Part 9 (1/2)

Now, purists in thought and argument might make it a subject of complaint, perhaps, that the writer, as soon as he reaches a vital part of his argument, should lapse into the imagery of an old music-hall song. But such an objection would be very much misplaced, for the ideas entertained by socialists as to this particular point closely resemble those which make music-hall songs popular. They consist of familiar images which are accepted without being a.n.a.lysed; and the image of man seated in an industrial canoe of his own, and paddling it just as he pleases without reference to anybody else, very admirably represents the lot which socialists promise to everybody, and which dwells as a possibility in the imagination of even their serious thinkers. But let us take this dream in connection with facts of the modern world, which these men, in much of their reasoning, themselves recognise as unalterable, and we shall see it give place to realities of a very different aspect.

To judge from our author's language, one would suppose that modern capital was made up entirely of separate little implements like sewing-machines, and that every one would, if the state were the sole capitalist, receive on application a machine of the same grade, which he might take away with him, and use or break in a corner. Now, if modern capital were really of this nature, the state no doubt might conceivably do something like what the writer suggests, in the way of dealing out similar industrial opportunities to everybody. But, as he himself is perfectly well aware, the distinctive feature of capital in the modern world is one which renders any such course impossible. Modern capital, as a whole, in so far as it consists of implements, consists not of implements which can be used by each user separately. It consists of enormous mechanisms, with the works and structures pertaining to them, which severally require to be used by thousands of men at once, and which no one of the number can use without reference to the operations of the others. If the state were to acquire the owners.h.i.+p of all the steel-mills at Pittsburg, how could it do more than is done by their present owners, to confer on each of the employes any kind of position a.n.a.logous to that of a man ”who has his own canoe”? The state could just as easily perform the literal feat of cutting up the _Lusitania_ into a hundred thousand dinghys, in each of which somebody would enjoy the equal opportunity of paddling a pa.s.senger from Sandy Hook to Southampton.

But we will not tie our author too closely to the terms of his own metaphor. The work from which I have just quoted is a booklet[27] in which he devoted himself to the task of refuting in detail the arguments urged by myself in the course of my American speeches. We will, therefore, turn to his criticism of what, in one of my speeches, I said about the state post-office, and we shall there get further light with regard to his real meaning. I asked how any sorter or letter-carrier employed in the post-office by the state was any more his own master, or had any more opportunities of freedom, than a messenger or other person employed by a private firm. Our author's answer is this: ”That the public can determine what the wages of a postman shall be--that is, they can, if they so choose (by their votes), double the wages now prevailing.” Therefore, our author proceeds, ”the postal employe, in a manner, may be considered as a man employing himself.”

Now, first let me observe that, as was shown in our seventh chapter, wages under socialism, just as under the present system, could be no more than a share of the total product of the community; and the claims advanced to a share of this by any one group of workers would be consequently limited by the claims of all the others. The question, therefore, of whether the postmen's wages should be doubled at any time, or whether they might not have to be halved, would not depend only on votes, but, also and primarily, on the extent of the funds available; and in so far as it depended on votes at all, the votes would not be those of the postmen. They would be the votes of the general public, and any special demand on the part of one body of workers would be neutralised by similar demands on the part of all the others. Further, if these ”employers of themselves” could not determine their own wages, still less would they determine the details of the work required of them. A postman, like a private messenger, is bound to do certain things, not one of which he prescribes personally to himself. At stated hours he must daily be present at an office, receive a bundle of letters, and then set out to deliver them at private doors, in accordance with orders which he finds written on the envelopes. Such is the case at present, and socialism would do nothing to modify it. If our author thinks that a man, under these conditions, is his own employer, our author must be easily satisfied, and we will not quarrel with his opinion. It will be enough to point out that the moment he descends to details his promise that socialism would equalise economic opportunity for all reduces itself to the contention that the ordinary labourer or worker would, if the state employed him, have a better chance of promotion and increased wages than he has to-day, when employed by a private firm, and (we may add, though our author does not here say so) that some sort of useful work would be devised by the state for everybody.

