Gladstonian Ghosts

by Cecil Chesterton

An almost exact parallel may be drawn between the recent history of Liberalism and the recent history of Nonconformity. English Nonconformity was founded on the doctrines of Calvin as English Liberalism was on those of Lock and Adam Smith. Where are the doctrines of Calvin now? I do not suppose there is one chapel in London—perhaps in England—where the doctrine of Reprobation is taught in all its infamous completeness. The ordinary London Nonconformist minister at any rate is the mildest and vaguest of theologians, and talks like the member of an Ethical Society about little but “Truth and Righteousness.” So far from preaching Calvinism with its iron and inflexible logic and its uncompromising cry of “Come out and be ye separate!” he is the first to tell you that the age of dogma is gone by and that modern religion must be “undenominational.” Yet, in spite of the complete disappearance of its intellectual basis, Dissent remains powerful enough to thwart the execution of great reforms and wreck the careers of great statesmen. And if you ask what (if not a common theology) holds the Nonconformists together and makes them so potent a force, the answer will be a common stock of prejudices—a prejudice against Catholic ritual, a prejudice against horse-racing, a prejudice against established churches, a prejudice against public houses and music halls, a prejudice in favour of Sunday observance. All these (except in the case of church establishment where the prejudice is the result of a political accident erected into a religious dogma) are natural consequences of the Calvinist theology, but in that theology the modern Dissenter does not believe. Nevertheless, the foundation gone, the prejudice remains, and may be found strong enough among other things to destroy the value of one of the most beneficent reforms which the last thirty years have seen.

Now what has happened in the case of Nonconformity has happened also in the case of Liberalism. The philosophy of Bastiat has followed the philosophy of Calvin into the shades of incredibility. Yet the prejudices born of that philosophy remain and can still be played upon with considerable effect. They may briefly be summarized as follows:—A prejudice against peers (though not against capitalists), a prejudice against religious establishments, a prejudice against state interference with foreign trade (the case of home industry having been conceded), a prejudice against Imperialism, a prejudice against what is vaguely called “militarism”—that is to say against provision for national defence. Add prejudices borrowed from the Nonconformists against publicans and priests and you have the sum total of modern Liberalism.

Now I regard all these prejudices as mere hindrances to progress. I wish to show in the pages which are to follow that they are not, as the enthusiastic Radical imagines, the very latest manifestations of “progressive thought,” but that on the contrary they are the refuse of a dead epoch and an exploded theory of politics, that considered as a message for our age they are barren and impossible, that a party dominated by them is unfitted for public trust, and that, unless newer and more promising movements can emancipate themselves from their influence, they are likely to share the same ultimate fate.

Peel is said to have caught the Whigs bathing and stolen their clothes. But the present apparel of the Liberals is not such as to tempt any self-respecting party to theft.

“WHAT PORTION HAVE WE IN DAVID?”

The ordinary man conceives of a Socialist as a kind of very extreme Liberal or Radical, a man who pushes Radical doctrines further than most Radicals dare push them. Indeed many Socialists conceive so of themselves. Yet it is obvious that, if there is any truth at all in what I have just written, this must be regarded as a complete misconception.

Socialism and Collectivism are names which we give to the extreme development of that tendency in political thought which has proved so fatal to Liberalism, which is indeed a reaction against Liberalism. Karl Marx himself, revolutionary though he was, admitted that the English Factory Acts were the first political expression of Socialism; we have already seen that they were the death warrant of consistent and philosophic Liberalism. Every piece of Socialistic legislation is in its nature anti-Liberal. There is no getting away from the truth of Herbert Spencer’s taunt when he called Socialism “The New Toryism.” Epigrammatically expressed, that is an excellent and most complimentary description of it. Socialism is an attempt to adapt the old Tory conceptions of national unity, solidarity and order to new conditions. Our case against Toryism is that its economic and political synthesis is no longer possible for us. But we can have no kind of sympathy with Liberalism which is the negation of all synthesis, the proclamation of universal disruption.

It is therefore particularly disheartening to find that “Liberal principles” are apparently as sacrosanct in the eyes of many Socialists as in those of the Liberals themselves. That Socialists also denounce the idea of a State Church, that Socialists also rail at Imperialism and condemn “bloated armaments,” that Socialists also proclaim the universal holiness and perfection of Free Trade—this is the really extraordinary and disturbing fact.

This, though none seems to see it, is the real root of the difficulties which beset every attempt to form an independent Socialist or Labour Party. You cannot have an independent party with any real backbone in it without independent thinking. And, omitting pious platitudes about “the socialization of all the means of production, distribution and exchange” there does not seem to me any perceptible difference between the way in which the Independent Labour Party (for example) thinks about current problems and the way in which the Liberals think about them. They may think differently about economic abstractions, but they do not think differently when it comes to practical politics. Consequently whenever a question divides the Liberals and the Tories, the I.L.P. always dashes into the Liberal camp at the firing of the first shot without apparently waiting to consider for one moment whether perhaps Socialism may not have an answer of its own to give which will in the nature of things be neither the Liberal nor the Tory answer. And then the I.L.P. and their allies of the Labour Representation Committee boast proudly of their “independence” because they are not allowed to speak on Liberal platforms. Of what avail is that prohibition if the platform on which they themselves stand is in its essence a Liberal platform.

A little while ago the leaders of the I.L.P. were extremely indignant because three L.R.C. representatives were said to have spoken at a by-election in support of Liberal candidates. The defence was that the three leaders in question spoke, not in support of the Liberal candidate, but in opposition to the Licensing Bill and other measures of the Conservative Government. Now it seems to me that this puts the whole question of Socialist and Labour independence in a nutshell. If Socialists and other champions of labour have really nothing to say on the Licensing Bill, Education, Tariff Reform, Chinese Labour and other topics of the hour other than what all the Liberals are saying it seems very difficult to understand why it is so very wicked of them to support Liberal candidates. If on every question which is really before the country they agree with the said Liberal candidates it would seem the obvious thing to do. At any rate I feel quite certain that they will go on doing it, directly or indirectly, in spite of all the waste paper pledges and resolutions in the world, until they get a political philosophy of their own, when they will realize that the Socialist (or if you prefer it the “Labour”) view of the licensing question, the fiscal question and the South African labour question is and must be fundamentally different from the Liberal and Radical view.