p. 122My Dear Mr. Blatchford,
It is a pleasanter subject than drunkenness that you bring forward in your 22nd letter. Perhaps it is not so interesting to some people. It belongs, as I understand, to what they call “the dismal science,” the science of political and social economy. But these dismal science subjects, I find, have a good deal to do with things that are not dismal unless the dismal science is neglected, and then they are liable to become very dismal indeed—like the state of a house with the chimneys and drains out of order.
Everybody is deeply concerned in the right regulation of liberty. England has found this out by bitter experience in past times when particular classes in the nation domineered over other classes. She will find it out again more bitterly than ever, as I believe, if ever the tyranny of the community (as in the proposed system of Socialism) is brought to bear in the extinction of the individual. You would not own to this being the object or even the effect of the system you advocate; but I have shown in former letters that such an effect would be inevitable.
You put the question wrongly in making it an issue between individualism and socialism. This is not the issue; the issue is between society as it now is, and society as you propose it should be. Society as it now is is not a system of individualism. There is no such thing as absolute individualism in any country that possesses even the germ of civilisation.
All reasonable men will agree with you that the rights of the individual ought not to be exercised to the detriment of the community. You truly say that “every member of a society must give up some fragment of his own will and advantage in return for the advantages which he gains from association with his p. 123 fellows.” It is in the application of this doctrine where serious disagreement arises.
Mr. Herbert Spencer himself, whom you particularly single out for animadversion, and also Mr. Levy, both admit that the liberty of the individual must be curtailed for the benefit of a community associated for mutual advantage. The question is, How far must the curtailment go? Individual liberty might be curtailed to the point of slavery, on the plea of collective advantage. Individual liberty might be destroyed by a false theory of the interest of the whole. This is the objection to Socialism, that it would undermine and destroy the most valuable conditions of life for the sake of some other advantages, which, while essential, are to be secured without paying such a terrible price. The whole question is the one you put yourself—“Where are we to draw the line?”
You talk of protecting society from scoundrels: nobody will object to this, but who are the scoundrels? and how is a scoundrel to be dealt with? A man might be a scoundrel, and yet do things that he has a right to do.
Take the sweater: what does he aim to do? Does he aim at the murder of those he employs? No; he is only aiming at making a living, and in hundreds of cases scarcely succeeds. Does he force those who are in his employment to remain in his employment? No; he has certain work to be done which he offers to anyone who is willing to do it on the terms he proposes. He does not force it on anyone; the wage he offers for the work may be small, but in this, it may be, he has no choice. If he pay a higher wage, he may not be able to sell the goods, because the same goods are being sold at a price that does not admit of a higher wage, and if he cannot supply them at that price, he has no chance. He is as much the victim of circumstances as the unhappy toilers in his stuffy shops. It is a confusion of ideas to call him a criminal. It is not criminal to offer work at a price. It is not criminal to make a living. It is not criminal to do the best he can for himself. It is what all the world, even the most respectable, are doing. The sweaters’ objects are lawful enough, and even commendable. The methods to which he is forced may bear hardly on those who do his work, but he cannot justly be held morally responsible for this.
So with the rent of houses: the owner offers to let the property to anyone willing to pay the rent. He does not force p. 124 anyone to take his terms: everyone is at liberty to leave his houses alone. He asks what he considers a fair rent. This is perfectly lawful, so long as it is lawful for a man to possess property and to let it, and this is the law of the country at the present time. To call a man who does that which is lawful, for objects which are lawful, “morally worse than a footpad or a scuttler,” because the houses he has to offer are poorly adapted for comfort, is merely to scold. It is a confusion of moral perception.
It is the motive of an act that constitutes its moral character. The footpad intends to kill and steal: the sweater and the rackrenter intend neither. They aim at making a living, or making money, by methods that are universally recognised as legitimate. The unfavourable circumstances under which they have to follow those methods are the results of conditions over which they have no control. It is a case for discernment and compassion, and not for vilification. A change is needed on most points, no doubt, Mr. Blatchford, but do not swear at the unfortunate men whose guilt amounts to no more than adjustment of measures to an evil state of things. It is not individualism that they practise.
You may find individualism in the dreadful forest that Mr. Stanley explored on his last visit to Central Africa, where the dwarfmen each fight for their own hand; but the English society that you wish to overthrow is a stringent compromise between the liberty of the individual and the interests of the community. Individual liberty is respected, and the interests of the community are considered. This is as it ought to be, but Socialism would push the interests of the community to the point of extinguishing individual liberty by over-regulation It would invade the privacy of home, and dictate the form of individual life.
You say it would give us as much liberty as we need; how much is this? Opinion might differ here. Some might be content with the liberty to eat and clothe and sleep, but this would not satisfy the typical Englishman. He has intelligence, and taste and ambition, and enterprise, and these constitute the very flowering of life. It would not be enough for a man endowed with these faculties to merely have plenty to eat and wear: he wants scope for the unfolding of his mental energies. Socialism, as you propose to apply it, would fetter and repress, and finally extinguish these.
p. 125 You might conceivably lure Englishmen into the bondage by fair prospects of three hours’ work a day, and plenty of time to stroll about and listen to music; but they would not be long under its operation without finding it an intolerable oppression, under the galling burden of which they would rise like a manacled Samson, and burst their bonds asunder to the alarm and discomfiture of the Philistines.
You mildly grant that State Socialism “would imply some interference with the liberty of the individual.” How much is “some”? It might be much or little. I have shown that it would be much; it would be nearly complete on all points.
A man would not be at liberty to own his house; he would not be at liberty to buy and sell; he would not be at liberty to devote himself to intellectual occupation; he would not be at liberty to possess property; he would not be at liberty to employ his neighbours in their leisure time; he would not be at liberty to wear what he liked or eat what he liked, nor educate his sons as he liked, nor put them to the occupations he would prefer. He must take his directions from the State officials, and submit to their dictation on all these and many other points.
