Moral Philosophy: Ethics, Deontology and Natural Law

by Joseph Rickaby

9. Abandoning this untenable position, Socialists still ask: "But is the difference in the value of their labour quite so vast as is the interval between the profits of the employer and the pay of his poor drudges?" Honestly we cannot say that it is. We are fain to fall back upon the consideration, that the employer contributes, not only his brains to the work, but his capital. "Ah, that is just it," is the Socialists' quick reply: "We propose to relieve him of his capital, and remunerate his brainwork only: by that means we shall be able to pay sufficiently handsome wages for management, according to the ratio of mental and manual labour, and at the same time have a sufficiently large surplus over to raise the wages of his needy comrades, those seventy thousand hodmen and eighty thousand quarrymen."

10. Two reasons may be given for turning away from this seductive proposal, and leaving capital (not consumer's wealth merely) in private hands,—and that not only in the hands of what we may call mentally productive capitalists, men who oversee their own enterprises and manage their own workmen, but even of unproductive capitalists, men who have shares in and reap profits out of a business which they never meddle with. The first reason is, because this position of the productive, and still more that of the unproductive capitalist, is a prize for past industry expended upon production. To understand this, we must recollect once more that men work, not as individuals, but as heads of families. Every working man, from the sailor to the shop-boy, covets for himself two things, pay and leisure. The same two things do mentally productive labourers covet. But they covet them, not for themselves alone, but for their families, and more even for their families than for themselves. They weary their brains, planning and managing, that in old age they may retire on a competence, and hand down that same competence, undiminished by their having lived on it, to their children. Thus the young man works and produces, that the old man, and the child to come, may have exemption from productive labour, an abiding exemption, which cannot be unless he is allowed to live on the interest of accumulated capital. These positions of affluence and rest—sinecures they are, so far as production is concerned—are the prizes awarded to the best productive labour. What they who do that labour aim at, is not wages but exemption from toil: their wish is not so much to be wealthy and have leisure themselves as to found a family in wealth and leisure,—the one possible foundation of such a family being a store of private capital. Socialists of course will offer nobler prizes for the best productive labour,—honour, and the satisfaction of having served the community, a satisfaction which they would have men trained from childhood to relish above all other joys. Unfortunately, this taste is yet unformed, and the stimulus of these nobler prizes is still unproved by experience. Meanwhile men do work hard, to the advantage of the community, for the ignobler prize of family affluence and ease. Socialists are going to take away the good boy's cake and give him a sunflower.

11. The second reason for leaving capital in private, even unproductive hands, begins from the consideration, that the highest end of man on earth is not production, just as it is not consumption, of the necessaries and luxuries of life. Aristotle bids us, as much as possible in this life, "to play the immortal ([Greek: athanatizein]), and do our utmost to live by the best element in our nature," that is, the intellect. (Ethics, c. ii., s. ii., n. 7, p. 9.) There is the intellectual life of the statesman in the practical order: and in the speculative order, that of the poet, of the artist, of the scholar, of the devout contemplative—the outcome of learned and pious leisure, and freedom from vulgar cares. One man ascending into this higher and better region helps his neighbour to follow. The neighbour can follow, even though he be not free from productive cares, but the leader ought to be free, if he is to soar a high, sustained and powerful flight, and guide others aloft. These unproductive capitalist families then form what we may call, by a figure which rhetoricians call oxymoron, something which comes very near a bull,—we may call them an endowed lay-clergy: they are told off from the rest of men to lead the way in doing, and causing to be done, the highest work of humanity. The absence of the First Class of Workers would render the Socialist Utopia a very vulgar place.

12. Nature's ideal is: To all, plenty: to some, superabundance. The superabundance of some is not necessarily incompatible with all having plenty: nay it is a positive furtherance of that and of still higher ends, as has been shown. But it is a position of advantage that may be abused, and is abused most wantonly: hence there comes to be question of Socialism.

13. The Socialism above described is of the old sort, called Collectivism. A new variety has appeared, Syndicalism. Syndicalism is opposed to nationalisation and centralisation of capital and power: it would convert workers into owners in each separate department of labour,—colliers to own the coal, railwaymen the lines and rolling-stock, agricultural labourers the land, and so on. Collectivism might conceivably be put in practice, given a sufficiently high standard of social virtue, a quality which Socialists are not in the way to get. As for Syndicalism in practice, I leave that to the reader to imagine. Syndicalism stigmatises Collectivism as a gross tyranny. Thus divided into two irreconcilable factions, the Socialists are not a happy family.

Readings.—The Creed of Socialism, by Joseph Rickaby (Anti-socialist Union, Victoria Street, Westminster).

SECTION III.—Of Landed Property.

1. Land, like cotton, timber, or iron-ore, is a raw material wrought up by man. Land, like any other thing, becomes an article of property originally by occupation, and its value is enhanced by labour. There is no more reason why all land, or the rents of all land, should belong to the State, than why all house property, or all house rents, should belong to the State. If the people need land to live on, so do they need houses to live in, coals to burn, and shoes to wear. Socialism, once admitted, cannot be confined to land alone. It will exterminate "the lord manufacturer" as remorselessly as it exterminates the landlord.

2. Every man, it is contended, has a right to live on the fruits of the soil. The proposition is needlessly long. It should be put simply: Every man has a right to live. For as to living on the fruits of the soil, there is absolutely nothing else that man can live on. All human nutriment whatever is derived from what geologists call pulverised rocks, that is, soil. But if it is meant that every man has a right to live on the fruits of some soil or land of his own, where is the proof? So long as the fruits of the earth do not fail to reach a man's mouth, what matters it whose earth it is that grows them? Some of the richest as well as the poorest members of the community are landless men. Confiscate rent to take the place of taxation, and some of the richest men in the community will go tax-free.

3. The land on which a nation is settled, we are told, belongs to that nation. Yes, it belongs to them as individuals, yet not so that a foreigner is excluded by natural law from owning any portion of it. But the government have over the land, and over all the property upon it, what is called altum dominium, or eminent domain, which is a power of commanding private proprietors to part with their property for public purposes, with compensation, whenever compensation is possible. Thus when a railway gets its Act of Parliament, the owners through whose estates the projected line is to run are compelled by an exercise of eminent domain to sell to the company. By the same power the government in a besieged city, when hard pressed, might seize upon all the stores of food and fuel within the walls, even without compensation. Altum dominium, which is not dominion properly so called, is sufficient for all national emergencies, without making the State the universal landlord.