Now, although every item of this contention, and especially the last, is disputable, let us suppose, for argument's sake, that it is, on the whole, well founded. Even so, we have not touched the real crux of the question. We have dealt only with the case of the ordinary worker, who fulfils the ordinary functions which must always be those of nine men out of every ten, let society be const.i.tuted in what way we will. It remains for us to consider the case of those who are fitted, or believe themselves to be fitted, for work of a wider kind, and who aspire to gain, by performing this, an indefinitely ampler remuneration. This ambitious and exceptionally active cla.s.s is the cla.s.s for which the promise of equal opportunities possesses its main significance, and in its relation to which it mainly requires to be examined. Indeed, the writer from whom we are quoting recognises this himself; for he gives his special attention to the economic position of those who, in greater or less degree, are endowed with what he calls ”genius”; and in order to ill.u.s.trate how socialism would deal with these, he cites two cases from the annals of electrical engineering, in which opportunities, not forthcoming otherwise, were given by the state to inventors of realising successful inventions.

Now, what our author and others who reason like him forget, is that the opportunities with which we are here concerned differ in one all-important particular from those which concern us in the case either of education or of ordinary employment. If one boy uses his educational opportunities ill, he does nothing to prejudice the opportunities of others who use them well. Should a sorter of letters, who, if he had been sharp and trustworthy, might have risen to the highest and best-paid post in his department, throw his opportunities away by inattention or otherwise, the loss resulting is confined to the man himself. The opportunities open to his fellows remain what they were before. But when we come to industrial activity of those higher and rarer kinds, on which the sustained and progressive welfare of the entire community depends, such as invention, or any form of far-reaching and original enterprise, the kind of opportunity which a man requires is not an opportunity of exerting his own faculties in isolation, like a sorter who is specially expert in deciphering illegible addresses. It is an opportunity of directing the efforts of a large number of other men.

Apart from the case of craftsmans.h.i.+p and artistic production, all the higher industrial efforts are reducible to a control of others, and can be made only by men who have the means of controlling them. Since this is one of the princ.i.p.al truths that have been elucidated in the present volume, it is sufficient to rea.s.sert it here, without further comment.

If, therefore, a man is to be given the opportunity of embodying and trying an invention in a really practical form, it will be necessary to put at his disposal, let us disguise the fact as we may, the services of a number of other men who will work in accordance with his orders. This, as we have seen already, is what is done by the ordinary investor whenever he lends capital to an inventor. He supplies him with the food by which the requisite subordinates must be fed; and the state, were the state the capitalist, would do virtually the same thing. It could give him his opportunity in no other way.

Further, if the invention in question turns out to be successful--here is another point which has already been explained and emphasised--the wage-capital which has been consumed by the labourers is replaced by some productive implement, which is more than the equivalent of the labour force spent in constructing it. If, on the other hand, the invention turns out to be a failure, the wage-capital is wasted, and, so far as the general welfare is concerned, the state might just as well have thrown the whole of it into the sea. Since, then, the opportunities which the state would have at its disposal, would consist at any moment of a given amount of capital, and since any portion of this which was used unsuccessfully would be lost, the number of opportunities which the state could allocate to individuals would be limited, and each opportunity which was wasted by one man would diminish the number that could be placed at the disposal of others.

Now, any one who knows anything of human nature and actual life knows this--that the number of men who firmly and pa.s.sionately believe in the value of their own inventions, or other industrial projects, is far in excess of those whose ideas and projects have actually any value whatsoever. When the _Great Eastern_, the largest s.h.i.+p of its time, had been built on the Thames by the celebrated engineer Brunel, its launching was attended with unforeseen and what seemed to be insuperable difficulties. Mr. Brunel's descendants have, I believe, still in their possession, a collection of drawings, sent him by a variety of inventors, and representing all sorts of devices by which the launching might be accomplished. All were, as the draughtsmans.h.i.+p was enough to show, the work of men of high technical training; but the practical suggestions embodied in one and all of them could not have been more grotesque had they emanated from a home for madmen. To have given an equality of opportunity to all this tribe of inventors of putting their devices to the test would have probably cost more than the building of the s.h.i.+p itself, and the s.h.i.+p at the end would have been stranded in the dock still. This curious case is representative, and is sufficiently ill.u.s.trative of the fact that opportunity of this costly kind could be conceded to a few only of those who would demand, and believe themselves to deserve it; and the state, as the trustee of the public, would have, unless it were prepared to ruin the nation, to be incomparably more cautious than any private investor.[28]

