Now let us look into some practical questions which the Socialist State of the future will have to settle. Let us, for instance, inquire:
How Will Labour Be Remunerated?
Many Socialists think that different workers should get different wages: "The citizens shall be consciously public functionaries, and their labours shall be rewarded according to results."[1226] "Socialism does not propose that everyone shall have an equal share of the product of collective labour."[1227] How, then, is the amount of the unequal wages to be calculated? Some Socialists, following Marx, propose to determine wages by means of labour-time. "Ascertain the time taken to produce two commodities and we know their relative exchange value. And this quality tallies with market valuations. So far as creating value is concerned, then, one man creates as much value as another, and on the basis of equal labour-time equal value, Socialists rest their argument of social equality."[1228] "The working time which the making of an article requires is the only scale by which its social value can be measured. Ten minutes of social work in one branch are exchangeable for ten minutes of social work in another. It will be easy to calculate how much social working time each single product requires."[1229] A hunter hunts all day and shoots a deer. A fisher fishes all day and catches a sprat. Will the hunter exchange his deer for the sprat, on the principle of equal labour-time? Will highly skilled workers be satisfied to receive the same wages as the most unskilled labourers? Will equal labour-time pay for all not lead to universal dawdling, shrinkage in production, and consequent starvation? Would workers not strive to get the maximum pay for the minimum work? To prevent dawdling, could it be ascertained how long it should take to repair a machine, paint a picture, amputate a leg, plough an acre?
It is manifestly impossible to pay men of varying capacity and productive power equal labour-time wages. Therefore many Socialists, especially the Fabians, maintain: "The principle of inequality of payment must be recognised. It is a necessary consequence of inequality of ability."[1230] "Every man should receive from the Commonwealth a fair equivalent in payments or services for the payments or services which the Commonwealth receives from him. It is not possible to say exactly how much each citizen has contributed to the wealth of the State, and absolute economic justice is therefore impossible."[1231] The question now arises how is the "fair equivalent for services rendered" to be determined? Many Socialists teach the doctrine that "the labourer is entitled to the entire product of his labour."[1232] Should the labourer be given an equivalent to the product of his labour minus various necessary expenditures? Could the value of the labour of an individual be calculated at all in the complicated processes of modern industry? What is the value produced by a day's labour of a ploughman, a railway porter, a postman, a book-keeper, a policeman, a machine-minder? Mr. Bax very sensibly argues: "What does each man produce of himself as an individual? Show me how much cotton any given factory operative has produced in the course of a year? I don't mean the amount of wages the capitalist has given him for the exploitation of his labour power during that period—but the actual product of his labour in the manufactured article. You could not do so, because his labour, like all modern labour, is associated; and the work of the individual producer is completely and indissolubly merged in that of the group (factory, mill) to which he belongs, which is again inseparable from that of the machinery employed in the process and from that of other groups."[1233]
It is impossible to calculate the exact value of service to the community by work in a factory or a field as soon as the wages system based on demand and supply has ceased to exist. Besides, differential pay will be impossible, because none will be satisfied with the pay received, except those who receive the highest pay. Therefore the same Fabian Society which in other writings, such as those quoted in the foregoing, advocates unequal payment, concludes: "Inequality of pay would be odious; the impossibility of estimating the separate value of each man's labour with any really valid result, the friction which would arise, the jealousies which would be provoked, the inevitable discontent, favouritism, and jobbery that would prevail: all these things will drive the Communal Council into the right path—equal remuneration of all workers."[1234] The Fabians, like so many other Socialists, cannot apparently quite make up their mind whether to plunge into the Scylla of equal pay or into the Charybdis of unequal pay. Therefore they plunge alternately into the one or the other.
Many Socialists are in favour of equal pay: "The credits granted to the citizens will be equal in all cases, without reference to skill, intelligence, or the nature of the service performed."[1235] "The labours of the bus driver or the mangler will be appraised just as highly as those of the Prime Minister, with this difference perchance, that if it can be clearly shown by statistics that buscraft uses up the life energy of a man more rapidly than statecraft, four hours of busmanship shall count, say, as five of statesmanship."[1236] Equal wages should logically be followed by equal treatment for all. "An anti-Socialist will say, 'How will you sail a ship in a Socialist condition?' How? Why, with a captain and mates and sailing-master and engineer (if it be a steamer) and A.B.s and stokers, and so on, and so on. Only there will be no first and second and third class among the passengers, the sailors and stokers will be as well fed and lodged as the captain or passengers, and the captain and the stoker will have the same pay."[1237]
So confused are the minds even of the leading Socialists with regard to the important question of the remuneration of labour that Mr. William Morris, one of the founders of British Socialism, in a poem first recommends individualistic Socialism and pay according to results:
For that which the worker winneth shall then be his indeed,
Nor shall half be reaped for nothing by him that sowed no seed.
Two lines later in the same poem he recommends Communism and equal pay for all, regardless of the work done:
[454] Then all Mine and Thine shall be Ours, and no more shall any man crave
For riches that serve for nothing but to fetter a friend for a slave.[1238]