Cornell University Library HD 8390.C75 Labor in the commonwealth; a book for the N. Y. S. SCHOOL OF INDUSTRIAL & lABOR RELATIONS CU. THE LIBRARY OF THE NEW YORK STATE SCHOOL OF INDUSTRIAL AND LABOR RELATIONS AT CORNELL UNIVERSITY Cornell University Library The original of tliis book is in tine Cornell University Library. There are no known copyright restrictions in the United States on the use of the text. http://www.archive.org/details/cu31924002253163 LABOUR IN THE COMMON- WEALTH LABOUR IN THE COMMONWEALTH A Book for the Younger Generation BY G. D. H. COLE NEW YORK B. W. HUEBSCH MCMXIX No longer I complain That knowledge brings no joy. That all the art I gain Is cunning to- destroy. Destroyers, we create: Creating, we undo. All things that have been great Out of destruction grew. CONTENTS AND SYNOPSIS Chapter I. THE HUMANITY OF LABOUR . 15 How we personify things and how we " de-per- sonify " human beings — Abstract Labour — Labour as a commodity or element in the cost of production — The commodity theory — " The Labour Market " — Minimum Wage legislation as a part of the com- modity theory — The immorality of the abstract Labour theory — Chattel slavery and wage slavery — Progress with a big " P " — Understanding rather than benevolence wanted — How we misunderstand Trade Unionism — Tendency to escape from abstract theory by the wrong road, to credit Labour with only the baser human passions : result, schemes of payment by results, etc. — Current attitude to Trade Unionism — Demand for discipline — In- humanity of this demand — Lord Leverhulme and the Six Hours' Day — Leisure or rest pauses — The question of status and the control of industry — Art and culture for the few or the many — The profes- feion of management — Fallacy of this idea — The demand for industrial democracy — The Spiritual meaning of industry — The place of industry in Society — The art of economics — ^The victims of the economic system — Making and breaking. . Chapter II. THE COMMONWEALTH . 37 How we personify the Commonwealth — The Commonwealth and the individual — The ultimate unit of individuality — The individual cannot be absorbed — The Commonwealth as means and not as end — Commonwealths, not one but many — The , organisation of the Commonwealth — The place of economic organisation in modern Commonwealths 5 — Economic classes in the Commonwealth — ^Thc ruling class, the working class, the middle. class — This class not really a class — Conception of the class struggle — What the class struggle means — The Commonwealth tends to act as a unit when it faces outwards towards other Commonwealths — Growth of " Internationalism " does not destroy Nationalism — " Internationalism " not all to the good — May lead to competition or hostile alliances — Balance of power — External policy necessarily reflects internal system — Our loyalty to our Commonwealth con- fused with obedience to the State — Revolution occurs when the State ceases to express in any sense the feeling of the Commonwealth — The Russian Revolutions — The Soviets and the class war — Why M. Pichon calls the Bolsheviks outcasts — Class groupings and the League of Nations — What sort of nations? — Militarist, capitalist, or democratic? — The class war in Eastern Europe — The hope of a Society without classes — The Commonwealth as a means to the good life. Chapter III. THE LABOUR MOVEMENT . . 59 Organisation of the working class — in all industrial countries — The International Labour Movement — The Labour Movement in Great Britain — The strength of vested interests in the Labour Movement — Phlegmatic temperament of the Trade Unions — Trade Unionism the product of the Industrial Revo- lution — The British working class also its product — Who the working classes are — How the Capitalist " picks " them over — The school as sieve — The process of selection continued in the workshop — It follows the working class all through their lives The draining of working-class resources — Its effects 6 on the residue — The problem of working-class leadership— The Labour Movement consists not of the total rejects of Capitalism, but of those whom it puts to the rank-and-file jobs — The bottom dog remains outside the Labour Movement — Problem of the bottom dog — Growth of organisation among the unskilled — The workers in the Movement not en- tirely propertyless — Differentiation of functions among the workers leads to vested interests — Growth of class consciousness and of Craft interest contrasted — The status of the Craftsman — Imagination needed to shake the Labour Movement out of its conser- vatism — What the Industrial Revolution meant — The dispossession of Labour — The permanent effects • — The economic system to-day — Gilding the chains. Chapter IV. THE MIDDLE CLASSES ... 78 The middle classes in industry — The one-man busi- ness and the present proprietor — Their demand for security and tendency to preserve the status quo — The foremen and other supervisors — The lower- paid professionals — Their apparently greater free- dom largely illusory in fact — The middle classes the dependents of Capitalism — The upper middle class — Growth of organisation among foremen and supervisors — Function of foremen and supervisors as go-betweens — Future relations of foremen and workers — Position of professionals — Unity of in- terest with manual workers — Position of Civil Servants — The question of control in relation to efficiency and freedom — Proper position of the expert and the administrator — Need for an alliance between them and the manual workers — The new Labour Party — The bourgeoisie as the world's theorists — What the middle classes could do. Chapter V. THE RULING CLASSES ... 95 Who are our rulers? — The rights of property — Not Norman blood, but the less pure liquid of commerce — "The idle rich" class — The origin of Liberalism in opposition to feudal oligarchy — What Mr. Balfour thinks of Lord Northclifie — ^The Capitalist parties — Unionism : (a) The true Tories, (b) The business Imperialists, (c) Weltmacht — ^The Liberal Party — Individualism for the rich and Collectivism for the poor — (a) The Laissez-faire economists, (6) The Nonconformists, (c) The Radicals — ^The Radicals' lack of positive policy — The Parliamentary leaders — Politicians and the interests — Dependence of politics on economic powrer — Prestige of Parliament — Relations of economic and political power — The " idle rich " class and the " busy rich " class — Who are the "busy rich"? — Not merely shareholders — The problem of the widow and the fatherless — Stake in the country and stick in the mud — " La carriere ouverte aux talons " — Self-made men — Economic power a matter less of origin than of function — The divorce of industrial coijtrol and management from ownership — The managing classes — The small fry of finance and industry-^ The organisation of Capitalism — Its progress in recent years — The Federation of British Industries — The danger of undervaluing the ruling class— r Not " Fat Men " but lean men — ^The servants of Capitalism — The blonde beasts of industry — The philosophy of Capitalism — The lion and the lamb — Why Labour must not be ■ too much of a " iamb." Chapter VL THE INDUSTRIAL SYSTEM . .115 " Plenty of room at the top " — Why there is " plenty of room " — What a factory is like — 8 Factory and Army — ^The inhumanity of the factory — Disciph'ne imposed from above — The hierarchy of industry — No opportunity for initiative by the workers — Tyranny of routine — The " scarcity of good men " — The inevitable results of the economic system — The perversion of man's natural endowr- ments — Scientific management as it is and as it might be — The argument from efficiency — The inefficiency of industry demonstrated from the mouth of the Capitalist — " Scientific " industry versus democratic industry — Industry as national service : true and- false — Production for profit versus production for use — The meaning of industrial self- government — Not merely autonomy but also demo- cracy — Where the Whitley Report fails — Fallacies of joint control — Need for a fundamental change of status — Need for beginning at the bottom — Wanted : A post-Georgian Samuel Smiles with a doctrine of co-operative self-help — The rank and file movement — Its demand for control — What control implies. Chapter VII. THE SOCIAL REFORMERS . .136 The beastliness of the present system re-asserted — Partial realisation of this by the well-intentioned Capitalist — The effect of palliative*^— Their waste- fulness — Their frequent distortion into further means of enslavement — Instances from Public Health and Education — This attack directed not against palliatives but against " palliativism " — The true meaning of revolution — Why the revolutionary must have an immediate policy^ — On having the courage of idealism — The cowardice of reformism — Our social reformers — The C.O.S. temperament — Why the workers resent the C.O.S. — The 9 Fabians the Left Wing and the C.O.S. the Right Wing of the same movement — Why this Chapter wiil have exasperated many worthy people, and why the author doesn't mind — Definitions of good and bad social reforms — Danger of the Servile State. Chapter VIII. LABOUR AND EDUCATION . 147 The bores who talk about education — The appalling fact that they are right — The character of the educational system — The process of Capitalist selection — The faults of the Elementary School- One Education for the rich and another for the poor — Machine-made education of the poor — The social merits of upper-class education — Its training in self- control denied to the poor — The amount of educa- tion — How we turn the adolescent adrift — Recap- turing the few where we might retain the many — The opposition to educational reorganisation — Capitalist opposition — Working-class opposition — Reasons for it — The demand for technical training — The place of technical training in relation to education — Education for efficiency versus education for citizenship — The question of the school age — The Prussianisation of public education — The victimisation of the dangerous teacher — Lord Meath, Empire Day, Flag-wagging, and Cadet Corps — The mystery of " Civics " — The indoctrination of the working class — The problem of the teachers — Their under-payment— Defective training — The heroes of education — " What Is and What Might Be " — The importance of education to the Labour Move- ment — Adult working-class education — Education a means to an end and ^ot a means to a means — A means only to the good life — Must not even be regarded mainly as a means to revolution. 10 Chapter IX. PROLETARIANISM. .166 The idea of a working-class culture — The Syndi- calists and the British Marxians — '"Bourgeois " history and " bourgeois " economics versus " pro- letarian " history and " proletarian " economics — Narrowness of proletarian outlook paralleled by prejudice of " bourgeois " culture — The Capitalist bias — Existing text-books and " bourgeois " teachers — A Worker Looks at History — The danger of substituting one-half truth for another — The train- ing of working-class teachers — The problem of freedom for the teacher — The difference between a real University and a sectarian Training College — The theory of indoctrination not absent from the working-class — The Socialist Sunday School — Perhaps a Socialist Baby Clinic ? — The abomination of the rebel child — The Central Labour College and the Workers' Educational Association — The Tutorial Class Movement — Its relations to the Universities and to the State — The Marxian criticism of it — The work of the Central Labour College — Relation of the advanced " bourgeois " to the Labour Movement — The most aggressive pro- letarian advocates usually disillusioned "bourgeois" — The place of the middle class in the Labour Move- ment — " The Evil that Marx wrote lives after him. The good remains interred in his books." Chapter X. THE STATE 179 The Marxian attifude to the State — The example of Russia — Why the Bolsheviks disregarded the Constituent Assembly — The Soviet regime: (i) As an expedient of transition; (2) As a permanent social organisation — Further analysis of the Marxian view of the State — Points of agreement and disagreement II — The State of to-day — The political expression of the economic power of Capitalism — Any State in any Commonwealth in which there are classes necessarily the political expression of the economic power of the dominant class — But the coming of Socialism would not necessarily make the State unnecessary, nor in a Commonwealth without class distinctions would economic power precede political power — The convenience of dual organisation in the Commonwealth : (i) To Capitalism; (2) Under Socialism — The functions of the State — In the political sphere — In the economic sphere — The need for the State under Socialism — The problem of - function and the idea of functional democracy— ^The pigmy man and the great State — How to save men from the State — The State not sovereign : in fact no sovereign body possible in the Commonwealth be- cause there can be no substitute for, or representative of, the individual soul. Chapter XI. THE ORGANISATION OF FREEDOM 193 The argument of the last Chapter elaborated — Opposing views of freedom — The negative view of "freedom as absence of restraint — The Kantian view of freedom as self-imposed law — This second view based on a conception of the nature of the individual — This conception a half-truth — How the individual soul works— rMoral rules and their relation to civil and political laws — The true nature of freedom — The fallacy of the abstract individual and the fallacy of the absorption of the individual in society — Rules and laws, moral or political, pure mechsnism— Laws scaffolding and not part of the building — ^These principles applied in the Commonwealths of to-day — The organisation of freedom only an apparent 12 paradox — The Commonwealth cannot be an insti- tution but only a complex of individuals and institu- tions — The need for functional institutionism and functional democracy — The problem of representa- tive government — How it grows as society becomes more complex — Mis-representative institutions — The nature of association — Tacit and formal associa- tion — Rousseau's imaginary " Social Contract " — The basis of human loyalty — Voluntary and com- pulsory association — The distinction between them not fundamental — Association based on function — Where function is ill-defined the association tends towards absolutism — The growth of State sovereignty — State sovereignty cannot be based upon the fact that everyone belongs to the State, because not the whole of everybody belongs to it — The right of institutions depends on the intensity and importance of the purposes they represent — The fallacy of most theories of representation — The individual cannot be represented — Unspecialised^ representation necessarily mis-representation — Functional representation the only true form because it only attempts to represent a particular purpose and not the whole of any individual — Relations of Church and State — Demand for religious self- government — ^The principle of functional democracy as applied to industry — The theory of National Guilds. Chapter XII. MEN AND WOMEN . . .216 The Commonwealth a means of expression for men and women and not an end in itself-^It is made by and for men and it is necessary to men — The need for the Commonwealth — The growth of association — Kow the economic system vitiates social 13 organisation — The need to change that system — Effects of a saner industrial order on human per- sonality — Men and women have never yet had a chance to decide what they want to be and do — They must have that chance — We do not know what they will make oi it — But even if they make a mess of it they ought to have the chance — What demo- cracy means — Not forcing on people what you want but letting them decide what they want — William Morris's conception of joy in life — The only Art worth having is popular Art arising out of the life of the people — Art under plutocracy — What is meant by Art — " A joy to the maker and the user " — What would happen if Capitalism stopped to- morrow — Certainly a mess, but a mess out of which a new order would arise — Why artists should side with Labour — The need for a revolutionary change in status — As a means not merely to a better economic order, but to a " good time." •4 CHAPTER I: THE HUMANITY OF LABOUR MEN'S tendency to personify those things which move them to wonder, fear, or any other human emotion has often been the theme of poets and of philosophers. But men have no less a tendency to despoil of personality those persons who do not move them to emotion, and whose actions and passions they do not under- stand. There is no stronger example of this second tendency than the " depersonification " of the working classes by the economists and politi- cians of the last century. In the realm of economic and social theory the majority of educated men have spoken, ever since the Indus- trial Revolution, in terms of abstractions. Not merely the " economic man " of the " dismal science," but, still more, the " Labour " which the economists have loved to contrast with " Capital," is an abstraction which has vitiated thinking and perverted economic science from its proper function. In setting out to write of " Labour in the Commonwealth," I have no such lifeless abstrac- tion in mind. I shall write, not of abstract Labour as a term in the economic relation of Capital and Labour, but of individual men and women who, taken together, form the vast majority of the People in any Commonwealth. Similarly, in speaking of the Commonwealth itself, I shall have in mind, not an abstract " Power " among the great States of the world, but these same men and 15 1 6 LABOUR IN THE COMMONWEALTH women, with others fundamentally like them, though held apart from them to-day by legal ami conventional barriers of property and caste. I gladly admit that something has been done already to break down the fiction which regards Labour as an abstract quantity or force, a factor in the cost of production, rather than a collective name for the makers and users of the world's goods. The growth of economic science in the direction of " applied economics," the application of psychology to social questions, and the begin- nings of a philosophical theory of Society of a less "high and dry" kind than satisfied the Victorian philosophers, are all evidences of the change that is coming. Moreover, among the workers them- selves there has been a strong growth of theory and practice which asserts the humanity of Labour and its claim to freedom and self-direction. The '* man in the street," however, is the last person to be touched either by the intellectual ferment of philosophic and economic theory or by the growth of a new spirit among the organised workers. If he- is not inaccessible to new ideas when he hears them, it is at least very difficult to get him to hear or to listen. And how much of the " man in the street " is in every one of us ! As soon as we allow our critical faculty to go to sleep, and in every sphere of thought in which that faculty has not been awakened, we are one and all " men in the street," creatures of the prejudices and the presuppositions of our time. Indeed, the THE HUMANITY OF LABOUR 1 7 position is even worse than this; for these preju- dices and presuppositions are not the creations of our own age, but the leavings of an age that is gone. Thus, even if we repudiate in our. conscious thoughts the idea that Labour is a " thing," passive and not active in its nature, that idea is still present in our half -consciousness, and dominates to a great extent the less alert part of our minds. In the midst of a sympathetic consideration of the " aims and claims of Labour," we find ourselves, instinctively and by force of habit, slipping back into the idea that Labour is something impersonal, or at most only half -personal. Being ourselves only half- rational, we cannot at once, by means of a new intellectual conviction, expel all the prejudices and presuppositions into which the intellectual convic- tions of the past have congealed. It is only by close and constant endeavour that we can keep ourselves from bondage to our immediate intellectual ancestors. A few examples should serve to make quite clear the point of view from which too many of us- always, and all of us sometimes, are still prone to regard Labour. The crowning example is in what we are learning to call " the wage-system." From the point of view of the manufacturer or of the costs manager in a factory, " Labour " is an element in the cost of production. So much for rent, buildings, etc.; so much for machinery and wear and tear of machinery; so much for raw mate- B l8 LABOUR. IN THE COMMONWEALTH _ _—,; rial; so much for management; and so much for Labour. Result, a finished product with a cost pf production including all these charges. Some of the elements in cost of production are fixed, and some are fluctuating. Rent is a fixed charge; but the cost of raw material varies from time to time, and so does the cost of Labour. What, then, deter- mines the cost of Labour.? Broadly speaking, exactly what determines the cost of materials and commodities of every kind — ^a basic charge nomi- nally fixed by their own cost of production, plus a floating charge determii^ed by supply and demand. The " Labour Market " is, no doubt, less "nervy" and liable to fluctuation than the " Metal Market "; but the principle at work in both is essentially the same, and the entrepreneur and the manager necessarily have their eye on both. It is admitted that this picture of the " Labour Market " is to some extent an abstraction, and that other causes modify those mentioned above in determining the cost of Labour. But this is true also of the Metal Market, or the Produce Market, or any other market in which commodities have a price. It remains none the less true that, from the point of view of the costs expert in a factory. Labour is a commodity just as much as a machine or a bale of cotton is a commodity. I do not say this in order to cast any reflection upon the costs expert. It is his business to regard Labour in this abstract light, and, as long as com- modities are produced for sale under individualist THE HUMANITY OF LABOUR 1 9 conditions, he cannot act in any other way. My complaint is that this purely abstract method of regarding Labour for the limited purpose of certain commercial calculations is habitually erected into a solemn theory, or, worst of all, a solemn presuppo- sition that is not theorised about because it is not questioned. The average man, and most of the men who are by no means average, calmly accept this buying and selling of Labour on a commodity basis as if it were something normal, natural, and inevitable. Among such men may be the most ardent of social reformers or even of Socialists; but it has never occurred to them to question the wage- system or the " commodity" theory of Labour. Thus, there has been a movement in recent years towards legislation designed to secure to every worker employed a certain minimum wage. The Trade Boards Act, the Coal Mines (Minimum Wage) Act, and the Corn Production Act have given this movement legal recognition in the case of certain industries, and the results have been beneficial on the whole, even if they have been meagre. But here we are concerned with funda- mentals. How many of the advocates of minimum wage legislation think of it as exactly similar to the policy, adopted to some extent during the war period, of fixing minimum prices for Stock Exchange securities.? How many, moreover, would be particularly struck by the comparison if they thought of it .'' Yet it is surely clear that the policy of the legislative minimum is an explicit B 2 20 LABOUR IN THE COMMONWEALTH recognition, if it is also to some extent a mitigation, of tne commodity theory of Labour. The parallel is, indeed, seen most clearly of all in the Corn Production Act, which, in exacting from the farmer a minimum price for the quasi- commodity Labour, guarantees to him a minimum price for the actual commodity corn. The commodity theory of Labour is fundamen- tally inconsistent with the recognition of the fact that " Labour " consists of human beings. It is obviously absurd that the health and welfare of human beings should be determined by market considerations or by a " law of supply and demand." The conscience of the civilised world repudiated slavery because it felt that to belong to another is inconsistent with human personality. But, if it is wrong for a man to be bought and sold for life at a price, it is no less wrong for a man to be bought aad sold for a year or a month or a day. It is in the buying and selling, and not in its duration, that the fundamental wrong isidone. " Yes," say our prejudices and our presupposi- tions, " that is all very well; but we must face facts. How is it possible to get away from the buying and selling of Labour ? What will become of the cost of production, of the laws which fix prices, of all the tidy system of economics which we have always assumed, even if we have not fully under- stood it .? " What, indeed ? But the reply is that such questions could not be asked if we had got really out of our minds the idea that " Labour " is a THE HUMANITY OF LABOUR 21 " thing," and not a collective noun denoting a number of human beings regarded in a particular aspect. The world has abolished chattel-slavery; but it is significant of the dominance of the abstract idea of Labour that it has lost no time in introducing new equivalents for it. The wage-bargain of the labourer in England is several removes from chattel-slavery; but the indentured Labour and the other forms of Labour under direct or indirect coercion which prevail very largely in our dealings with less " civilised " races are very near to it indeed. Moreover, even the wage-bargain, though it is limited and circumscribed in many ways, is still of the essence of slavery. Indeed, in one respect it regards Labour from an even more abstract standpoint than chattel-slavery itself. It abstracts the Labour from tl>e labourer, and, while It preserves for the labourer at least a nominal personal freedom, it thereby absolves itself from regarding his labour as in any sense human. The labourer is nominally free, and a man : his labour is merely so much " Power," to be bought at a price and used in the interest, and for the profit, of the purchaser. Of course, there is Progress, with a big " P," which is itself not the smallest of our prejudices and presuppositions. The labourer is really better fed and