II
But if the galley of old Venice stimulates my Socialism, the cinematograph of modern Venice torpifies it again. For be it known that in Venice there are scores of halls and theatres devoted to delectable visions at prices to suit the poorest, and open to ragazzi for a couple of soldi. And in every city of Italy the fever rages; one performance follows on the heels of another, and the wretched manipulator of the magic lantern must subsist on sandwiches while the theatre is clearing and re-filling. Every unlet dancing-hall or decayed rink or bankrupt building has blossomed out into a hall of enchantment where even the words of the play are sometimes given by the cunning juxtaposition of gramophones. In this way I heard Amletto, or the Prince of Denmark, its too, too solid flesh melted into a meat extract. But the most wonderful spectacle of all was soundless, save for the flowing music. For twenty centesimi the Teatro S. Marco passed before my eyes an exquisite vision of Le Ore—the hours in ten “Quadri animati,” from the shiver of light that precedes the dawn to the last falling of night. In the Sala d’Aurora of the Castle of Ferrara, Dosso Dossi has depicted Tramonto, Notte, L’Aurora and Mezzogiorno, but not more poetically than the modern stage-manager who arranged these living pictures. As I watched these allegorical groupings of nymphs and fauns by their stream in the glade, I felt that the old pagan religion still lingered in the souls that could conceive and enjoy this nature-poetry.
And as I sat here, amid Venetian washerwomen and street boys, it was further borne in upon me that no State Bureau would ever have begotten this marvel for the joy and uplifting of the people, and that in the present imperfection of human nature individual initiative under the spur of gold or hunger could alone work these miracles of Socialism. “La propriété c’est la vol,” said Proudhon, but “vol” in his sense implies a bullish acceptance of the very conception he is combating. Let us translate it by “flight.” Property is the impulse of the aeroplane.
Therefore pray do not count my aspiration for a solvent social order as an adhesion to any cut and dried theory of the State owning and administering all social resources. For that sort of Socialism is—like science—bankrupt, even before it begins. It fails, not merely because it would substitute an external arrangement for a change of heart—and Socialism will either be a religion or will not be—but because no external arrangement is possible. The collective ownership of land and capital is feasible in Juan Fernandez so long as Robinson Crusoe and Friday continue exiled from civilisation, but impossible in our world of international finance, where private ownership extends to countries which the property holder will never even visit. Unless, therefore, every country in the world simultaneously adopted Socialism, there would be an inextricable tangle of Socialism and Individualism. Not to mention that capital—as every shareholder knows—means men as much as money. But even in Juan Fernandez, as soon as it became thickly populated, Socialism would be unmanageable, because the stock of concentrable human consciousness is insufficient to arrange a social order from a central bureau. Omniscience alone would be equal to the task, not to mention All Goodness and All Wisdom. Despite the vast loss by friction and absence of organisation, despite the vast suffering, the struggle for existence is the only agency capable of fitting the pegs into the holes. Shall the State, for example, select which man shall write poetry? And still more vital, which poetry the State Press shall print? We have already had experience of the State as a selector of Laureates and a censor of drama, and Milton knew it as a censor of literature. Our most brilliant Socialists, an they had their way, would be reduced to pasting pasquinades on the pedestals of our street statues.
But in a looser connotation, “we are all Socialists now,” if indeed we ever were anything else. From the day of the first human grouping for co-operation and common defence, Socialism has been the rule of life, and the question of how the common work and the common products are to be apportioned is a mere question of organised distribution. That we have hitherto left this cumbrous and infinitely complex problem of distribution to solve itself by natural selection does not make society less socialistic. Nor would the discovery of a more excellent way of dividing up the labour and its results make society more socialistic. For compared with the assets of civilisation in which we share equally—the museums, picture galleries, libraries, parks, roads, schools, life-boat and fire-engine services, armies, navies, light-houses, weather-bureaus, asylums, hospitals, observatories—the assets in which we share unequally are relatively unimportant, and without sacrificing to a machine the zest and stimulus of liberty, and the fine flavour of individuality, it is a comparatively simple matter to minimise the waste and suffering produced by the struggle for existence, and to arrange that talent shall rise to the top, not for its sake but our own. It is no evil that one man should live in a palace and another in a cottage; these differences even add to the colour and joy of life. The evil is solely that any man willing to work should lack a cottage, or that the cottage should be a malarious hovel. Levelling up is the only reform necessary, as it is the only reform possible. For if the gradual consolidation of railways, land, mines, and a few leading industries in the hands of the State is not beyond practical politics, this would still be very far from “Socialism,” and it is vastly amusing to witness the agony of apprehension with which respectable society looks forward to the advent of a social order which cannot possibly materialise, and which menaces us less than the flaming tail of a comet. Only less amusing is the awe with which society regards Property as something sacrosanct in quality and immutable in quantity. Why, even the King’s shilling is as nimble and elusive as mercury, will buy you mutton to-day and only tripe to-morrow, and scarcely run to dog-sausage in a siege. Property is a Proteus, a shadow, a transient and generally embarrassed phantom. Property merely means a potential call upon human service—past or future—and if human service is unwilling or absent, Property shrinks or collapses, like the bag of pearls found by the thirsting Arab in the desert. Finance—like all other branches of science—has been treated as though its subject-matter had absolute existence. But the assets of the world’s bankers incalculably outrun the world’s power of service, and Property is merely a promissory note which can only be redeemed if there is not too great a run upon the labour bank at which it is presented. Still more elastic is the service that produces this right to call upon the service of others. A hundred thousand readers buy this book—instead of borrowing it—and I am a Crœsus; a hundred, and I am free of income tax. Motor cars are invented, and my house in Ascot falls to half its former value because the smart set need no longer stay overnight during the Ascot week. My unknown aunt remembers me in her will and I am a thousand pounds the richer. The Seine rises and my Paris flat is a ruin. I die and my land dwindles to six feet. Where in this foolish flux is room for holiness? And why may not society—the only source of values—mould Property as it will for society’s ends? Why—among the many vicissitudes with which Property must reckon—should not social reform count equally with bad harvests, wars of conquest and Stock Exchange manœuvres?
