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CHAPTER IX.

PRACTICABLE STATE SOCIALISM :

(1.) — LEGISLATIVE.

ALTHOUGH the main argument of the Socialists, that all wealth is the product of labour, and should therefore belong to the labouring classes, is fallacious, and although the remedies of the extreme Socialists for admitted social ills are either impracticable for the most part and pregnant with social chaos, or where they would be practicable would not be beneficial to the working classes or the community, it does not follow that the Socialists. have got no case, nor that there are not real remedies for real social evils and injustices; remedies slower and less heroic than those prescribed, but more sure and lasting. I believe they have a case, and that there are such remedies.

The strength of the case of the Socialists lies undoubtedly in the fact that the Land and Capital, the two great requisites of production, other than labour, have, as a fact, got into the hands of comparatively small classes, and out of those of the large labouring classes, and with this result as respects their relation to capital, that they are obliged to accept

wages reduced by employers' profits composed mainly of interest and of wages of management rated as large as interest; that these labourers' wages in many cases, and still more the wages of common or unskilled labourers, tend to the Ricardian minimum or the smallest amount that will suffice to support the labourer and his family until such time at least as the children's labour can assist; that from the uncertain and changing circumstances of modern manufacturing industry in particular, which produces for an indefinite and shifting, but world-wide market, only the best labourers can expect to get constant and regular work, while even of these many may be thrown out by new labour-saving machinery, changes of fashion, or a commercial crisis; that from these different causes there is always in existence what Marx called the "reserve army of labour," a phrase which i describes the sorrows of their situation, being only partially employed, and the remaining time anxiously idling while subsisting on siege allowance from their society's funds, sometimes on the public charity or benevolence; that besides and beyond these at the bottom of all lies a mournful multitude of men and women and children, the certain result and product, predictable with scientific precision, of our whole individualistic and sauve qui peut system, who can get no work save of the most casual kind, not to speak of the considerable number who have no particular intention of working, being indeed mostly unfit for any work; who, having been born in a destitute condition, and never having had the chance to learn an honest calling, took naturally

to the evil ways of their parents, to thieving, begging, or loafing, which they still follow, there being in fact no other courses at present open for them.

The monopoly of the land in like manner leads to the worst, though not to all, of the above evils. It led to them before the capitalistic system came into being, and it still leads to them where it exists and where agriculture is the chief industry, as in Ireland and parts of Scotland. If the people are too numerous, the rent competitively determined might conceivably amount to the total produce, deducting only bare subsistence, in which case the system would be barely an improvement on slavery or the corvée, save in its presenting the semblance of freedom. In this case rents would be identical with profits, as described by Ricardo and Marx, namely, all above bare subsistence, in the one case, of the tenant, in the other of the wage-earner. This, however, does not apply to rents in England, because in England large farming with large capital is the general rule, and the landlords can only appropriate what is above the line of average profits (surplus profits). But it has been the case, and without interference tends to be the case in countries of small tenures, as in most parts of Ireland and in some parts of Scotland and Wales-which is the one main reason why the Land Question is there more important than the capital and labour question. Happily, however, the Land Question in Ireland, where the evils were worst, is in a fair way of being settled in the only practicable, and, on the whole, satisfactory way, by the conversion of the occupier into the owner, though land legisla

tion for the benefit of the tenants in Scotland and Wales, suited to their different social circumstances, is still needed. In the rural regions of England it is the agricultural labourer who has been the chief sufferer from the monopoly of land, and in his case, too, though something has been done by providing allotments, something more ought to be done towards the creation of a class of small farmers or owners.

Besides unemployed or ill-paid labourers, or overrented small farmers, there are others discontented. with the existing order, and inclined to Socialism: all who have been permanently displaced by the present capitalistic system;-the petty tradesman and dealer, the superseded middleman, the skilled workman whose place has been taken by machinery, the early superannuated; in addition to those displaced, those again who have never been placed, or who have failed to get berths or connection ;-the professional man without business; the educated man in general who can find no employment, whether from excessive competition or want of character; the educated man who is exploited by the capitalist with superior astuteness, but without intellect or culture; the man of capacity and ambition, but without means; all the déclassés, the failures, and the "broken men." Besides those who suffer from the present system, there are men of a different stamp who favour Socialism in some sense of the word, in some cases without too closely inquiring what sense; the idealist who would improve the world at all risks; the philanthropist who sees society's evils, and thinks that Socialism might prove the cure for them; the social philosopher who

has thought out the whole problem, and thinks part of the Socialists' programme right; the moralist who thinks the whole egoistic system immoral; the just man disturbed at what he considers the triumph of the wicked in the case of the successful swindling speculator or financier ;-all these look with more or less favour on Socialism as something which, being the declared antithesis of what they dislike in the present system, might bring deliverance, or a better state of things.

There is also the Tory Democratic Member of Parliament who is in sympathy with one side of Socialism to a certain distance, and the Radical Member who is in sympathy with a different side of it, and probably to a greater distance, judging from platform addresses and from special programmes. And then the Church, perhaps from an unquiet feeling that something singularly like Socialism, mixed with something of an opposite character, is in the first three Gospels, has shown a certain leaning to it, or at least a newborn interest in the working man. Nor is the general public hostile or averse, but rather in its favour, provided it does not touch its interests or its pocket too deeply. Nay, it would even go some distance towards it, having been awakened somewhat, and having begun to think that the labouring classes have a grievance against the capitalist class and against the rich in general.

Socialism is in fact supported not only by labourers, but by a great mass of discontented feeling. It is like David's cave of Adullam, to which resorted "every one that was in distress, every one that was in debt,