Of the general doctrine, then, that the opportunities of all should be equal, we may repeat that, as an abstract proposition, it is one which could be contested by n.o.body; but we have seen that, when applied to societies of unequal men, and to the various tasks of life, its original simplicity is lost, and it does not become even intelligible until we divest it of a large part of its implications. Economic or industrial opportunity is, we have seen, of three kinds: firstly, educational opportunity; secondly, the opportunity of performing and receiving the full equivalent of an ordinary task or service, such as that of a postman, the value of which depends on its conformity to a prescribed pattern or schedule; and thirdly, opportunity of directing the work of others, thereby initiating new enterprises or realising new inventions--a kind of opportunity requiring the control of capital, which capital, whether provided by the state or otherwise, would be lost to the community unless it were used efficiently.

With regard to educational opportunity--it has been seen that it is possible to equalise this, approximately if not entirely, at a given time in the early lives of all, but that it would be possible to maintain the equality for a short time only.

With regard to opportunities of earning a livelihood subsequently by performing one or other of those ordinary and innumerable tasks which must always fall to the lot of four men out of every five, we may say that an equalisation of opportunities of this kind is the admitted object of every reformer and statesman who believes that the prosperity of a country is synonymous with the welfare of its inhabitants. In achieving this object there are, however, two difficulties--one being the difficulty, occasional and often frequent in any complex society, of devising work which has any practical value, and replaces its own cost, for all those who are able and willing to perform it; the other being the difficulty which arises from the existence of persons who are incapacitated, by some species of vice, from performing, or from performing adequately, any useful work whatever. We must here content ourselves with observing that the official directors of industry, who would const.i.tute the state under socialism, would be no more competent to solve the first than are the private employers of to-day, while there is nothing in the scheme of society put forward by socialists, which even purports to supply any solution of the second, other than a more drastic application of the methods applied to-day.

Thirdly, with regard to equality of opportunity for those whose main ambition is not to be provided with some task-work performable by their own hand, but to achieve some position which will enable them to prescribe tasks to others, and thus do justice to their real or supposed talents by the construction of great machines, or the organisation of great enterprises--in other words, with regard to those persons whose ambition is to obtain what are called the prizes of life, and who think themselves treated unjustly if they find themselves unable to gain them--we have seen that to provide equal opportunities for all or even for most of these, is in the very nature of things impossible. The fundamental reason of this, let me say once more, is the fact that the number of men possessing sufficient talent to conceive ambitious schemes of one kind or another far exceeds the number of those whose talents are capable of producing any useful results; and to give to this majority opportunities of testing their projects by experiment would be merely to deplete the resources of the entire nation for the sake of demonstrating to one particular cla.s.s that abortive talents are worse than no talents at all.

Here we are in the presence of a fact far wider than this special manifestation of it. In the animal and the vegetable world, no less than in the human, the successes of nature are the siftings of its partial failures; and in order to secure such services as are really productive it must always be necessary to squander opportunities to a certain extent in the testing of talents which ultimately turn out to be barren.

But cases of this kind may, at all events, be reduced to a minimum; and the reduction of their number is possible, because they are largely an artificial product. In order to understand how this is, we must go back again to the question of equality of opportunity in education, and consider it under an aspect which has not yet engaged our attention.

We started with supposing the establishment of a system of education which would offer to all the same books and teachers, and also--for this was part of our a.s.sumption--equal leisure to profit by them; and we noted how soon opportunities would cease to be equal on account of the different uses which would be made of them by different students. What must now be noted is that as matters have been conducted hitherto, attempts to make educational opportunities equal do tend to produce an equality of a certain kind. Though they have no tendency to equalise powers of achievement, they tend to produce an artificial equality of expectation. In order to elucidate the nature of this fact, and its significance, I cannot do better than quote a pa.s.sage from Ruskin, admirable for its trenchant felicity, which, since it occurs in a book much admired by socialists, may be commended to their special attention.[29] Economic demand, Ruskin says, is the expression of economic desires; but the const.i.tution of human nature is such that these desires are divisible into two distinct kinds--desires for the commodities which men ”need,” and desires for commodities which they ”wish for.” The former arise from those appet.i.tes and appetencies in respect of which all are equal. They are virtually a fixed quant.i.ty, and the economic commodities requisite for their healthy satisfaction const.i.tute a minimum which is virtually the same for all men. The latter, instead of being fixed, are capable of indefinite variation, and in these--the desires for what men ”wish for” but do not ”need”--we have the origin ”of three-fourths of the demands existing in the world.”

