SOME LABOUR ARGUMENTS.
[To THE EDITOR OF THJE " SPECTATOR."I
Sts,—The White Paper recently published on Bolshevism says : "We doubt whether so much human misery as has existed in Russia during the last three years has ever been the lot of any people within so short a time in the history of the modern world." This, then, is the result of that systematic and organized attack on capitalism which was welcomed with such enthusiasm by the Labour Party in England; and, let there be no mistake about it, Bolshevism is only the drastic and logical enforcement of principles which inspire all biit the most moderate—and therefore least influential—of our Labour leaders. Labour has long been accorded an indulgence which no other party dreams of claiming. The mildest criticism of the most subversive doctrines is always regarded as an " attack" on Labour, and therefore (note the inference) entirely improper. Even if you believe any branch of Labour policy to be ruinous to the State, you must manage to confine your dissent to something which cannot be construed as an assault on the party as a whole. The motives-of its leaders must always be supposed to be immaculate. The most their critics can afford to hint is that they may conceivably be mis- taken in their intellectual deductions. I should object the leas
to this if the converse were true. But it.seems to be considered equally reasonable that Labour leaders should assume the motives of all other classes and parties, capitalists, employers, Conservatives, and even their affectionate Radical allies (the affection, by the way, is entirely unreciprocated), to be normally base and unworthy. However, even if we grant that Labour is morally impeccable, it is perhaps-permissible to point out that their creed is based on the very antinomies of political and economic thought. Wages are to be kept at a highly inflated standard and yet prices are somehow to fall. Every great in- dustry is to protect itself against even the temporary un- employment of its workers by limiting its output and closing its ranks to new members, and yet the total of unemployment in the country is to diminish. The rich are to be taxed out of existence, and yet the whole revenue of the coming Labour State is to be derived from imposts levied on the excessively wealthy. After this there is nothing surprising in Labour leaders zealously supporting extreme nationalism in India and at the same time clamouring that they are betrayed when one of the fondest desires of Indian Nationalists (the repeal of the excise duty on manufactured cottons) is to be realized.
I am perfectly aware that by no means all the blame for this state of things is to be attributed to Labour. From the begin- ning of the war our statesmen never had the moral courage to make it clear that every class would have to bear in some measure the burden of the war. They proposed, while engaged in the most colossal conflict in history, to introduce the mil- lennium by a side wind. The trouble was there was no one to oppose them. The Conservatives, prepared to make sacrifices, were determined not to appear in a time of national crisis as the defenders of property and capitalism, and so patriotically, though I believe mistakenly, they let the question go by de- fault. The Liberal Party, except for a pathetic adherence to the theory of free imports in its crudest form, had long aban- doned every article in the creed of orthodox individualism. Upon the brow of the Prime Minister the laurels of the con- queror were fatally intertwined with the rapidly wilting garland of Limehouse. In their eagerness to win the support of the workers the Government cultivated the idea that every kind of economic loss could be made good by increased mone- tary wages, bonuses, and allowances. I am not denying, of course, that it was necessary to give increased remuneration to workers engaged in certain vital trades; they had, no doubt, a right up to a point to be protected against the rise in the cost of living, even at the cost of their fellows. But it should always have been given with the solemn warning that some day Om price of it would have to be paid; that the mere fact that certain classes were at least as well off as before the war meant in itself a great net gain in prosperity and that it was won only at the expense of other classes. But nothing of the kind was done. The most extravagant wages were paid to Government employees. Every class that showed itself restive
was bribed into a condition of temporary contentment without any consideration that these terrible drafts on the future would have some day to be met. The natural result was that all other classes put forward similar demands, and the Govern- ment had estopped themselves from refusing them. But you
cannot properly determine the wages in one industry by com-
parisons (which are always odious) with those paid in another, particularly when the latter have been determined not by economic laws but by mischievous Government interference.
To point out, for instance, that road-sweepers can earn more than a certain class of workers in the mines may be a sound argument against the lavish expenditure of the ratepayers' money by the municipalities; it is no argument for determining the wages of the miner by criteria which have nothing to do with coal-mining. • Utter disaster is in store for us unless we can get back to saner views. I would even go so far as to maintain that we cannot allow to pass unchallenged the Labour leaders' assump- tion that the workers in the great organized trades have a right (a) to be fully compensated for the whole rise in the cost of living; (b) to be granted an additional sum to raise the standard of life; (c) to work shorter hours. Of course, all these things would be desirable in a perfect world. We might even concede that they ought to be granted as long as the in- dustry can bear the cost, even though the employers' profits sink to the minimum. But the cool suggestion of the present day is that even when the industry is bankrupt the State must guarantee the cost. Such claims, apart from their appalling selfishness (for if one great industry obtains these benefts all the others must suffer proportionately), entirely ignore the dark background of economic loss and indebtedness which ought to condition all our social and political thinking. The idea that the world-ruin of the war can be charmed away by adroit legislation, by further raids on our already sadly depleted stock of national capital, or even by fantastic modifications of economic systems that died an unlamented death in the Middle Ages, is one of the cheapest misjudgments and most pernicious fallacies of the present day.—I am, Sir, &c,
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