VII
Discontent with the existing method of assembling the machinery of government has been growing rapidly in recent years. The progress of the proportional representation movement is the measure of this discontent; and it is difficult to conceive any valid objection to the scheme on the part of those who desire to give to the personnel of the governing body a more genuinely representative character than it possesses at present. At the same time, the transferable vote does not and from the nature of the case cannot secure a completely representative government—at any rate while we continue to elect parliamentary representatives on a territorial basis.
We shall no doubt continue to elect representatives on a territorial basis, for it would appear to be the only effectual method of representing the chief interests which all individuals in the commonwealth have in common, namely their interests as consumers (or enjoyers). But the territorial unit is more or less arbitrary in definition, and it does not coincide with the other interests that make up the business of life. And these other interests have assumed a commanding importance in the conduct of the business of life in recent times. Reference was made in a previous paragraph to the fact that the one great industry which was not adequately organised was agriculture. The reason for this circumstance is to be found in the greater difficulty which the farmers and the farm workers have had in getting together. The other great industries are located in urban areas where facilities of communication and meeting are comparatively easy. The result of facilitating communication among the farmers is already evident. The Non-partisan League was brought to birth by the Ford car and the rural telephone. It is true that the farm-workers still lack the opportunity of easy assembly; but what has happened in the case of the farmers has the peculiar interest of being a graphic and simple object lesson in the processes which have transformed modern life. Our present political methods and acceptances date back to the period before the railroad; and not only in politics, but in ethics and religion, we have yet to take on the task of revising our traditional concepts in the light of the vast transformation wrought by the swift advance in methods of communication. The main result is that there are very few men who do not belong to professional and trade organisations which stretch out beyond their county boundaries, and there is a growing number to whom these ultra-territorial associations are more vital and significant than the local association of citizens in which the accident of their habitat places them. The new fact for the problem of government consists in the actual existence and multiplication of these professional and vocational constituencies; and it is evident that that representative government is unworthy the name which does not represent these large embodiments of living opinion and interest.
If for the moment then, we consider the economic aspects of the life of the community alone, it is evident that two main sources of representation have to be provided for—the consumer and the producer; and every man should have a vote in each capacity. The defect of the Soviet organisation in Russia is that, as it is at present constituted, it appears to provide the consumer with no direct representation. The Russian Soviet is a council of workers. But it is evident that the provision supply, carriage and distribution of commodities to a village is the concern of the whole village independently of the share which the villagers may have in the actual production of these commodities. So that the consumer qua consumer must be represented. The physician and the teacher[[40]] may not be producers in a strict and direct sense; but they are directly interested in the problem of consumption and are interested in it in the same way as the village blacksmith and the shoemaker. Moreover, there are problems of sanitation and road-keeping in which they are all also equally concerned. The village and the city ward are therefore proper units of representation. But they still remain only one type of unit. The agricultural labourers who live in the village may be members of a labour union which charges itself with the oversight of the conditions of the agricultural labourer’s work. The physician will also be a member of an association which is concerned with the special interests of his profession. Here then we have another type of unit. For our present purpose we are concerned with these units only as they are industrial and productive.
[40]. Of course there may be physicians’ and teachers’ soviets; but they will operate provincially rather than parochially, while the village soviet would appear usually to consist of peasants.
In Russia the problem of representing these “professional” or “industrial” constituencies has been solved with greater ease than is likely to be the case elsewhere. In many cases the owners of industrial plants have been expropriated and a “shop-council” is in control. This shop-council sees to it that none but members of the labour union concerned are employed in the shop; it is free to hire what expert help it requires to carry on production; and in general it rules the roost. But it is an elected body, and it forms the cell-unit out of which, through a hierarchy of local and provincial bodies, the All-Russian Congress of Soviets is at last constituted. Naturally this scheme is not yet in universal operation. Some employers are still tolerated to remain in possession, and a single rule has not yet been established in the tenure of land. But that is the general principle; and while it must necessarily admit in practice of all sorts of exceptions, there is no clear reason why it should not become effective throughout Russia.
