New worlds for old: A plain account of modern socialism

by H. G. Wells

The Anti-Socialist argues that out of this evil of encouraged and stimulated avarice comes good, and that this peculiar meanly greedy type that predominates in the individualist world to-day, the Rockefeller-Harriman type, “creates” great businesses, exploits the possibilities of nature, gives mankind railways, power, commodities. As a matter of fact, a modern intelligent community is quite capable of doing all these things infinitely better for itself, and the beneficent influence of commerce may easily become, and does easily become, the basis of a cant. Exploitation by private persons is no doubt a necessary condition to economic development in an illiterate community of low intelligence, just as flint implements marked a necessary phase in the social development of mankind; but to-day the avaricious getter, like some obsolescent organ in the body, consumes strength and threatens health. And to-day he is far more mischievous than ever he was before, because of the weakened hold of the old religious organization upon his imagination. For the most part the great fortunes of the modern world have been built up by proceedings either not socially beneficial, or in some cases positively harmful. Consider some of the commoner methods of growing rich. There is first the selling of rubbish for money, exemplified by the great patent medicine fortunes and the fortunes achieved by the debasement of journalism, the sale of prize-competition magazines and the like; next there is forestalling, the making of “corners” in such commodities as corn, nitrates, borax and the like; then there is the capture of what Americans call “franchises,” securing at low terms by expedients that usually will not bear examination, the right to run some profitable public service for private profit which would be better done in public hands—the various private enterprises for urban traffic, for example; then there are the various more or less complex financial operations, watering stock, “reconstructing,” “shaking out” the ordinary shareholder, which transfer the savings of the common struggling person to the financial magnate. All the activities in this list are more or less anti-social, yet it is by practising them that the great successes of recent years have been achieved. Fortunes of a second rank have no doubt been made by building up manufactures and industries of various types by persons who have known how to buy labour cheap, organize it well and sell its produce dear, but even in these cases the social advantage of the new product is often largely discounted by the labour conditions. It is impossible, indeed, directly one faces current facts, to keep up the argument of the public good achieved by men under the incentive of gain and the necessity of that incentive to progress and economic development.

Now not only is it true that the subordination of our affairs to this spirit of gain placed our world in the hands of a peculiar, acquisitive, uncreative, wary type of person, and that the mass of people hate serving the spirit of gain and are forced to do so through the obsession of the whole community by this idea of Private Ownership, but it is also true that even now the real driving force that gets the world along is not that spirit at all, but the spirit of service. Even to-day it would be impossible for the world to get along if the mass of its population was really specialized for gain. A world of Rockefellers, Morgans and Rothschilds would perish miserably after a vigorous campaign of mutual skinning; it is only because the common run of men is better than these profit-hunters that any real and human things are achieved.

Let us go into this aspect of the question a little more fully, because it is one that appears to be least clearly grasped by those who discuss Socialism to-day.

§ 2.

This fact must be insisted upon, that most of the work of the world and all the good work is done to-day for some other motive than gain; that profit-seeking not only is not the moving power of the world but that it cannot be, that it runs counter to the doing of effectual work in every department of life.

It is hard to know how to set about proving a fact that is to the writer’s perception so universally obvious. One can only appeal to the intelligent reader to use his own personal observation upon the people about him. Everywhere he will see the property-owner doing nothing, the profit-seeker busy with unproductive efforts, with the writing of advertisements, the misrepresentation of goods, the concoction of a plausible prospectus and the extraction of profits from the toil of others, while the real necessary work of the world—I don’t mean the labour and toil only, but the intelligent direction, the real planning and designing and inquiry, the management and the evolution of ideas and methods, is in the enormous majority of cases done by salaried individuals working either for a fixed wage and the hope of increments having no proportional relation to the work done, or for a wage varying within definite limits. All the engineering design, all architecture, all our public services,—the exquisite work of our museum control, for example,—all the big wholesale and retail businesses, almost all big industrial concerns, mines, estates, all these things are really in the hands of salaried or quasi-salaried persons now—just as they would be under Socialism. They are only possible now because all these managers, officials, employees are as a class unreasonably honest and loyal, are interested in their work and anxious to do it well, and do not seek profits in every transaction they handle. Give them even a small measure of security and they are content with interesting work; they are glad to set aside the urgent perpetual search for personal gain that Individualists have persuaded themselves is the ruling motive of mankind, they are glad to set these aside altogether and, as the phrase goes, “get something done.” And this is true all up and down the social scale. A bricklayer is no good unless he can be interested in laying bricks. One knows whenever a domestic servant becomes mercenary, when she ceases to take, as people say, “a pride in her work,” and thinks only of “tips” and getting, she becomes impossible. Does a signalman every time he pulls over a lever, or a groom galloping a horse, think of his wages,—or want to?

I will confess I find it hard to write with any patience and civility of this argument that humanity will not work except for greed or need of money and only in proportion to the getting. It is so patently absurd. I suppose the reasonable Anti-Socialist will hardly maintain it seriously with that crudity. He will qualify. He will say that although it may be true that good work is always done for the interest of the doing or in the spirit of service, yet in order to get and keep people at work, and to keep the standard high through periods of indolence and distraction, there must be the dread of dismissal and the stimulating eye of the owner. That certainly puts the case a good deal less basely and much more plausibly.

There is, perhaps, this much truth in that, that most people do need a certain stimulus to exertion and a certain standard of achievement to do their best, but to say that this is provided by private ownership and can only be provided by private ownership is an altogether different thing. Is the British Telephone Service, for example, kept as efficient as it is—which isn’t very much, by the bye, in the way of efficiency—by the protests of the shareholders or of the subscribers? Does the grocer’s errand-boy loiter any less than his brother who carries the Post Office telegrams? In the matter of the public milk supply, again, would not an intelligently critical public anxious for its milk good and early be a far more formidable master than a speculative proprietor in the back room of a creamery? And when one comes to large business organizations managed by officials and owned by dispersed shareholders, the contrast is all to the advantage of the community.

No! the only proper virtues in work, the virtues that must be relied upon, and developed and rewarded in the civilized State we Socialists are seeking to bring about, are the spirit of service and the passion for doing well, the honourable competition not to get but to do. By sweating and debasing urgency, we get meagrely done what we might get handsomely done by the Good Will of emancipated mankind. For all who really make, who really do, the imperative of gain is the inconvenience, the enemy. Every artist, every scientific investigator, every organizer, every good workman, knows that. Every good architect knows that this is so and can tell of time after time when he has sacrificed manifest profit and taken a loss to get a thing done as he wanted it done, right and well; every good doctor, too, has turned from profit and high fees to the moving and interesting case, to the demands of knowledge and the public health; every teacher worth his or her salt can witness to the perpetual struggle between business advantage and right teaching; every writer has faced the alternative of his æsthetic duty and the search for beauty on one hand and the “saleable” on the other. All this is as true of ordinary making as of special creative work. Every plumber capable of his business hates to have to paint his leadwork; every carpenter knows the disgust of turning out unfinished “cheap” work, however well it pays him; every tolerable cook can feel shame for an unsatisfying dish, and none the less shame because by making it materials are saved and economies achieved.

And yet, with all these facts clear as day before any observant person, we are content to live on in an economic system that raises every man who subordinates these wholesome prides and desires to watchful, incessant getting, over the heads of every other type of character; that in effect gives all the power and influence in our State to successful getters; that subordinates art, direction, wisdom and labour to these inferior narrow men, these men who clutch and keep.