clothed to-day than he was a hundred years ago, though I should have more difficulty in find- ing an answer if the comparison were with a still 22 LABOUR IN THE COMMONWEALTH earlier period. My point is, not that we are going back, but that our theories and presuppositions are wrong, and that even 'when we try to mend our social system, we are still the victims of ideas which are overripe for repudiation. We no longer in most cases want to treat Labour as a commodity or a " thing "; but we continue to do so because we know no better and have not flung off the myths of the Industrial Revolution. Good-will is, in a sense, the basis upon which the fabric of any new Society must be built. But 70od-will alone is a terribly dangerous possession. It leads many a man not to mend but to muddle, not to build a new Society but to patch the outworn fabric of the old. The making of the new Com- monwealth is a matter not merely of benevolence or of good intentions; it is above all a matter of understanding. There are two senses in which, whether we are of Labour or not, we must seek to understand Labour. We must understand what fhe workers themselves are thinking, feeling, hoping, and imagining; and we must have a theory, or vision, of the place of Labour in the Commonwealth. To the making of these two understandings this book is a contribution. It seeks to explain what Labour and the Labour Movement are like, and it is also an exposition of a personal theory of Labour's place in the Commonwealth. Armed with this double understanding, we can no longer regard Labour as a commodity or as a " thing." THE HUMANITY OF LABOUR ^3 The second example which I propose to take is an example, not so much of our tendency to treat Labour as a " thing," as of the false direction which our minds may take when we begin to escape from this tendency. Those who regard Labour as a " thing " may desire to keep it in good condition, just as a prudent manufacturer employs the best machinery and keeps it in excellent order. They may fully realise the "economy of high wages," and the advantages of healthy factory conditions and of " welfare work." Many " benevolent " employers and many members of the public are in this position, though even this truth has taken long to secure an appreciation which is still very limited, and there are still very many who are not convinced of it. Increasingly, however, it is beginning to dawn upon " good " and " bad " employers alike that their workers pos^ss some at least of the attri- butes of humanity. Often, this fact strikes them first as a disagreeable surprise. They find that the Labour which they employ is not putting into its work the last ounce of its strength, and they at once accuse it of " ca' canny " and " restriction of out- put." For a while, they waste their breath in recrimination; but then it occurs to them that if Labour is human enough to " speed down," it may also be human enough to be speeded up by suitable inducements. Thereupon follows a campaign in favour of " payment by results," that is to say, of the offering to the worker of a financial inducement to produce more. Higher 'earnings are promised 24 LABOUR IN THE COMMONWEALTH for greater output, and the employer feels that, in offering such inducements, he is fully recognising the humanity of Labour and largely solving the industrial problem. In reality, while the offer of such inducements is in a certain degree a recognition of Labour's humanity, it only recognises Labour as animated by the baser passions. Those who set out to solve the industrial problem by such means regard Labour, if not as a " thing " or exactly as an " animal," at any rate as a being of a distinctly lower order than their own. They admit the existence in the. workers of one human quality, but they do not recognise its possession of higher qualities. In criticising this attitude, I do not of course mean to suggest that Labour is above such induce- ments, or that it is immune from the lower human passions. Its mere economic position, apart from everything else, would compel it to take notice of the prospect of gain. But I do most strc*gly affirm that the industrial question cannot be solved, even for a moment, in this' way, and that Labour is human in a far larger and higher sense. The recognition of humanity is, above all else, the recognition of the right to freedom, and to equality of opportunity and of status. Of the recognition of these attributes of Labovir there is still lamentably little sign among our governing classes, or indeed among educated men and women. Most of us still tend to think of the THE HUMANITY OF LABOUR 2§ " condition of England question " in terms of remuneration, of material inducements and mate- rial privations. Trade Unions we tend to regard as existing for the maintenance of wage-rates, unrest as a trouble to be quelled by the offer of a bribe. It. does not occur to most of us that the system by which a man sells his labour to another is degrading, quite apart from the price which he secures by its sale. We feel only surprise, or even incredulity, when we hear of workers who object to " speeding up " even when higher earnings will certainly be the reward of greater effort. Yet another instance of our failure to appreciate the humanity of Labour is to be found in the current attitude towards the Trade Union Move- ment itself. There have been many cases in recent years in which the "rank and file " -of the Trade Unions, instead of following with unquestioning obedience the dictates of their leaders, have pre- ferred to think, and even to act, for themselves. At once the cry has gone up from the Press, the poli- ticians, and the public that the Trade Unions need "discipline," and that, unless the leaders can enforce obedience upon the rank and file, the whole Trade Union Movement stands discredited and has no claim to public sympathy. Moreover, this atti- tude is too often imitated by Trade Union leaders themselves. The assumption that "discipline" is the first duty of Labour is sheer capitalist morality. It is no more the first duty of the workers to be disci- 26 LABOUR IN THE COMMONWEALTH plined, in the sense of obeying without question the advice of their leaders, than it is the duty of the electorate to prostrate itself at the mere men- tion of an Order in Council. Trade Union leaders are not the " General Staff " of an " Army " of Labour, but the servants of the rank and file, chosen to do their will. If we find that Labour has a will of its own, we ought to rejoice at this further manifestation of its humanity; but we are only too apt to resent its interference with the plans which we lay for the promotion of its well-being. Lord Leverhulme's panacea of the six hours' day may seem to imply a recognition of the human rights of Labour, in that it does recognise the importance and value of leisure in the workman's life. But Lord Leverhulme is really almost as far as the rest from a true understanding of Labour. His " leisure " is still conceived too largely as a " rest-pause," designed to fit the worker to execute more efficiently the tasks of the factory, and for the calling out of the energy stored in the worker by this leisure Lord Leverhulme still relies mainly on monetary inducements, provided in this case in the form of profit-sharing. Of course, I do not mean to suggest that Lord Leverhulme is unaware of the absolute value of leisure quite apart from any results it may have in increased efficiency; but he still argues as if the increased efficiency, rather than the good life, were the principal object to be attained. Moreover, he quite fails to understand that, however much leisure Labour may be given, THE HUMANITY OF LABOUR 2? no fundamental change can take place in its status unless the conditions of work, as well as of leisure, are altered. I come back again and again to this point : that the key to the industrial problem lies in the status of Labour in the workshop and at its work. As long as the conditions of work remain such that Labour has to sell its man-power to Capital, sur- rendering in return for a "living wage" all control over production or over the product, it is useless to talk as if the humanity of Labour were recognised. Such conditions are themselves the very denial of Labour's humanity; and those who uphold them on the ground that there is no other way in which industry c^n be carried on are confronted with the great test of all social theorists. Their argument is essentially a defence of a class-Society, of a divi- sion of the community into grades and classes with not merely different social functions, but different degrees of rights. We are familiar with those ghouls who are fond of telling us that art, leisure, culture, beauty, under- standing, and all the finer values of life can be only for the few and must rest for ever upon the sweat of the brows and the degradation of the souls of the many. Surely, against such whited sepulchres of civilisation, we are with William Morris when he cries, " I do not want art for a few, any more than I want education for a few, or freedom for a few." Many, however, who will readity echo these 28 LABOUR IN THE COMMONWEALTH sentiments in favour of a democratic art, will yet assume no less readily the indefinite continuance of a caste-division in industry. "The function of management," they will tell us, " is to manage : the function of Labour is to do what it is told as efficiently as possible." It is my point that this caste-division of functions is no less immoral in industry than it is in politics or in any other sphere. In April, 1917, a general Conference of " Employment Managers " from all over the United States met at Philadelphia. This is how one of their principal speakers addressed the Conference: — "The underlying thought [in the Employment Managers' Association] is that the handling of human beings in the relation of employer and employee is a professional job." " No doubt," some of my readers will say; " but we all know that in America they are not quite right in the head on such questions." Very well : hear what no less an authority than Mr. Sidney Webb has to say in his recent book, " The Works Manager To-day " : — " First let me remind you that you belong to a brain-working profession, just as much as the lawyer or the doctor, the architect or the engineer, though your profession is only now becoming conscious of itself as a distinct profession, the profession of management. . . . What we are concerned with here, whether we are consider- ing any grade of managers or superintendents, is THE HUMANITY OF LABOUR 29 the quite distinct profession of organising men. I beg you to think of yourselves . as professional managers charged with a distinct function . . . namely, the function of handling human nature in conjunction with machinery and materials with a view to its perfect co-operation in an industrial enterprise." Mr. Webb and Mr. Meyer Bloomfield, the one a British Socialist and the other an American Employment Manager, are essentially at one in their outlook on this aspect of the industrial question. Both of them believe and assume that the " manipulation of men " is a science to be learnt and controlled by the expert manipulator. I do not believe this. Surely Mr. Webb and the American manager are here missing an absolutely vital and fundamental difference. The lawyer, the doctor, the architect, and the engineer are alike in this, that their bond of professional unity is a common technique and a common knowledge which others do not possess. No doubt the mana- ger has, and still more should have, a technique and a knowledge of his own; but he differs from these other professionals in being largely, and even primarily, as they admit, a disciplinarian, a " manipulator of men." As such, he is essentially different from those professionals who are technical advisers where he is a " captain of industry," or at least a commander of men. In this, the manager resembles not the lawyer or the architect, but the professional politician or the Civil Service adminis- 3© LABOUR IN THE COMMONWEALTH trator. His essential characteristic is that he has to order the actions of other men. It is therefore as dangerous to endow him with the full status of a governing profession as it is to endow the politician or the bureaucrat with full authority. Just as the community ought to demand and maintain direct democratic control over its political administrators, so industrial Labour will claim direct democratic control over those who seek to manipulate its industrial conditions. The claim to democratic control in industry follows logically and immediately upon the recog- nition of the humanity of Labour. As soon as we get out of our heads the idea that Labour is some- thing that can be abstracted from the labourer, from the man who possesses Labour-power, it is at once evident that all the arguments in favour of political democracy apply with no less force in the industrial sphere. It is sometimes urged that this parallel does not hold because, whereas the object of politics is the "good life," the object of industry is just the production of commodities, so that industrial organisation is a science and political organisation an art. The examination of this fallacy will be the last of our instances of the pre- vailing habit of regarding Labour as an inanimate abstraction. There is, of course, a sense in which the object of industry is the " production of commodities." But there is also a sense in which the object of politics is the provision of drains. The spiritual THE HUMANITY OF LABOUR 3 1 meaning of politics finds expression largely in the provision for material needs and against material dangers. In so far as the State promotes the " good life," it does so very largely by providing for the security of material things, for the feeding of school children, for the physical well-being of the communtiy, for reasonable sanitation, and so on. But who but a lunatic or a parish-pump politician would conclude from this that politics is a purely material scifence? The lunatic results of such a conclusion have been admirably depicted by Mr. G. K. Chesterton in one of the most fascinating of his novels, " The Ball and the Cross." The point of that book, as I understand it, is the startling paradox that men are, after all, neither more nor less than men. If it is true that, largely as politics are preoccu- pied with material considerations, they are none the less very much more than material, is not the same equally true of industry.? What gives to politics their spiritual content is not their "political" character, but the fact that they have to do with the affairs of men and women. Industry too, in a very real and fundamental sense, has to do with the affairs of men and women, and this gives it a spiritual content not at all inferior to that of politics. * ' The fact, of course, is that spiritual values neces- sarily express themselves largely in material forms. The odd fact that man is at once soul and body forces itself into every social relationship, and binds 32 LABOUR IN THE COMMONWEALTH together spirit and matter in a fashion which the philosophers have found infinitely troublesome to explain. It is the most vicious of abstractions to take an aspect of human life and say of it : " This at least is purely material." That is, in a very real sense, " the sin against the Holy Ghost." Yet those who stress the importance of the industrial question have continually flung at them the taunt of being materialists and of conceiving life in the sordid terms of economics. As if a man at work in a factory were not just as much a man as a man at a political meeting, or in a church, or at a theatre. It would indeed be a poor look-out for humanity if men were doomed for ever to surrender their individuality when they enter a factory, and only to resume it when they are tired at the end of the working day. Those who fix their eyes on industry do so not because they believe that industry enshrines all life's fundamental values, but because they believe that the custom of regarding industry as a purely material and dehumanised science is one of the worst abuses of our time, and the key to much of the materialism that dominates our Society as a whole. In short, we ought to pay attention to industry not because we are materialists, but absolutely and precisely because we are spiritualists. Man is and must be largely an industrial worker; and, if for that reason alone, mdustry is and must be a soiritual thing. ^ We must throw off, then, the conception of THE HUMANITY OF LABOUK; 33 industrial organisation as a science, and we must regard it as no less an art than politics. This does not mean that there is no science in it; for every artist must master the technique of his mediun^ But it does mean that the object of industry is not merely " the production of commodities " : it is " the production of good commodities by free men under democratic conditions." Let us look at industry, not as a science apart, but as a vital function of communal life. If we do this we shall at once see Labour, not as an abstraction in relation to other abstractions, but as men co-operating in a common service. Seeing Labour in this light, we shall surely recognise the enormity of the present industrial system. Is this system, we must ask ourselves, consistent with our theory of life ? Is it rational or just or tolerable ? Is it even efficient according to its own narrow standards ? Surely to employ Labour in industry in such a way as to ignore its humanity is as if a " sourdough " in the Yukon were to wash patiently the bed of a river, preserving the gravel and throw- ing away the gold. Moreover, let us not forget that the employer's claim upon Labour is in the nature of a mortgage or debenture, or at least of a first preference. He takes so much energy out of the worker before the worker is allowed to take any for himself. And how few workers are in a position to " declare a dividend " on their ordinary shares ! By the time they leave their work, their vital energy has been 34 LABOUR IN THE COMMONWEALTH used Up; the employer debenture-holder has claimed all, and the workers have nothing left over for themselves. That is a simple and sufficient reason for the difference in " culture " between the workers and their betters. This would be bad enough if the work on which the energy of the mass of the people is used up had in it anything ennobling or awakening, or were done under conditions which would serve to awaken the sense of freedom and responsibility. If that were so, the workman would have little more to grumble at than the overworked professional, who often overworks himself because he loves his job. But the fact, of course, is that most of the work of " Labour," in the ordinary sense of the term, is not awakening but deadening. So far from calling out the sense of freedom and creation, or from stimulating the worker's individuality, it is usually dull, and often actually unpleasant, or worse, degrading. Moreover, the conditions of discipline and subordination imposed from above under which the work is done make it additionally destructive of human character. ^ The effect of this system is not merely negative: it is positively harmful. It not merely does not make men human: it definitely makes them inhuman. Moreover, its effect is not confined to working hours or to the workmen themselves : it poisons the springs of Society, and makes the mass of our people largely unfit for the " good life." It affects the rich no less than the poor : it stamps THE HUMANITY OF LABOUR 25 materialism and inhumanity upon the face of civilisation. " The millions, mostly fools," who were enfran- chised during the last century — the millions more, still mostly fools, who were enfranchised only the other day — are alike the victims of the industrial system. They have not learnt self-government : most of them know little of the free play of human thought, though we cannot altogether rob them of human emotion. Most have been trained to sub- servience : a few to power. But the power is no less vicious titan the subservience; for it is largely illegitimate class-power or money-power over other men and women. Who believes that our ruling-classes woidd have enfranchised the many if they believed that the many would know how to use their nominal power .'' The industrial system, I cannot too often repeat, is in great measure the key to the paradox of poli- tical democracy. Why are the many nominally supreme, but actually powerless ? Largely because the circumstances of their lives do not accustom or fit them for power or responsibility. A servile system in industry inevitably reflects itself in political servility and in a servile Society. Where, then, lies our hope.? In the humanity of men and women, and in nothing else. Abstract "Labour" remains an abstraction still; for the spirit that is in men and women cannot be killed, though it can be warped and thwarted in its normal growth. It is warped and thwarted to-day, and the c 2 36 LABOUR IN THE COMMONWEALTH re-creation of humanity will not be an easy task. Out of the valley of the shadow of Capitalism there is no easy passage. But youth at least, when , it is not left dead upon the battlefields of the world, is hearing the cry of freedom. Old men may be determined to put back all the skeletons of the nations into the cupboards from which the war has brought them fortjfi; but youth has had its fill of the Elder Statesmen. And to youth I commend the verses that I have set upon the title-page of this book. CHAPTER II: THE COMMON- WEALTH IF " Labour " is a collective name for human beings, what is the Commonwealth ? It is our perverse pleasure to personify the Common- wealth, while we " depersonify " the human beings of whom it consists. We speak of the Com- monwealth as of some great and all-inclusive per- sonality, in- which all other personalities are ab- sorbed, and beside which the individual is nothing. We philosophise about the limited and dependent character of the individual human being; but we lose ourselves in admiration of the ultimate and self-dependent reality of the Commonwealth. This is an essentially false conception. It is of the essence of the individual human soul that it is individual and cannot be absorbed into anything else. Membership of the Commonwealth no more detracts from its individuality than membership of a glee-party or a Dorcas Society. If the Common- wealth can claim personality at all, it can do so only in a sense which is consistent with the full indi- viduality of all its members. That in such a sense the Commonwealth is indi- vidual and even personal I have no desire to deny. Wherever men come together animated by a com • mon purpose or sympathy or idea, a new personality and a new individuality are created. There is a soul of Britain, just as there is a soul of Labour, or a soul of the^United Order of Ancient Buffaloes But this group soul, so far from detracting from the soul of the individuals who enter into it, is itself an 37 38 LABOUR IN THE COMMONWEALTH enhancement of their souls. It is not an individual absorbing their wills and individualities : it is an additional means of expression for them. The most painful thing about these sentiments is that everyone will profess to agree with them. Let me hasten to assure the greybeards that they do not really agree with me. They contend that the individual human being expresses himself through his Commonwealth in some finer and diviner way than in his own being; that his greatest self-realisation is to lose himself in the great soul of his country; and a lot of similar nonsense. I con- tend that, whereas a man may express himself largely through his Commonwealth or some other group to which he belongs, there is no inherent superiority in such expression over his pvirely per- sonal expression of his own individuality. Indeed, I contend that his individuality is the funda- mentally important thing, of which all groups, in- cluding the Commonwealth itself, are merely pro- jections. It has been unkindly and most unjustly said of a certain neutral nation that its fault is " giving too little and asking too much." This is pre-eminently the fault of the Commonwealth. " Existing," as Aristotle said, " for the good life," the Common- wealth tends always to erect itself into an end, whereas it is properly and by its very nature a means. Why human beings exist is a question we can answer only with the words "Ask me another"; but, if we go on to ask why the THE COMMONWEALTH 39 Commonwealth exists, we can give at least an answer that is not obvious nonsense. It exists in order that the men and women in it, and their children and their children's children, may have, in the fullest sense of the words, " a good time." Still more, if we ask why any particular form of human association exists, we can say either thafit exists for certain ends or that it has no reason for existing at all. The Socialist Movement, for instance, exists because the men and women who compose it want certain definable changes in the spirit and form of social organisation : the Royal Academy has no reason at all for cumberincr Picca- diUy. The Commonwealth, then, is not an " end in itself," but a means to a good time. It is not a sacred being possessed of Godhead, and calling for human sacrifice as its daily right, but a convenience, or rather a synthesis of conveniences. And its right to sacrifice is limited to the sacrifices men and women offer to it freely, because they see, in the particular sacrifice made, a means to a good time, not necessarily for themselves, but certainly for some individual person or persons. Moloch, in short, is out of date as a divinity; and Hegel is hardly less out of date as a high priest. It is no doubt a very wonderful thing that men associate in a great Conimonwealth, just as it is very wonderful that they make such complicated machines, or that they have discovered wireless telegraphy. But, so far from making man feel small 40 LABOUR IN THE COMMONWEALTH in face of the great Commonwealth, these things ought to i^ake him swell to Gargantuan propor- tions in his own imagination. For it is for men and women that all these wonders exist, and it is by men and women that they have been created. With this preamble, let us try to analyse rather more closely the nature of Commonwealth, and more especially the present character of the Com- monwealth in which we live. For it will be news to no one except the Hegelian philosophers that there are actually many Commonwealths. It is true that these philosophers are fond of writing, in their philosophic moments, as if there were only one Commonwealth, and, even