The Harvest of Ruskin

by John W. Graham

Roughly, then, and in the large, Regulation and Co-operation, rather than Competition and Economic freedom, are to be the guiding principles. That is, Ruskin is a Socialist. But he is no revolutionary nor divider up of property. He desired all things to be gradual, and was too wise to suppose that anything sweeping could be done at once, or indeed very much of any kind for a long time. To his private correspondents in Fors the advice was always given to stay where they were, and do as well as they could what they had in hand. Ruskin, again, is a Socialist of the aristocratic variety. He believed in graded ranks, and in people staying in the class they were born in. He did not say that everybody was equal. He was also of the earnestly religious type of Socialist. When I add that he considered that he and Carlyle were the only two Conservatives left in England, and that he was a Tory of the type of Scott and Homer, I may perhaps have succeeded in leaving my readers fairly confused in mind: as every one who tries to classify Ruskin will become.

As to Wealth, Ruskin proposes that there shall be a legislative upper limit to a man’s property; and that those whose superfluity is skimmed off by law should have titles instead and be employed in public service. As noted again in the chapter on Usury later, there are various ways of securing this: by steeply graduating the Income Tax and the Death Duties at the upper end, or by limiting the legal right of bequest, either by saying that you must not bequeath more than a certain sum to one person, or that a person must not inherit more than a certain total sum from all sources. These startling innovations would no doubt put an effective check on accumulation, if the State succeeded in fighting the ingenuity of the lawyers.

All interest on money he entirely forbids. This I deal with in Chapter VII.

All land is to be bought by the State from the landlords, and the aristocracy, living on the Government annuities thus created, are to become the legislators and leaders of the people. I don’t know whether he knew them very well. At any rate these annuities appear to me to be of the nature of interest.

War is to be managed by personal encounters between some of the military aristocrats and the aristocrats of the enemy, to save butchery of peasants and much needless devastation. A kind of international Rugby football match without referees might meet the case—where the honour of England was really at stake. It is a simple suggestion; but soberly Ruskin loathed war—particularly wars for conquest and all modern war by machinery and for the benefit of capitalists. This is shown in Chapter VIII.

Our factory system and the crowding into towns he detested; though he gives us no practical suggestions towards ending it except that most steam power should be abandoned—not quite all. There is a curious prophecy too about electricity superseding steam and smoke. We are beginning on hopeful lines here with Mond gas, central electrical power stations, and Garden Cities—if only we could and would compel our factories to stop making smoke, the greatest curse of the landscape. This is treated more fully in Chapter IX.

Our Government must also take heed to all means of keeping our population in the country.

Population Ruskin deals with fantastically by permitting marriages only to young men and young women after passing a suitable examination in business or domestic qualifications. He would provide them, on marriage, with an income for seven years from the State. If they had a private income beyond this minimum it must accumulate; so that all young couples start life on the same standard of expenditure. This is the most drastic of his regulations, and the most out of reach.[79]

Under land tenure from the State each person was to hold no more than he could properly make use of—a system of permanent peasant proprietors, that is, at a quit rent;—the land inalienable in title, and to descend by primogeniture.

We have also the somewhat obscure remark[80] that bread, water, and the roof over his head must be tax (i.e. rent) free to every man. Methods of administration are to be left to settle themselves. Also, “every man is to build his own house to his mind, and to have a mind to build it to.”