Beneath all the Socialist argument on this subject lies the assumption that the attitude of the average man toward the higher motives can by some mysterious process be completely revolutionised. This is contrary to all experience, and to all reasonable probability. Only a small minority of men have ever, in any society or environment, been dominated mainly by altruism or the desire of public honour. What reason is there to expect that men will act differently in the future? Neither legislation nor education can make men love their neighbours more than themselves, or love the applause of their neighbours more than their own material welfare.
Restricting Individual Liberty
Even though human nature should undergo the degree of miraculous transformation necessary to maintain an efficient industrial system on Socialist lines, such a social organisation must soon collapse because of its injurious effect upon individual liberty. Freedom of choice would be abolished in the most vital economic transactions; for there would be but one buyer of labour, and one seller of commodities. And these two would be identical, namely, the State. With the exception of the small minority that might be engaged in purely individual avocations, and in co-operative enterprises, men would be compelled to sell their labour to either the municipality or the national government. As competition between these two political agencies in the matter of wages and other conditions of labour could not be permitted, there would be virtually only one employer. Practically all material goods would have to be purchased from either the municipal or the national shops and stores. Since the city and the nation would produce different kinds of goods, the purchaser of any given article would be compelled to deal with one seller. His freedom of choice would be further restricted by the fact that he would have to be content with those kinds and grades of commodities which the seller saw fit to produce. He could not create an effective demand for new forms and varieties of goods, as he now does, by stimulating the ingenuity and acquisitiveness of competing producers and dealers.
Prices and wages would, of course, be fixed beforehand by the government. The supposition that this function might be left to the workers in each industry is utterly impracticable. Such an arrangement would involve a grand scramble among the different industries to see which could pay its own members the highest wages, and charge its neighbours' members the highest prices. The final result would be a level of prices so high that only an alert and vigorous section of the workers in each industry could find employment. Not only wages and prices but hours, safety requirements, and all the other general conditions of employment, would be regulated by the government. The individuals in each industry could not be permitted to determine these matters any more than they could be permitted to determine wages. Moreover, all these regulations would from the nature of the case continue unchanged for a considerable period of time.
The restriction of choice enforced upon the sellers of labour and the buyers of goods, the utter dependence of the population upon one agency in all the affairs of their economic as well as their political life, the tremendous social power concentrated in the State, would produce a diminution of individual liberty and a perfection of political despotism surpassing anything that the world has ever seen. It would not long be tolerated by any self respecting people.
To reply that the Socialist order would be a democracy, and that the people could vote out of existence any distasteful regulation, is to play with words. No matter how responsive the governing and managing authorities might be to the popular will, the dependence of the individual would prove intolerable. Not the manner in which this tremendous social power is constituted, nor the personnel of those exercising it, but the fact that so much power is lodged in one agency, and so little immediate control of his affairs left to the individual,—is the heart of the evil situation. In a word, it is a question of the liberty of the individual versus the all pervading control of his actions by an agency other than himself. Moreover, the people in a democracy means a majority, or a compact minority. Under Socialism the controlling section of the voting population would possess so much power, political and economic, that it could impose whatever conditions it pleased upon the non-controlling section for an almost indefinite period of time. The members of the latter part of the population would not only be deprived of that immediate liberty which consists in the power to determine the details of their economic life, but of that remote liberty which consists in the power to affect general conditions by their votes.
In the last chapter we saw that the claim to the full product of industry, made on behalf of labour by the Socialists, cannot be established on intrinsic grounds. Like all other claims to material goods, it is valid only if it can be realised consistently with human welfare. Its validity depends upon its feasibility, upon the possibility of constructing some social system that will enable it to work. The present chapter has shown that the requirements of such a system are not met by Socialism. A Socialist organisation of industry would make all sections of the population, including the wage earning class, worse off than they are in the existing industrial order. Consequently, neither the private ownership of capital nor the individual receipt of interest can be proved to be immoral by the Socialist argument.
Since private ownership and management of capital are superior to Socialism, the State is obliged to maintain, protect, and improve the existing industrial system. This is precisely the conclusion that we reached in chapter iv with reference to private ownership of land. In chapter v we found, moreover, that individual ownership of land is a natural right. The fundamental considerations there examined lead to the parallel conclusion that the individual has a natural right to own capital. But we could not immediately deduce from the right to own land the right to take rent. Neither can we immediately deduce from the right to own capital the right to take interest. The positive establishment of the latter right will occupy us in the two following chapters.