when they descend to practical politics and have perforce to recognise the existence of " others," as if these " others " were only imitations, and theirs the only genuine article. This political " solipsism," however, need not de- tain us long. There are few things more remarkable than this tendency of the theorists of Commonwealth to speak as if there were only a single example of the genus. They philosophise sagely about the funda- mental nature of Commonwealth, and the relation to it of men and women, for all the world as though this exhausted the categories of social theory. Yet it is fundamentally important to remember, when- ever we discuss the relations of men and a Com- monwealth, that there are many other Common- wealths to which men stand in relation. The rela- tion differs widely from case to case, though there is THE COMMONWEALTH 4I behind it an identity which is independent of dif- ferences in custom or constitution, because it rests on the fundamentallysocial nature of human beings. In analysing our own Commonwealth, then, let us always remember that there are others, and that these others have not merely important similarities to our own, but are also in a sense fundamentally of the same kind. " The Commonwealth," if we are to speak so of it, is not self-contained, but has many relations to, and dependences upon, other Commonwealths. This does not in any sense de- stroy its identity or diminish its importance; but, if we bear this point in mind, we shall be likely to avoid some dangerous pitfalls that may otherwise beset our path. If the Commonwealth is not self-contained ex- ternally, neither is it simple or single in its internal relations. The men and women who are of it are not absolutely isolated units who are absorbed or fused into its nature : they have their own indi- vidual habits, theories, emotions and purposes which they refuse to surrender. Moreover, they are grouped in a number of ways, and one indi- vidual may be a member of many groups. The same man may be at once a " free and independent elector " of Bethnal Green and a member of the Leather Workers' Union, the Baptist Church, and the True Temperance League. Into no one of these organisations does he put the whole of his personality, nor into all of them taken together; for he may be also a good father and husband, a 42 LABOUR IN THE COMMONWEALTH regular patron of the Surrey Cricket Club, and a host of other things. Every man is, indeed, a host in himself, and to regard him as absorbed into any group or collective organisation is to be guilty of a vicious and inhuman abstraction. The vast tissue of social organisation which the modern Commonwealth has built up is infinitely diverse, and affords an infinite variety of opportu- nities for communal self-expression. But all this tissue, so far from superseding or transcending the individuals who compose it, can only be built up and can only survive while . their active will sustains it. Naturally, at different times and in different Commonwealths, different forms of social organisa« tion rise to prominence. In the modern industrial Commonwealths, the maximum amount of human energy and will tends to flow into industrial and economic organisation. The principal grouping in the great Commonwealths of to-day is really that into social castes or classes based upon economic functions. The great " industrialists " not merely enter, but penetrate and even saturate upper-class Society, where the sheep's clothing of culture is worn but lightly over the wolf-skin of industrial power. They throng into the House of Lords for honour's sake, and into the House of Commons for more solid and suflicient reasons. They domi- nate the Churches, which must live by their bounty; they evict the hereditary landowner from his acres and turn his country houses into a dis- THE COMMONWEALTH 43 persed Brighton. Nor do they forget to organise in the sphere on which their power is based. They have their Associations of Employers and of Mer- chants — their Chambers of Commerce, their Federation of British Industries, and their British Trade Corporation. They take health-giving exercise on the golf-course and on the Stock Ex- change : they are equally at home at a levee or a company meeting. In short, they are organised, not perfectly, but at least purposefully and with effect. And they are every day organising more strongly. On the other hand. Labour too is organised. The workers have their Trade Unions and their Co- operative Societies to protect them in some measure from exploitation. But they have also their Friendly Societies, their Clubs and their infinite network of associations of every sort. Their country houses are at Blackpool and Southend, and their House of Lords a grateful country maintains for them under every Board of Guardians. In short, they have their proletarian culture which hardly touches at any point the culture of their lords and masters. This picture is no doubt a simplification — some will say a gross misrepresentation and misunder- standing. But is it either of the latter things .' It misses out, no doubt, the very sections to which this book is principally addressed — the middle- classes who are neither the captains nor the privates of the industrial army. But is it not right to miss 44 LABOUR IN THE COMMONWEALTH them out? They have no unity, no common voice, no effective organisation. They are not a class, but a buffer : and they can have no distinctive character or organisation of their own. They are necessary to the Commonwealth, and they do much of its best work; but in the direction of it they have only that share which the other classes choose to allow them, or they can seize while the others are busy contending for mastery. ■I do not mean that it is the fate of the middle- class to be ground to powder between the upper and the nether millstone. It is not. They per- form many functions which are essential to the ruling classes, and many which are essential to Labour, and they are therefore certain of survival. But they have to choose on which side they will be. They cannot for long successfully be a side of their own. For they have behind them n6ne of the " powers " which count for most i^ the struggle of to-day : neither money-power nor man- power, neither the actual power of Capital nor the potential power of Labour. The Commonwealth, then, tends to express itself more and more, in its internal structure, through organisation on a class-basis. It would perhaps be too much to say that it expresses itself as a class- war between different classes; but it does in- creasingly tend to express itself internally as a class • struggle. There are those who profess to believe that, after the war, we shall put such " sordid antagonisms" behind us; but those who take this T^E COMMONWEALTH 45 view are usually either too good for this world or too bad for the next. The whole structure of the Commonwealth to-day is such as to express itself inevitably in a struggle of social classes, more or less acute according to circumstances and to leading, but present all the time, and only the more un- pleasant the more it is suppressed and forced under- . ground. Of course, the real character of this struggle is not fully recognised. It still appears, not as the normal expression of the industrial and social system, but only as a periodic and recurrent dis- turbance of it. There are still many who believe that these disturbances are all the work of wicked agitators and mischief-makers, and do not realise that there is scant need for the making of mischief in this worlds But surely a fair-minded analysis of the existing social order would convince even these of the futility of denying any longer the obvious facts of what we are pleased to call " civi- lisation." To many people the conception of the class- struggle at once suggests the most terrible imagin- ings. They see visions of red revolution, hatred, mSice and all uncharitableness walking the streets, tumbrils, massacres and what not. Believe me, I have no wish to conjure up any of these spectres. The class-struggle may be as orderly as a prayer- meeting, and as inspired by brotherly love as Mr. Lansbury's articles in the Herald. I am merely drawing attention to the plain fact that the Com- 46 LABOUR IN THE COMMONWEALTH monwealth of to-day is divided sharply infa social classes, and that these classes inevitably struggle for the mastery. Whether they conduct their struggle amicably or with hate, by constitutional or by unconstitutional means, is, for the present argu- ment, irrelevant. My point is that, while these social classes remain, the struggle between them is bound to continue, and each class will inevitably organise largely for that struggle. Thus, the energy and goodwill which ought to flow into the common service are necessarily diverted into the struggle. Instead of seeking the good one of another, we seek perforce the good of a particular social class. Internally, then, the Commonwealth to-day can only express itself in terms of a class-struggle. The machinery of State is dominated by the classes which possess the actual political and economic authority, while the classes whose power is only potential are driven to build up counter-organisa- tions designed for the capture of the State and the industrial machine. It is true that there are ques- tions on which the contending classes co-operater' it is true that the lines of division between classes are neither clear-cut nor definite : it is true that the majority in all classes has no full awareness of the nature of the conflict. But these facts do not in- validate the general thesis that, in its internal rela- tions, the Commonwealth tends more and more to express itself as a struggle between social classes contending for ecoHomic and political authority. THE COMMONWEALTH 47 Externally, the position is somewhat different. As soon as it is time to face outwards towards other Commonwealths, the Commonwealth tends to ex- press itself as a single homogeneous organisation. Group and class loyalties, and, still more, indi- vidual rights, tend to be suppressed in the interests of unity. However riven by internal dissensions, each Commonwealth still tends to seem, to those who compose it, an ultimate value, an expression of themselves in comparison with which everything outside it is external and alien. In the presence of an external menace, even if that menace be the result of their own Commonwealth's aggression, men still tend to sink their differences and rally to the call of the Commonwealth. They may, during the period of external security, have been conduct- ing the most vigorous campaign against their own ruliiig class; but, with the coming of external danger, they will tend to rally even \o that class until the danger is over. Yet th^ modern Commonwealth is not, and can hardly be, in normal times at all an isolated thing. Finance and industry, art and science, thought and sentiment are growingly international in chjS"acter. On continents at least, the boundaries of Common- wealths are inevitably to a great extent artificial and even arbitrary, and they show continually less con- formity with modern needs. In times of peace, the continental traveller crosses national boundaries on an express train; but often the only customs which change are those imposed by the Tariff laws. 48 LABOUR IN TH£ COMMONWEALTH Coalfields and ironfields show a distressing disre- gard for the boundaries of Commonwealths; and a man may work in Essen and live in Holland almost as easily as he may live in Battersea and work in Woolwich Arsenal. This does not mean that nationality, or member- ship of a particular Commonwealth, ceases to count in men's minds; but it does mean that the organisa- tion of Society for many purposes tends to ignore, or at least to cross, the boundaries of Common- wealths. As the markets of trade and industry and the communications of art and science become international, there arises, not so much a cosmo- politan spirit, as a vast network of international groupings and associations, from The Hague Con- vention or the Armaments Ring to the periodical international conferences of savants or international exhibitions of artists. Such international organi- sation is indeed nothing new : and the Society of Christendom is still in very many respects less international than it was in the Middle Ages. But, after a period of intense nationalism and isolation of one Commonwealth from anbther, we are return- ing to a more internation^ social structure. It must not be understood that thivnternation- alism is all to the good, or that it necessarily corrects or supplants the individualism of each particular Commonwealth. Too often, its immediate effect is merely to exaggerate the individualism, or to sup- plement it with new groups even more immediately dangerous to Labour and to the world. For, when THE COMMONWEALTH 49 the isolation of a particular State breaks down, it does not follow tnat it is replaced by a world- solidarity. Often its place is taken by political and economic alliances between Commonwealth and Commonwealth, or between groups of financiers or capitalists in several Commonwealths. Such groups lead to counter-groups, and to the balance of political and economic power in the world and in the world's markets. The Commonwealths live beneath a Damocles' sword of conflict, and the in- ternal situation of each is aiFected by the constant pressure of a possible external danger. The in- ternal struggle of classes cannot be permanently suspended; but it is always hampered by the external conditions. It cannot be too strongly insisted that the ex- ternal policy of the Commonwealth is necessarily the reflection of its internal system. International relations between Commonwealths necessarily and essentially express the policy of the dominant class in each Commonwealth. Injustice or oppression at home means a selfish and domineering foreign policy. The suspension of internal struggles and the rally round the Commonwealth of all classes in time of external dapger mean in many cases the support of national -wrongdoing. Yet it is hardly surprising that men do in most cases still rally to the Commonwealth in such times. For, although the class-struggle tends to dominate social groupings in modern Industrial Common- wealths, It dominates at most only the organised D 50 LABOUR IN THE COMMONWEALTH parts of the lives of men. In times of crisis it is not to the State in the sense of the machinery of government that men offer their support, it is to the Commonwealth that underlies all forms of government and of voluntary association. The unorganised' part of men's lives, which is still by far the greater part, is compact of sentiments,^ customs and traditions; and these sentiments, cus- toms and traditions attach themselves intimately to the person of the Commonwealth. The ^lass- struggle is suspended, or largely suspended, in times of external strife, not because the State is greater than the Trade Union, but because the indi; viduals in such times transcend the groups througli which they ordinarily act. ♦ Ldyalty to the Commonwealth on such occasions has usually to find its expression in a very different thing — obedience to the State. For the State^the machinery of political government in the Cominon- wealth, is the only social organ which even pretends to include everybody. The State takes the advan- tage of our loyalty to the Commonwealth : it registers, restricts and conscribes us, and claims fi-om us every sacrifice in the Commonwealth's name. Usually, we yield; grumbling more or less, and deprecating more or less gently the more out- rageous forms of interference with our personal or group liberty. If, however, a State is or becomes too completely out of touch with the Common- wealth which it professes to represent — if loyalty to the Commonwealth can no longer express itself, THE COMMONWEALTH $1 even imperfectly in obedience to the State — if the overthrow of the easting State is the most im- perative need of the Commonwealth — then follows revolution. This is what has happened in Russia. It was impossible for the Russian people to feel that in serving Czardom they were serving Russia. Even if they were fighting against militarism abroad, they were fighting for oppression at home. Their revolution was in essence not internationalist, but nationalist. / It was their loyalty to the Russian Commonwralth that principally led them to the overthrow of Czardom. But mark what followed. No sooner had Czar- dom been overthrown than the class-struggle was forced again to the front. There was no longer any organ of Commonwealth that could make the smallest claim to speak for Russia; and Russian society at once fell into its natural internal grouping of possessors and dispossessed. Bourgeois Liberals and hardly less bourgeois Socialists struggled hard to keep the national unity in being; but the class- conflict would not be denied. The possessing class were intent above all to save their property, the dispossessed to acquire that economic power upon which alone their freedom could be firmly based. Finally, for the time at least, the power of the Soviets triumphed, and the second revolution regis- tered its success. At once, the world was con- fronted with a new situation. In one Common- wealth' — and that until recently the most reac- D2 52 LABOUR IN THE COMMONWEALTH tionary of all — the working class was in power, and the " rights of property " were overthrown. Every capitalist class in the world saw the menace of this situation. Some of their spokesmen, Hke M. Pichon, made no bones about the matter, and roundly called the Bolshevik Government " out- casts." In other cases the denunication was more guarded; but through the whole Capitalist Press of Europe went a running fire of insult and innuendo. It would have been laughable, had it not been tragic, to find sections of the British Press record- ing with apparent satisfaction defeats of the Finnish " Red Guards " by Finnish " White Guards " largely officered and aided by the Germans. In short, throughout Eastern Europe at least, the Russian Revolutions turned the war of nations into nothing less than a class-war. It has not come to that in Western Europe yet; but who will be bold enough to say that it may not come to that if the war continues. Beneath the unity of every one of the contending Commonwealths is the smovddering reality of the class-struggle; and, given fuel and wind, this suppressed struggle might easily reach the dimensions of something like war. A predominantly militaristic Commonwealth such as Germany naturally arouses the dislike and fear of predominantly capitalistic Commonwealths such as France or Great Britain. But a proletarian Commonwealth such as Russia has become is almost equally distasteful to both.' The class- grouping which appears in every European Com- THE COMMONWEALTH 53 monwcalth has always hitherto — except for the wild days of the Paris Commune — been, from our rulers' point of view, the right way up. Capital has been on top, and Labour underneath. Capital has dominated the State and the industrial mechanism of the Commonwealth, while Labour has formed its counter-organisation of resistance and criticism. The reversal of these positions is not what our rulers have bargained for, and they feel that Bolshevism would be even more out of place in the councils of the nations than the aggres- sive militarism of Prussia. Indeed, the Bolsheviks themselves feel this hardly less strongly. They regard the Russian Commonwealth which they have made, not as a nation in the comity of nations, but as a standing incitement to world-revolution. If they are called " outcasts," they will probably reply that " casting out " is a game at which two can play. In nothing is this more marked than in connec- tion with the idea of the " League of Nations." The demand for the establishment of a League of Nations surely at once provokes the question, " What sort of nations ? " Sir Edward Carson answers this question by saying that it is unthink- able that the " militaristic " Empire of Germany should enter into such a League : the Bolsheviks would certainly take very little interest in a League consisting of " capitalistic " Governments. These answers raise two different points. A League of Militarist Nations is hardly conceiv- 54 LABOUR IN THE COMMONWEALTH able except in the sense of balancing alliances of hostile groups; lor it is in the nature of militarism to be. in opposition to an external enemy. A League of Capitalistic Nations, on the other hand, is, quite conceivable and fully compatible with the best " Norman Angellite " arguments. A cursory reading of that astonishing weekly. Common Sense, should be enough to convince even the most sceptical of this fact. The capitalists of the world might quite reasonably convince themselves that war is not a paying proposition, and might unite to share out and exploit the markets of the world. They might also unite to keep the working classes of their various Commonwealths in due subjection. Dominating the various States, they might create a League of Nations which would be fundamentally in the nature of a gigantic World-Trust. In fact, a League of Nations, if it meant simply a League of Capitalist States, would be, from the standpoint of Labour, merely a League of Capital. With this conception, must be sharply contrasted that of a League of Peoples. This is what the Bolshevik internationalists have in mind. Such an idea is clearly a menace alike to capitalistic and to militaristic States. It implies the inversion of power in each Commonwealth, and the dominance of the People. Throughout the foregoing discussion I have again been consciously simplifying the facts. The States of Europe have not the simple capitalist or militarist characters assigned to them without re- THE COMMONWEALTH 55 servation. There are real degrees of capitalism, militarism and democracy in various Common- wealths, and no State has a purely capitalistic or militaristic organisation. Nevertheless, what I have said holds good as a generalisation. The class struggle is a fundamental fact not merely of the internal, but also of the external, relations of the European Commonwealths. That is to say, there cannot be a real League of Nations unless there is a sufficient homogeneity of internal structure among the nations composing it. The " constitutionalisation " of Germany is essential even to her entry into a League of Capi- talist Nations, and the democratisation of the other European countries is essential to their entry into a League of Peoples with Russia. Alterna- tively, Russia must return to the position which she held for a time after the first Revolution. The democratisation of the various Common- wealths may be accomplished by various means — in this country, perhaps, by wholly constitutional means. I do not mean to suggest that the means by which the Russians overthrew first Czardom and then Kerenski are at all the means by which the British will escape from a very different regime. I say only that dSl and water will not mix, and that substantial uniformity of class-structure is essential to a League of Commonwealths. If this is so,'' the social question is the question which above all others demands an answer. The Russian Revolutions have inverted the social struc- S6 LABOUR IN THE COMMONWEALTH ture: they have left a class of ex-possessors and rulers, now dispossessed and deprived of authority, who are struggling by every means, including civil war, to regain their lost power. Even the mili- tarism of Germany, against which these classes were fighting before th& Revolutions, now seems to them a timely ally against the power of the Soviets. The Ukrainian bourgeoisie seeks, not only subsidies from France, but also military aid from Germany. M. Pichon himself has told us that thousands of Russians are crying out for a foreign invader to deliver them from their own countrymen. Truly, the spirit of the emigres is not dead. This is a menacing position for any Common- wealth, most of all for a Commonwealth sur- rounded by others dominated by the classes which it has dispossessed. It is not good, even if it is sometimes inevitable, that changes in the faFric of Society should be so wrought as to effect such bit- terness. Far happier are those Commonnvealths, if such there be, which can change their nature and redistribute social functions without the aid of any such upheaval, or the legacy of any such bitterness. It should be our task, then, not, by denying the fact of the class-struggle or acquiescing in oppres- sion, to drive the workers to force or bitterness of spirit. We must be ready, not merely for social reforms and adjustments of the social mechanism, but for radical changes resulting in a comprehensive redistribution of power in the Commonwealth. We must recognise the organisation of Labour, not the' commonwealth 57 merely as the protective association of an inferior class, but as the repository of an important part of the power and authority of the Commonwealth, destined, in the near future, at least to an equal voice in the supreme control. We must adjust our ideas to a Society without classes, based upon the full recognition of the equal humanity and right of every citizen. And, above all, we must en- deavour to play our part in framing these new conditions. The Commonwealth, of which we are members, is not a piece of social machinery, nor is it de- pendent upon any piece of social machinery. It would exist in us no less if the whole fabric of political organisation which claims to express it were swept away. It is independent of the State and of every form of governing authority, though it finds in them a partial, if often a misleading, expression. It expresses itself to-day, not only in the machinery of government, but still more in the network of voluntary association which the people have built up for themselves; but it is funda- mentally independent even of these voluntary asso- ciations also. It is, in fact, our way of living to- gether, and its roots are in the sentiments, ideas and traditions which we have in common. But there is nothing sacred about this Common- wealth — still less about the organs through which it finds expression. They and it are means to the good life for individual men and women, and by the test of their effect on human happiness and 58 LABOUR IN THE COMMONWEALTH well-being should they and it be judged. If all is right with the men and women who compose it, it does not matter a rap whether a particular Com- monwealth lives or dies. It is true, of course, that our happiness may to some extent depend on the Commonwealth — we may love its