p. 136My Dear Mr. Blatchford,
You deal with quite a cluster of difficulties in your 24th letter. If you do not deal with them successfully,—if, after you have most adroitly pitched them out of your path, they come back on you like the boomerang, the fault is in the subject, and not in your handling of it.
You foresee the difficulty of having loafers and idle people under a system that would require everybody to work. You propose to kill them off by starvation. This is simple and effectual certainly; but it would have its drawbacks. You might possibly kill off some who were not loafers. How are you to tell when a man is a loafer? You say that the mere fact of a man begging under a system in which there would be work for all, would be proof that he was a loafer. But there might not always be work for all. It might happen sometimes in a town or village that all the coopering or smithing work was in hand, and that some cooper or smith might turn up who could not find a job. It might be some weeks before there was work for him. Meanwhile he would have no wages coming in; he is not a loafer, but he cannot starve, so he begs.
Or a man might be unwell and unable to earn his wages, and might be under the necessity of begging. “Oh, but,” you say, “we would provide for cases of illness.” Aye, but might there not be shamming? Of course there might, and often would, for many men would prefer to skulk if there was no danger of wages being discontinued. How would you do with the shammers? You would look upon them as self-convicted loafers, and kill them off. “Serve them right, too,” you p. 137 say. Yes, but might not men be suspected of shamming who were really ill? There is no question about it. Men are sometimes ill enough to be unfit for work, when not ill enough to be above suspicion. Suspecting him of shamming, you would refuse him food, and be guilty of murder.
It is easy to say you would “oblige the loafer to work or perish.” In the process, you would cause many others to perish not only by mistakes of the kind suggested, but often by the action of malice. For see what a weapon you would put into the hands of officials having a grudge. They would only have to raise the cry “You are a loafer” to have legal warrant to stop supplies and starve those who did not please them.
The scavenging also you recognise as a difficulty in a Socialist State. Scavenging is not agreeable work, and if men were under no pressure of necessity, they would not choose scavenging. You think you might get over the difficulty by making scavenging hours shorter than any other kind of hours. But suppose the attraction of short hours was not sufficient to overcome the repulsion of nasty work, and there was a deficiency of volunteers, how then? Would you force the citizens? Would you allow the parish official to serve notice on some ex-railway director or bank-manager (say) or some large holder of Socialist State compensation scrip, that he must become a cleaner of drains or a night-soil man or a street-cleaner, or a chimney-sweep? What would be the right name for the country where any man was exposed to such freaks of officialism?
You rejoice that under Socialism, snobbery would perish and gentility get quickly ready for burial. It is probable that a good many other things would also be ready for burial at the same time. Hearts would break, refinement vanish, and the beauty of English civilisation become a memory of happier days. The life of the country would be thrown back 500 years, and if Socialism outlasted the indignation of outraged liberty, an iron chain would be tied round the chances of recovery. The only hope would be in revolution, in which the forces of enlightenment, assisted by such of the common people as might mourn the departed glory, would rise in irresistible rebellion and sweep away the odious tyranny erected in the name of liberty and plenty.
p. 138 Another difficulty: many working men own their own houses as the result of their own frugality. What would become of their houses in the change to Socialism? Would they continue the property of their present owners, or would they be taken by the State? You do not answer this. You think that perhaps the State would “nationalise” them—that is, take possession of them—that is, rob the working man of his house: on the ground that the State would in return confer greater advantages than the possession of a house would be. The State, you say, would ensure him a provision for his old age, and provide for his wife and children in case of his death. Well, but the State would do this for all working men: for those who had no houses as well as for those who had. You take from the frugal man what the frugal man has acquired by his frugality, on the plea of giving him something that is given equally to the non-frugal man. There is want of even-handedness here. The frugal man might say, “You put me on the same level as the spendthrift: you give me no compensation for what you take from me, and ask me to be content with what the spendthrift gets equally with me. I say it is not fair.”
And then he might complain, that while you compensated the classes from whom you took the land, you gave no compensation to working men from whom you take their houses.
