Your pay envelope

by John Richard Meader

Discouraging as such a system of payment would be to industry and initiative, it still is, as a matter of fact, the only system that Socialism can adopt if it is to show any regard for the preservation of the collective character of the State.

If all workers are paid alike, it is possible that a certain degree of equality may be maintained. If, as Blatchford says in “Merrie England” (p. 103), “the only difference between a Prime Minister and a collier would be the difference of rank and occupation,” the mere worker may feel that he is living in a State in which class distinction has been largely eliminated. If, on the other hand, workers are to be paid according to the nature and value of their productions, how long do you think it will be before a new set of class distinctions will be created? How long will it be before the skilled workman who draws the fattest pay envelope will become the aristocrat, or, at least, will assume a class distinction mid-way between the bossing class and the class of unskilled laborers?

The Socialists themselves have recognized the danger that the problem of remuneration presents, and have tried to anticipate some of its difficulties by suggesting possible solutions. The sophists among them, of course, have sought to evade the issue, thus leaving the inquirer to imagine that this question, like all the other difficulties that confront the Collectivist, will settle itself when the moment of emergency arises. The more honest and consistent Socialists, however, are quite frank in their admission that equality of reward is the inevitable consequence of Collectivism. Even Spargo, in the quotation already referred to, admits that class formation must take place and the old problems incidental to economic inequality reappear under anything less than an “approximate equality of income.”

Mrs. Annie Besant, who is a much-quoted Socialist, takes the same stand. “Controversy,” she says (“Fabian Essays,” pp. 163-164), “will probably arise as to the division: shall all shares be equal, or shall the workers receive in proportion to the proposed dignity or indignity of their work? Inequality would be odious.... The impossibility of estimating the separate value of each man’s labor with any really valid result, the friction which would arise, the jealousies which would be provoked, the inevitable discontent, favoritism, and jobbery that would prevail; all these things will drive the Communal Council into the right path—equal remuneration of all workers.”

And yet as early as 1830—years before Marx and Engels had begun to prepare their “Communist Manifesto”—the French Communists addressed a manifesto to the Chamber of Deputies in which it was stated that the equal division of property would constitute “a greater violence, a more revolting injustice, than the unequal division which was originally effected by force of arms, by conquest.”

The Socialist of the present day may well learn wisdom from the logic of his French predecessors. It is a self-evident fact that production must be most disastrously effected by equality of distribution. Where is the incentive to come from if the industrious or the highly skilled man is to be mulcted of a share of his earnings that it may be used to equalize things with the “work-shy,” who happens to be indisposed to earn a living for himself? As one writer suggests, “it is to be no longer a question of ‘Every man for himself, and the devil take the hindmost,’ but we are to go to the opposite extreme and endeavor to establish an equally false doctrine of ‘Every man for his neighbor, and the devil take the foremost.’”

Marx seemingly attempts to provide for this contingency by preaching the doctrine embraced in the formula, “From each according to his ability, to each according to his needs.” Apparently, he recognizes that it will be impossible to evade the inequalities naturally existing between different individuals, and he endeavors to neutralize these natural advantages by supposing that each is to produce “according to his ability.”

But, my dear John, you mustn’t be deluded by the suggestion that there is a difference in these propositions. In both cases, the neutralizing profits are to be taken from the most efficient producers and given to those who are less efficient. If this were done there would soon be an end to the Socialist promise that every worker is to get the full product of his labor. If this rule of remuneration were to become operative, the surplus product needed to supply the bad or idle worker with the means of securing a reward “according to his needs,” would be stolen from the proceeds of the industry of the more capable “comrades.”

Yet H. M. Hyndman, the prominent English Socialist, sees no objection to this arrangement. In a letter contributed to the London Daily Telegraph (October 14, 1907), Mr. Hyndman wrote:

“Socialism will recognize no difference as to the share of the general product between the ‘good’ and the ‘bad’ workman, but will give both every opportunity to make themselves more valuable citizens and comrades. Good and bad will alike be doing their social best for the community, and will be entitled to their full participation in the enjoyment of the wealth created by the work of the whole body.”