That philosophy, abandoning all useless and irritating discussion as to the origin of wealth and the extent of its possession, proceeds at once to the moral rules which should regulate it as a social function. The distribution of power among men, of material power especially, lies so far beyond our means of intervention, that to set it before us as our main object to rectify the defects of the natural order in this respect, would be to waste our short life in barren and interminable disputes. The chief concern of the public is that power, in whosever hands it may be placed, should be exercised for their benefit; and this is a point to which we may direct our efforts with far greater effect. Besides, by regulating the employment of wealth, we do, indirectly, modify its tenure; for the mode in which wealth is held has some secondary influence over the right use of it.
The regulations required should be moral, not political in their source; general, not special, in their application. Those who accept them will do so of their own free will, under the influence of their education. Thus their obedience, while steadily maintained, will have, as Aristotle long ago observed, the merit of voluntary action. By converting private property into a public function, we would subject it to no tyrannical interference; for this, by the destruction of free impulse and responsibility, would prove most deeply degrading to man’s character. Indeed, the comparison of proprietors with public functionaries will frequently be applied in the inverse sense; with the view, that is, of strengthening the latter rather than of weakening the former. The true principle of republicanism is, that all forces shall work together for the common good. With this view we have on the one hand, to determine precisely what it is that the common good requires; and on the other, to develop the temper of mind most likely to satisfy the requirement. The conditions requisite for these two objects are, a recognized Code of principles, an adequate Education, and a healthy direction of Public Opinion. For such conditions we must look principally to the philosophic body which Positivism proposes to establish at the apex of modern society. Doubtless this purely moral influence would not be sufficient of itself. Human frailty is such that Government, in the ordinary sense of the word, will have as before to repress by force the more palpable and more dangerous class of delinquencies. But this additional control, though necessary, will not fill so important a place as it did in the Middle Ages under the sway of Catholicism. Spiritual rewards and punishments will preponderate over temporal, in proportion as human development evokes a stronger sense of the ties which unite each with all, by the threefold bond of Feeling, Thought, and Action.
Inheritance favourable to its right employment
Positivism, being more pacific and more efficacious than Communism, because more true, is also broader and more complete in its solution of great social problems. The superficial view of property, springing too often from envious motives, which condemns Inheritance because it admits of possession without labour, is not subversive merely, but narrow. From the moral point of view we see at once the radical weakness of these empirical reproaches. They show blindness to the fact that this mode of transmitting wealth is really that which is most likely to call out the temper requisite for its right employment. It saves the mind and the heart from the mean and sordid habits which are so often engendered by slow accumulation of capital. The man who is born to wealth is more likely to feel the wish to be respected. And thus those whom we are inclined to condemn as idlers may very easily become the most useful of the rich classes, under a wise reorganization of opinions and habits. Of course too, since with the advance of Civilization the difficulty of living without industry increases, the class that we are speaking of becomes more and more exceptional. In every way, then, it is a most serious mistake to wish to upset society on account of abuses which are already in course of removal, and which admit of conversion to a most beneficial purpose.
Intellect needs moral control as much as wealth
Again, another feature in which the Positivist solution surpasses the Communist, is the remarkable completeness of its application. Communism takes no account of anything but wealth; as if wealth were the only power in modern society badly distributed and administered. In reality there are greater abuses connected with almost every other power that man possesses; and especially with the powers of intellect; yet these our visionaries make not the smallest attempt to rectify. Positivism being the only doctrine that embraces the whole sphere of human existence, is therefore the only doctrine that can elevate Social Feeling to its proper place, by extending it to all departments of human activity without exception. Identification, in a moral sense, of private functions with public duties is even more necessary in the case of the scientific man or the artist, than in that of the proprietor; whether we look at the source from which his powers proceed, or at the object to which they should be directed. Yet the men who wish to make material wealth common, the only kind of wealth that can be held exclusively by an individual, never extend their utopian scheme to intellectual wealth, in which it would be far more admissible. In fact the apostles of Communism often come forward as zealous supporters of what they call literary property. Such inconsistencies show the shallowness of the system; it proclaims its own failure in the very cases that are most favourable for the application. The extension of the principle here suggested would expose at once the inexpediency of political regulations on the subject, and the necessity of moral rules; for these and these only can ensure the right use of all our faculties without distinction. Intellectual effort, to be of any value, must be spontaneous; and it is doubtless an instinctive sense of this truth which prevents Communists from subjecting intellectual faculties to their utopian regulations. But Positivism can deal with these faculties which stand in the most urgent need of wise direction, without inconsistency and without disturbance. It leaves to them their fair measure of free action; and in the case of other faculties which, though less eminent, are hardly less dangerous to repress, it strengthens their freedom. When a pure morality arises capable of impressing a social tendency upon every phase of human activity, the freer our action becomes the more useful will it be to the public. The tendency of modern civilization, far from impeding private industry, is to entrust it more and more with functions, especially with those of a material kind, which were originally left to government. Unfortunately this tendency, which is very evident, leads economists into the mistake of supposing that industry may be left altogether without organization. All that it really proves is that the influence of moral principles is gradually preponderating over that of governmental regulations.
