In fact, it is the exigencies of reasonable distribution that constitute the fundamental justification of every title of ownership. The title of purchase by which a man claims the hat that he wears; the title of inheritance by which a son claims the house that once belonged to his father; the title of contract through which a labourer gets wages, a merchant prices, and a landlord rent,—are all valid simply because they are reasonable devices for enabling men to obtain the goods of the earth for the satisfaction of their wants. All titles of property, productivity included, are conventional institutions which reason and experience have shown to be conducive to human welfare. None of them possesses intrinsic or metaphysical validity.[120]
Therefore, the Socialist cannot establish the right of labour to the full product of industry until he proves that this so-called right could be reduced to practice consistently with individual and social welfare. In other words, he must show that to give the entire product to the labourer would be a reasonable method of distribution. Now the arrangement by which the Socialist proposes to award the whole product of labour is the collective ownership and operation of the means of production, and the social distribution of the product. If this system would not enable the labourer and the members of society generally to satisfy their wants to better advantage than is possible under the present system, the contention that the labourer has a right to the entire product of industry falls to the ground. The question will be considered in the following chapter.
CHAPTER XI
THE SOCIALIST SCHEME OF INDUSTRY
"Never has our party told the workingman about a 'State of the future,' never in any way than as a mere utopia. If anybody says: 'I picture to myself society after our programme has been realised, after wage labour has been abolished, and the exploitation of men has ceased, in such and such a manner,—' well and good; ideas are free, and everybody may conceive the Socialist State as he pleases. Whoever believes in it may do so; whoever does not, need not. These pictures are but dreams, and Social Democracy has never understood them otherwise."[121]
Such is the official attitude of Socialism toward descriptions of its contemplated industrial organisation. The party has never drawn up nor approved any of the various outlines of this sort which have been defended by individual Socialists. It maintains that it cannot anticipate even the essential factors in the operation of a social and industrial system which will differ so widely from the one that we have to-day, and which will be so profoundly determined by events that are in the nature of the case impossible to prognosticate.
Socialist Inconsistency
From the viewpoint of all but convinced Socialists, this position is indefensible. We are asked to believe that the collective ownership and operation of the means of production would be more just and beneficial than the present plan of private ownership and operation. Yet the Socialist party refuses to tell us how the scheme would bring about these results; refuses to give us, even in outline, a picture of the machine at work. As reasonably might we be expected to turn the direction of industry over to a Rockefeller or a Morgan, making an act of faith in their efficiency and fairness. We are in the position of a man who should be advised to demolish an unsatisfactory house, without receiving any solid assurance that the proposed new one would be as good. To our requests for specific information about the working of the new industrial order the Socialists, as a rule, answer in terms of prophesied results. They leave us in the dark concerning the causes by which these wonderful results are to be produced.
From the viewpoint of the confirmed Socialist, however, this failure to be specific is not at all unreasonable. He can have faith in the Socialist system without knowing beforehand how it will work. He believes in its efficacy because he believes that it is inevitable. In the words of Kautsky, "what is proved to be inevitable is proved not only to be possible, but to be the only possible outcome."[122] The Socialist believes that his scheme is inevitable because he thinks that it is necessarily included in the outcome of economic and social evolution.