THE LABOUR-SOCIALIST CONFERENCE AT LEEDS.
WE are not much afraid of Socialism becoming triumphant either in Great Britain, America, or Germany. The essential character of a race rarely changes, and the Teuton will always detest the social tyranny and minute domestic supervision which are the conditions of a truly Socialistic recline. He may sanction pillage, though we do not believe he will, but he will never nationalise the spoil. He wants to be himself, not an item in the com- munity, and prefers independence to improved diet. The Collectivism of which Mr. Sidney Webb is the ablest exponent in these islands is a much more formidable theory, because it has in its favour certain large facts and a pleasing popular illusion. There is, we think, no doubt in the mind of any man who can form an opinion on the subject that modern industry has in it an inherent tendency towards very large combinations. The volume of capital which can thus be employed, the extinction of reckless competition, the re- duction in the expenses of management, and the immensely increased power of dealing with workmen all help to invest the great Trusts, combinations, associations, and co-operative societies with virtual monopolies, with which individuals, however able or industrious, are unable to contend. There is no sound hope of preventing the growth of such corpora- tions by legislation or by strikes, or through popular opinion, and their multiplication produces two results. They decrease individualism, for small employers dis- appear and are replaced by armies of foremen, and they concentrate on themselves a great amount of popular hatred. The able workers grow indignant at the extinction of independent careers, and the average workers attribute any suffering they may endure to the existence of " monopolies " and their vast money-power. We hear murmurs already even in England, and in America those who murmur control great parties. As it is obviously impossible to revive individual trading when the world has grown accustomed to the promptitude, cheapness, and superior methods of its rival, people fall back on the sub- stitution of tyrannies which they can control for tyrannies which they cannot, and clamour for the municipalisation of all great industries. Why not, they say, buy the working capitalists out, with money raised at low rates from the capitalists who want to enjoy without working, and use the profits in redaction of taxation, and to increase the amenities of the collective life ? These things are already said about the railways, gas companies, water companies, coal-mines, iron- mines, and liquor factories, and the argument will be extended to all the industries which are most easily worked through large establishments paid out of great capitals. Mr. Webb, we presume, would municipalise all these, even if he did not, being a reasonable man, include all the producing and distributing industries of his model city. This tendency, already unmistakable, will, as we have said, be accelerated by a popular illusion. It is almost im- possible to convince men, except by experience, that the community will not be a gentle master. Why,' they say, we ourselves, being the electors, shall ourselves be masters ; and can we not trust ourselves to be kind to our- selves even if we are not kind to other men ? ' The answer, of course, is that there are competing wants, and competing necessities, as well as competing modes of supply, and that the first competitions are as sharp as the last and make men as unreasonable and dour. The instinct of the masses when bread rises is to nail the baker's ears to the doorpost as they do in Turkey. The masses as lords of industry will insist on cheapness, and cheapness when insisted on by irresistible power means low wages, long hours, and that sharp dis- cipline which extracts efficiency from the unwilling. Ask any head of a " sweating " firm if the whip behind him is not this demand. Take the supply of coals, for instance. Imagine the coal-mines nationalised, and say whether the average elector, and his wife, would bear to see coals in London sold at thirty shillings a ton instead of a guinea, in order that miners whom they never see may work for six hours a day at high wages. They will ask for convict labour sooner ; and this is merely one illustration. The consumer as direct master of industry will be to the capitalist, who has bowels, and can be hooted, as Rehoboam was tc Solomon. There is not a community in Europe which par the soldier even decently, or one which does net acknowledge that the soldier is as necessary as the baker's man. Scarcely an average man in London had patience with the gas men when they tried to strike, and there is not one man in three who, if all scavengers struck, would hesitate for a moment to resort to forced labour. The workmen, however, cannot be convinced of this, and the belief in municipalities as employers, like the trend of industry towards monopoly, works directly for Collectivism.
We regard Collectivism, therefore, as a possible social policy, which Socialism is not ; but it is, in our opinion, a most dangerous one, not so much because it would decrease the comfort of the majority, though it would do that also, as because it would impair the national character. Nature refusing everything, even bare subsistence, except in payment for work, the immense majority in any nation must always work, and the Collectivist system ensures that they must always work in strict subordination. Municipalities or nations owning all capital, all industrial ladders are taken away, and there remain only the community and those who under its orders labour for its benefit. There would not only be no small masters, but no variety in mastership, the whole of the present competitive elements being superseded by a single authority. There would in a great town be in practice one factory, one shop, and one farm, and these three would be identical. There would be one set of rules for social life, one set of ruling ideas, one set of managers authorised to carry them out, one distributor of wages. and he a trustee bound by his position to wrap himself in formulas, and one method of coercion. The able, the ambitious, the independent, and the gnarled—a very distinct class—would be compelled to stand aside, and only those who obeyed agreeably would have pleasant, or even tolerable, lives. The mass would be as privates in a regiment, with no hope of rising to be officers, and the better they were officered the sooner they would lose the power of acting for themselves. No grown man becomes so like a child as a good private in a good regiment with a good com- manding officer, and the privates of the municipal army would be enlisted for life. Discipline would become the great doctrine, obedience the great virtue, and separateness the great stigma on a man,—a result, it is said, already apparent in many of the factories which have lasted more than two generations. There would, it is said, be much " brotherhood," which would be a grand compensation ; but there are rivalries for other things than wages or custom, and jealousies, hatreds, even hostilities, are to be found in a regiment, a profession, or even a monastery. The weakening of character produced by universal sameness of life, universal obedience, and universal freedom from competition is no guarantee either for virtue, or cultivation, or content. Indeed, there is said to be wickedness, drunkenness, con- tention, and crime even in Russian villages, though the antique institution of the Mir is a close approach to the Collectivist ideal, and has succeeded, many observers say, in creating the great want of the Russian . character, the absence of initiative and disinclination to stand alone. It is not .because it is impracticable, for in many directions it is quite practicable, that we oppose Collectivism,• but because it is opposed to the fullest development of freedom, and because we dislike—even detest—the character which we belieie it would in a generation or two impose on the com- munity. The competitive struggle has many drawbacks, but at least it produces men, and it is men we want to make, not great associations of impersonal consumers of food.
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