English politics even long before this had begun to shake off its individualism and to rid itself of the philosophic and political doctrines of the utilitarian Radicals, which Bentham and his friends had formulated early in the nineteenth century, and which still exercise a considerable influence over some people. The Fabians regard themselves as the special protagonists of the new standpoint. They would be proud to consider themselves the intellectual successors of the utilitarian Radicals, who simply claim to express the new desires of a great industrial democracy. Labour legislation and its many ramifications, municipal socialism spontaneously developing in all the big towns, the great co-operative “wholesales” in Glasgow and Manchester, furnish persuasive illustration of the practical socialism which they advocate. “It is not,” writes Mrs. Sidney Webb, “the socialism of foreign manufacture which cries for a Utopia of anarchy to be brought about by a murderous revolution, but the distinctively English socialism, the socialism which discovers itself in works and not in words, the socialism that has silently embodied itself in the Factory Acts, the Truck Acts, Employers’ Liability Acts, Public Health Acts, Artisans’ Dwellings Acts, Education Acts—in all that mass of beneficent legislation forcing the individual into the service and under the protection of the State.”[1248]
The Fabian doctrine is the latest avatar of the Ricardian theory. It would really seem impossible to draw any further conclusions from it. Everything that could possibly be attempted in that direction has already been done, although other weapons of war forged against the institution of private property may yet come out of that old armoury. But that is hardly probable, especially when we remember that economic science no longer regards rent as a kind of anomaly amid the other economic phenomena. There is no doubt as to its reality, but it has been deprived of much of the social importance that was attributed to it by Ricardo and his followers, and it has consequently lost much of its revolutionary fecundity.
CHAPTER III: THE SOLIDARISTS
I: THE CAUSES OF THE DEVELOPMENT OF SOLIDARISM
The word “solidarity,” formerly a term of exclusively legal import,[1249] has during the last twenty years been employed to designate a doctrine which has aroused the greatest enthusiasm—at least in France. Every official speech pays homage to the ideal, every social conference ends with an expression of approval. Those who wish to narrow the scope of industrial warfare as well as those who wish to extend the bounds of commercial freedom base their demands upon “a sense of social solidarity,” and it is becoming quite a common experience to find writers on ethics and education who have fallen under its spell. The result is that no history of French economic doctrines can pass it by.[1250]
The fundamental idea underlying the doctrine of solidarity, namely, that the human race, taken collectively, forms one single body, of which individuals are the members, is not by any means new. St. Paul and Marcus Aurelius among the writers of antiquity, not to mention Menenius Agrippa’s well-known apologue, gave expression to this very idea in terms almost identical with those now commonly used.[1251]
Nor was the importance of heredity wholly lost upon the ancients. The hereditary transmission of moral qualities was a doctrine taught with the express sanction of a revealed religion. This doctrine of original sin is perhaps the most terrible example of solidarism that history has to reveal. Turning to profane history, we are reminded of the line of Horace:
Delicta majorum immeritus lues!
We must also remember that it was always something more than a mere theory or dogma. It was a practical rule of conduct, and as such was enjoined by law, exhorted by religion, and enforced by custom, with the result that what was preached was also practised with a thoroughness that is quite unknown at the present day. We have an illustration of this in the collective responsibility of all the members of a family or tribe whenever one of their number was found guilty of some criminal offence. A survival of this pristine custom is the Corsican vendetta of to-day.
Finally, there is that other aspect of solidarity which is based upon division of labour and the consequent necessity of relying upon the co-operation of others for the satisfaction of our wants. The Greek writers had caught a glimpse of this interdependence many centuries before the brilliant exposition of Adam Smith was given to the world.