CHAPTER XXIV
UNSETTLED PROBLEMS IN THE ECONOMIC ORDER
Under this head we propose to consider one general and three special problems on which society is at present at work, framing new moral standards to meet new conditions. Many of the questions involved in the new order marshal themselves under a single antithesis. Will the moral values of wealth be most fully secured and justly distributed by leaving to individuals the greatest possible freedom and holding them morally responsible, or by social agency and control? The first theory is known as individualism. The most convenient term for the second position would be socialism.
Socialism, however, is, for many, an epithet rather than a scientific conception. It is supposed to mean necessarily the abolition of all private enterprise or private property. In its extreme form it might mean this, as individualism in its extreme form would mean anarchy. But as a practical ethical proposition we have before us neither the abolition of public agency and control—extreme individualism—nor the abolition of private agency and control. We have the problem of getting the proper amount of each in order that the highest morality may prevail. Each theory professes to desire the fullest development and freedom of the individual. The individualist seeks it through formal freedom and would limit public agency to a minimum. The socialist is willing to permit limitations on formal freedom in order to secure the "real" freedom which he regards as more important and substantial. Between the extremes, and borrowing from each, is a somewhat indefinite programme known as the demand for equal opportunity. Let us consider each in a brief statement and then in a more thorough analysis.
§ 1. GENERAL STATEMENT OF THE POSITIONS OF INDIVIDUALISM AND OF PUBLIC AGENCY AND CONTROL
1. Individualism.—Individualism[234] believes that each man can secure his own welfare better than any one else can secure it for him. It further holds that society is made up of individuals, and hence, if each is provided for, the welfare of the whole is secured. Such goods as are social can be secured by voluntary association. Believing that the course of civilization has been "from status to contract," it makes free contract its central principle. It should be the chief business of organized society to maintain and safeguard this freedom. It locates the important feature of freedom precisely in the act of assent, rather than in any consideration of whether the after consequences of the assent are good or bad; nor does it ask what motives (force and fraud aside) brought about the assent, or whether there was any other alternative. In other words, it regards formal freedom as fundamental. If not in itself all that can be desired, it is the first step, and the only one which law need recognize. The individual may be trusted to take other steps, if protected in this. The only restriction upon individual freedom should be that it must not interfere with the equal freedom of others. In the economic sphere this restriction would mean, "must not interfere by force." The theory does not regard economic pressure by competition as interference. Hence it favors free competition. Leaving out of account benevolence, it holds that in business each should be allowed, or even recommended, to seek his own advantage. But when the question as to the justice of the distribution reached by this method is raised, a division appears between the democratic individualists and the "survival of the fittest" individualists. The democratic individualists—Adam Smith, Bentham, Mill[235]—believed that individualism would promote the welfare of all members of society. The "survival of the fittest" school maintains that the welfare of the race or of civilization depends on the sifting and selecting process known as the "struggle for existence." If the "fittest" are thus selected and survive, it matters not so much what is the lot of the rest. We must choose between progress through aristocratic selection and degeneration through democratic leveling.
2. Theory of Public Agency and Control.—Socialism (using the word in a broad sense) holds that society should secure to all its members the goods of life. It holds that an unrestrained liberty of struggle for existence may secure the survival of the strongest, but not necessarily of the morally best. The individualist's theory emphasizes formal freedom. "Seek first freedom and all other things will be added." The socialist view emphasizes the content. It would have all members of society share in education, wealth, and all the goods of life. In this it agrees with democratic individualism. But it considers this impossible on the basis of individual effort. To hold that society as a whole can do nothing for the individual either ignores social goods or supposes the social will, so powerful for democracy in the political sphere, to be helpless and futile in the economic world. To assume that all the control of economic distribution—the great field of justice—may be left to individual freedom and agency, is as archaic as to leave the collection of taxes, the administration of provinces, and the education of citizens to private enterprise. It regards the unregulated struggle for existence as economically wasteful and morally vicious, both in its inequality of distribution and in the motives of egoism on which it relies. Individualism, on the other hand, so far as it is intelligent and does not lump socialism with anarchy and all other criticisms on the established order, regards socialism as ignoring the supreme importance of active personal effort, and the value of freedom as the keynote to progress.
3. Equal Opportunity.—An intermediate view has for its maxim, "equal opportunity." It holds with individualism that the active personality is to be stimulated and made a prime end. But because it believes that not merely a few but all persons should be treated as ends, it finds individualism condemned. For it holds that an unregulated struggle for existence does not secure the end individualism professes to seek. When individuals start in the race handicapped by differences in birth, education, family, business, friends, and inherited wealth, there is no selection of ability; there is selection of the privileged. Hence it would borrow so much from socialism as to give each individual a "fair start." This would include public schools, and an undefined amount of provision for sanitation, and for governmental regulation of the stronger.
It is manifest, however, that this theory of the "square deal" is a name for a general aim rather than for a definite programme. For a "square deal," or equality of opportunity, might be interpreted to call for a great variety of concrete schemes, ranging all the way from an elementary education up to public ownership of all the tools for production, and to abolition of the right to bequeath or inherit property. The peoples of America, Europe, and Australasia are at present working out policies which combine in various degrees the individualistic and the socialistic views. Most have public schools. Some have provision for old age and accident through either mutual or State systems of insurance and pensions. Let us analyze the moral aspects of the two opposing theories more thoroughly. It is obvious that the third view is only one of a number of mediating positions.