But this simplicity is not likely to obtain elsewhere. The forcible immediate expropriation of the employer is not a probable contingency in England or America so far as one may judge from present signs. But this need constitute no insuperable obstacle to the institution of shop-councils such as for instance have been set up in the woollen trades at Bradford. And just as in this instance, the shop-council would be generally the unit out of which an ascending scale of superior bodies would be formed, reaching at last to what the Russians call the “supreme council of public economy.” The outline of such an organisation is to be found already in Mr. Malcolm Sparkes’ scheme (referred to in another chapter) of a “national industrial parliament”; and all that need be added to the plan is that this industrial parliament should be recognised as the actual legislative body within its own sphere, subject to the review and veto of a final body which would be charged with the oversight of all the interests of the commonwealth.[[41]]
[41]. This “National Industrial Parliament” has come very near taking practical form in the proposal of the recent National Industrial Conference for a “National Industrial Council” in England.
Still confining ourselves to the economic interests, we should find it necessary to secure that the labour unions shall find effective representation in the legislative organisation; and so long as private ownership of industrial plant is permitted, the same thing is true of employers’ associations as well. But it is plain that while industry is subject to this antagonism of interests within itself, it is not likely to minister to the public interest as effectually as we have a right to require of it. Ultimately we shall be compelled to establish the doctrine that industrial production is a community-interest and to institute the principle of national Guilds as the ground plan of industrial organisation. Some approach to this plan has been made during the war in the interests of increased productivity; and the situation consequent upon the war in the belligerent countries is likely to aggravate rather than abate the acuteness of the problem of productivity. On this account it would be a grave misfortune if industry were permitted to relapse into its pre-war inefficiency. Thorstein Veblen, in a shrewd analysis of the working of the capitalistic system in America, estimates that it “lowers the actual output of the country’s industry by something near fifty per cent. of its ordinary capacity when fully employed.” “But” he adds, “it is at the same time plain enough that this, in the larger sense, untoward discrepancy between productive capacity and current productive output can readily be corrected, in some appreciable degree at least, by any sufficient authority that shall undertake to control the country’s industrial forces without regard to pecuniary profit and loss. Any authority competent to take over the control and regulate the conduct of the community’s industry with a view to maximum output as counted by weight and tale, rather than by net aggregate price income over price cost can readily effect an appreciable increase in the effectual productive capacity.... The several belligerent nations of Europe are showing that it can be done, and they are also showing that they are all aware, and have always been aware, that the conduct of industry on business principles is incompetent to bring the largest practical output of goods and service; incompetent to such a degree indeed as not to be tolerable in a season of desperate need when the nation requires the full use of its productive forces, equipment and man power, regardless of the pecuniary claims of individuals.”[[42]] The course of events seem to point to the institution of the “sufficient authority” which Professor Veblen indicates. It is clear that this authority must be of a character to ignore the exigencies of the profit-system, and to operate with an eye single to the welfare of the community; in which case, soon or late, there must be eliminated from it those who would desire to turn it to a personal or sectional advantage. Or at least their possible advantage from industry shall be so rigorously abridged as to make it cease to be worth their while to rig the business in such a way as to retard or otherwise to interfere with output. But, inasmuch as this rigging has been done in the past chiefly at the expense of the workers, they in their turn armed themselves for defence, by joining into unions. With the elimination of the private profit motive from industry, the character of the trade union as a fighting body would largely if not wholly lapse; and the need for its direct representation in industrial control would cease to be urgent or even important. Especially would this be true when a minimum standard of life had been fixed and universally applied. The union would merge into the guild which would include not the operatives alone but the entire effective personnel of the industry. Out of these guilds, themselves functioning through a hierarchy of bodies from the single shop upward, would be formed the national industrial parliament which would be the effectual economic authority of the community.
[42]. Thorstein Veblen. The Nature of Peace, pp. 173, 174.