You say that “idle men now in receipt of large incomes might under Socialism continue idle, but would not continue rich.” How is this, Mr. Blatchford? On page 99, you say, “Socialism does not propose to seize the property of the rich and share it among the poor.” If not, what does Socialism propose to do with the property of the rich? The land is the property of the rich. On page 107, you say you suppose compensation would have to be given for the land, but you hope it would be kept as low as possible. On the same page about the mines and railways (also the property of the rich), you say “they could be bought, and the smaller the price, the better.” Here is the principle of compensation and purchase in the transfer from the present system to Socialism.
Now, while you would try and keep the amount of the compensation and the size of the price as low as possible, you could not prevent its being a just and therefore a large amount.
p. 139 The very law of compensation and purchase is based on the value of the thing taken over. Therefore the rich bought out or compensated for the loss of their property would be rich still, or else they would not be “compensated.” And if so, would not the frugal working-man have ground to complain that you compensate the rich on “nationalising” their property, but do not compensate him in “nationalising” his house?
It looks as if you didn’t quite know your own mind on this point, Mr. Blatchford. If the rich, as you say, are no longer to be rich under Socialism, then you are going to “seize on the property of the rich.” If they are to receive “compensation,” and their properties are to be “bought,” then they are to continue to be rich as the result of the acquisition of their property by the State. It looks as if you put it both ways—which is certainly convenient—it enables you to pacify the classes, and please the masses while conducting your agitation. It is possible it may have the contrary effect. Working men will lower their brows when they find you mean to really let the rich down gently; and the rich will give rein to all their alarms when they see reason to suspect that with all your talk of compensation, you really mean confiscation and extinction.
It would be better to put your proposal fair and square, and let the trumpet give a certain sound. If the frugal workman is to lose his cottage, and the idle peer is to lose his palace, and gentility is to perish, and all men and all manners are to be squeezed down to a common street level; if all property is to be put into the national pot, and boiled down into a sort of workhouse skilly to be ladled out to all classes turned into one class, among whom there will be no rich and no poor, no masters and no servants, no employees, no working men, no gentlemen and no common people,—you may well recognise that “Socialism will not be a perfect system of life.” Most people will think that with all its killing of tramps and finding work for all (chimney sweeping if necessary for artists out of work, and sewer cleaning for superfluous doctors)—it will not be so good as our present system, which, with all its wretchedness, at least secures the picturesque variation and enterprising initiative that comes with liberty and individual incentive. It has certainly large compensation in the vigorous development of capacity, refinement, art, science, intellectual culture and p. 140 taste, and beauty of all kinds that would be impossible under Socialistic repression. The present form of society is comparable to the diversified aspect of nature in mountain, valley, stream, woodland, lake, and ocean. Socialism would gather all into a monster crushing machine, and serve out a liquid concrete to be spread over earth’s fair face in dismal level wastes. We prefer the landscape to the dreary triumphs of the steam roller.
Then there are the delicacies. Who is to have them? Your mode of dealing with this question is, I must say, amusing. There is only so much salmon and pineapple, of course. There would not be enough to go over everybody. Who is to get what there is, in a Socialistic State, where all are equal, and where nobody is supposed to have more money than another? What a dilemma! Everyone looking on with teeth watering, but nobody quite sure what to do. There would be Socialist magnates, surely. Would not the members of the Cabinet be of more consideration than the railway porters? It could not be prevented. And might they not be excused for thinking themselves entitled, at the end of an arduous and exhausting session, to indulge in a little turtle soup and whitebait? But evidently out of doors there would be such a glare of envious eyes that they dare not think of it. Mr. Blatchford thinks of a compromise. He thinks the delicacies might be “reserved for invalids and old people, and delicate women and children.” Do you really think, Mr. Blatchford, that the Parliament, even of a Socialistic State, could be trusted to vote all the nice things to the inmates of hospitals? It is a funny idea. It is false to nature. It would never be realised. If the fear of the people deterred them from voting a member’s allowance of the delicacies, it certainly would deter them from voting against the people having a taste. And so, in all probability, if the question came up, they would decide in despair to let the delicacies go to those who could afford to pay for them, which would necessarily include the ex-owner of mines, railways, and peerages, if you carried out your professed purpose of giving them compensation.
Mr. Blatchford, your scheme is as thickly set with difficulties as a hedgehog is with quills; and I am afraid you will all find yet that it will do nothing but prick the hands and vex the souls of all that meddle with it.
I am obliged to be,
Your outspoken and impartial friend,
JOHN SMITH.