Slavery

p. 103My Dear Mr. Blatchford,

Excuse me saying that I think you labour in vain, in your 19th letter, to refute Mr. Herbert Spencer’s opinion that “Socialism would result in a more odious form of slavery than any the world has yet known.”

In your eagerness to get rid of this imputation, you actually contradict your own earlier words. You say that Mr. Spencer is mistaken in thinking that Socialism would compel men to work against their will. You say “Socialism would not compel any man to work.” Mr. Blatchford, you are the authority for the opinion that it would. If the opinion is a mistake, you are responsible for it. In Chapter xiii., page 202, you say that Socialism would not only refuse to tolerate competition: “it would do more than this . . . it WOULD COMPEL EVERY MAN to do some kind of useful work.”

You talk of having your opponents on the hip. Where have I got you here? You have either forgotten or contradicted yourself. I think the latter.

You must mean what Mr. Spencer says you mean, and what you say Mr. Spencer is mistaken in thinking you mean. You must mean that you would compel every man to work, for if you do not compel every man to work, three-fourths of the population would elect not to work if their living were sure without it, as you propose.

You make it quite certain that this is what you mean by what you go on to say, for you go on to say “If a man declined to work, he would certainly have to starve or leave the community.” What is this but compulsion? Mr. Spencer was not mistaken in thinking that Socialism would compel men to work against their will. And if this isn’t slavery, the word has no particular meaning. The only p. 104 practical difference between this slavery and the old slavery of the South American planters would be that the compulsory power would be in the machine of the State instead of in the hands of an individual master.

The enormity of compelling men to work against their will would be most manifest where there was no need to work. There would be many such cases even under Socialism: for you propose to give compensation to the persons from whom you would take over the railways, mines, and industries of the country. There would also be the funded debt of the country to take over, amounting to about £750,000,000. If you paid money to the holders of this debt and the owners of the industries of the country, these people would have money to buy food, clothing, and other things without working. If they refused to work, you would send them into exile, for you could not starve them into submission. Think of this outrage on liberty, that a man having property—property which the nation had sanctioned by giving it to him—should not be allowed to live on it: should not be allowed to spend it in the country that had awarded it to him as “compensation,” unless he shouldered a bricklayer’s hod, or handled a spade, or wielded a sledge hammer, at the bidding of the Socialist officials.

Do not deny, Mr. Blatchford, that Socialism would compel men to work against their will. This is exactly what it would do, and what it would have to do to defend itself against the return of the old system through the crevices of compensated privilege. Admit it and face it out.

You cannot rebut the allegation that this would be the worst possible form of slavery. Your object might be the benefit of the community, but slavery would be your means—the subjection of all classes to labour by compulsion. The community would sell freedom for comfort.

It has been well said that the human race cannot afford to exchange its liberty for any possible comfort. You do not attempt to dispose of this. You only say that they have got no liberty to exchange. The allegation is not true. Every man out of restraint has perfect control over his own actions, however unfavourable circumstances may be to the exercise of that control. He has perfect liberty to choose whatever avocation may come within the range of his choice; or to spend as he pleases the money he may earn from that avocation. The avocation might not be much to p. 105 his mind, and the earnings might not be very liberal, but independence is sweet. The pleasure of doing as one chooses makes up for much. It is a very common saying that a man would rather starve in a garret with liberty to do as he likes, than have the comforts of a palace under bondage. This sentiment is a very common one among the poor: as for the rich, you might break an Englishman’s back—you could not bend it. You do not sufficiently take this national characteristic into account.

Under Socialism, he would have to do as he was told. If he was one of the holders of State compensation, having no need to work, he might want to give himself to study; all in vain. He would be obliged to take the job assigned to him by the district inspector, who might be a district taskmaster as well—for it would be no new thing for mediocrity to strut and swagger under “a little brief authority.” Human nature would be the same as now. A man might want to buy from some of his neighbours on better terms than he could supply himself from the State stores; no, he mustn’t. He must buy where the officials order him. He might want to sell something that he did not want to some friend who wanted to buy; he dare not. The eye of the official would be upon him. A tip might do something; for the officials, as you tell us, are not going to be stained-glass angels. But what a degradation for Englishmen to have to bribe their way into what is now the common privilege of all men.

The citizens in general would not only have to surrender the rights of buying and selling; they would have to abandon all ideas of improving their position or enlarging their sphere of influence and activity. They would be tied down into a fixed place and shut up to so much eating and drinking and the wearing of such clothes and ornaments as the State (mere parish beadles in most cases) might think good for them. Private life in all its details would be under the heel of State regulation. Such a state of life would be impossible of endurance.

You say “the Socialistic State would prevent a man living on the work of others.” This sounds beneficent. But what does it mean practically? Would you prevent a man from employing a lad to run errands? He might want a boy to fetch something that he required in the making of something with his own hands in his own house, and to which by Socialistic principles he would have a right as the production of his own industry. Would you forbid p. 106 him using the boy on the plea of preventing him from “living on the work of others”? Must he fetch the article himself? If so, to what abject slavery would Englishmen be reduced! If not—if you would allow him to give the boy a penny to fetch the thing, how are you to “prevent men living on the work of others”? for if he might employ a boy to run an errand, he might employ the same boy when he came back to cut something, or polish something, or lift something. Or he might employ him to sell Clarions on the street. And if he might so employ one boy, he might employ two. And if he might employ boys, he might employ men; where could the line be drawn? There is no middle ground between the absurd and outrageous tyranny of interfering with a man’s right to get what help he likes in his own house, and allowing men to “live on the work of others.”

