3.4. A CRITICISM OF CERTAIN FORMS OF SOCIALISM.
It is necessary to point out that a Socialism arising in this way out of
the conception of a synthesis of the will and thought of the species
will necessarily differ from conceptions of Socialism arrived at in
other and different ways. It is based on a self-discontent and
self-abnegation and not on self-satisfaction, and it will be a scheme of
persistent thought and construction, essentially, and it will support
this or that method of law-making, or this or that method of economic
exploitation, or this or that matter of social grouping, only
incidentally and in relation to that.
Such a conception of Socialism is very remote in spirit, however it may
agree in method, from that philanthropic administrative socialism one
finds among the British ruling and administrative class. That seems to
me to be based on a pity which is largely unjustifiable and a pride that
is altogether unintelligent. The pity is for the obvious wants and
distresses of poverty, the pride appears in the arrogant and aggressive
conception of raising one's fellows. I have no strong feeling for the
horrors and discomforts of poverty as such, sensibilities can be
hardened to endure the life led by the "Romans" in Dartmoor jail a
hundred years ago (See "The Story of Dartmoor Prison" by Basil Thomson
(Heinemann--1907).), or softened to detect the crumpled rose-leaf; what
disgusts me is the stupidity and warring purposes of which poverty is
the outcome. When it comes to the idea of raising human beings, I must
confess the only person I feel concerned about raising is H.G. Wells,
and that even in his case my energies might be better employed. After
all, presently he must die and the world will have done with him. His
output for the species is more important than his individual elevation.
Moreover, all this talk of raising implies a classification I doubt. I
find it hard to fix any standards that will determine who is above me
and who below. Most people are different from me I perceive, but which
among them is better, which worse? I have a certain power of
communicating with other minds, but what experiences I communicate seem
often far thinner and poorer stuff than those which others less
expressive than I half fail to communicate and half display to me. My
"inferiors," judged by the common social standards, seem indeed
intellectually more limited than I and with a narrower outlook; they are
often dirtier and more driven, more under the stress of hunger and
animal appetites; but on the other hand have they not more vigorous
sensations than I, and through sheer coarsening and hardening of fibre,
the power to do more toilsome things and sustain intenser sensations
than I could endure? When I sit upon the bench, a respectable
magistrate, and commit some battered reprobate for trial for this lurid
offence or that, or send him or her to prison for drunkenness or
such-like indecorum, the doubt drifts into my mind which of us after all
is indeed getting nearest to the keen edge of life. Are I and my
respectable colleagues much more than successful evasions of THAT?
Perhaps these people in the dock know more of the essential strains and
stresses of nature, are more intimate with pain. At any rate I do not
think I am justified in saying certainly that they do not know...
No, I do not want to raise people using my own position as a standard, I
do not want to be one of a gang of consciously superior people, I do not
want arrogantly to change the quality of other lives. I do not want to
interfere with other lives, except incidentally--incidentally, in this
way that I do want to get to an understanding with them, I do want to
share and feel with them in our commerce with the collective mind. I
suppose I do not stretch language very much when I say I want to get rid
of stresses and obstacles between our minds and personalities and to
establish a relation that is understanding and sympathy.
I want to make more generally possible a relationship of communication
and interchange, that for want of a less battered and ambiguous word I
must needs call love.
And if I disavow the Socialism of condescension, so also do I disavow
the Socialism of revolt. There is a form of Socialism based upon the
economic generalizations of Marx, an economic fatalistic Socialism that
I hold to be rather wrong in its vision of facts, rather more distinctly
wrong in its theory, and altogether wrong and hopeless in its spirit. It
preaches, as inevitable, a concentration of property in the hands of a
limited number of property owners and the expropriation of the great
proletarian mass of mankind, a concentration which is after all no more
than a tendency conditional on changing and changeable conventions about
property, and it finds its hope of a better future in the outcome of a
class conflict between the expropriated Many and the expropriating Few.
Both sides are to be equally swayed by self-interest, but the toilers
are to be gregarious and mutually loyal in their self-interest--Heaven
knows why, except that otherwise the Marxist dream will not work. The
experience of contemporary events seems to show at least an equal power
of combination for material ends among owners and employers as among
workers.