traditions and its ways of life. But these are tangible things by which it may be judged. The Commonwealth that consists of men and women living a good life is, so far, worthy of survival : the Commonwealth that does not " deliver the goods " had better be overthrown. CHAPTER III: THE LABOUR MOVEMENT IN every large modern Commonwealth the in- dustrial system has compelled the working class to organise. Trade Unionism is the necessary ' product of the Industrial Revolution, and the Socialist Movement the inevitable answer to the capitalistic organisation of Society. In one sense, the modern Labour Movement is the reaction of the working class against Capitalism; but there is a more fundamental sense in which it is not a reac- tion, but the fruit of a creative impulse. In the first sense, it is merely defensive and protec- tive : it aims merely at maintaining or improving the workers' standard of life within the existing economic order. But in the more fundamental sense, it is a challenge to the existing order, and at least a suggestion of the order which should take its place. Let us look more closely at the Labour Move- ment, with a view to understanding both its strength and its weakness, the springs of its action and the explanation of its submissiveness. Why, let us ask, is it there at all, and why, being there, does it not, by mere force of numbers, dominate the world .'' First, we must notice that it is at once national and international. It appears in many Common- wealths, and in each it has its own special charac- teristics. It transcends the borders of Common- wealths; but in its international groupings it con- sistently recognises national divisions. But 59 60 LABOUR IN THE COMMONWEALTH nationally and internationally it has at least two wings or methods of expression — an industrial or Trade Union wing, and a political wing, usually Socialist in character. It has also in most countries a Co-operative wing, more or less loosely attached to either or both of the others. The relations between these different wings of the Labour Movement vary from country to country. Sometimes, as in France, there is very little connection between the Socialist Party and the Trade Unions : sometimes, as in Great Britain, the Trade Unions largely form the political party of Labour : sometimes, as in Germany, the Social Democratic Party dominates the Trade Unions: sometimes, as in Belgium, the political, industrial and co-operative wmgs of the movement are joined inseparably together. Whatever the actual form o^ organisation adopted, there is usually a fairly close approximation in policy and tactics among the various national movements. Differences in organisation are in many cases readily explained. In Germany, the autocratic character of the Government has necessarily given the movement a primarily political character. Or perhaps it would be truer to say that this political character has been largely forced upon the move- ment because Germany is a militaristic, even more than a capitalistic. Commonwealth. In Great Britain, on the other hand, the early development of large-scale industry brought the Trade Unions into being before Labour had become politically THE LABOUR MOVEMENT 6 1 conscious, while the fragile democratic element in British Radicalism also contributed to defer the effective entry of Labour into British politics. The International Labour Movement, which im- perfectly associates together the various national movements, consisted, until 19 14, principally of two organisations, the International Socialist Bureau with its occasional Congresses, and the In- ternational Federation of Trade Unions. On the industrial side, there were in addition a large number of International Federations confined to particular industries or occupations — miners, tex- tile workers, transport workers, etc. — but neither these organisations nor the main Federation itself possessed any great strength or coherence. The International Socialist Bureau has been throughout a far more considerable affair, and its vitality, even in the difficult circumstances of the war, has been a source of hope to many even out- side the Labour Movement. There are still many in every country to whom " Stockholm " stands, not merely for a wasted opportunity, but also for a still living hope. But, if the events of the war have shown that the International is still alive, they have shown no less clearly that its power of action is very closely circumscribed by the character of the national movements of which it consists. The International takes its colour from the national movements, and it is therefore upon them that our attention rnust be fixed. The British Labour Movement is by far the 62 LABOUR IN THE COMMONWEALTH oldest of the Labour Movements of the modern world. It has behind it considerably more than a century of struggle, and it is more than half a century since it assumed something like its present form. Its history has been written too often for me to recount it here. Let me say only that it had its period of idealism and insurrectionary spirit in the 1830's, its period of conservative and even sometimes reactionary growth in the middle of the century, its emergence into life again under early Socialist influence in the i88o's, its political period in the early years of the present century, and its renewed outbursts of industrial unrest in the years immediately preceding the war. Every organisation tends with age to become clogged with vested interests and obsolete but ingrained habits. It can only keep itself vigorous if, every now and then, it gets thoroughly well shaken up. A movement may, like that of France, get shaken so often that it never gets really time to settle down; but the British Movement has on the whole been shaken too little and too seldom, and has acquired a certain complacency and intellectual laziness which do not make for an aggressive policy. Trade Unionism has never be- come exactly fashionable or popular — Heaven for- bid that it should — ^but it has become accepted, and it has shown something of a tendency to accept itself. By that I mean that, instead of striving to alter Society, it has shown a ten- dency to accept itself as a part of the Society THE LABOUR MOVEMENT 6^ in which it exists and to accept that Society as its natural environment. The two things that most puzzle Continental Socialists about the British Labour Movement are its phlegmatic temperament and its seeming im- perviousness to ideas. At Labour Conferences in France or Italy, men wave their arms and shout as excitedly as if the end of Capitalism were at hand. At German Conferences, men talk as if the matter under discussion were of the profoundest intel- lectual and practical importance. A British Labour Conference, on the other hand, seldom seems to be listening to the speeches; and, however important the issue may be, it generally wants to get the matter over and done with in the shortest possible time. Possibly a record was created in this respect by the Special Labour Party Conference of February, 191 8, which disposed of the entire new constitution at a single morning sitting. It is indeed true that the standard of intellectual interest in the British Labour Movement, and especially among the Trade Unions, is extraordi- narily low. This does not mean that they do their business inefficiently : indeed, they are for the most part highly efficient within their narrow range. What it does mean is that, having learnt by prac- tice to do the things they are immediately called upon to do, they are not particularly anxious to " take on any more." Sufficient unto the day is the intellectual exertion thereof. This characteristic of British Labour is extra- 64 LABOUR IN THE COMMONWEALTH ordinarily baffling to the outside observer, or to the middle-class man or woman who finds a way into the Labour Movement. It leads at first to an undervaluation of the capacity of Labour leaders. They seem so little interested in living problems, which surely touch them nearly, that one wonders vaguely what on earth they are really in the Move- ment for. Only gradually does one find out the capacity behind the lack of theoretical interest. The Trade Union Movement, I have said, is the product of the Industrial Revolution. So is the British working class. We have lived longer than any other nations under the conditions of large-scale machine production, and we have felt to the fullest extent their effect upon human character. The factory system has set its seal upon our men and women, and, no matter where they are placed, they will be largely dominated by the ideas and traditions of the factory. They are at once disciplined and insubordinate; but both in their discipline and in their recalcitrance they are to a great extent products of the factory system. If we are to grasp the character of the Labdur Movement, we mtist first grasp that of the workers who compose it. Let us try to see who they are, and how they are chosen. For, in a very real sense, the Labour Movement is not a mere casual five millions or so of the population, but a body of workers chosen from a much larger number by quite definite methods of selection. The process of selection begins, as Samuel Butler THE LABOUR MOVEMENT 65 would have said, when the child selects its parents. The sort of surroundings into which it is born go far to determine its after-life. But, in order that we may not become involved in a controversy of the " Which came first — the chicken or the egg ? " description, we will begin our survey of the process of selection at a rather later period : with the elementary school. Our civilisation has at least this element of pru- dence — there is a type of ability for which It is always on the look-out. The economic domina- tion of the few is only possible because the few con- stantly select from the ranks of the many those who are to hold the lower posts of responsibility and power under the direction of the ruling classes. This selection begins in the elementary school. The children who show signs of a brightness that is likely to have an industrial or administrative use are noted, and an endeavour is made to secure for them a form of continued education. The ele- mentary school is not merely a training ground for the rank and file of the social system : it is also a place of selection for the lesser administrators. Thus, when the great majority of children leave the elementary schools for their first direct personal experience of the wage-system, they have already been lightly picked over, and some of the most promising " material " has been abstracted from them. Both in the secondary schools and in the work- shops this process of selection continues.. Of B 66 LABOUR IN THE COMMONWEALTH what happens to those who reach the secondary schools we need not speak here; for we are con- cerned only with the personnel of the Laboiir Movement, and for the most part those who get to a secondary school have already been abstracted from it. But what happens in the workshops does not vitally concern our present subject. When the rejects of the schools reach the workshops, the process of selection begins afresh. " Bright " boys, in the sense of boys who seem likely to be of use to Capitalism, are singled out for special oppor- tunities; and usually the acceptance of such special opportunities — for technical training, for instance >— means withdrawal from the Labour Movement. Nor is the process of selection confined to children or adolescents : it follows the working class through their whole lives. Whenever a workman shows qualities which are likely to make him useful to his employers it is ten to one that he will be abstracted from the Labour Movement and made a foreman or supervisor of one kind or another. This means that the working class in the nar- rower sense — the workers who have so far formed the personnel of the Labour Movement, are neces- sarily a residue. They have been picked over again and again, and the " material " of which the ruling: classes can make use has been removed. Even when Labour seeks to counteract the effects of this continual drain upon its resources by providing its own educational facilities for adults of THE LABOUR MOVEMENT Sj the working class, it cannot altogether prevent the process from continuing. Ruskin College was meant to train officials and advocates for the Labour Move- ment : it has too often provided officials for Employ- ment Exchanges and other Departments of national, local or capitalist administration. Indeed, it was largely as a reaction against the tendency, which has now ceased to be marked in the case of Ruskin Col- lege, that the Central Labour College originally grew up and found working-class support.* Of course the process of selection is neither com- plete nor exhaustive. In the first place, many mis- takes are made. The most usefial men are passed over, and less useful men are taken. In the second place, the " material " sometimes proves recalci- trant, and men prefer to remain in their class rather than to improve their economic position by leaving it. In the third place, the qualities which Capi- talism requires, and for which it selects its men, are by no means coextensive with the good quali • ties of humanity. There are some good qualities which are of no use, and others which are a positive drawback from the capitalist standpoint, land the men in whom these qualities predominate are for the most part left in the ranks of the manual workers. In the fourth place, the process of selec- tion is applied to women only in a far less degree, though, where It is applied, its operation is often far more sinister than in the case of men. If this picking over of the working class is here • Se» further, Chapter 'IX. E 2 68 _ LABOUR IN THE COMMONWEALTH described in terms that seem to apply disapproval, it must none the less be recognised that the process is inevitable. There must be men to occupy the minor administrative and supervisory positions, and, while the division of Society into classes con- tinues, this process almost inevitably takes the form of abstracting men from their class. My purpose in describing it is not to disapprove, but merely to show of what elements the Labour Movement mainly consists. The residue which Capitalist selection leaves be ■ hind is iiievitably lacking in many qualities — not- ably, in driving force and constructive imagination. For these qualities are of use, or can usually be per- verted into forms which are of use, to Capitalism. The man who makes a " hustling " manager, highly unpopular with the workers under him, might, in other circumstances, have been a democratic leader : the man who makes a fortune by some imaginative stroke would just as readily have placed his imagi- nation at the service of Labour had he remained a " rank and file " worker. The fates and the social order, however, have willed it otherwise; and he gives up to exploitation what was meant for the service of human freedom. That is why, in the Labour Movement, the men of initiative and ability are so often of unstable character, and the men of stable character so often of second-rate ability. They are, happy accidents apart, men whose qualities it was not worth the while of Capital to develop in its own Interest THE LABOUR MOVEMENT 69 They work side by side with the men whom Capi- talist selection has missed by an error which it never ceases to regret and, if it can, to remedy. Moreover, the men of other classes whom the Labour Movement attracts to itself have not, in the past, been usually of the finest quality. Most men of ability can find, from the point of view of material success, much better openings than are to be found in the Labour Movement. Business offers opportunities for getting things done, and showing immediate results, which appeal strongly to the man of push and go. In politics, the older parties have hitherto been far more easily open, and have offered far wider material opportunities to men of ability than the Labour Party. Those of the middle classes who take up with Labour have tended, therefore, to be either " cranks " or disap- pointed men. The " cranks " include some who are " cranks " in the finest sense of the word — men and women who are governed by principles and ideas and prepared to make any sacrifice for what they believe to be right; but they include also " cranks " in less fine senses, from monomaniacs to men who are mad not on one point, but on every- thing. In fact, the middle-class adherents of Labour are sometimes idealists and sometimes highly practical persons; but they seldom possess these much-needed qualities in the combined form of a thoroughly practical idealism. These are the materials out of which a new world has to be made. Moreover, those who must make ^0 LABOUR IN THE COMMONWEALTH this new world are primarily the manual workers themselves, and they must make it in face of the continual defection from their ranks of many of their most efficient members. Of the relation of the manual workers to other social classes, and to those who leave their ranks by selection and pro- motion, I shall have much more to say in the next chapter. Here we must persist in our examina- tion of the structure and character of the Labour Movement in so far as it consists of manual and other rank-and-file workers — that is to say, of the rejects of Capitalism. We must notice at the outset that the Labour Movement by no means consists of those whom Capitalism wholly rejects, but of those whom it merely relegates to rank-and-file functions. It con- sists mainly of wage-earners in more or less regular employment earning a wage which is at least usually up to the subsistence level. Below it, and almost out of its reach, are the total rejects — the slum-dwellers, casuals, " People of the Abyss." In this horrible welter of poverty and physical and spiritual degradation a point is soon reached at which organisation becomes impossible, and the crudest individualism necessarily recurs. Many persons have written books about our slums to prove that even in the " abyss " faith and charity, if not hope, still survive, and acts of human self- sacrifice are freely done. But our concern here is not with the human self-sacrifice that not even the slums can kill, but with the human sacrifice that the THB LABOUR MOVEMENT 7 I slums involve. These " people of the abyss " may continue to be " Christians " on a fraction of " a pound a week," but they are for the mo§t part utterly b^ond the reach of the organisation which Labour has built up for its protection and self- expression. The Labour Movement consisted, until a quarter of a century ago, almost entirely of the " better class of wage-earners," the skilled workers among whom it still has its main strength. The years succeeding the Dock Strike of 1889 first proved to be possible what till then Labour leaders, in common with the other sections of the community, had believed to be impossible — the organisation of the less skilled and less perma- nently employed classes of workers. The move- ment receded after 1889; but the ground gained then was never wholly lost, and, during the last seven years, there has been another tremendous leap forward in the organisation of " general labour." The General Labour Unions, now com- bined in a National Federation of General Workers with at least 750,000 members, are now a power to be permanently reckoned with in the councils of Trade Unionism, But, despite the progress of organisation among the less skilled workers, the main strength of Trade Unionism is still among workers who have a defi - nite trade and a more or less safe expectation of regular employment. This is becoming less true as the advance of machinery encroaches upon the 72 LABOUR IN THE COMMONWEALTH domain of manual skill; but it is still the case in a broad sense. The Labour Movement still con- sists mainly of workers who are capable of stable organisation largely because they are to some ex- tent stably employed. This composition of the Labour Movement has important consequences. Although in their rela- tion to Capitalism the organised workers may pro- perly be described as dispossessed and exploited, they are neither so completely dispossessed nor so thoroughly exploited as the mass below them. Many of them have savings, a little property, perhaps a house of their own; while most of them have a certain vested interest in the skill which they possess, and in the status which they have acquired under the capitalist system. This differentiates them in some measure from the workers below them, both from the less skilled workers and, still more, from the unorganised " People of the Abyss." It creates a division in the ranks of the exploited, and it enables Capitalism to create further divisions. Here again it is necessary to draw attention to the fact that I am merely describing and not disap- proving. As Capitalism becomes more highly de- veloped, it is inevitable that social functions should become more widely differentiated not only on the side of Capital, but also on tha t of Labour.* A * It is too soon yet to say whether the growth of machinery will reverse this tendency to such an extent as to undo the differentiation in the ranks of Labour ; but I do not think it will. It is likely to involve a redistribution of functions; but this will not abolish the difierentiation, but re-cast it in a new form. THE LABOUR MOVEMENT 73 newly-developed country may present a crude con - trast between undifferentiated Capital and undif- ferentiated Labour; but a long-developed country inevitably instils vested interests and rights into every stratum of society. We could not, if we so desired, revert to a purely propertyless proletariat ; and, in addition, we should be very foolish to desire any such thing. It is a commonplace that organisation and " class-consciousness " develop more easily among " well-paid " workers in regular employment than in the lower grades of the working class. The reason for this is obvious. The worker in regular employment at the standard rate is usually better educated, and has, in any case, far more opportunity for reflection on his status in the social and eco- nomic order. The leaders even of the less skilled organisations are largely recruited from the skilled trades. It is none the less true that the skilled and estab- lished character of British Trade Unionism does tend to impress upon it many conservative charac- teristics. It has a status, even if a poor one, and it does not want to imperil that status, and risk falling into the abyss beneath it, without good and sufficient reasons. It is conservative — and this is the real point — because it has something to con- serve. It will only be prepared to risk that some- thing if it sees a real prospect of a better position and a higher status. In fact, imagination is the only quality that can 74 LABOUR IN THE COMMONWEALTH shake the Labour Movement out of its conserva- tism. Imagination, however, is precisely the quality which the present industrial system neither develops nor encourages among the working class. We shall be able to see this most clearly if we tixrn back to the point from which we set out in this chapter. The Industrial Revolution was the greatest act of dispossession in history. The story of that dis- possession is told, with terrible graphic power, in Mr. and Mrs. Hammond's tWo great books. The Village Labourer and The Town Labourer. They show us the enclosures as the dispossession of the villager, the creation of factory industry as the dis- possession of the industrial worker. It is admitted that both these processes of dispossession resulted in an enormous increase in productive capacity and in the actual production of wealth; but it is none the less true that they took away from the ordinary worker his property and his share in the common property of the Commonwealth, his independence and his status as a free producer. It is not neces- sary for this argument that the oppressions of the old rdgime should be ignored or minimised : they are fully admitted. But it is an undeniable fact that, before the Industrial Revolution, a man's work did ordinarily give him a certain sense of in- dependence and did develop in him qualities of free-will and responsibility, whereas the factory system and the enclosed estates of the rich gave no such sense and fostered no such development. THE LABOUR MOVEMENT 75 Those who read the writings of William Cobbett or study the history of the Chartist Movement will not remain long in doubt on this point. Still more, a reading of the early economists or of the Parliamentary orators of the early nineteenth century will convince even the most sceptical that the Industrial Revolution brought \?ith it a new sense of the dependence of the poor upon the rich. The capitalist, as the giver of the boon of em- ployment, was felt and felt himself to be the saviour of Society : the workers who were not sufficiently " pushful " and " abstinent " to become capitalists were enjoined to be for ever gratefiil to their bene- ficent employers, who exploited them only for their own good. The Commonwealth still suffers under the effects of the Industrial Revolution. For one hundred years and more Labour has occupied, not merely a dependent status, but a status which is deadening to the sense of freedom and responsi- bility. Under these conditions, can we wonder if Labour is long-suffering and slow to revolt? It has been trained to dependence, and it has had more than a century in which to learn its lesson. Poverty ~ presses upon it, and restricts its opportunities for culture and self-expression. The sense of insecurity cornpels it to cling even to its dependent status as preferable to the comparative independence of the destitute " bottom dog." Poverty and insecurity combine to restrict its mental outlook to the imme- diate future, and to preclude it from taking a long jS LABOUR IN THE COMMONWEALTH view. Moreover, the industrial system is based upon a discipline that is imposed from without. The worker does not have to give orders or even advice. If he is fit for command or consultation, he is picked out by the capitalist and given a status which removes him frorh his class, while it leaves him still dependent upon the whim of his em- ployer. He is usually not encouraged to think : he is good enough if he does his job. In fact, he is considered in industry, not as a human being or as a citizen, but solely as a part of the industrial mechanism. And, as custom largely rules us all, in the end he often comes to regard himself in the same light. Outside his working hours, the position is rather different. Mr. Ivor Brown some years ago con- tributed td the