Action of organized public opinion upon Capitalists. Strikes
The method which is peculiar to Positivism of solving our great social problems by moral agencies, will be found applicable also to the settlement of industrial disputes, so far as the popular claims involved are well founded. These claims will thus become clear from all tendency to disorder, and will consequently gain immensely in force; especially when they are seen to be consistent with principles which are freely accepted by all, and when they are supported by a philosophic body of known impartiality and enlightenment. This spiritual power, while impressing on the people the duty of respecting their temporal leaders, will impose duties upon these latter, which they will find impossible to evade. As all classes will have received a common education, they will all alike be penetrated with the general principles on which these special obligations will rest. And these weapons, derived from no source but that of Feeling and Reason, and aided solely by Public Opinion, will wield an influence over practical life, of which nothing in the present day can give any conception. We might compare it with the influence of Catholicism in the Middle Ages, only that men are too apt to attribute the results of Catholicism to the chimerical hopes and fears which it inspired, rather than to the energy with which praise and blame were distributed. With the new spiritual power praise and blame will form the only resource; but it will be developed and consolidated to a degree which, as I have before shown, was impossible for Catholicism.
This is the only real solution of the disputes that are so constantly arising between workmen and their employers. Both parties will look to this philosophic authority as a supreme court of arbitration. In estimating its importance, we must not forget that the antagonism of employer and employed has not yet been pushed to its full consequences. The struggle between wealth and numbers would have been far more serious, but for the fact that combination, without which there can be no struggle worth speaking of, has hitherto only been permitted to the capitalist. It is true that in England combinations of workmen are not legally prohibited. But in that country they are not yet sufficiently emancipated either intellectually or morally, to make such use of the power as would be the case in France. When French workmen are allowed to concert their plans as freely as their employers, the antagonism of interests that will then arise will make both sides feel the need of a moral power to arbitrate between them. Not that the conciliating influence of such a power will ever be such as to do away entirely with extreme measures; but it will greatly restrict their application, and in cases where they are unavoidable, will mitigate their excesses. Such measures should be limited on both sides to refusal of co-operation; a power which every free agent ought to be allowed to exercise, on his own personal responsibility, with the object of impressing on those who are teaching him unjustly the importance of the services which he has been rendering. The workman is not to be compelled to work any more than the capitalist to direct. Any abuse of this extreme protest on either side will of course be disapproved by the moral power; but the option of making the protest is always to be reserved to each element in the collective organism, by virtue of his natural independence. In the most settled times functionaries have always been allowed to suspend their services on special occasions. It was done frequently in the Middle Ages by priests, professors, judges, etc. All we have to do is to regulate this privilege, and embody it into the industrial system. This will be one of the secondary duties of the philosophic body, who will naturally be consulted on most of these occasions, as on all others of public or private moment. The formal sanction which it may give to a suspension or positive prohibition of work would render such a measure far more effective than it is at present. The operation of the measure is but partial at present, but it might in this way extend, first to all who belong to the same trade, then to other branches of industry, and even ultimately to every Western nation that accepts the same spiritual guides. Of course persons who think themselves aggrieved may always resort to this extreme course on their own responsibility, against the advice of the philosophic body. True spiritual power confines itself to giving counsel: it never commands. But in such cases, unless the advice given by the philosophers has been wrong, the suspension of work is not likely to be sufficiently general to bring about any important result.
This theory of trade-unions is, in fact, in the industrial world, what the power of insurrection is with regard to the higher social functions; it is an ultimate resource which every collective organism must reserve. The principle is the same in the simpler and more ordinary cases as in the more unusual and important. In both the intervention of the philosophic body, whether solicited or not, whether its purpose be to organize popular effort or to repress it, will largely influence the result.