Now this class-war idea is one diametrically opposed to that
religious-spirited Socialism which supplies the form of my general
activities. This class-war idea would exacerbate the antagonism of the
interests of the many individuals against the few individuals, and I
would oppose the conceiving of the Whole to the self-seeking of the
Individual. The spirit and constructive intention of the many to-day are
no better than those of the few, poor and rich alike are
over-individualized, self-seeking and non-creative; to organize the
confused jostling competitions, over-reachings, envies and hatreds of
to-day into two great class-hatreds and antagonisms will advance the
reign of love at most only a very little, only so far as it will
simplify and make plain certain issues. It may very possibly not advance
the reign of love at all, but rather shatter the order we have.
Socialism, as I conceive it, and as I have presented it in my book, "New
Worlds for Old," seeks to change economic arrangements only by the way,
as an aspect and outcome of a great change, a change in the spirit and
method of human intercourse.
I know that here I go beyond the limits many Socialists in the past, and
some who are still contemporary, have set themselves. Much Socialism
to-day seems to think of itself as fighting a battle against poverty and
its concomitants alone. Now poverty is only a symptom of a profounder
evil and is never to be cured by itself. It is one aspect of divided and
dispersed purposes. If Socialism is only a conflict with poverty,
Socialism is nothing. But I hold that Socialism is and must be a battle
against human stupidity and egotism and disorder, a battle fought all
through the forests and jungles of the soul of man. As we get
intellectual and moral light and the realization of brotherhood, so
social and economic organization will develop. But the Socialist may
attack poverty for ever, disregarding the intellectual and moral factors
that necessitate it, and he will remain until the end a purely economic
doctrinaire crying in the wilderness in vain.
And if I antagonize myself in this way to the philanthropic Socialism of
kindly prosperous people on the one hand and to the fierce class-hatred
Socialism on the other, still more am I opposed to that furtive
Socialism of the specialist which one meets most typically in the Fabian
Society. It arises very naturally out of what I may perhaps call
specialist fatigue and impatience. It is very easy for writers like
myself to deal in the broad generalities of Socialism and urge their
adoption as general principles; it is altogether another affair with a
man who sets himself to work out the riddle of the complications of
actuality in order to modify them in the direction of Socialism. He
finds himself in a jungle of difficulties that strain his intellectual
power to the utmost. He emerges at last with conclusions, and they are
rarely the obvious conclusions, as to what needs to be done. Even the
people of his own side he finds do not see as he sees; they are, he
perceives, crude and ignorant.
Now I hold that his duty is to explain his discoveries and intentions
until they see as he sees. But the specialist temperament is often not a
generalizing and expository temperament. Specialists are apt to measure
minds by their speciality and underrate the average intelligence. The
specialist is appalled by the real task before him, and he sets himself
by tricks and misrepresentations, by benevolent scoundrelism in fact, to
effect changes he desires. Too often he fails even in that. Where he
might have found fellowship he arouses suspicion. And even if a thing is
done in this way, its essential merit is lost. For it is better, I hold,
for a man to die of his disease than to be cured unwittingly. That is to
cheat him of life and to cheat life of the contribution his
consciousness might have given it.
The Socialism of my beliefs rests on a profounder faith and broader
proposition. It looks over and beyond the warring purposes of to-day as
a general may look over and beyond a crowd of sullen, excited and
confused recruits, to the day when they will be disciplined, exercised,
trained, willing and convergent on a common end. It holds persistently
to the idea of men increasingly working in agreement, doing things that
are sane to do, on a basis of mutual helpfulness, temperance and
toleration. It sees the great masses of humanity rising out of base and
immediate anxieties, out of dwarfing pressures and cramped surroundings,
to understanding and participation and fine effort. It sees the
resources of the earth husbanded and harvested, economized and used with
scientific skill for the maximum of result. It sees towns and cities
finely built, a race of beings finely bred and taught and trained, open
ways and peace and freedom from end to end of the earth. It sees beauty
increasing in humanity, about humanity and through humanity. Through
this great body of mankind goes evermore an increasing understanding, an
intensifying brotherhood. As Christians have dreamt of the New Jerusalem
so does Socialism, growing ever more temperate, patient, forgiving and
resolute, set its face to the World City of Mankind.