”These demands are,” he proceeds, ”romantic. They are founded on visions, idealisms, hopes, and affections, and the regulation of the purse is, in its essence, regulation of the imagination and the heart.”

With the demands which originate in men's equal needs we are not concerned here. It is impossible to modify them appreciably either by education or otherwise; but the desires or wishes which Ruskin so happily calls ”romantic” vary in intensity and character to an almost indefinite degree, not only in different individuals, but also in the same individuals when submitted to different circ.u.mstances. Those of them, indeed, which are most generally felt are often, to speak strictly, not so much desires as fancies; and while the image of their fulfilment may please or amuse the imagination, their non-fulfilment produces no sense of want. So long as they are merely fancies, they raise no practical question. They raise a practical question only when their insistence is such that their non-fulfilment produces an active sense of privation; and whether in the case of any given individual they reach or do not reach this pitch of intensity depends upon two things. One of these is the individual's congenital temperament, his talents, his strength of will, and the vividness or vagueness of his imagination. Education, understood in its more general sense, is the other. Now, men varying as they do in respect of their congenital characters, the strength of their romantic wishes bears naturally some proportion to their own capacities for attempting to satisfy these wishes for themselves. Few men, for example, have naturally a strong wish for conditions which will enable them to exercise exceptional power, unless they are conscious of possessing exceptional powers to exercise. Hence, though this consciousness is in many cases deceptive, the struggle of men for power is confined within narrow limits, and the disappointments which embitter those who fail to attain it are naturally confined within narrow limits also. So long as matters stand thus, the majority of men are unaffected. But wishes which are naturally confined to exceptional men, who are more or less capable of realising them, are susceptible by education of indefinite extension to others who are not so qualified; and in the case of these last, the results which they produce are different. They multiply the number of those who demand preferential opportunities, in order that they may enter on a struggle in which they must ultimately fail.

They multiply the number of those, to a still greater extent, who demand that positions or possessions shall be somehow provided for them by society, without reference to any struggle on their own part at all. The artificial diffusion of ”wish” among these two distinguishable cla.s.ses is thus accomplished by education in somewhat different ways; but the _modus operandi_ is in one respect the same in both. It consists of an artificial enlarging, in the case of all individuals alike, of the ideas entertained by them of their natural social rights; and an active craving is thus generalised for possessions and modes of life, which nine men out of ten would otherwise have never wasted a thought upon, and which not one out of ten can possibly make his own. How easily this idea of rights is susceptible of enlargement by teaching, and how efficient it is in creating a desire where none would have existed otherwise, is vividly ill.u.s.trated by those not infrequent cases in which men, who for half their lives have considered themselves fortunate in the possession of moderate affluence, have suddenly been led to suppose themselves the heirs of peerages or great estates, and have died insane or bankrupt in consequence of their vain endeavours to secure rank or property which, had it not been for a purely advent.i.tious idea, would have affected their hopes and wishes no more than the moon did. It is precisely in this manner that much of the education of to-day operates in consequence of current attempts to equalise it[30]; and since education is the cause of the evils here in question, it is in some reform of education that we must hope to find a cure. What the general nature of this reform would be can be indicated in a few words. It would not involve a reversal, it would involve a modification only, of the principle now in vogue, and can, indeed, best be expressed by means of the same formula, if we do but add to it a single qualifying word--that is to say, the word ”relative” prefixed to the word ”equality,” when we speak of equality of opportunity as the end at which we ought to aim.

Let me explain my meaning.

