Social Justice Without Socialism

by John Bates Clark

Differences of mere interest between the various social classes are inevitable. There will never be a time when, in the division of any common property, the mere bald interests of the claimants are alike. When two fishermen own one boat and fish together, each one is interested in taking the whole catch. They divide, however, by a fair rule and live in peace. Any similar division may proceed in harmony if what the parties want is justice. Till recently American workmen have lived with their employers without hating them; and if wages can be fixed now by some appeal to the principle of justice, they can live with them in that way again. This means a better method of adjudicating claims than by a crude test of strength. There is no time to discuss a scheme by which this can be done. I must claim that it can be done, and take the responsibility of proving it when more time is available. There are beginnings of a good method in New Zealand, in Australia, and in Canada, and the point I am making now is that if we get a plan which works well in the United States, we shall save a deplorable waste and do more to revive the spirit of fraternity than we can by any measure ever attempted. Struggles of classes there may be, as there are between buyers and sellers everywhere; but this need not make the parties enemies. Its effects do not need to extend to the heart and character and to put distrust and hatred in the place of confidence and good will. The moral effects of this reform will be the best ones, but the economic effects also will be vast and beneficent.

I am not predicting a complete millennium merely as the result of the reforms I have described. That would require also the moral perfection of the human race. Not a little moral improvement is to be expected as the effect of these measures, but it is too much to claim that they will repress all vice and crime, reclaim all criminals, and give to the race generally a keen devotion to duty. A belief in a State where even this will be realized is deeply implanted in human nature, and Socialism itself might easily get a major premise from it. The syllogism would run thus: (1) A better State is bound to come. (2) It cannot come under the system of private capital. (3) Therefore that system must be abolished. So would we all say if the minor premise were true—"The good State is impossible under private capital." We claim that it is possible and that we can see how to realize it. We can trace the forces which, without revolution, will make work lighter, pay better. We also can make a syllogism, and it reads thus: (1) The present State is tolerable. (2) Every reform will make it better, and there are many to be made. (3) The coming State will be whatever we have wit and energy enough to make it.

Our plea for the justice of the coming system will not convince any man who starts with the assertion that capital ought to have no return whatever, and that interest is robbery, and that the men who bring empty hands to the mill should take all the product of it. To most men's instinctive judgment this view does not appeal. The general verdict is that it is right for capital to get something.

If we are fishing together from the shore and I make a canoe which multiplies my catch by five, I have a right to the extra return which my new instrument gives me. If my neighbor asks me to lend it to him and I do so, I deprive myself of the extra product I have been getting by means of it, and it is right for him to pay me interest on the cost of the boat. He can do it and make money by the transaction. If his catch is now five times what it was, he can afford to pay me a part of the extra return and still be better off than he was before.

If my share is still large, other men will make boats and offer them for hire. They will compete in lending them till a modest percentage of the cost is all that any owner can get. The borrowers will then get the major benefit. This implies competition and shows the necessity of preserving it.

If, in lieu of lending my canoe, I persuade another man to take it and fish for me, I shall have to give him more fish than he was originally catching; and the more the boats multiply, the larger the share which will have to be given to the men who are hired to work them, and the smaller the share which will be kept by the owner of any one boat. Under a normal condition, multiplying capital means in itself higher wages. Higher wages mean that laborers, in the end, begin to get boats of their own, or shares in boats, and that the laboring-class and the capitalist class are more and more merged. Invention—that is, devising and introducing canoes—and accumulation of capital—that is, active canoe-building—mean for laborers higher pay and a chance to save capital.

Do you tell me that this is a primitive State, an Eden of the past and hopelessly vanished from the present earth; that it is a lost Paradise whose gates are forever barred? The whole point of the economic study of which I have given the briefest outline is that it is practicable to create in complex modern life the most essential condition of this primitive life—its tendency toward justice. In the Scriptures the primitive Eden was a garden, but the New Jerusalem is a city. What we have before us for study is a vast centralized economic system suggesting the city; and we have to see what can be made of it.

It is something extremely good. The late Edward Atkinson was fond of saying that, if improvements are allowed to do their best, the time will come when, as he expressed it, "it will not pay to be rich." The workers will be so comfortable that the care of a great capital will more than offset any additional comfort a man can get by owning it. Grotesquely exaggerated as this claim may appear to be, it was based on serious economic study. There are forces at work which, if they have free play, will carry human life very far in the direction of the State so described, with its comfort, contentment, and fraternity.

That fraternity is possible in spite of sharp contention is clear whenever athletic teams meet and celebrate a game which has been a victory for one and a defeat for the other; and the parties that contend in the great industrial field may be equally brotherly if they play fairly. Foul play always means enmity, and fair play, friendship. The finest possible type of character grows up in the course of keen but honorable rivalry. The noblest manhood that can anywhere be developed would come from competing vigorously in the market and living together as brothers when the contest closes. The beaten man may not enjoy his defeat, but he may act rightly and feel rightly toward the victor. Develop in these economic contests the sense of justice—let both parties seek to follow a rule of right—and men's hearts, at least, will not need to be embittered. You will then see a contest, which, when it is waged with bombs and bludgeons, looks like a Sheol, so changed that it shall open the way to a transformed world and make the hope of a future Eden no day-dream, but a scientific deduction from cosmic law. We may build a new earth out of the difficult material we have to work with, and cause justice and kindness to rule in the very place where strife now holds sway. A New Jerusalem may actually arise out of the fierce contentions of the modern market. The wrath of men may praise God and his Kingdom may come, not in spite of, but by means of the contests of the economic sphere.

Socialism can have no monopoly of beatific visions. It offers much in that direction. It draws a picture of a future State of great riches and general equality; and the picture is glorified by a vision of general brotherhood. To some this seems more attractive than any other which imagination can create. I confess to a preference for a prospect which assures, before all else, the continuance of progress, and shows humanity striving to make forward steps and actually making them so long as the universe shall exist. As between a stationary paradise and a progressive purgatory, I should prefer the latter, for the sake of the permanent well-being of the human race; but what I should choose in preference to either is a progressive paradise. The capacity for further improvement is the essential trait of the best condition now in sight. The reformer can point to his delectable mountains and trace an unending route to and over them, as they rise range beyond range and lose themselves in the distance. Men are, in general, following the route, and each generation advances beyond the point attained by its predecessor. Every step is forward and upward, and the nearest goal will soon be reached and passed. Our descendants will reach a better and more distant goal and then press on to something remoter and still better. Again and again barriers seemingly insurmountable will be passed. The impossibility of to-day will be the reality of to-morrow, and the dazzling vision of to-day will be the reality of the future and the starting-point for still grander achievements.