New Age a piece of brilliant social characterisation under the title, " Gilders of the Chains." He pointed out that the amusements provided for the poor are not of a nature to turn their minds away from the system under which they are enslaved, but to gild the chains which they wear. The Press, the theatres and other places of entertainment, cinemas, football matches and even public-houses are not merely jander capitalist domination, but share to the full extent the disease of the age. They do not express the sentiments or the relaxations of free men, but for the most part only relieve the ennui of the enslaved. A^ain, I am not rebuking our theatres or even our journalists or newspaper proprietors. The THE LABOUR MOVEMENT 77 amusements of an age inevitably reflect its spirit, and it would be absurd to look for free art or free amusement in a servile Society. The whole damned order of things hangs together : it is the business of all good men to select the points at which it is most vulnerable and open to assault, and upon those points to direct all the forces at their command. The vulnerable point of the existing order is the industrial system, which is also no doubt its strongest point and its pivot. But we have to con- sider not so much where the enemy's defence is weak as where we can make our own attack strong. The Labour Movement, whose faults and weak- nesses we have so fully recognised in this chapter., can be mobilised against the industrial system with a strength which it cannot equally exercise in any other direction. Upon it therefore our attack ought to be mainly concentrated. The nature of this attack we shall be better able to foreshadow when we have examined more closely into the character of the other elements in the personnel of industry. CHAPTER IV: THE MIDDLE CLASSES WE saw, in the last chapter, how the manual-working classes are constantly picked over and carefully sorted by their " betters." We omitted to notice there that they also to a certain extent sort themselves. In certain trades, nota,bly carpentering and shop-keeping and other " domestic " occupations, it is comparatively easy to-day for men to " set up for themselves " with 'only a very little capital behind them. It is true that the mortality among such self-selected " freedmen " is extraordinarily high, and that many relapse again into the ranks of the employed. But the possibility of such self -selection remains, none the less, one of the chief safety-valves of the capitalist system. We have heard much during the last three years of the " one-man business," and it is necessary, before we go further, to say something of this stratum of modern Society. The " one-man business " is to industry and commerce what the peasant proprietor is to agricul- ture — a standing incitement to conservatism. Indeed, in one important respect, this is consider- ably more true of the " one-man business " than of the peasant proprietor. For the latter has, at least, a certain security, whereas it is of the essence of the former that it is insecure. The proprietor of a " one-man business " is walking the tight-rope with wage-slavery, or, as he grows older, destitu- tion, underneath, and the prospect of security and an established position at the other end if he can 78 THE MIDDLE CLASSES 79 keep his balance. He is mortally afraid of a breath of wind, which may blow him off his rope, and therefore he usually stands for the prese;rvation of the status quo. Small businesses of almost every type are in this position. The larger ones have often a greater security; but their security depends upon the preservation of the status quo. A drastic change in the social order might better or worsen their position; but the very precariousness in some cases, and the limited security in others, conspire to make them conservative. These elements form the nucleus of the lower middle class and largely determine its culture and its standards. Mingled with them are the lower grades of those whom Capitalism has selected — selected, in these cases, usually for qualities of " conscientiousness " and " method " rather than for initiative or force of character, but sometimes for these qualities alsa Such are foremen, office clerks, and many of the lower grades of supervisors and professionals. Above these again come the tradesmen in a larger way of business, and the clerks, supervisors, and professionals of a slightly higher grade. And then, above them, the upper middle class, dominated hy the recognised profes- sionals of industry and commerce, law, medicine, and religion, but plentifully sprinkled also with employers, managers, and traders whose scale of business is not large enough to place them in the ruling class. All these classes, and especially the higher grades 8o LABOUR IN THE COMMONWEALTH among them, enjoy, at least in appearance, a freedom considerably superior to that of the wage- earners. They live on their profits or interest or on an upstanding salary instead of a weekly wage. They are, with exceptions, mbre secure, and even insecurity means for them, as a rule, not the fear of destitution, but the risk of falling into a lower grade. If we omit the small trader.*, they are for the most part .better educated ^an the manual workers, and have wider opportunities for culture, whether or not they make use of them. They are not merely free to think, but have as a rule more leisure for thought — shorter working hours and often less monotony in their daily labour. This freedom, however, is still largely illusory. The mass of professionals and middle-class persons have in some important respects less freedom of thought than the working classes. The power of Trade Unionism has largely won for the manual workers freedom of political opinion and in its expression. If they are sometimes victimised, they can often resist victimisation by corporate action. The middle classes, on the other hand, are far more defenceless. The foreman or clerk who takes an active part in the Labour Movement is likely soon to find himself out of a job, particularly if he attempts to apply any of his principles to his own works or office. Even the doctor who professes advanced principles too publicly may find his " pay- ing " patients seeking other medical assistance. How many middle-class men does each one of us THE MIDDLE CLASSES 8 I know who keep their opinions quiet for the sake of their wives and families ? In fact, the whole of the middle classes, including all the diverse social strata which we have indicated, are the dependents of the capitalist system no less than the manual workers. No doubt, their depen- dence is less galling, both because their material position is better and because they are given ample rope to disport themselves in directions which are not dangerous. But, in the last resort, the social and economic system denies them freedom just as it denies freedom to Labour in the narrower sense. The fact is not altered because the majority of the middle classes never feel the chains that bind them. They do not desire to taste the forbidden fruit, and the notice which says that it is forbidden never attracts their attention. They go through life almost unconscious of the existence of other classes, or at most wondering what all the trouble is about. From this description we must except those who are driven by the very circumstances of their pro- fessions to realise the existence of other people. The doctor who really believes in his profession, the teacher who really knows the meaning of educa- tion, the minister who has a glimmering of the everyday reality of religion — these see that, even if they are comfortable, there are others who are not, and these join themselves to the ranks of the advocates of change. But these are the few; and, even -for these few, the act of intellectual and 82 LABOUR IN THE COMMONWEALTH spiritual conviction which is required before they can throw in their lot with Labour is a bitter pill and hard to swallow. They see so clearly the " shortcomings " of Labour — shortcomings which we described in the last chapter — and they say to themselves, " Can any good thing come out of the lower classes ? " With too little faith for an affir- mative, they become " Social Reformers," and relapse into the ranks of the damned. There are, of course, some who are saved. For the great mass of the upper middle classes the day of salvation is not yet. That their funda- mental spiritual interest is with Labour they will hardly be induced to believe while their chains are so finely gilded, their culture so well assured, and their bodies so well fed and clothed. But among a minority of them, the leaven will work, and it may be that the time will come when even the majority will be no longer past conviction. For the moment, however, our concern is rather with certain sections of that heterogeneous mass which is called the lower middle class. These we may divide roughly into two sections — the direct and the indirect dependents of Capitalism. The indirect dependents are those who are " on their own," as small masters or shop- keepers or peasant farmers or what not : the direct dependents are the "selected" of Capitalism, the foremen, supervisors, confidential clerks, and "employed" professionals. To these should be added, as a distinct sub-class, the employees of the THE MIDDLE GLASSES 83 State Departments and of the local authorities. It is of the two latter groups that we have now to speak. The growth of a common consciousness among the lower grades of professionals and supervisors has been very marked during the last few years. Deputies, who correspond roughly to foremen, have long been organised in the mining industry. On the railways, the Railway Clerks' Association has been making huge strides in the organisation of stationmasters, chief clerks, and agents, while the National Union of Railwaymen has made a beginning of organising supervisory workers in the operative grades. In the Post Office and in the Civil Service, the supervisory and administrative grades have followed the^example of the rank and file by forming associations of their own. Teachers are strongly organised, and have even shown a tendency of late years to adopt a more aggressive policy. But the most interesting recent developments have come from industry proper. The Association of Engineering and Shipbuilding Draughtsmen has enrolled 10,000 members and decided by an overwhelming majority to register as a Trade Union; while the Association of Industrial Chemists is already following closely upon its track. A National Association of Engineerir!^ Foremen has recently been started in opposition to the Foremen's Mutual Benefit Society, which is subsi- dised and controlled by the employers; and the new F 2 84 LABOUR IN THE COMMONWEALTH body shows signs of a willingness to act in concert .with the rank-and-file Trade Unions. Of course, these developments and others like them are, so far, mere drops in the ocean; but they do at least serve to show that a new spirit is abroad. Much hangs upon their fate and upon the reception accorded to them in the ranks of organised Labour. For, after all, the people who do the work of the world are the manual workers and the managers and professionals — " workers by hand and brain " in the words which, significantly enough, are used both in the first tract of the National Guilds League and in the first manifesto of the reorganised Labour Party. If these two sections of the community can pull together, it must be a very heavy burden that they could not draw. The widened and reorganised Labour Party is an attempt to find for these two sections a common political platform : the ideas of National Guilds, as we shall see later, are an attempt to find for them a common economic platform. What, then, are the things that hold them apart, and, still more impor- tant, what are the things that can be used to bind them together ? The supervisors and professionals, whether in public or in private employment, fall more or less sharply into two classes. They are either experts possessing a special technique and belonging to a defined profession which is, or ought to be, largely self-governing; or they are supervisors or " mani- pulators of men," whose main business it is to THE MIDDLE CLASSES 85 order and co-ordinate the actions of other men. Of this I have had something to say already, in the first chapter of this book. The supervisors or professionals of the second type no doubt have, and must have, a knowledge and a technique of their own; but these are ancillary to their main function, which is the management of men. Whereas, in the case of the professionals properly so called, technique is primary and the basis of their common function. Let us look at the relations of these two classes to the manual workers. And let us, for shortness' sake, call them simply " supervisors " and " pro- fessionals." The relation of the manual workers to the fore- men or supervisors is at present largely one of mutual suspicion. The supervisor is, and must be under present conditions, the employer's man. He has been picked by the employer, usually out of the ranks of the manual workers : he is paid by the employer, and the employer can dismiss him and perhaps force him back into the ranks. He must, therefore, look after the employer's interests and confront the men in the shop as the representative of the employer. Yet he is at the same time to some extent a go-between. He holds only non-commissioned rank in the army of industry, and his power is strictly circumscribed. He is often forced into the position not only of carrying to tlje men the orders of the management, but also of carrying to the 86 LABOUR IN THE COMMONWEALTH management the views of the men. Himself usually promoted from the ranks of the men, he has some understanding of their point of view, though this understanding itself may sometimes help to make him overbearing and arbitrary after his change of status. He is a go-between who, whatever his personal views may be, is com- pelled by force of circumstances to side •vjith his employer. This makes the workers naturally suspicious of him. They see in him, not merely an agent of the management, but also to some extent a renegade from their own class. Although the majority would"with little hesitation take a foreman's job if it were offered, they often resent the doing by others of what they would do themselves. They do not find it easy to make full allowances; for toleration is one of the most difficult, as well as one of the finest, of the virtues. Nevertheless, there are many who see the great importance of a rapprochement between the super- visors and the rank-and-file workers, and realise that the best policy for Labour is to encourage, by every means in its power, the development of organisation among the supervisory grades. The supervisor is essential to industry, and, however supervisors were appointed and whomever they served, they would be largely the same people. The tendency, then, which is already manifest- ing itself to some extent in the Trade Union movement, for the rank-and-file workers to endea- THE MIDDLE CLASSES 87 vour to keep their promoted members in their organisations after promotion and to establish dose relations with any separate associations which the supervisors create for themselves is essentially good. It is possible to hold strongly, as I do, that all supervisors should be chosen by those whom they are to supervise, and in particular that the effort of Trade Unionism should be directed to taking the control of promotion and the choice of foremen out of the hands of employers and vesting it in themselves; and at the same time to hold that, even before that step is taken, there is room for a rapprochement between the supervisors and the rank and file. At the present stage, such a rap- prochement could not extend beyond the lower grades of supervisors; but, even in that restricted area, it would be a great advance, and would pave the way («o a change in the methods of appoint- rnent. It would also enormously strengthen the hands of the supervisors in relation to the manage- ment, and decrease their dependence upon it; and this would set them free to remember their origin, and behave far more humanly and fairly in relation to the rank-and-file workers. The position of the lower grades of professionals is far simpler than that of foremen. For they are not, except incidentally, in the position of having to order the rank-and-file workers about. Their functions are mainly advisory, and their place in industry, as well as their bond of union one with another, they owe to their technique and know- 88 LABOUR IN THE COMMONWEALTH ledge. The barrier that holds them apart from the rank-and-file workers is not that they function as their " superior officers," but that they regard themselves as belonging to a superior caste. In fact, they tend to be snobbish, and to look down upon the manual workers as of commoner clay than their own. They are "respectable," and their sense of their own respectability is fostered by their employers. Until quite recently, they have been almost wholly unorganised. A very few had drifted into the National Union of Clerks, a very few more, having served an apprenticeship in the work- shops, had remained members of various craft Unions. Even now, with the rise of the Draughts- men's and Chemists' Associations, only the fringe has been touched by organisation. Yet even the material interests of the vast majority of these professional workers are essen- tially the same as those of the manual workers. To begin with, many of them are no better paid, and, in addition, the drawing office or the laboratory is no more free from the vexations and oppressions of Capitalism than the workshop or the yard. Spiritually, their aims are far more closely akin; for the desire for freedom and self-direction exists among both groups, and both are clearly necessary to a democratic and self-governing industrial system. It is only " snobbishness " that holds them apart — the snobbishness of the " black - coated proletariat " fancying itself better than the manual worker, and the inverted snobbishness of THE MIDDLE CLASSES 89 the manual worker who despises the professional for posing as his social superior. Similar in some respects is the position of the Civil Servant, though he does not come as a rule into close contact with any large body of manual workers. The Civil Service is organised in almost all its grades, and the process of organisation has affected to a considerable extent the higher branches. The newly-formed Association of Civil Servants consists for the most part of persons so tailorly black-coated that they have quite ceased to be in any ordinary sense a proletariat. But these and all other grades of Civil Servants have a con- siderable quarrel with the present social system; and it is a sign of the times that, in its latest pro- nouncement on policy, the Civil Service Clerical Alliance puts forward a vigorous demand for increased control over promotions and the orga- nisation of the service — a demand which has long been made by the Postal and Telegraph Clerks' Association and by other Post Office Associations. The question of " control " forms, indeed, the central point round which any alliance in the economic sphere between manual and " brain " workers must turn. When the demand for control of industry is put forward by the manual workers, as it so often is nowadays, the " brain workers " are inclined to fear that this means a cult of incom- petence, an ignoring of capacity and technical knowledge, and the enthronement of inefficiency. If it meant" any such things, it would indeed be 90 LABOUR IN THE COMMONWEALTH doomed from the outset; but what it really means is that the industries and services should be con- trolled by those who do the work and the service in them, that is to say, by manual workers and " brain workers " together. Doubtless, as we saw, it also involves that those whose main business is the supervision of others should be chosen by those whom they are to supervise; but there is nothing in this demand that should make blench the expert whose main function is not to order other people about, but to apply his technical knowledge and ability to the problems of industry. Of course, those who believe that men respond only to blows and move only as they are driven will not be brought by any words of mine into an alli- ance with the Labour Movement. But those who believe that the real leader of men should hold his position, not by force or superior economic power or superior social status, but by force of character and by personality, will not be afraid to enter such an alliance. Nothing less is at issue than the whole question of the nature of leadership, and of the position which the leader ought to hold in the industrial system. If aristocracy is a thing of social caste and status, I am against aristocracy in industry just as much as I am against it in politics and in Society. If, on the other hand, aristocracy means merely what it says, the leadership of the best men, then I hold that it is most likely to be realised in the Commonwealth that is most demo- cratic, not only in its political structure, but also in THE MIDDLE CLASSES 9I its industrial system. The true leader is he who leads not by authority, but by influence, he who gains and holds his position by virtue of his per- sonal character and ability. Men who believe that they are leaders by nature need not fear that a democratic system will give them no scope : if they are right about themselves, they will be far more likely to find themselves overloaded with too much power. The expert, the professional, and the adminis- trator are vital to Labour because they possess special qualifications which are essential to industry and to the Commonwealth. And, equally. Labour is essential to them if they are to possess any real independence or to secure a reasonable chance of doing their jobs well. Under present conditions, they are the dependents of Capitalism, and they have to do their jobs not so as to render the best possible service, but so as to afford the greatest possible profit for their employers. They are con- stantly compelled to do bad work, because it pays their lords and masters best that bad work should be done. Of course, this burden of capitalist morality does not fall upon all alike : there are good and bad employers, and there are employers who make good and efficient service a profitable busi- ness. But there are few brain-workers attached to industry who have not, at some time during their lives, beer^onfronted with the necessity of doing bad work in order to live and keep their jobs. I do not, of course, claim that the brain-worker 92 LABOUR IN THE COMMONWEALTH has only to be willing to ally himself with Labour, and Paradise will come. The situation is not so sweetly simple. But I do firmly believe that only in alliance with manual Labour will the brain- worker find freedom and professional self-govern- ment. I think the mere pressure of circumstances, the growth of capitalist organisation on the one side and of Trade Union organisation on the other, will in the long run drive many of the supervisory and professional grades willy nilly into an alliance with the manual workers, and it is not difficult to see this process already at work. But I do not want the " brain-workers " to be driven 'into this alli- ance : I want them to come into it of their own accord. And I want the manual workers, if need be, to go more than half-way to meet them. One of the main reasons why the new Labour Party constitution is to be welcomed is that it makes a bridge for co-operation in the political sphere. A similar bridge in the industrial sphere may take far longer to build; but, if it can be built, the effects are likely to be much more far-reaching. For the struggle for a co-operative control over industry would bind the workers by hand and brain together far more securely than a purely political union. It is out of co-operation in the daily struggle that the truest comradeship grows. I may seem, in this chapter, to be giving a very wide and elastic interpretation to the term " middle classes." That is because I have been interpreting the term not so much in a social as in an economic THE MIDDLE CLASSES 93 sense. I have been thinking of those who stand between the "captains of industry " on the one side, and the " rank and file " on the other. But before leaving the " middle classes " altogether, I must say a little more about them in their social aspect. It has often been remarked that the theories of the world are largely made by the " middle class." Hobbes and Marx were alike of the middle class; but neither of them addressed his theory primarily to his own class. Hobbes did not say that the Social Contract implied the sovereignty of the bourgeoisie: he gave his Leviathan the head of Charles I. Still less did Marx salute the suburbs and say, " Bourgeois of the world, unite : you have nothing to lose but your villas, and a world to win " : he fixed his eyes firmly upon Labour, and bade his own dass go hang. , In ract, although the bourgeoisie produces most of the theorists, it is very seldom the theme of their theories. Nor is this surprising; for the bourgeoisie is in fact not so much a class as a transition, not so much a thing as a relation. If we seek to define it, we are hard put to it to to the fact that at the present day this citizenship is all too often a class citizenship based upon a co-operation which stops short at the class of which these boys and girls are members. I am not upholding our better-class education because it is a class education. I am merely saying that it includes features which ought to be included in an education free from class bias and open to everybody. Again, let us contrast with this education the education of the poor. Just when upper and middle class education is attaining its maximum value and affording the widest opportunities for self-expression and self-development, working-class education comes to a dead stop. Just as they are reaching the age when they might begin really to develop qualities of initiative and responsibility, the children of the working class — or the over- whelming majority of them — are chucked out of the schools and flung upon the labour market. Then follow those years which are the despair of every educationist. At thirteen or fourteen, or sometimes fifteen, a boy or girl leaves school. Nothing has been done to awaken the desire for further education; the routine methods of the Elementary School forbid that. The experience of the wage system has not yet roused even a minority