It sounds plausible to say, “If you enjoy the benefits and share the wealth of the commonwealth, you must obey the laws and share the labour.” These fine words do not disguise the nature of the system. When you do not allow a man to choose his own labour, or its conditions, and prevent him acting in accordance with his own likes and preferences, you impose upon him a system of slavery, whatever you may call it. Liberty is freedom to act according to individual choice in any given circumstances. You propose to substitute for this, permission to do as we are told—and told by bailiffs and beadles! It is quite too monstrous. If that is liberty, what is slavery?

You suggest that we have the same difficulties to contend with now. You say that the work is apportioned by capitalists now, and that, therefore, there ought to be nothing impracticable in its being apportioned by the State. But, Mr. Blatchford, there is no apportioning of work by the capitalists now in the sense that you propose the State should apportion it. No capitalist decides for a man what he is to do. He may tell him what there is to do, and what he may do, but the man can leave it alone if he likes. Under Socialism, you would compel him to do it. This would make all the difference in the world. You must know human nature very superficially if you do not know that men who would do almost anything left to their choice will refuse to do anything that is forced on them. This is the answer to your remark that men are not free now. They are free in the sense in which men like to be free. They are free to act according to circumstances. Socialism p. 107 would not allow this freedom but would compel them to a line of action out of the house and in it.

You say boys would be as much at liberty to choose their occupation under Socialism as under the present system; but in dealing with objections, you make it manifest that this would not be the case. Your opponent suggests that all the boys would want to be doctors or architects: none of them would choose to be chimney sweeps and scavengers. What is your answer? That if too many boys wanted to be doctors, the authorities would have to say, “We have enough doctors, you must be a candlestick maker,” and to the candlestick-making they would have to go. Quite so: it would not be a case of people choosing for themselves but of the officials ordering them about. Your only rejoinder is that things are not well ordered now. This is not an answer. Granted that things are not well ordered now, the objection is that they would be worse ordered under Socialism, because whatever advantages Socialism secured would be secured at the price of freedom, for the loss of which there could be no compensation. If it gave food and clothing to people, it would take from them that which gives food and clothing their chief value. It would paralyse all the forces that make for the development of mankind through the stimulus of incentive and the pleasure of independent choice. Men are not animals to be made comfortable in lime-washed stalls, cowsheds, kennels, or cages: they require scope for the unfolding of their faculties in a fair field, and no favour. If they are too much taken charge of, their manhood will stunt, and they will become a race of effeminates. Under Socialism we should be like drilled soldiers: we should all step to a pattern, work to a pattern, dress and feed to a pattern. Individual enterprise would be extinguished. We should be the drilled slaves of the commonwealth. If there is slavery in the present system, it is at least liberty to be slaves: but under Socialism there would be no choice. We should have to do as we were told, or starve or leave the country.

You think you are going to make ladies of the factory girls by Socialism, and to make the humblest citizens at home in “the best of art, science, literature, music, poetry or the drama.” Mr. Blatchford, it is a pretty conceit and nothing more. It could not be. The nature of things is against it. You cannot develop ladyhood and high culture except in the leisure and refinement that come with wealth. But you propose to make everybody work; so that p. 108 instead of making ladies of the factory girls, you would make factory girls of the few ladies we have, and bricklayers and candlestick-makers of our artists, scientists, literati, &c. You would obliterate the refined and picturesque features of society, as it now is, without sensibly improving the working class in whose name Socialism is invoked: for how could you get much general improvement out of 3s. 6d. more for every 5s. they now have, and things much dearer? Remember, the working class take £500,000,000 of the gross earnings of the country; the employers take only £360,000,000. Now, if you take the £360,000,000 from the employers and hand it over to the working classes, it would only amount to 3s. 6d. per head more than the 5s. they now get, of which they would not sensibly be the better, as regards culture, while the body of Society would be much worse. The point is well illustrated by a paragraph that appeared the other day. A working man told Baron Rothschild he ought to bless the world by dividing his great wealth. The Baron asked him how much blessing it would confer. The working man thought a good deal. The Baron reckoned up, and, handing him over 3d., said, “There is your share.”

Your pretty generalizations are enticing, but they are fallacious at the bottom. The system could not be made to work the splendid results you foresee, unless you kill off all the moneyed people, and take over the whole property of the country without a farthing compensation. Even then, you would merely have the arithmetical elements of a possible success. You would lack many others that would be essential. The thing could never begin, and if it began, it would never go on.

It is not capitalism that restricts the advantages of life to the few. It is an entanglement of evils which it is not in the power of man to unravel. So helplessly thinks,

Your despairing yet not hopeless friend,

JOHN SMITH.