“Everybody should have a legal right to an opportunity of earning his living in the society in which he has been born,” we read, “but no one should or could have the right to ask that he should 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.”
Again, Sydney Webb, in his “Basis and Policy of Socialism” (p. 71), says:
“Instead of converting every man into an independent producer, working when he likes and where 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 organization, local or national, as may be suitable to his capacity and social function. In fact, so far are we from seeking to abolish the wage system, so understood, that we wish to bring under it all those who now escape from it—the employers, and those who live on rent or interest—and so make it universal. 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.”
And Sydney Webb is not alone in these conclusions. Ramsay MacDonald, who is certainly one of the most conservative of Socialists, expresses the same spirit when he tells us that “trade must be organized like a fleet or education system” (“Socialism and Society,” p. 172); while Suthers answers this particular “objection” by expressing the most genuine contempt for those who would protest against the kind of slavery that collectivism would introduce. He reminds us that the people themselves would then be masters. Who would oppress the people? The people themselves? Like so many other Socialists, he will not see that slavery is slavery under whatever guise it may operate.
The only attempts to escape this proposition have been most utopian in character. Bebel, for example, asks us to believe that, in a Socialist State, disagreeable work will be accomplished chiefly by means of mechanical devices and that such undesirable tasks as remained, and which could be performed only by personal action, would be freely undertaken, as an effect of the unselfish spirit which will prevail among the workers of the future. He even suggests that it will be possible to inaugurate a kind of changing-off system so that each member of society may in his turn submit to assignment to the performance of the more disagreeable duties.
While this suggestion may be equitable in theory, it is of no practical value. Picture to yourself what kind of a community we should have if each individual was compelled to submit himself by a changing-off system to the most disagreeable avocations that you can imagine. Can you say that “freedom” could exist under such a régime? Do you think that such a system is possible outside of the penitentiary?
Of still greater absurdity is Bebel’s promise (“Woman,” p. 271) that the members of the social body shall become so perfectly developed that, “without distinction of sex,” they “shall undertake all functions” of society. As Cathrein says (p. 289), “this statement can hardly be said to deserve a refutation.”
“Let us only imagine what such industrial and technical ability supposes,” he continues. “Every individual in his turn undertakes all social functions. For instance, in a factory he is director, foreman, fireman, bookkeeper, a simple laborer or hod-carrier; then he turns to some other branch of industry or social calling—becomes editor, compositor, telegrapher, painter, architect, actor, farmer, gardener, astronomer, professor, chemist, druggist. With such a program is any thorough knowledge of anything possible?”
You know, John, that the efficient worker is the man who has mastered a trade thoroughly, and you also know that the maintenance of his efficiency depends upon his constant attention to the ever-changing details of his particular trade. This means the application of a lifetime, yet Socialists tell us that, merely by the adoption of the collective system, all men will become so perfectly proficient in everything that they will be fitted to undertake every kind of work.
No, John, this is not a joke! I did not find it in Puck or Judge. It is Bebel and other equally bright lights of the Socialist philosophy, who are responsible for these assertions. Even Marx himself endeavors to prove (“Capital,” p. 453) that the “separate individual” will be replaced by the “totally-developed individual,” and this development will confer upon the workman “absolute availability” for everything. If this is not a flight of imagination worthy of our old friend Baron Munchausen, what is it? Even Professor Paulsen, who cannot be called an anti-Socialist, protests in his “System of Ethics” (Vol. II, p. 437) against the equalizing tendencies shown by those who are trying to picture the future Co-operative Commonwealth.