No review of Christian Social doctrines, however summary, can afford to omit the names of certain eminent writers who, though belonging to none of the above-mentioned schools, and having no definite standing either as socialists or economists, being for the most part littérateurs, historians, and novelists, have nevertheless lent the powerful support of their eloquence to the upholding of somewhat similar doctrines.[1089]
Tolstoy and Ruskin are the best known representatives of this movement on the borderland of Social Christianity, although they are by no means the only ones.[1090] These two grand old men, who both died at an advanced age, appeared to their contemporaries in much the same light as the prophets of old did to Israel. True descendants of Isaiah and Jeremiah, they exultantly prophesied the downfall of capitalism—the modern Tyre and Sidon—and announced the coming of the New Jerusalem—the habitation of justice. Their language even is modelled on Holy Writ, and Ruskin, we know, was from his youth upwards a diligent reader of the Bible.[1091] Both of them condemn the Hedonistic principle and denounce money as an instrument of tyranny which has resulted in setting up something like a new system of slavery,[1092] and they both advocate a return to manual labour as the only power that can free the individual and regenerate social life. They differ, however, in their conception of future society, which to Ruskin must be aristocratic, chivalrous, and heroic, while Tolstoy lays stress upon its being equalitarian, communal, and above all ethical. The one looks at society from the standpoint of an æsthete, the other from that of a muzhik: the one would breed heroes, the other saints.
Thomas Carlyle also deserves mention. Among the numerous books which he wrote we may mention, among others, his French Revolution (1837) and his Heroes and Hero-worship. Chronologically he precedes both Tolstoy and Ruskin, and his influence upon economic thought was greater than either of theirs. But we could hardly put him among the Christian Socialists because of his extreme individualism, and if he were to be given a place at all it would be with such writers as Ibsen and Nietzsche. His economic ideas, however, run parallel to Ruskin’s; and nowhere except perhaps in the choruses of the old Greek tragedies do we get anything approaching the passion which is displayed in their declamations against the present economic order.[1093]
Carlyle is possibly the strongest adversary that the old Classical school ever encountered. It was he who spoke of political economy as “the dismal science.” That abstract creation of the Classicists, the economic man, afforded him endless amusement, and he very aptly described their ideal State as “anarchy plus the policeman.” He is no less fierce in his denunciation of laissez-faire as a social philosophy.[1094] But he left us no plan of social reconstruction, being himself content to wait upon individual reform—a trait which brings him into intimate connection with the Christian Socialists.[1095]
Ruskin, on the other hand, has given us a programme of social regeneration which might be summarised as follows:[1096]
1. Manual labour should be compulsory for everybody. His readers were reminded of those words of St. Paul, “If any would not work, neither should he eat.” He thought it both absurd and immoral that a man should live in idleness merely by using money inherited from his ancestors to pay for the services of his fellow-men. Life is the only real form of payment; in other words, labour ought to be given in return for labour. To live upon the fruits of dead labour is surely absurd and contradictory. And it must be real human labour. Machinery of all kinds must be renounced except that which may be driven by wind or water—natural forces which, unlike coal, do not defile, but rather purify.
Ruskin wanted labour to be artistic, and he longed to see the artisan again become an artist as he was in the Middle Ages (which is a somewhat hasty generalisation perhaps). In practice this is not very easy. Some of his immediate disciples have set up as artistic bookbinders, but the number of people who can find employment at such trades must be exceedingly few.
Tolstoy, on the other hand, does not strive for artistic effect. His heart is set upon rural work, which he magnificently describes as “bread work,” and which seemed to him sufficiently noble without embellishment of any kind.
2. Work for everyone is the natural complement and the necessary corrective of the preceding rule of no idleness and no unemployment. In society as at present organised everybody is not obliged to work, while some individuals are obliged to be idle.[1097] This monstrous inequality must be remedied. There would be no difficulty about finding plenty of work for everyone if everyone did something. Under such a system there would be no unemployment, although there would be more leisure for some.
3. Labour would no longer be paid for according to the exigencies of demand and supply, which tend to reduce manual work to the level of a mere commodity. It would be remunerated according to the eternal principles of justice, which would not of necessity imply an appeal to any written law, but solely to custom, which even now fixes the salaries of doctors, lawyers, and professors. In these professions there are no doubt some individual inequalities, but there is also the norm, and it is a breach of professional etiquette to take less than this. The norm does occasionally find expression in the rules of the association, and in some such way Ruskin would fix not merely a minimum but also a maximum wage. Whatever profession a person follows, whether he be workman, soldier, or merchant, he should always work not merely for profit but for the social good. He must, of course, be suitably rewarded if his position as a worker is to be maintained and the work itself efficiently performed, but it can never be done if gain becomes the end and labour merely the means.