SOCIALISM OR EFFICIENCY ?
LEADERS of the Labour Party met at the Albert Hall in a self-congratulatory mood last Sunday, to celebrate recent successes in the municipal elections and in Parliamentary by-elections. They naturally looked forward to a time when they will be as strongly repre- sented at Westminster as they are now for local purposes at the London County Hall ; and Mr. Lansbury took the opportunity of contrasting what is now being done for the betterment of the people with what will be done when Britain has been " won for Socialism." For the present, he said, Socialists had no objection to helping or re- organizing industry, but they did not want it to be done " in order to perpetuate a profit-making system."
It is a favourite doctrine of Socialist writers that the so-called capitalist democracy has been kept in being by a continued policy of throwing sops to Cerberus—Cerberus being the masses who were becoming ever more conscious of their rights and demanding that their hardships should be reduced and their urgent needs satisfied. Social reform became the watch-word not only of the Liberals but of both the great parties before the last century was out, for it provided, it is said, safety-valves by which potentially explosive forces were released from the machine of capitalist democracy. With the vast increase of wealth which continued throughout the nineteenth century it was easy for capital to go on making con- cessions to labour, and so long as it could satisfy the demand for progress in this way it was in a position to justify the profit-making system.
But all that, we are told, was changed when markets could no longer be expanded and the power of capital to go on earning large profits ceased. The turning-point was reached at about the end of the last century, and the approaching crisis came to a head in 1929. The capitalist system, it is asserted, ceased to be capable of providing the surplus profits out of which the demands of the people for a decent life could continue to be satisfied ; and at last it became palpable that further progress along these lines was no longer possible—the time was ripe for a trans- ference of the reality of power to the workers, and the substitution of the Socialist for the Capitalist State.
It will be observed that the Socialist case rests upon two assumptions ; firstly, that the capitalist system, administered as it now is, is incapable of providing the conditions of life which the people are justified in demanding ; and secondly, that any reform of it would be no more than a temporary bolstering-up, and could not produce the required results. Supposing for the moment we confine our attention to the first assumption. Is it the case that this country, as organized today, has recently been incapable of improving the lot of the working classes, of continuing the progress which, admittedly, has been achieved in the past ? Is it not true, on the contrary, that precisely during that period when the economic system has been most severely pressed expenditure on the social services has been enormously increased and an amazing effort has been made to reduce the effect of that pressure on the working-classes ? Some measure of that effort is reflected in a White Paper recently issued showing the total national expenditure, from taxes and rates, on public social services. In the financial year 1909-1910 this expenditure, for England, Scotland and Wales, was only 163,000,000. In 1929-80, it had risen to the enormous total of 1468,000,000 ; and in 1931-32 (the latest year for which figures are available), when the slump was at its height, it was £490,000,000.
This multiplication of the figures of expenditure on the social services by 8 (taking nominal values) or between 5 and 6 (if we take real values) took place in the course of that period in which, according to the Socialist reckoning, the existing economic system was already at the end of its tether, and incapable of providing further alleviations of poverty. When we ask on what the money went, we see that it has gone to provide unemployment insur- ance benefits or relief, widows' and old age pensions, health and maternity benefits, money for housing, for the feeding of school children, for public health and other services to the immediate advantage of the poorest classes. And if it be said that this is merely the price that has been paid by the rentier class for maintaining the economic system, and that the people are no better off, the answer is that the average of real wages through- out the country is higher in every industry (with the possible exception of coal-mining in some districts), and that the health of the people is better. Sir George Newman reported the other day that the health and nutrition of the people today, in spite of the slump, is better than it has ever been at any previous period.
Not that there is any ground for complacency as long as there are two million unemployed and so many people living on the poverty-line. All that the facts above show is that a continuous upward line of improvement in the condition of the poorer classes has been com- patible with the present system, and that an evcr- increasing proportion' of the total national income has been put at the disposal of those classes. Under the present system the tendency undoubtedly is towards a more equitable distribution of wealth, the upper and Middle classes becoming poorer, the poor on the average less poor. This obviously does not mean that the best possible use is being made of the nation's resources. But the. Labour Party, to make good their case, have to show not only that they will distribute the nation's wealth more equitably (that process is already going on) but' that they will increase it. They have to show that they will be more efficient in production and marketing. And their case for a sudden revolutionary transition to the full programme of Socialism must rest upon the assumption, not only that they can make a success of it, but that all the results they aim at cannot be accomplished without a revolution. There are members of the Conservative Party in the House of Commons, like Mr. Harold Mac- millan and Mr. Molson, who are not in the least satisfied that all is being done to improve the economic system that ought to be done. They are convinced that industrial planning is necessary and possible under the capitalist system, and that there is no reason, why the Labour Party should get away with the proposition that they are the only " planners." They are all for organizing industry in stronger units, for regulating and even, in some cases, socializing industry. Their propaganda, which increasingly makes itself felt as a leaven in circles not antagonistic to the Government, goes to show that the real distinction between the Labour Party and other parties lies not so much in its Socialism as in its desire for violent experiments, and experiments which are likely to be undertaken by inexpert hands. If the welfare of the masses of the people is the supreme object, the real question lies not between private ownership and Socialism, but between efficient and inefficient manage- ment through the whole field of industry and finance.
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