The effect of such a system, supposing it could be carried out, would in the long run be to emasculate manhood, and reduce the population to a uniform and drivelling type. It would be as if they were all put into a “devilling machine” and reduced by a common friction to a common state of cipher. No, Mr. Blatchford, it would be interference not a little, but interference much, with the liberty of the individual, to its total destruction.
But then you ask, “Which individual?” and you answer, “The scoundrel.” No, Mr. Blatchford, this is not correct. No doubt it is the scoundrel you would aim at extinguishing, but you would extinguish the community for the sake of extinguishing the scoundrel, like the quack killing the patient to cure the disease. You would reduce every individual in the community to a state of serfhood for the sake of having a community in which scoundrelism would have no chance. This is altogether too drastic a cure. You would squeeze all the beauty out of life for the sake of circumventing scoundrels. Most people would prefer that the scoundrel should have a chance of a little, rather than life should be reduced to a state in which it would not be worth living for anybody.
p. 126 You say you would prevent the rascal from taking what is not now his own. This is most desirable, but don’t prevent the honest man from getting at the same time what is his own. This is what your system would do. You would deprive the rascal of a breathing-place by suffocating honest men, for your system would certainly stifle intelligent enterprise. You would make life not worth living for the best sort of men, for the sake of preventing the worst sort having a chance. God prevent you ever making the experiment. Nobody would be more shocked at the result than yourself, I am sure, if I rightly read noble enthusiasm and generous aim in your brilliant writing.
I don’t think you mean to be unfair, but many of your remarks have a smack that way. You give a wrong meaning to Mr. Spencer’s obvious definition of society as “consisting of individuals.” You make it mean a concourse of independent atoms, and not a united whole. Now, the statement is not intended to convey, and cannot bear, such a meaning. It is exactly the reverse of Mr. Spencer’s meaning. His meaning is that though it is a whole, it is a whole consisting of individuals, and must therefore be compacted on a plan recognising their separate rights, or it must cease to exist. You make him deny the societyship, which is what he affirms. You make him affirm the independency of the individuals, which is what he denies. His aim is the reconciliation of the two which is what you ignore.
Society is indeed a multitude of connected units, which is Mr. Spencer’s contention; but you make him declare the units to be unconnected, which is what he repudiates. The fact is you have to make Mr. Spencer utter nonsense before you can answer him, but the nonsense recoils on Socialism. A society is an organisation of connected parts in mutual subordination one to the other, but Socialism would destroy the parts by boiling them all down into a workhouse compost.
When you say that society as it now is, consists of antagonistic parties united for purposes of social warfare, you write a vigorous sentence; but you do not utter a truthful statement except in the shallow sense in which a country bumpkin, seeing a factory engine for the first time, might say there was a deal of going backward and forward for no purpose. Capital may seem to be antagonistic to labour, and labour may seem to be antagonistic to capital, but, in p. 127 fact, they are as essential to each other as man and wife. How could the masters get on without the working-men, and how could the working-men get on without the masters? Like separate parts of an engine going contrary ways, they are both essential to the result for which the whole concern has been put together. And so it will be found through all parts of the Social machine—even down as low as a gentleman’s gardener and up as high as a royal duke. Much of the bad feeling that exists is due to agitation and the want of understanding.
You say that where an independent individual is found, he is either a good man trying to bring the combatants to reason, or a bad man trying to fleece them. I can only say, Mr. Blatchford, if you believe this to be true, your acquaintance with British Society must be a very circumscribed affair. Why, sir, in every considerable town there are thousands and thousands of independent men who are certainly not fleecers, but growers of fleece, and who, if their voices are not heard in trade disputes, have eyes that keenly follow and anxiously watch the movements of public affairs, and are only passive because they are helpless in the distracting complications of an evil time.
You should not misrepresent the contention of those who say that Socialism is impracticable. They do not “claim that men should be left free to fight each for his own hand,” without respect to the interests of the community. They claim that individual liberty should be left inviolate within a certain clearly-defined circle, outside of which alone the individual should be compelled to submit to conditions imposed for the good of the whole. This is, in fact, the present constitution of Society, to which Socialism would put an end by letting the community invade the inner circle of private life and private rights. There is not the amount of love and justice rife that good men long to see, but there is something to be thankful for in that line. What there is grows out of the preservation of individual rights. If these were overrun and destroyed, love and justice would necessarily perish with them.
You talk of this liberty of the individual tending only to the cozening of the strong and the destruction of the weak, for the sake of useless gain. I can only call this an extravagance of partisan rhetoric. It ignores the balance of truth. There is p. 128 doubtless much abuse of personal liberty, but this is not confined to the well-to-do: it extends to evil men in every class. But what an extraordinary argument it is that would destroy liberty because of its abuses. As well propose the abolition of medicine because of poison; or the abolition of food because of gluttony; or of water because of drowning; or of Mr. Blatchford because of the Anarchists.
Society is truly “a union of people for mutual advantage.” No wise man will quarrel with your philosophy here; but no wise man will agree that it is an advantage to suppress individual liberty for the sake of preventing its abuse. Rather let us have its occasional abuse for the sake of its boundless blessings than sacrifice the boundless blessings to prevent its occasional abuse. The burglar and the thief—or even the sweater and the usurer—we can deal with, and endure, while we are permitted to arrange our own affairs in our own way; but who would consider even empty prisons and white gloves at the assizes a sufficient compensation for the surrender of private life and private rights to the dictation of the parish beadle? You see I continue to show myself
Your “hard-headed and shrewd,” and therefore protesting friend,
JOHN SMITH.