to a sense of the need for self-education as the road LABOUR AND EDUCATION I 53 to power. Consequently for some years practically the whole of the working class passes absolutely out of the range of effective educational effort and spends the years which are most valuable from an educational point of view, not in learning things or gaining character, but in forgetting what has been learnt, and too often in losing character, or in gain- ing the wrong character. A few years later, when the child has become a man or a woman, there may be an opportunity, through one of the agencies for working-class edu- cation, of getting back a small minority of these lost sheep oY the educational system; but even if they come back they have usually forgotten, not merely what they had learnt, but how to learn. They have got out of the way not merely of being educated, but of educating themselves, and it is a painful climb back, which only a few accomplish, into effective adult education. It is true that the appalling results of this breaking short of educa- tion at fourteen or thereabouts are recognised amongst all schools of thought which pay any atten- tion whatsoever to the educational problem; but there still remains as an obstacle to any remedy the apathy of the vast majority, the active opposition of industrial interests, and the stinginess and lack of prevision of the rate-payer. Mr. Fisher's Educa- tion Act of 19 1 8 made a mild and inadequate suggestion for bridging the gulf between childhood and the adult. The Bill, as introduced, provided, for the continuance of education for a few hours a 154 LABOUR IN THE COMMONWEALTH week up to eighteen. At once two distinct currents of opposition became manifest. One of the parties of opposition pointed out the dislocation in the industrial system which would result from a stoppage of the supply of child labour in the mills and factories, particularly in the textile areas, and showed itself for the most part completely unwill- ing to take any steps to readjust its industrial methods to educational needs. There could have been no clearer case of the habit of our governing classes of regarding the vast mass of the people, not as human beings with a right to the opportunities of active citizenship based upon knowledge, but as mere raw material of industry to be used up in the service of wealth production and private profit. Unfortunately a section of the working classes joined themselves, for different reasons, to this interested opposition of manufacturers. They said that they could not afford to lose the wages which came to them from the labour of their children, and they often added that the education which they had had in their childhood had been good enough for them, and therefore ought to be good enough for their' children. Although the economic causes of this opposition are sufficiently manifest, it is hard to regard this attitude of the working class with even the scant sympathy which it deserves; but it may at least be pointed out that this attitude is the expression of the morality and the outlook on life which are engendered in the wage slave by the edu- cation of wage slavery. That section of the work- LABOUR AND EDUCATION I 55 ing class which has felt for more than a century the full rigours of the factory system has lost in the process most of its idealism, and has come to accept as inevitable the conditions against which it re- belled in the early days of the Industrial Revolu- tion. As we know, the result of this double opposition was that Mr. Fisher dropped completely out of his proposals the immediate enactment of compulsory education up to i8, and postponed the full opera- tion of his scheme under the mistaken impression that the great industrialists would take advantage of the respite to readjust industry for the new con- ditions. In fact, they will of course do nothing of the sort, and the opposition will have to be faced again, probably under less favourable conditions, when the time arrives for reconsideration. The second kind of opposition was of a more subtle but also of a more dangerous character. It came from those who said : " By all means let us have more education, but let us make sure that this education is directed to the interests of industry. Let us continue the education of children, but in special schools in which purely technical training will be provided, in order that the supply of skilled labour may be better maintained." A sign of the strength of this attitude may be found in the most dangerous proposal in the Act of 191 8 — the pro- posal to allow compulsory Works Schools upon employers' premises, to be regarded as fulfilling the needs of continued education. 156 LABOUR IN THE COMMONWEALTH Of course, in protesting against this idea of con- tinued education of a purely technical kind, directed purely to the needs of industry, and not to the needs of the scholar as a citizen, I do not mean to say that no technical training at all ought to be provided; but I do mean to say that technical train- ing of an industrial character is in no sense a substi- tute for education properly so called. If more technical training is wanted let it be given, by all means; but let it be given in addition to, and not in substitution for, education of a civic character. What is wanted is that the gulf between childhood and manhood should be completely filled up, not in order that the employer may secure better wage slaves, but in order that the children of the working class may secure an education as good as that which is now obtained by the children of the upper and middle classes. I make no apology for returning again and again to the point that the gulf between the date at which the ordinary boy leaves school and the date at which he becomes an active citizen is a fatal barrier to any real educational reformation. As long as edu- cation for the many stops short at any point before the boy has become a man, or^the girl a woman, those who acquiesce in such a situation will be recognising and acquiescing in one education for the rich and another for the poor. They will be accepting the view that the needs of industry have precedence of the needs of citizenship, and that it is not possible or not desirable to provide the mass LABOUR AND EDUCATION I 57 of the people with the opportunity for self- deiVelopment which the rich and middle classes quite properly demand for themselves. The immoral character of this class division in our educational system is not difficult to discern. It is implied throughout that entirely different ideals are to be served and entirely different methods adopted in educating the children of the rich and in training the children of the poor. The rich are to be taught how to govern, the poor arc to be taught how to obey. The rich and middle- class- children are destined either to positions of more or less responsibility or at least of more or less power. The working-class child, unless he is picked out by a process of selection from the mass of his fellows, and given special facilities for further education, is intended merely as a member of the industrial rank and file which is excluded from all real control. As soon, -therefore, as enough has been done to make a more or less efficient rank- and-file worker there is, on this showing, no need for any further education for the great majority. It is true that this view is misguided and unen- lightened, even if its pre-supposition of capacity is correct. It does not train the most efficient wage workers; it does not secure the best results from the rank and file. That is why the more enlightened type of employer is now pressing, as we have seen, for more education of a technical character; but however much education may be pressed for by members of the ruling class, it is still animated by 158 LABOUR IN THE COMMONWEALTH exactly the same. idea. The aim is still to provide only that amount of education which can be re- garded as reproductive capital expenditure— bnly that amount which will show results in the indus- trial balance sheet and make the commerce of the nation more efficient in world competition. The upper or' middle-class boy requires for his indus- trial functions in many cases a scientific training and a technique of a highly elaborate character, but no one dreams of giving this as a reason for early specialisation in his case, or for the abandonment of general education at the earliest possible moment. It is clearly recognised in the case of the upper and middle classes that technical ability by itself is no good for those who are to have a share in the direction of industry. It is necessary, in addition, that they should be good all-round men, well educated in such a way as to possess a sense of responsibility and a capacity for power. In their case, therefore, technical training always follows upon a good general education. They remain at school almost without specialisation till eighteen or nineteen; many of them continue their general education without reference to the particular profession which they intend to follow at the Universities, and there has recently been a move towards enlisting more University men in business. Specialisation when it comes is therefore, in the case of the professional,, broad-based upon all round education. ''-^ Clearly the ideal behind the education of this LABOUR AND EDUCATION 1^9 sort is a quite different one from the ideal which lies behind the proposals for better technical training of the working class. In their own case the governing classes clearly recognise that the period of adolescence is the critical period in edu- cation, and they postpone technical training until the most critical years of adolescence are over. There is no human reason why the same should not be true of children of other classes. It is certainly too much to hope for that in a capitalist society the whole of the population should have the chance of continuing its school-time education at least to manhood, but there is nothing less that can really satisfy the human needs of any section of the population : whether the boy or girl is destined for a calling which requires special technical training or not, he or she is at least destined for citizenship, and good citizenship requires the best possible general education. As long as the majority of children pass away from the schools at fourteen or fifteen or even sixteen, there can be no pretence that we are really educating our people for citizen- ship. That is why it is so enormously important to secure the principle that education should continue up to the latest possible age. The Education Bill of 19 18, as originally drafted, preferred the pro- posal for a few hours' weekly schooling up to eighteen to the counter-proposal of half-time schooling up to sixteen. In taking this view Mr, Fisher was clearly right. The hours suggested l6o LABOUR IN THE COMMONWEALTH were utterly inadequate, but they could have been extended; the main point was to establish, without further delay, that education ought to be continued right through the period of adolescence. It is, therefore, all the more calamitous that Mr. Fisher so easily gave away one of the vital principles of hisBilh^ ^ ^ ^ I do not suggest that if the Education Bill had been carried in substantially unaltered form it would have gone more than half an inch to remove the class distinction in education. To insist on a few hours' schooling up to eighteen, and even so to leave wide loopholes for the introduction of technical training during these hours, is certainly not to abolish class distinction in education. It is^ a beginning, per- haps, but it is a very, very little one. Nor even if the inconceivable had happened, and Parliament had enacted full-time education for every boy and girl up to eighteen and found teachers in necessary numbers of rair quality, would the class basis of edu- cation have been thereby removed. The workers need, not simply more education, but also educa- tion of a very different sort. Doubtless the exten- sion of educational facilities and the provision of more education for the mass of the people would by itself do something to change the curriculum and the nature of the teaching, but it would not do very much, and it is possible that even the addi- tional facilities for education which will be pro- ^ vided after the war will be made the excuse for a LABOUR AND EDUCATION l6l new class distinction in the curriculum provided. It cannot have «tecaped attention that during the war period our schools have been very largely mili- tarised- Dangerous teachers have been driven out, Cadet Corps and flag-wagging, and simple talks about the Empire have been driven in. Lord Meath's detestable experiment of Empire Day has caught on in schools if nowhere else. There will obviously be a determined effort in some quarters to make our schools good training grounds for a docile Unionist, Imperialist and Industrialist population. Much attention has been concen- trated in late years upon the teaching of a mys- terious subject called " civics." Properly taught civics, despite its name, is an essential part of the school curriculum. Improperly taught it is the most pernicious form of indoctrination of the young. What every boy and girl ought to learn at school is something of the organisation, the char- acter and history of industrial and political society both in theory and in practice. What they ought emphatically not to learn is a Shorter Catechism of Industrial and Political Subservience. If, how- ever, we may judge by many of the present experiments in the teaching of civics, the second is what they are being taught. Clearly the key to the educational situation, so far as it has to do with the character rather than the amount of the education provided, rests largely with the teachers. It cannot be said that this is'^at the present time an inspiring thought. We have 1 62 LABOUR IN THE COMMONWEALTH SO wretchedly underpaid our teachers, at least in the schools supported out of public funds, that we have not got the best material. We have also so muddled their education and technical training that we have not made the best use even of the material which we can get. Teachers' Training Colleges and the sections of Universities and Uni- versity Colleges which are devoted to the training of teachers are in too many cases a laughing stock, while teachers themselves are unTortunately re- garded by the general public as being too often prigs and to some extent charlatans. The plain fact is that the teacher, miserably underpaid and of very doubtful social status, is usually trying hard to make headway against adversity to keep himself, or her- self, respectable and to bear up against the intoler- able drudgery of teaching huge classes uninterest- ing th' ngs according to uninteresting machine-made rules. There are, of course, thousands of excep- tions. There are teachers who throw themselves into the Labour movement and the working-class educational movement. There are the teachers who throw themselves into their own profession and manage to make even the drab surroundings of the ordinary Elementary School a place of light and leading for those whom they have to teach. They are heroes and heroines, but they cannot for long, or save as exceptions, make headway against the difficulties which they encounter. This then, is what is. Mr. Edmond Holmes, in the most eloquent book written about education in LABOUR AND EDUCATION I 63 recent years, has told us- what might be, but even he has not told us how to get it. He has, indeed, suggested that until we get education we shall not get anything else that is worth having; but he has not fully realised that it is at least equally true to say that until we get other things that are worth having we shall not get education. As long as the eco- nomic system and the needs of the few under that system are allowed to dominate our entire social organisation we must not expect education to be immune from this general domination. It is all very well to say that the -aim of education is essen- tially to draw out the individuality of every student, but you will not catch our ruling classes showing any great enthusiasm for education of that sort. Do they not, indeed, owe their rule to the fact that most people's individuality is in a state of chronic suppression ? The importance of education to the Labour Movement cannot be overestimated; but it would be the height of folly for the Labour movement to concentrate all its endeavours,upon the educational system, for the key to the provision of the right kind of education, at least so far as our public Ele- mentary and Secondary Schools are concerned, lies in the economic system itself. The present edu- cational order may be slightly modified, but it will not be overthrown unless and until the workers succeed in overthrowing the present economic system. The vicious circle is that they are only likely to succeed in overthrowing the economic L 2 I 64 LABOUR IN THE COMMONWEALTH system when they are better educated, and the moral of these two half-truths is that they must try to press on along both paths at the same time. They must at the same time go all out for educa- tion, and education of a better kind, and they must also concentrate their efforts upon securing greater economic power and control. While they are doing these things they can also to some extent provid-; — not, perhaps, for the children, but for the adult working class — certain types of education and training which will not, indeed, take the place of the education which ought to have been gfven in childhood and adolescence, but which will at least do something to remedy the more glaring defects. The movements towards working-class education which are discussed in the next chapter are of the greatest possible importance, because to some extent they serve to resolve the dilemma that a better educational system must precede economic emancipation, while economic emancipation must precede a better educational system. One last word, and we must leave the general question of the educational system. There is one thing which the working classes must particularly remember when they are pressing for better edu- cation for themselves and their children. They must beware of accepting the educational ideal which is presented to them by the ruling classes; the ideal of education as a means to a means, and not as a means to an end. The ruling classes think of the education of the poor as a means to efficiency LABOUR AND EDUCATION I 65 which is itself a means and only a means to the good life. The working class must beware either of accepting this ideal as it stands or of substituting for it the ideal of education merely as a means to revolution, which in itself only a means to the good life. It is true that education will be the most powerful means to revolution, but it will have this effect most if it is less consciously directed towards it, if it is regarded as itself a necessary means to the good life. Oscar Wilde once remarked that all art was absolutely useless. We might do worse than say that all education is absolutely useless. Neither remark is true, but both of them are inspired lies. CHAPTER IX : PROLETARIANISM IT is a question that has been posed again and again in the history of Labour and Socialist agitation how far the working class, of proletariat, ought to have a culture and an " ideology " of its own. In France, the ques- tion has been debated in the most fascinating fashion in the books of the Syndicalist intellectuals. MM. Lagardelle, Berth and Sorel. In this country, it has risen to prominence in connection with the " extremist " working-class movements represented by the Socialist Labour Party, the Central Laboui College, and the Plebs League. In a most interesting book, very recently pub- lished, a leading member of the Socialist Labour 'Party sets out to analyse the nature, origin and function of the State. For the moment, I am con- cerned not with his argument, but merely with his bibliography. To each cha,pter he appends a list of books for further reference. It is not venture- some to say that of all the professors and intel- lectuals who so learnedly discuss the nature of the State not one in ten has ever heard of one in ten of the books which he mentions. These books are not all by members of the working class, oc even of the Socialist Movement; but, taken as a whole, they do represent a quite different starting-point and a quite different culture from the accepted culture of our times. A similar phenomenon may be to some extent observed in the classes conducted under the auspices of the Central Labour College and in the articles published in the " Plebs Magazine." These " ex- i66 PROLETARIANISM 1 67 tremists" of the working class are rejecting not merely the conclusions of what they term " bour- geois economics " and " bourgeois history," but also the methods and the text-books. They are setting out, with very inadequate resources and equipment, it is true, but with the high confidence which comes from certainty, to create a new prole- tarian learning and a new proletarian culture. Naturally, they cannot make their break with the past absolute, or do over again all the research which has been done in the past by " bourgeois in- tellectuals " ; but they show a marked tendency rather to narrow their culture and keep it as " pro- letarian " as possible than to widen it at the expense of too great a dilution by bourgeois influence. It is easy to decry this movement by pointing to its absurd narrowness and lopsided culture, and to the inadequacy of the foundation of historical knowledge on which it rests ; but it is far less worth while merely to decry its imperfections than to en- quire why it has arisen, and how far it is on the right lines. No one who approaches history or economics with Labour sympathies can fail to realise the inade- quacy of most of the books which " bourgeois cul- ture " has provided. Moreover, the text-books are far more inadequate than the more advanced specialised studies. Not only are most of them strongly biassed in favour of things as they are : not only do they constantly import their disputable conclusions into their descriptions and offer as facts 1 68 LABOUR IN THE COMMONWEALTH what are highly controversial theories : they also quite omit many of the things which the working class student or adherent is most anxious to know, and to assign to such events as they do mention a place in their narrative and argument which is immensely inferior to their real importance. There are, of bourse, notable exceptions to this general indictment. John Richard Green's "His- tory " and H. D. Traill's " Social England " set a fashion which has been followed in many subse- quent books; while Mr. and Mrs. Hammond's books stand out above all others among the more advanced and specialised studies in which the working-class student can find the facts he wants. But when he is confronted with the vast literature of capitalist bias which is commended to his notice in connection with every subject that concerns him, can we wonder if the alert and conscious workin'g-class student is inclined sometimes to thrust all this stuff behind him, and to seek for a new knowledge and a new culture of his own ? I agree that, to a considerable extent, he is making a mistake, though he is not alto^her mis- taken; but his mistake is at least easily understood, and deserves the fullest understanding. What is true of books is true of teachers alsb. The keen working-class student is apt to find in most bourgeois teachers exactly the same causes for dissatisfaction as in bourgeois books. Bias, acceptance as axioms of disputable theories, and, above all, failure to tell the student just the things PROLETARIANISM 1 69 he wants to know, or to enter into the student's scale of values in such a way as to assign to various points the degrees of relative importance which he assigns to them — these are the prime defects of most bourgeois tutors from the point of view of the class-conscious worker. " A Worker Looks at History " is the title of a small book recently pub- lished by a Central Labour College lecturer, and the very title serves to emphasise the difference in point of view. It is not so much that when the class-conscious worker " looks at history " he sees things differently, though he does this, as that he sees different things. Different facts outstand, and the facts group themselves to his view in a different manner. It is true, then, that for real and effective working-class education, most of the text-books will have to be re-written, at least so far as history and economic science are concerned. It is also true that, to a great extent, tutors will have to be dif- ferently trained if they are to be brought into a right relation to their students. But it does not follow from this that the working-class has to make a totally new culture, or that the bridges between it and bourgeois culture ought to be broken down. It follows rather that the working class ought to make all speed with the creation of teachers and text-books to suit its needs, but that it ought to be ready to avail itself of all really friendly assistance in the process. There is grave danger in a narrowing of culture, 170 LABOUR IN THE COMMONWEALTH or a confining of it within rigid limits. There is also grave danger that, in building up a " working- class culture," the workers will merely repeat the errors of the bourgeoisie. Finding half-truths in the bourgeois historians and economists, they may all too easily put into their own works only that other half of the truth which these writers have left out. And, in the same way, their teachers may teach only that half of the truth which finds no place in bourgeois teaching. If they do this, I do not say that they will be as bad as the bourgeois; but they will be fighting the bourgeois with the weapons of the bourgeois, and with vastly inferior resources — that is to say, if they play at that game the bourgeois will beat them. What is worth while for the working class is simply " the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth." They must not narrow their culture in order to make it exclusively proletarian; they must widen it in order to admit those elements which bourgeois culture has excluded. They must correct the defects of existing cultures, not by making a new counter-culture of their own, but by tearing out the discreetly veiled facts from the wprks of the bourgeois writers and setting them boldly side by side with the facts which those writers are eager to obtrude. They must not sup- press the facts which make against them, or ignore the powerful books which