The above extracts show that confusion reigns in the Socialist camp regarding the settlement of the Wage Question.
Wage-earners are not philanthropists. Highly skilled men will not be content with wages equal to those of unskilled labour, not even in the name of Liberty, Equality, and Fraternity. In the absence of a free demand and supply, which automatically graduates wages in accordance with the social value of the work done, its attractiveness or unattractiveness, &c., it cannot scientifically, though it can perhaps autocratically, be determined how wages should be graduated. When it comes to the fixing of differential wages in the Socialist State of the future, quarrels will immediately arise, which will lead to strife and rebellion, for all workers will use arguments such as the following ones recently put forward by Mr. Smillie, President of the Lanarkshire Miners' County Union. In reply to the reproach that miners, by unduly high wages, increased the cost of coal to the poor, Mr. Smillie answered: "Miners are being blamed in some quarters for the high price of coal. Their wages at present range from 6s. 6d. to 8s. per day, or from 30s. to 2l. 5s. per week when broken time is taken into consideration. Will anyone grudge an income of this kind to a worker whose labour is of a most uncomfortable and exhausting nature, and who takes his life in his hand from the moment he steps into the cage until he reaches the surface again? The miner recognises that high-priced coal means pinching and suffering in the homes of the poor, and he has real sympathy for this class, but he argues that the true value of coal must include a reasonable sustenance for those who risk their lives in its production."[1239] If miners claim higher wages than other workers because their work is uncomfortable and dangerous, railway workers, sailors, and many others will raise the same claims; fishers and butchers will claim higher wages because their work is disgusting; factory workers because their work is sedentary and monotonous; waiters because it is menial; postmen because they have to walk; drivers because they have to sit still; washerwomen because they have to stand; farm labourers because they have to work in the cold; bakers because they have to work in the heat, &c. All workers would of course demand the maximum pay, and who could adjudicate on all the rival claims? The Wages Question seems likely to prove insoluble.
How Will Labour Be Organised and Directed?
We are told: "Labour will be organised on principles of perfect freedom. Everyone decides for himself in which branch he desires to be employed. If a superfluity of workmen occur in one branch and a deficiency in another, it will be the duty of the executive to arrange matters and readjust the inequality."[1240] In accordance with the variations in demand and supply and the rise and decay of industries, the introduction of labour-saving machinery, &c., labour requires continual redistribution. That redistribution is at present automatically effected largely through the rise and fall of wages. A rise in the wages of industries which require more labour, and a decline in the wages of industries which require less labour, cause labour to turn from shrinking to growing industries. When wages are no longer fixed with reference to commercial demand and supply, how will the periodical and necessary redistribution of labour be effected? Some Socialist leaders think: "As the workers, of course, will not be drafted into the different branches of production under military compulsion, irrespective of their wishes, it may well turn out that some will have a superfluity of labour, while others will suffer from scarcity. The necessary equilibrium could then be restored by reducing the wages in those industries where the applicants are too many and by raising them in those where the applicants are too few, till each branch has just the number of workers which it requires. It could be restored also by other means; for instance, by the shortening of the hours of labour in those industries that are short of workers. With all that, however, the general rate of wages throughout the working class will be influenced no longer by supply and demand, but by the quantity of available products. A general fall of wages in consequence of over-production will be impossible."[1241] In other words, the beautiful schemes of remuneration independent of the laws of supply and demand discussed in the foregoing would immediately break down. In order to redistribute labour, workers would either have to be compelled by direct force to work in those trades which required additional labour, or their wages or hours of work would arbitrarily be altered in order to effect the necessary changes by economic pressure—that is, by reducing their food. In other words, commercial demand and supply would break down the Utopian regulations of the Socialist Commonwealth as soon as they had been framed.
While some Socialists wish to distribute and redistribute labour by arbitrarily changing wages and hours of labour, some of the more logical and scientific Socialist leaders are frankly in favour of compulsory labour: "We already see official salaries regulated, not according to the state of the labour market, but by consideration of the cost of living. This principle we seek to extend to the whole industrial world. Instead of converting every man into an independent producer, working when he likes and as he likes, we aim at enrolling every able-bodied person directly in the service of the community for such duties and under such kind of organisation, local or national, as may be suitable to his capacity and social function. If a man wants freedom to work or not to work, just as he likes, he had better emigrate to Robinson Crusoe's island or else become a millionaire. To suppose that the industrial affairs of a complicated industrial State can be run without strict subordination and discipline, without obedience to orders, and without definite allowances for maintenance, is to dream, not of Socialism but of Anarchism."[1242] "Everyone should have a legal right to an opportunity of earning his living in the society in which he has been born; but no one should or could have the right to ask that he shall be employed at the particular job which suits his peculiar taste and temperament. Each of us must be prepared to do the work which society wants doing, or take the consequences of refusal."[1243] And what consequences would refusal to do the allotted work at the allotted pay entail? Either dismissal, which would mean starvation—for the State, as the sole employer, would control all employment and all the food—or bodily chastisement, or imprisonment. There could be no strike on the part of dissatisfied workers, for the State—that is, the officials—holding all the wealth, would be able to starve them out in a week.
