I
There is no such thing as capitalism, say the conservatives. It is an empty sound, a curse in the name of a false god, directed by the revolutionaries against the world of things as they are, as they always have been and always shall be. Capitalism is a reality, say the radicals. It is the appropriate designation of the current system—a vulgar, hideous system, a brute mechanism set in motion by the energy of blind greed, a mechanism through which human values and human lives are thrust, to emerge smudged and flat and dead. The soul of capitalism? Pernicious paradox!
Capitalism is no less a reality than was feudalism. The capitalist employer is the most prominent figure in the modern state, just as the knight was the most prominent figure in the mediæval. But the order of knights did not of itself constitute feudalism: equally characteristic was the class of serfs. In a fundamental sense the system consisted in the mutual relation between knight and serf. Capitalism, in like manner, implies a class of employers and a reciprocal and conditioning class of workers, but as a system it consists in the mutual relation of these classes. The conscious existence of the members of both classes is shaped, or at least colored, by the capitalistic relation. Not in the same way, however; for capitalism induces one set of reactions in the minds of the employing class, and another set of reactions in the minds of the employed. But these diverse reactions are equally the product of capitalism, its inevitable concomitants, its psychical essence.
Capitalism is, to be sure, not the whole of modern life; nor was feudalism the whole of the life of the Middle Ages. In the feudal state there were classes that were not, strictly speaking, under feudal law. Such were the clergy, the merchants and artisans of the towns, the freemen of the villages. Moreover, there were individuals who rose superior to the system, such as the great feudatories, who often assumed a regal freedom from the narrow feudal rules. There were also elements that proved incapable of assimilation, aliens, outlaws, mendicants. But the popular mind, with its inveterate bent towards order and uniformity, generalized the relation beyond the range of its proper application. To the worldly bishop, even the Pope was a great feudatory; to the beggar's apprentice, his master was a species of knight. So at the present time there are numerous elements that are incongruous with capitalism. The independent worker and the small merchant, the professional classes, the artists and the politicians, are not properly governed by capitalistic rules. The great magnates of the industrial world have won for themselves a measure of immunity from the laws that govern the conduct of the typical capitalist-employer. But the predominance of the capitalistic system is evidenced by the fact that all these non-assimilable forms are being translated into capitalistic terms. A farm is no longer a "holding," it is an "investment" or a "job." A political magnate is a "boss" and his supporters are "workers"; the political machine itself is "invested capital." The buildings of church or school are, with increasing frequency, described as "plant." We are beginning to hear of "efficiency control" of college curricula; of the "unit costs" of saving souls. Our most exalted dignitary is "the people's hired man"; and the late King Humbert of Italy was wont to speak of assassination as a "trade risk."
With due allowance for the whimsical quality of some of the instances cited above, we must yet admit that they indicate a general tendency to translate all current experience into capitalistic terms. Such instances are but indications of the collective conviction that capitalism is the most significant fact in modern life. Why then do our conservatives insist upon rejecting the term, upon denying the very content of the concept? Chiefly because those who have depicted capitalism have sketched it in black crayon, instead of painting it in the rosy hues of romance.
To speak of capitalism as endowed with a soul, is indeed a paradox. But the conception of soul is itself paradoxical. The man of science dispenses with it in so far as he can. All that compels us rationally to posit the existence of soul, is its works, good and evil. The hypothesis of a human soul has been forced upon us by the fact that there is in the action of man an element that transcends the needs and purposes of the body, an element that we often see growing into such commanding importance that it reduces the body to the rank of mere instrument. Capitalism, too, appears to subserve purposes that transcend its proper ends. To what end, in profit-making, is the destruction of personality, the corruption of the sentiment of humanity, that the Socialists attribute to capitalism? To the Socialists themselves capitalism appears endowed with a soul, to whose purposes capital's immediate processes are merely instrumental. Only, the soul is one of unmixed evil.