have been written by bourgeois thinkers : they must build upon bour- geois culture, and they must transcend it. PROLETARIANISM I7I If they will do this they will be perfectly right in training their own teachers as far as possible from their own ranks and in writing their own text- books and doing their own research. But they will be no less wrong if they seek to impose upon their tutors and their text-books some rigid test of orthodoxy or belief in a theory, however much they may believe their " doxy " to be right and their theory to be true. If they want to train their own teachers and to write their own text-books they must give their own men the best possible training, and then leave them free to believe, teach and write as they choose. To some extent, the bourgeois have learnt this lesson. They do leave considerable freedom to their teachers and writers, especially in the older Universities, where the power of capitalism is less immediately felt than in the industrial centres. It is true that this tolerance is apt, in many cases, to stop short at a teacher or writer who openly pro- fesses highly dangerous economic views; but it is none the less very really present. Its presence is, moreover, the only guarantee that real educational work will be done, and makes just the difference between, say, a real University and a theological training college. When the working class sets out to make its own educational institutions, it must bear very clearly in mind the gulf between a real University and a sectarian training college. It is the principle recognised by educationists — in theory, at least — 172 LABOUR IN THE COMMONWEALTH that training should follow education, and should be based upon it. That is to say, the training of a good Unitarian or Presbyterian Minister* in- volves that he should first be educated at an insti- tution which is not sectarian and does not provide sectariah teaching, and then trained at a sectarian college. Exactly the same' principles apply to working- class education. Technical training based upon the acceptance of some particular social theory should only follow upon education free from any such implication. I do not mean that education should be free from a working-class interest and pre-occupation, but that it should not be based upon the acceptance of any particular dogma or doctrine about the working class. " Marxian education," however much we may believe in Marx, is not education, but sectarian training. Of course, the working class may accept the Roman Catholic and Established Church view, and may desire to indoctrinate the -v^orkers from the earliest possible moment with some particular social theory. If so, it will no doubt conduct Marxian Socialist Sunday Schools, and perhaps even Marxian creches and kindergartens for good " rebel " children, and follow them up with Marxian classes for adolescents and adults. If they do this, I believe that they will be merely imitating the wrongs done by the present ruling classes, and denying tl^e real meaning of education. * This, I know, is not the theory of the Roman Catholic, or •Ten oi the Ettabliihtd, Church. PROLETARIANISM 1 73 Let me be quite clear. I am not denying the value or desirability of Marxian classes. Far from it: I am more than anxious to see them extend. But I do hold most strongly that they ought to follow upon education which is not of a similar sectarian type, and that they will serve to narrow and distort the character of many of their students unless they are preceded by such education. The Central Labour College — and, still more, its auxiliary, the Plebs League — wage unceasing war against the largest of the agencies for adult working-class education — the Workers' Educa- tional Association. This is a body with branches in all parts of England and a considerable indi- vidual membership; it has also a large number of affiliated Trade Unions and other Labour and educational bodies. It runs many classes of iti own; but for the most important part of its work — the conducting of Tutorial Classes — it works jointly with the various Universities through special joint committees. These Tutorial Classes are paid for partly by private subscription and Trade Union grants, but also by grants from the Universities and Colleges and from the Board of Education and the local authorities. The Marxian extremists denounce the W.E.A. as a " fake " organisation, nominally out to serve the interests of Labour, but really devoted to the preservation of the existing economic order. They point to its subscription list, which does indeed include subscriptions from strange persons, and to 174 LABOUR IN THE COMMONWEALTH its connection with the bourgeois Universities and with. the Board of Education. They also denounce many of its tutors as reactionaries, and appeal to Trade Unions to withdraw their support from it. It must not, however, be imagined that the C.L.C. spends all its energy in denunciation. It is itself a most active institution, conducting not only full-time courses in its own building, but also classes in many parts of the country. It has achieved the greatest success among the miners in South Wales, and is now jointly owned and con- trolled by two great Trade Unions — the National Union of Railwaymen and the South Wales Miners' Federation. If what we have said above is correct, the Tutorial Classes of the W.E.A. and the Marxian' training of the C.L.C. have really different func- tions to perform. The former should be the nucleus of the working-class University, the latter of the propagandist training college. The business of the one is to give the adult workers the opportunity of a good general education; that of the other is to provide special technical training upon the basis of that education. It is true that neither institution is as yet at all perfectly adapted to the carrying-out of these func- tions. It is open to doubt how long the co-opera- tion between working-class bodies. Universities and the Board of Education can be preserved unless both the Universities and the State are made far more democratic by working-class action. In PROLETARIANISM 175 practice, tutors under the Tutorial Class scheme have so far been left comparatively free to do their work in their own way, and this has meant that, as a rule, the classes have secured the sort of tutor whom they want; but it is clear that the main- tenance of the independence of class and tutor alike fundamentally depends on the amount of control which the Labour movement exercises over the W.E.A., and the amount of active pressure which, through the W.E.A. and directly, it put? upon the State and the Universities. If there is complaint as to the actual working of the W.E.A., the remedy is for the Labour movement to exercise over it a nill and complete control. This the con- stitution of the W.E.A. makes perfectly easy. On the other hand, the Central Labour College is at present by no means perfectly adapted to the role which I have suggested for it. It is at present conducting classes for those who have not the previous education which I regard as essential. It is, moreover, even when it is dealing with more advanced students, far too narrow and doctrinaire — far too apt to insist not merely on Marxism, but even on a rigid interpretation of Marxism along very controversial lines. It has all the defects which we have seen to be inherent in the attempt to create a new and separate working-class culture. But it has also the sovereign merit of being very much alive, and this great practical merit outweighs its theoretical defects. In fact, the need for working-class education is 176 LABOUR IN THE COMMONWEALTH at the present tiirue so overwhelming and the existing facilities so meagre that any honest or- ganisation that will step into the breach is doing good work. Later, there will have to be a co- ordination and a clearer understanding of the principles at stake; but for the present there is room for all. The theoretical issue which I have raised is therefore not so much immediate as fundamental. It is fundamental because it raises the whole ques- tion of the possibility of co-operation between the class-conscious workers and the Socialist bour- geoisie. It is a curious fact that among the most vindictive apostles of a purely working-class culture, and the most vigorous opponents of boxxrgeois intervention in working-class affairs, are men who are themselves bourgeois by origin and training. M. Sorel is an outstanding example from France : Great Britain is rapidly breeding her own as the youth of the bourgeoisie becomes dis- illusioned and disgruntled with the existing system. No one is so likely to denounce the bourgeoisie and all its works as the bourgeois who has become disgruntled with his own class. This mood, however, is a reaction, and the same may be said in some measure of the extreme prole- tarians among the workers themselves. They react, naturally and inevitably, against the domin- * ance of the bourgeois, and they become Sinn Feiners of Labour. No one can blame them, even if he regards their attitude as unwise. PROLETARIANISM 177 For the fact is that Labour has need of all the weapons and of all the good-will that it can muster in its fight against the existing order. It is recognised that the most serious handicap to it in its struggle is the lack of knowledge and educa- tion. Even in the hands of the bourgeoisie, education has a value which cannot be replaced by anything else, and the men who have received a first-class education have a power which cannot be taken from them. If they are willing to help Labour, they can render very great help. The last thing they ought to desire is that Labour should hand over to them any actual control : they should be only advisers, placing their knowledge and skill at the disposal of Labour to do what it likes with them. This function those who are true friends of Labour will most willingly accept : those who seek power over Labour are better outside the Labour movement. The proletarians, then, are wrong if they reject the help of tutors trained by the Universities before they have had time or opportunity to train equally well tutors of their own. To adopt this attitude is to narrow their movement, and to refuse for a false theory help of which they stand sadly in -need. Heaven forbid that the working class should continue to take their education entirely from men of another class than their own; but Heaven forbid, too, that they should exclude all others than those of their own class. What is wanted is the abolition of classes, and the best M 178 LABOUR IN THE COMMONWEALTH way to that is not a new class-exclusiveness even more rigid than the old. Marx is a sadly misused writer. The German Marxians give one interpretation of him, the French Syndicalists a second, the British Industrial Unionists a third. There is a terrible tendency in all men to make rigid and abstract systems, and this tendency is especially marked in the making of a new culture. I yield to none in admiration for Marx as an economic thinker, particularly in the sphere of historical method, but the attempt to make out of Marx's controversial writings a rigiil system seems to me to rest on a misunderstanding. Marx wrote not in order that we might regard his works for evermore as the " basis and finale " of all economics, or as the foundation for a new cultural system, but in order to assert his own view and refute that of his contemporaries. He did great j^ork; but it is our business to pass beyond him. As soon as we begin to regard him as a prophet or as a god we are apt to lose our balance, and to fall into extravagant interpretations of his writings. In fact, it is all too often true that — " The evil that Marx wrote lives after him : The good remains interred in his books." The proletarians are too eager to find a system to cling to. They have dug bourgeois culture up by the roots : let them beware lest they plant in its place a proletarian culture no less abstract and intolerant. CHAPTER X: THE STATE ONE of the spheres in which " proletarian- ism " finds, at the present time, its most in- tense expression is that of political theory The Marxian Industrial Unionists contend that the State is, by origin and fiinction alike, the pro- tector of property and the inveterate and unrelent- ing enemy of the dispossessed classes. They hold, not merely that the State of to-day expresses the ideas and desires of the dominant economic class, but that " the State " only came into existence at all with the rise of that class and for its protection, and that, with the passing of that class, the State itself will pass away. The Commonwealth of the fiiture, they hold, will have its administrative machinery, but this machinery will be not " a democratised State," but an economic organisation representing the working class, and based upon the industrial grouping of the working class. It is always easier to understand an actual thing than a theory, and the history of Russia during the period since the first Revolution of 1917, enables us to see in action the theories of the Marxian Industrial Unionists. The first Revolu- tion resulted in a partly democratised, or at least in a constitutional. State. The theory behind the calling of the Constituent Assembly was that it would result in a completely democratised State. The Bolsheviks, however, regarded the Con- stituent Assembly as a sham, because they did not believe in a democratised " State " as the basis of the new Russian Commonwealth. Their watch- word was " All power for the Soviets," or, in other 179 M 2 I 8b LABOUR IN THE COMMONWEALTH words, the substitution for the State of a social organisation based upon the economic grouping of the working class. The theory behind the Bolshevik regime in Russia, at least in the minds of those who desire its permanence, is essentially the same as the theory of Marxian Industrial Unionism all the world over. It is based upon the economic interpretation of history, and upon the view that, as the State is the political expression of the Capitalist System, so the Soviet regime is the expression of Socialism. We must not, of course, push our actual instance too far. It is quite possible for a Russian or for a foreigner to sympathise with, and to support, the Soviet regime as a necessary expedient in a period of transition, without regarding it as a satisfactory form of permanent social organisation. The National Guildsman, or even the CoUectivist who is a Socialist, may well accept the necessity that, where revolution takes place, the working class should adopt, even exclusively, during the period of transition, the form of organisation which offers the readiest opportunity for rapid mobilisation of working-class forces and full utilisation of economic power. If the method of passing from Capitalism to Socialism is by violent revolution, as in Russia, the working class can hardly be expected to take any different course. The dissolution of the machinery of Capitalistic Society makes imperative the immediate impro- visation of a social structure capable at least of THE STATE l8l " carrying on " — of furthering revolution and of resisting reaction. But it does not follow that the improvised structure of the transition period affords a complete basis for the structure of the' Commonwealth when the transition period is over. Nor does it follow that, where the change from Capitalism to Socialism takes place without violent revolution, a similar improvisation will become necessary. We are dealing, then, not with the immediate causes which made inevitable the emergence of the Soviet regime in Russia, but with the theory which regards that regime, or something like it, as the necessary expression of the change from Capi- talism to Socialism. It is on this point that I join issue with the Marxian Industrial Unionists and with the advocates of " Proletarianism " in general. Let us first rehearse our points of agreement. It is true that the State of to-day is mainly and in the last resort the political expression of the economic power of Capitalism. It is also true that any State, in a Commonwealth in which there are classes, is necessarily in the last resort the political expression of the economic power of the dominant economic class. Secondly, it is true that the fundamental power, in any Commonwealth in which there are classes, is economic power, and that the road to emancipa- tion lies through the conquest of economic power by the working classes. But it is not true either that " the State " would 102 LABOUR IN THE COMMONWEALTH become unnecessary, or that the State would neces- sarily cease, with the abolition of Capitalism and the coming of Socialism. Nor, secondly, is it true that, in a Commonwealth freed from class dis- tinctions, economic power would still precede and dominate political power. Let me elaborate these points. The capitalist class, which is dominant in the economic sphere, has none the less found it convenient and necessary to express its domination, not only in the economic, but also-Ln the political, structure of society. Why has this dual expression of Capitalism been found convenient and necessary.'' Because the economic organisation of Capitalism is not fitted to perform all the functions which are socially necessary to Capitalism, and because the political organisation of Capitalism (i.e., the State of to-day) is fitted to perform certain functions which are socially necessary to Capitalism. I can best make this point clear by imagining, or rather by finding in history, a condition of Capitalism not complicated by serious pressure from the working class. Let us imagine Capi- talism free to exploit the wage-system without serious or organised resistance from the wage- slaves — i.e., a social condition in which Labour really is a pure commodity. We shall not, of course, find such a condition of affairs any where or when completely in historical existence; but the condition of England during certain periods since the Industrial Revolution has been largely this, THE STATE I 83 notably in the early period of the Revolution, and stiir more about 1 8 50, after Chartism, Owenism and the Corn Law Agitation had receded, and before the rise of the modern Labour Movement. Would, or did, Capitalism, in such circumstances, desire to abolish the State as unnecessary, or would it find in the State a most useful means of expression? Of course, the reply will be made that, in such circumstances, the threat of internal revolution or external aggression is always potentially present, and that the State exists and is desired as a means of coercion. But this only leads to a fiirther question. Why does not Capitalism, in such cir- cumstances, organise coercion on an economic basis, as the violent revolutionaries would have the working class organise it, or as the Soviet regime in Russia has actually organised it.'' We are back at our old question. Why does Capital- ism choose to adopt and cleave to a dual system of organisation ? This question can be answered best, in the first place, in relation to the abstract Society which we have imagined — a Society in which, ex hypothesi, the convenience and self-expression of the Capi- talist class is the only thing that calls for considera- tion. I reply that the dual organisation, economic and political, would be adopted because it would be more convenient, and more expressive of the will of the members of the Capitalist class. In such a Society there would be functions which the 184 LABOUR IN THE COMMONWEALTH economic structure would not be ,well adapted to perform. What, then, are these functions ? First, there are many functions which have no direct connection with industry and are not directly economic, although, of course, the pre- dominant economic system conditions and moulds them. Law and justice, national and local administration, questions of public health and education, have many non-economic aspects with which a body based upon purely economic groupings is not well fitted to deal, either in the interest of a particular class or in that of the community. Moreover, even in relation to economic questions, our dominant class would be consumers as well as producers, and it would suit them to have a special body to render articulate their point of view as consumers and to undertake the work of administration on their behalf as consumers. This would, indeed, be far more the case in our imaginary Society than it is to-day; for, under present conditions, the State is continually perverted from its proper functions and used as the agent of oppression on behalf of the ruling classes against the ruled. If the motive for such perversion were removed, the State would not die; it would assume the function of caring for those concerns of the ruling classes which directly affect them not as producers or capitalists, but as users or consumers or dwellers in a particular area. In our imaginary Society, the State exists still purely as the political expression of the economi- THE STATE I 85 cally dominant class. It is desirable as a means of expression to that class, quite apart from the -class- struggle, and the desire for it would subsist even if there were no risk of popular self-assertion, as is indeed now the case in many half-developed countries, including some of our own Colonies. The reason why this is so is that the State is fiindamentally and in its true nature an organisa- tion adapted to the carrying out of certain specific functions which must to some extent be performed in any social system. The need for the State does not arise out of the institution of property, or out of Capitalism, or out of the class-struggle : it arises because certain jobs want doing, and it is the organisation that is best suited to do them. This truth is not readily understood to-day because the class-struggle is so, real and present a fact — because the State is constantly diverted from its job to take part in the class-struggle, usually on behalf of the ruling class. This will be inevitably the case as long as a ruling class exists and a dispossessed class has vigour enough to pppose it. It would be no less the case if the present social system were inverted, and the workers were placed in power and the present ruling class in subjection. Socialism, however, sets out not to make the proletarian class dominant over other classes, but to abolish classes altogether. What, then, would be the relation of the State to the organisation based on economic grouping in a Commonwealth without class-distinctions ? I 86 LABOUR IN THE COMMONWEALTH The Marxian Industrial Unionist holds that the State, in such a Commonwealth, would be at best only an unnecessary replica of the economic structure of the Commonwealth. Is this argu- ment really sound ? I think not; for I believe that the dominance of economic power over other forms of power is essentially dependent on the existence of classes, and that the abolition of class- distinctions would result in a liberation of the State from the domination of economic interests, and would thereby set it free to mind its own proper business. The domination of economic over other sources of power necessarily depends on the existence of classes, of " material " for industry to exploit, and, with the disappearance of this factor, the economic domination of Capi- talism, or of any industrial organisations, oyer the State would largely cease. For the domination of economic interests in the Commonwealth has its root in the fact that a class-conflict is in progress, and that the dominant class is naturally impelled to use the State as a secondary weapon of defence and aggression. This class-conflict once removed by the aboli- tion of class-distinctions and the establishment of a democratic industrial system, the way will be clear for the re-creation of the State on truly democratic lines. The State will then, and not till then, be set free for the fulfilment of its proper functions in a democratic Commonwealth. What will these functions be ? THE STATE I 87 They will resemble, and at the same time differ from, the functions assigned to the State in our imaginary pure Capitalist Commonwealth. There will be, in the first place, functions not economic in character, including the non-economic aspects of law and justice, national and local administration, many questions of public health, education and recreation, the amenities and utilities of the national life. They will be primarily administra- tive rather than governmental — that is to say, the element of coercion will be gra,dually disappearing from them. They will express, in this aspect, the non-economic common needs, purposes and desires of the citizens of the Commonwealth. They will, no doubt, be largely decentralised; for with the winning of freedom, local life and co-operation will spring into new vigour. Largely, they will be exercised by local bodies, with only a general co-ordination through a national State. Secondly, there will be economic functions, and in relation to these the State and the local Com- munes or administrative bodies will represent the common economic needs of the citizens of the Commonwealth, their common use of the goods and services which are produced and rendered for them. In this aspect, the State will represent the " consumers," or, better, the users, or, better still, the citizens as users of the various goods and services. In fact, if we are to sum up in a phrase the function of the State in a democratic Common- I 88 LABOUR IN THE COMMONWEALTH wealth, we shall say that it is to represent the whole of the citizens as consumers, users and enjoyers of goods, services, and amenities, and to fulfil the purposes which they have in common as dwellers together, conscious of their community and common life in a single Society. This is, indeed, a very different function from that which is exercised by the State of to-day, and a function which can only be exercised when the Commonwealth is freed from class-domination and class-conflict. But again my questioners will ask, Why is it necessary to have a separate organisation to represent the citizens as consumers, users and enjoyers.? Why cannot the economic organisation of Society do all the work that is needed in the Commonwealth ? My reply is two-fold. In the first place, as we shall see more clearly in the next chapter, men group themselves in different ways for the doing of different things — for the execution of different sets of purposes. They cannot find full communal expression for their personalities through a single form of organisation. Institutions which exist for specific purposes can be truly representative of the common purposes of their members, whereas no