To say that Property is sacred is to confuse the means with the end, like the miser who hoards his gold and forgets its uses. Society is sacred, not Property, and whatever sanctitude or stability has been attached to Property has been attached entirely for socialistic purposes; not that the individual may be enriched, but that he may not lose the spur that drives him to enrich society. Individual property is merely a by-product of labour for society. He who demands overmuch for his labour is under-moralised. The true citizen is anxious to be taxed for the general good, provided his taxes are used for social service. He is anxious that some form of distribution of the common products shall be organised to supplement natural selection and correct its over-harshness. Experience might prove that interference with natural selection saps the stamina and initiative of society more than it benefits the “submerged tenth,” in which case we should reluctantly return to the present form of Socialism.
As for land, it is the one thing that I can conceive nationalised even under our present form of Socialism, nay, which is already nationalised to the extent that the private owners of British land may not sell it to Germany or Japan, as they may sell anything else of theirs. Every new State should doubtless begin by trying to nationalise its land. I say “trying,” because it is by no means certain that it would succeed, since so far from the increment in land values being unearned, it is the very possibility of earning it that induces the pioneer to suffer peril, privation and isolation. Were Canada, for example, not to give away its land, the many adventurers who have flowed in from the United States would probably have remained at home, and all this Canadian territory have been still empty. And once you have made land quasi-private property, it cannot justly be subjected to any peculiar tax, since colossal as is the rise of land values in growing towns, the value of land is controlled by the same factors of luck and judgment as rule all other property values, and may be depreciated as well as enhanced by the operation of social forces beyond the owner’s control or prevision. Wherefore all increments in value—in stocks and shares, copyrights, patents, &c. &c.—should be treated as potential matter for taxation equally with the so-called “unearned increment” on land.
One would imagine from the war cries in our latest political campaign that Socialism was already upon us, and that the only refuge from it lay in Tariff Reform. But it is precisely Tariff Reform which is Socialism; a taxation of the entire community in the interests of this or that industry. Nor should the entire community be averse from taxation for any provably good object; a moralised community would even be always looking round for fresh methods of self-taxation. Budget Day would be a national festival, a day of solemn joy, tense with the hope that new ways would be found of making England the Kingdom of God. Alas! it is a day of sick anxiety, with a sequel of farcical unfailingness, in which every section taxed sends a deputation to show that it is the one section that should have been left unburdened, while from the bloated gluttons and swillers at the great hotels arises the cry of “Red ruin and the breaking-up of laws.” And the poor philanthropist we have always with us—he who threatens to stop his charity contributions. As if the abolition of charity was not the very object of social reform! Every benevolent activity means a sore in the social system, and charity covers indeed a multitude of our sins.
Strange that these sordid questions of money should so fever this mighty England of Shakespeare and Milton. Ship-money cost Charles the First his head, and a petty land tax changes the House of Peers. Poor humanity, so deluded as to the essential values of life, so peculiarly demented in all that concerns Property! But I bid you cast away your fears. I repeat to you my good tidings of great joy. Socialism is impossible. A perfect and just distribution of the goods and labours of life—“to each according to his needs, from each according to his powers”—is Utopian. Moreover envy, hatred and all uncharitableness prevent it: stupidity, sloth, selfishness, treachery and tyranny preclude it. Rejoice, therefore, and let us cry Hosanna!
Nor are these evil qualities confined to the capitalist, they are found in even uglier forms in the working man, who is merely a capitalist without means, and through his Trade Unions talks equally of rights and even less of duties and ideals.
But if Socialism is impossible, and Socialist parties consequently deficient in constructive potency, they yet perform in every country a critical and regulative function of the first importance. Our own Labour members are the only gentlemen in British politics. To all questions, national or international, they bring a broad spirit and a quixotic ideal, and while our Howards and our Percys cower in craven terror of Germany, or make prudent alliance with Holy Russia, or handle with correlative despotism India, Ireland or the woman question, our men from the pits and the factories sit free and fearless, the sole guardians of England’s ancient glory.