Socialists admit: "Mankind is as lazy as it dares to be."[1244] "In the average man there is a strong tendency to mere idleness and aimlessness which, but for the compulsions and temptations of existing circumstances, might run to great lengths. The trouble is that, while the average man is willing to work occasionally where his choice is free, he considers his lot a hard one if necessity compels him to continue regularly at a given task. He is willing to work at almost anything save that at which he is asked to work. It is a common thing to hear even good workmen profess a dislike to their trade."[1245]
How will shirking and idling be prevented in the Socialist Commonwealth when men are no longer compelled by economic necessity and free competition to do their best?
The leading American exponent of Socialism prophesies that workers will work no longer in order to live in comfort, but that they will henceforth see in work a semi-religious duty, which they perform owing to their strong sense of beneficence: "In the New Commonwealth the butcher will be conscious and satisfied that 'the essential thing is not that he shall have a living, but that meat shall be supplied.' The work of the citizen will be the willing performance of social office. He will be a worker whose best efforts, best ardour, and highest aims will be drawn out by his sense of the beneficence of his work, even though it be such a coarse routine of manual labour as machinery should soon remove altogether from human hands. He will be habituated to regard his wages, not as a quid pro quo, but as the provision made by society to enable him to carry out his labour."[1246] Will the "sense of beneficence" induce men who are not satisfied with the condition and remuneration of labour to transport milk and other provisions during the night so that the townspeople may have them early in the morning? Will men be induced by their sense of duty to clean the sewers? To ask these questions is to answer them. Bebel puts the question, "What becomes of the difference between the industrious and the idle, the intelligent and the stupid?" and answers, "There will be no such difference, because that which we associate with these conceptions will have ceased to exist."[1247] "If there is one vice more certain than another to be unpopular in a Socialist community, it is laziness. The man who shirked would find his mates making his position intolerable even before he suffered the doom of expulsion."[1248] Arguments such as the above should really not be placed before grown-up people. They are only fit for the nursery.
The tendency towards lazing and idling, the desire to make money without exertion, is strongly developed in Great Britain. "The essence of gambling is the craving to obtain something from others without giving an equivalent."[1249] Perhaps in no country is betting and gambling in every form so much in evidence as it is in Great Britain. Betting on the turf, missing-word competitions, limerick competitions, &c., draw every year many millions of pounds from the pockets of millions of British workers. How then can the natural tendency of men to loaf and idle and to live rather by their wits than by their work, which is strong in all men, be overcome in the Socialist State of the future? The fundamental book of the Fabian Society, the most scientific Socialist body in Great Britain, tells us: "A very small share of the profits arising from associated labour acts as a tremendous stimulus to each individual producer,"[1250] and it suggests, as do many Socialist writers, that the workers will do their best because they know that the more they produce the greater will be their individual share in the general production. Great Britain has 12,000,000 workers. Therefore a worker will make as his own share an extra sovereign if by extra exertion he succeeds in producing an extra 12,000,000l. worth of goods, a feat the accomplishment of which will require several thousand years. That is a "tremendous stimulus" to the individual producer! Can any argument be more foolish than the foregoing one?
An influential Socialist writer tells us: "The credits granted to the citizens will be equal in all cases, without reference to skill, intelligence, or the nature of the service performed; but no credits will be given to the able-bodied shirkers, who will thus be starved into doing their share of the world's work without other compulsion."[1251] Other Socialist writers have put forth similar views. This is a cheerful outlook for the free citizens of the free Socialist Commonwealth. The workers will become "wage-slaves" in the fullest sense of the term. They will have to submit to forced labour, arbitrary wages, and arbitrary hours of labour, and those who do not produce as much as the official overseers require—and they may have a private grudge against some unfortunate worker who does his best—will be starved until they work harder. The lot of savages ruled by the knout, the kourbash, and the sjambok will be preferable to the lot of men ruled by starvation in the free Socialist Commonwealth of the future. The former have at least some liberty, while the latter will be kept by officials, who will distribute food and force them to work by rewards of food alternated by starvation, like performing dogs and apes.