institution can really represent men in general, apart from specific purposes which they have in common. As soon as an attempt is made to give to one institution, or type of institution, a universal reference, or to include in its scope, or place under its ultimate authority, the whole work THE STATE I 89 of Society, that institution, or type, ceases to be really representative and becomes misrepresenta- tive of the will of its members. Functional, democracy is possible, if difficult : no real demo- cracy is possible in a Commonwealth which is under a single sovereign institution. It is a confirmation of this view that different types of representative institution bring different types of men to the front, and take different, though not necessarily contradictory, points of view without any necessary conflict of interest. It is not primarily a question of interest in the ordinary sense, but of attitude. Each functional institution, rightly organised, tends to choose as its managers and administrators men of particular competence in relation to its particular function, and the only way of arriving at the General Will of Society is by putting these various attitudes and competences together. On the other hand, there is no such thing as an unspecialised attitude or competence, and that is one reason why our pro- fessional politicians, who take all Society for their province, are such lamentable failures. They are supposed to be something which does not exist — the all-round man or the philosopher-king — and it is only natural that they make a most unholy mess of the job. If we want good men at the head of the Commonwealth, we must* choose them for special competence and particular functions, and through institutions representing these particular functions. And in order to do this, we must base 190 LABOUR IN THE COMMONWEALTH the organisation of our Commonwealth on the idea of functional democracy. The second reason for at least dual organisation in the Commonwealth goes no less deep. Atten- tion has often been drawn to the " paradox of representative government," by which one man or a few men are supposed to " represent " many thousands. In fact, this is not so much a paradox as a sheer untruth. Men cannot be represented, and any attempt to represent them is more or less abstract and misleading, however necessary some such attempt may be. It is agreed that the attempt must to some extent be made; but we ought to ■ make it in such a way as to attempt to represent, not men as such, but specific purposes which certain men have in common. As soon as we try to represent men as such, we get misrepresentation, and the substitution for the wills of the "repre- sented " of the wills of those who are supposed to represent them. The pigmy man is submerged in the Great State, which claims over him absolute jurisdiction as his representative and in his own name. But, in fact, the man is not represented : he is merely engulfed. This character of distortion and substitution of the will of the " representer " for that of the " represented " exists, no doubt, in any " repre- sentative " institution; but it exists far less in institutions with specific and limited functions than in an institution which, like the State of to-day, claims unlimited and universal sove- THE STATE I9I reignty. The solution lies in the abandonment of the idea of universal representation, and the sub- stitution of that of functional representation. We shall not thereby eliminate thfe element of error, but we shall greatly reduce its proportions. Moreover, there is safety in numbers. Under the scheme which I have outlined, the individual enters into, and is partially represented by, a number of different institutions consisting of varying groups of persons. He is not completely represented by any of them; nor is he completely represented by them all. For a great part of his life finds expression not through institutions at all, but directly in his individual and unorganised actions. He is therefore not submerged : nay, more, he is plainly and necessarily the pivot on which the whole system of institutions turns. For he alone has in him the various purposes of the various institutions bound together in a single personality. In " functionalising " democracy, in dividing sovereignty, and in securing thereby true if partial representation, lies the hope of freedom for the individual. The State, then, as I conceive it, is not an absolute or universally sovereign authority : it is merely a functional expression among other functional expressions of the common will of the men and women who compose the Common- wealth. It may be the most important institution in the Commonwealth; but it is not the Common- wealth, and it does not and cannot by itself 192 LABOUR IN THE COMMONWEALTH represent the Commonwealth or "sustain the person " of the Commonwealth. For it is of the essence of the Commonwealth that it has no " person " to be sustained : personality belongs only to the individual men and women who are its citizens. These men and women make various insti- tutions to express their common purpose; but no institution which they make can, in the last resort, completely represent them, or claim over them absolute and final authority. The State, in short, is an administrative institution with the specific function of representing men and women not as such, but as consumers, users and enjoyers in common of the goods, services and amenities which nature and labour afford.* * For a fuller discussion of the question raised in this chapter, see " Self-Government in Industry," Chapter III. CHAPTER XI: THE ORGANISA' TION OF FREEDOM WE have been the victims during the past century of a continuous wrangle concern - ing the true nature of freedom, and at the end of it all — after the Benthami^'es and the Kantians and Mill and Mr. Bosanquet have said their worst — we are still not very much nearer the true conception of what freedom means. Broadly speaking, there have been two opposing views, although, of course, these views, as in Mill, have shaded into one another to a considerable extent. The first view is that which conceives of freedom purely as anarchy, as an absence of restric- tion on liberty. On this showing the less society and the less organisation there are, the more free- dom there is. " Man is born free and he is every- where in chains," said Rousseau. Rousseau meant something very well worth saying by that remark, but many of those wha have never read further in " The Social Contract " take it to mean simply that freedom is the absence of social restraint, and conceive of all government as an evil — albeit in some cases a necessary evil — because it involves a restriction upon freedom. The nineteenth-century philosophers have made hay of this view of freedom, although it still has exponents in our own time in Lord Hugh Cecil, Mr. Wedgwood, and other strong individualists. Unfortunately, in exposing one false idea of free- dom the nineteenth-century philosophers have only created another. Reacting against the view 193 N 194 LABOUR IN THE COMMONWEALTH that freedom consists simply in the absence of restraint, they have leapt to the paradoxical conclu- sion that freedom consists in the presence of a system of restraints. They affirm most strongly that freedom means, not a mere negative, but a positive condition of man, and therein they are certainly right. But they go wrong when they leap from this affirmation to the paradox of free- dom as restraint. This is the burden, to some extent, of T. H. Green's famous preliminary chapter to the "Principles of Political Obligation," and much more of most recent Idealist writing. In this view freedom is conceived not as the absence of restraint but as the presence of law; and the evolution of society is envisaged not as a gradual binding of chains upon men's original freedom, but as the gradual evolution of a system of law, under which alone men can become free. This view is based upon a philosophical theory of the nature of the individual. It rests upon the Kantian conception of moral freedom as it exists in the individual soul, and it is thence extended to cover political Society also. Just as the moral being who lives under the law which arises from his own self-determination is conceived as the only true free being, so the Society which lives most under a system of law is conceived as the freest Society. There is, no doubt, up to a point, a good deal of ^truth in this second view. It is true that the indivi'^'ial soul can only find expression, and there- THE ORGANISATION OF FREEDOM 1 95 fore freedom, by prescribing to itself laws, and it is also true that laws are essential to Society and to the freedom of the individuals composing Society. But it is not true either that the individual is the more free in proportion as he imposes upon himself more moral laws, or that the Society becomes more free in proportion as it imposes uppn itself further laws. The truth is, if we take first the individual soul, that its need for abstract and generar moral laws or rules arises from its imperfection and imperfect self-expression, and that as it fights its way towards a more perfect expression it can pro- gressively dispense with the use of abstract rules or laws. The same is surely true of Commonwealths. The CommonwealtlT may have to take to itself laws for the articulation of freedom, but these laws will be most necessary in the earlier stages of social evolution, before the Commonwealth has reached real coherence in its working together. As the Commonwealth gradually reaches coherence and becomes more an established Society it will be able, like the individual, to dispense gradually with the artificial and abstract laws which it has laid down for its guidance, and to live after more concrete and universal principles. It is true, then, that law is necessary to the expression of the Commonwealth and to the freedom of the individuals composing the Com- monwealth; but it is absolutely untrue that the freedom of these individuals consists in being bound by the laws by which they and the Common- N 2 196 LABOUR IN THE COMMONWEALTH wealth are regulated. The Commonwealth is, after all, a means to their freedom, and the laws which the Commonwealth prescribes to them are also, at the most, means to freedom, and not them- selves a part of freedom. The fallacy of the Idealist conception of freedom as law lies in regarding what is essentially a means as an end, and in confiasing the freedom of the individual with the mechanism adopted by the Commonwealth as a means to this freedom. The freedom that ultimately matters is, above all, the freedom of individual men and women. It is agreed that, if this freedom is to find perfect expression, it requires organisation; and to tfeat the individual man or woman as isolated from other men and women is to cut away from each one a great deal of what is most important and vital. It is an abstraction to regard men solely as social creatures or solely as finding expression through the institutions. States, &c., of which they are members, ignoring their individuality which ex- ists apart from, as well as in, such institutions; and it is no less an abstraction to regard solely their individuality apart from institutions, ignoring its expression in and through institutions. The fundamental purpose which Rousseau had in view in " The Social Contract " — one of the greatest books ever written on social philosophy — was that of resolving the paradox of law and free- dom in the Commonwealth. He saw clearly both that laws are not and cannot be the expression of THE ORGANISATION OF FREEDOM I 97 freedom, and that some method must be found of justifying law in the name of freedom. He did not state clearly or satisfactorily the answer to his problem; but he did at least make the problem clear. Can we, then, building upon the founda- tions which he has laid, arrive at any short and intelligible statement of the social relations and law of freedom .'' We shall be most likely to succeed in doing this if we look first at th^ relation which law and freedom bear in the individual man. It will be hotly disputed by many philosophers, and still more by many moralists, but it is none the less true, that moral rules or laws are pure mechanism devised by the individual soul as a means to a better correlation of action with funda- mental needs. By this I do not mean that there is no such thing as an absolute moral principle; but I do mean that there is no such thing as an absolutely valid moral rule which says " thou shalt not do such and such a thing " or " thou shalt do such and such a thing." All such particular commandments or laws are abstractions made by the mind for its own convenience. They are the scaffolding of human freedom; but they are not part of the building. In exactly the same way the laws of the Com- monwealth are scaffolding, but are not building. They do not form part of the actual structure of freedom either from the point of view of the indi- viduals who compose the Co"mmonwealth or from the point of view of any of the institutions 198 LABOUR IN THE COMMONWEALTH through which the Commonwealth finds expres- sion. They are highly necessary, no doubt, but they are means and not ends. This is only another way o^ saying that anarchism, in the sense of absence of coercive organisation, is no less ulti- mately right than it is immediately and politically wrong. Through law we proceed to the abse^^e ^ of law, through self -limitation to a more complete and expressive freedom. Let us now try to apply these principles rather more directly to the Commonwealth as it exists at the present time. We have in the Commonwealth many individuals each with his own moral code, each with a legislature and executive and judiciar^ sitting in his own soul. We have also these individuals combining, not only in what we call the State, including the local governing authorities, but also in a vast network of associations existing for all manner of special purposes of varying degrees of social import. In every institution included in this network there is again a body of law, a legislature and executive, and at least an improvised or rudimentary judiciary. The whole of the network of institutions, regarded from the point of view which has been stated in the pre- cedmg paragraphs, must be conceived as ultimately of the nature of means to the expression of the individual souls which compose the Common- wealth. For these souls cannot find complete , expression in isolation or through personal codes of moral rules. They must also, if they are to find THE ORGANISATION OF FREEDOM 1 99 the hig^hest and fullest expression of which they are Capable, express themselves co-operatively with other souls in relation to all manner of specific purposes and functions which they are impelled to perform. The rules which men make co-opera- tively through associations are therefore no less a part, but only rather less directly a part, of the means to the individual self-expression than the rules which they make in the Parliament of their own souls. If the foregoing view is right, then it is indeed no paradox to speak of the organisation of freedom through institutions. It is only a paradox and an untruth to suggest that the institutions themselves embody this freedom. Freedom is essentially something which is realised by and in the indi- viduals composing the Commonwealth, and not in the omnipotence of institutions over the indi- vidual — in fact, not in the Prussian State idea, but in the expression of the individuals, both in them- selves and through, but not in, institutions. The Commonwealth itself is not and cannot be — save at that ultimate and unrealisable point at which everything finds its consummation in being every- thing else — an institution. It consists of indi- viduals, but these individuals express themselves, not only through their personal conduct, but also through all manner of institutions. The Common- wealth, therefore, while it consists ultimately of individuals, consists also intermediately of these institutions which to some extent embody, and are 200 LABOUR IN THE COMMONWEALTH necessary to, the self-expression of the individuals. That is to say, if we would seek for the meaning of Commonwealth at its present stage of develop- ment we can only find it in a complex of indi- viduals and institutions. John Smith and the Duke of Stow-in-the-Wold, the Brass Finishers' Trade Union, and the Brotherhood of the Fifth Gospel are all parts of, and essential to the structure of, the Commonwealth. But this structure is not, and cannot, be itself an institution^ Jt is a complex of institutions and individuals, and such, a complex cannot be unified into a single institution, again, except at infinity. It follows that the organisation of freedom in Society consists in securing two things — first, the best and most perfect relationship of institution to institution within the Commonwealth;* and, secondly, the most perfect subordination of all institutions to the expression of the wills of the individuals whom they exist to express. It is upon these principles, which it was not possible to state clearly at an earlier stage in our argument, that the whole of this book has been based. In the second chapter I tried to analyse the existing nature of the Commonwealth in so far as the individual wills on which it rests tend to be expressed or distorted through certain types of institutions. We saw there that, under the existing * This ignores, for purposes of simplicity, the problem of institutions wider than a single Commonwealth. For a discus- sion of this point see my paper in the Proceedings of the Aristotelian Society, Session 1915-16. THE ORGANISATION OF FREEDOM 20I social and industrial order, peculiar importance attaches to economic and industrial groupings which serve, under present conditions, both to express more strongly than any others the wills of individuals, and also to distort those wills by forcing them into arbitrary class groupings. The problem of the organisation of freedom is that of reinoving this distortion while at the same time preserving and intensifying the expression of individual wills which is secured through these institutions. In my view this involves, primarily, an insistence upon the two complementary principles — func- tional " institutionism " and democracy. The way in which individual wills express themselves most completely and readily in relation both to their personal and to their co-operative expression is through rules and institutions related to specific purposes or groups of purposes — that is to say, to specific functions. The real and vital principle of democracy is, in fact, as I have tried to explain clearly elsewhere,* a functional principle. Let me try to re-state this argument as briefly as I can, and in the simplest possible language. No sooner do men begin to act in association, even in the most simple and rudimentary societies, than they are faced with the problem of representa- tive government. In a small and simple society, such as the ancient City State, they may be able to keep the work of legislation in the hands of the * See my Selj-Government in Industry, Chapter III. 202 LABOUR IN THE COMMONWEALTH whole of the members, though even this practice will be difficult to maintain. But, in any case, they will be compelled to confer upon representatives, or magistrates, a considerable executive and administrative power which will tend inevitably to encroach upon the sphere of legislation. More- over, as soon as the society becomes at all large, or complex, or geographically dispersed, the need for representative institutions will necessarily extend into the sphere of legislation.* Representative institutions at once raise in the most acute form the problem of Sovereignty and of the relation of the individual to Society. Rousseau's contention that Sovereignty rests inalienably in the whole people and cannot be transferred to any representative governmental institution is based upon the view that the Com- monwealth exists and is maintained by the positive wills, and not by the mere passive assent of its members, and that will is an inalienable property of the individuals in whom alone it exists. I believe this view to be absolutely and completely right. In the Commonwealth of to-day practically all institutions are predominantly representative, or • It is interesting to find Mr. J. T. Murphy, the latest spokesman of the " rank and file " movement in Trade Union- ism, putting forward in his pamphlet on " The Workers' Committee," a theory of democratic government which amounts to a repudiation of the representative theory, at least in the sphere of legislation. Mr. Murphy seeks to vest all ultimate industrial power iu rank and file workshop meetings — a proposal which is oljviously unworkable in any complete form in a national Trade Union Movement. THE ORGANISATION OF FREEDOM 203 misrepresentative, in character. It therefore follows that no institution, and no combination of institutions, can be regarded as sovereign. Sovereignty rests inalienably with the individuals composing the Commonwealth. At the same time, these individuals must find means of acting together, and they can do this, at the present stage, only through institutions which are mainly representative and even to some extent coercive. If none of the institutions can claim Sovereignty, to what extent can all or any of them claim service or loyalty ."" We have seen that, for the guidance of their own lives, individuals make moral rules or laws, and prescribe to themselves courses of action and discipline and criteria of conduct. All such " individual " rules have to some extent a social element, and rest to some extent upon customary or socially recognised codes of conduct. They are, at the least, as Rousseau said in an inspired moment, acts of " tacit association." The passage! is, easy from " tacit " to " formal " association. As soon as a purpose, or set or class of purposes, requires coherent co-operative action by a group of individuals, the need arises for formal association of a temporary or permanent character. The individuals concerned therefore unite in an association; but they do not make over to these associations, as in Rousseau's imaginary " Social Contract," " the whole person and goods of each associate." They merely put into the 204 LABOUR IN THE COMMONWEALTH common stock as much of their personalities as they regard as necessary to their common purpose, laying themselves either under no penalty, or under definite arid limited penalties, if they fail to act according to the decision of the association. This is clearly the method of establishment and working of the ordinary association at the present day; but, as we saw, in proportion as the association acquires importance, it tends to become com- pulsory for those who are concerned in its par- ticular purpose, and also tends to work more by representative methods. When it reaches this stage of development, how does it stand in relation to the individuals who are its members ? Its claims to their loyalty are still based on its necessity to them, and to the expression of a pur- pose, or set of purposes, which they have in common. The compulsion which it imposes is still conditional upon their desiring to do the particular thing, or hold the particular view or belief, for the doing or holding of which the association exists. As soon as they cease to be concerned with that particular thing or belief, they can cease to be members of it, and its jurisdiction over them will lapse. There are, however, certain forms of association which, while they still relate in their nature and principle of obligation to particular purposes or functions, relate to purposes or functions which must concern everybody, or nearly everybody, in the community. In such cases, the conditional THE ORGANISATION OF FREEDOM 20^ compulsion of the ordinary association becomes, or tends to become, an absolute compulsion.* This has long been true of States and local govern- mental institutions, and in the industrial Com- monwealth of to-day it is rapidly becoming true of industrial associations, as it was true of the Church in past ages. In proportion as the claim of an association to compulsory membership acquires this absolute, or quasi-absolute, character, its claim upon its mem- bers tends towards absolutism. The first check upon arbitrariness in the ordinary association is the power of the individual to escape its obligations by resigning rnembership. As membership becomes compulsory this check is removed, and the insti- tution tends to claim Sovereignty over the mem- bers. Nor is a very effectual check imposed even if there are several similar institutions, and the individual can change from one to another by emigrating from Germany to the United States, or by leaving the mines and becoming a railway- man. For, the more complex Society gets, the more difficult such changes become in some cases, and the more the institutions between which the individual has to choose become assimilated. Yet it is surely clear that the Institution cannot base any claim to Sovereignty on the fact that everyone has to belong to it. For, though it con- * It is still in the strictest sense conditional, just as cate- gorical judgments may be regarded as, in the strictest sense, hypothetical. 2d6 LABOUR IN THE COMMONWEALTH cerns everyone, it is very far from concerning, or expressing, the whole of everyone. All the indi- viduals within, say, a national group may be its members; but each of these individuals probably belongs to other associations as well, and has, moreover, a life apart from organised associations which may well express the best part of him. My point is that institutions cannot substitute themselves for human wills by right, although they continually attempt to do so in fact. Institutions possess validity and impose obligations only in so far as they express purposes common to groups of individuals. They are an extension of the means of expression employed by individual wills, and as soon as they pass beyond this function, and try to substitute them^lves for individual wills, they can claim no right. * The claim of institutions rests, then, not on the number of individuals which they include, or on the fact that they include everybody in a Common- wealth, but on the intensity and importance of the common purposes which they express, and on the intensity and " amount " of will that individuals put into them. This brings me to my next point. The intensity of the common will in an associa- tion depends upon the definiteness anc}> importance of its common purpose. I do not mean that th