The logical end of all action is happiness; and happiness, so far as it depends on economic conditions at all, is an equation between desire and attainment. The capacities of men being unequal, and the objects of desire which they could, under the most favourable circ.u.mstances, make their own, being unequal likewise, the ideal object of education, as a means to happiness, is twofold. It is, on the one hand, so to develop each man's congenital faculties as to raise them to their maximum power of providing him with what he desires; and on the other hand to limit his desires, by a due regulation of his expectations, to such objects as his faculties, when thus developed, render approximately if not completely attainable. Thus, relatively to the individual, the ideal object of education is in all cases the same; but since individuals are not equal to one another, education, if it is to perform an equal service for each, must be in its absolute character to an indefinite extent various; just as a tailor, if he is to give to all his customers equal opportunities of being well dressed, will not offer them coats of the same size and pattern. He will offer them coats which are equal only in this--namely, their equally successful adaptation to the figures of their respective wearers.

Of course, so to graduate any actual course of education that in the case of each individual it is the best which it is possible to conceive for him--that it should at once enable him to make the most of his powers, and ”regulate,” as Ruskin says, ”his imagination and his hopes”

in accordance with them, would require a clairvoyance and prevision not given to man; but the end here specified--namely, an equality of opportunity which is relative--is the only kind of equality which is even theoretically possible; and it is one, moreover, to which a constant approximation can be made. The absolute equality which is contemplated by socialists, and by others who are more or less vaguely influenced by socialistic sentiment, is, on the contrary, an ideal which either could not be realised at all, or which, in proportion as it was realised, would be ruinous to the nation which provided it, and would bring nothing but disappointment to those who were most importunate in demanding it. The only conceivable means, indeed, by which it could be extended beyond the first few years of life, would be by a constant process of handicapping--that is to say, by applying to education the same policy that trade-unions apply to ordinary labour. If one bricklayer has laid more bricks than his fellows, he virtually has to wait until the others have caught him up. Similarly, if equality of opportunity, other than an equality that is relative, were to be maintained in the sphere of education, a clever boy who had learned to speak German in a year would have to be coerced into idleness until every dunce among his cla.s.smates could speak it as well as he; and a similar process would be repeated in after-life. This policy, as has been pointed out already, is, even if wasteful, not ruinous in the sphere of ordinary labour--a fact which shows how wide the difference is between the ordinary faculties, as applied to industry, and the exceptional; but no one in his senses, not even the most ardent apostle of equality, would dream of recommending its application to efforts of a higher kind, and demand that the clever boys should periodically be made to wait for the stupid, or that the best doctor in the presence of a great pestilence should not be allowed to cure more patients than the worst one.

If, then, it is, as it must be, the ideal aim of social arrangements generally to enable each to raise his capacities to their practical maximum, and adjust his desires and his expectations to the practical possibilities of attainment, ”relative equality of opportunity,” firstly in education and secondly in practical life, is a formula which accurately expresses the means by which this end is to be secured; but the absolute equality which is contemplated by socialists and others is an ideal which, the moment we attempted to translate it into terms of the actual, would begin to fall to pieces, defeating its own purpose; and there is nothing in socialism, were socialism otherwise practicable, any more than there is the existing system, which would obviate this result.

Indeed, it may be observed further that, though the idea of equality of opportunity in general is not inconsistent with a socialistic scheme of society, as socialists of the more thoughtful kind have now come to conceive of it, it belongs distinctively to the domain of the fiercest individual compet.i.tion. For in so far as socialism differs from ordinary individualism, it differs from it in this--that, instead of encouraging each man to do his utmost because what he gets will be proportionate to what he does, it aims at establis.h.i.+ng a greater equality in what men get by making this independent of whether they do much or little; in which case the main concern of the individual would be the certainty of getting what he wanted, not the opportunity of producing it.

The three ideas or conceptions, then, which have engaged our attention in this and the three preceding chapters--namely, the idea that labour does, as a statistical fact, produce far more in values than it at present gets back in wages; the idea that the ma.s.s of the population could permanently augment its resources by confiscating all dividends as fast as they became due, and the idea that it is possible to provide for unequal men, for more than a moment of their lives, equal opportunities of experimenting with their real or imaginary powers, are ideas, indeed, which have all the vices characteristic of socialistic thought; but the first and the third have no necessary connection with socialism, and the second is not peculiar to it. We will now return to it as a system of exclusive and distinctive doctrines, and sum up, in general terms, the conclusions to which our examination of it is calculated to lead far-seeing and practical men, and more especially active politicians.

FOOTNOTES:

[25] The Christian Socialist author of _The Gospel for To-day_. See chapter on Christian Socialism.