It will be maintained that measures of this kind will take away the incentive to industry and commercial progress. But it may be pointed out in reply that the economic end of British life so far from being disastrously undermined by wholesale interference with economic laws during the war, seems to have been in a rather healthier condition than it had ever known previously. Profits were limited; prices were standardised; the old competitive basis was largely suspended. Virtually all those incentives of self-regard and gain which we have been told were essential to economic development were put out of business. Yet production reached an unprecedented point, both in quality and in amount. Another incentive was indeed operative; but this incentive was not of the personal kind. The peril of the nation in the great hazard of war evoked a social solidarity which proved a more powerful incentive to industry than the self-regarding instincts ever provided. This is our sufficient answer to those who still hold to the cynical superstition that the only motives on which we can rely in dealing with human nature are those of selfishness. What is needed to stimulate effort and devotion is the sense of direct participation in a great social task; and there is no reason to suppose that the systematic education of a couple of generations may not make this same social idealism the normal driving force of national effort. It is no doubt true that, as things are, only such a challenge to patriotic feeling as war brings, could achieve such a result; but it is our business to discover the stimuli which will make this same intensity of devotion a permanent fact.
But, it may be said, the economic conditions of wartime are abnormal, and economic “laws” must be disregarded in the stress of national crisis. This is, of course, partly true and partly untrue. So far as production is concerned, the only change that war requires is greater speed and greater volume; the difference is one of degree and not at all of kind. It is only in the region of finance that war-time conditions work havoc with economic “laws”; and the experience of war-time has taught us the useful lesson that these “laws” have no permanent character. They are on the contrary contingent and derivative affairs, being no more than general statements concerning economic tendencies which are set afoot and sustained by the ways in which men habitually act. If men could be induced to act differently, then we should require to formulate a new set of “laws.” The greatest revelation of the war in many respects is the tremendous achievement of industrial production in Great Britain under the influence of a social emotion, and without any of the common incentives of personal advantage. It may be conceded that this social emotion was to some extent stimulated by a group antagonism, but in the main it was the love of and the desire to preserve—in spite of its faults—that particular social synthesis described as British that lay behind this great performance. And once more let it be repeated that the peril of war is not the only organ of social vision.
It is not pretended that commerce will be redeemed automatically by placing a limitation upon the profit-motive; but without such a limitation, it cannot be redeemed at all. It must enter into our scheme to provide means of kindling the social vision which will transform commerce into a social service; and this implies certain changes of temper and method in the system of education. There is no reason why we should not come to regard the business of feeding and clothing the people as much a department of the public service as that of educating or that of providing them with water or the time of day, or of transmitting their correspondence; and there is no reason for supposing that a right education will not provide in time as effectual a spur to patriotism as the peril of war.
IV
It is, however, not enough to standardise the cost of living and to impose a limit upon profits; for we have still no adequate guarantee against a lowering of the standard of life. It does not necessarily follow that the surplus profits will go to the raising of wages, or that standardised prices will make for a sufficient living. It is necessary to define a minimum standard of life. The demand for a minimum wage is a beginning in this direction, but under the profit system, the minimum wage defined as a money-wage is something of a snare. For so long as prices tend to fly upward, no minimum wage can effectually prevent a depression of the standard of life. It is only as we succeed in fixing a minimum “real wage” which takes account of the cost of living that we approach a satisfactory estimate. But, again, under the present system—the relation of supply to demand in the labour market will render even a minimum “real wage” exceedingly precarious.
The only satisfactory solution of this difficulty is to dissolve the connection between work and wages. The assumption that men will not work unless they must is not true; but it is the truth that while men are compelled to work by the coercion of fear—whether of hunger or of punishment—they will not do the most or the best work of which they are capable. That workmen nowadays are apt to do as little as they can for as much as they can get is not to be disputed; and organised labour combines with its demand for larger wages another demand for fewer working hours, and under certain conditions imposes restrictions on output. But this is simply the answer in kind which labour returns to capital. It is the vicious sequel of a vicious system. Capital buys in the cheapest and sells in the dearest market; and labour having been brought up in the same school does the same thing. If capital tries to extort as much as it can out of labour, it is not to be wondered at that labour should take a hand in the game.
We have to recognise that the best workmanship requires two conditions; first—that the worker shall have a direct interest in the thing he produces, second, that he shall enjoy the freedom which comes from a sense of guaranteed security. To the former we shall have to return at a later stage in the argument. Concerning the latter, we have seen how the present system exposes the worker to a grave and vexatious insecurity. It is stupid to suppose that men will habitually put their best into their work under such conditions as these. The whole system is intrinsically demoralising to all whom it touches. It is demoralising to the employer because he comes to regard the worker as a mere “hand,” a tool; and that is a frame of mind which saps his own manhood. It is demoralising to the worker because it treats his physical energy as a thing to be bought and sold at a price, the highest price he can extort; and since a man’s labour is actually inseparable from his person, it reduces him to a condition of servility, which, within a certain limit, is as real as that of a chattel slave. He has neither independence nor security. Over against this state of things, we must affirm that a man’s subsistence shall be guaranteed to him as a customary practice, in good weather and in bad, in sickness and in health, in work or unemployment. The British Labour Party’s proposal of a national minimum standard of life universally enforced is certainly one of the cornerstones of a wholesome social order. The cynic will probably say that this will be the paradise of the slacker; and no doubt there would be some persons base enough to evade their share of productive labour. But we can count upon the public opinion of a society in which freedom has created a new sense of social obligation and a new quality of fellowship, to make a slacker’s life not worth living. It may very fairly be doubted whether at the worst the slacker who remained incorrigible would constitute so great a tragedy—either in number or in kind—or constitute so clear evidence of the bankruptcy of a system as do the innumerable and increasing derelicts of the present industrial order.
These three measures, the standardisation of the cost of living, the limitation of profits, the institution of a minimum standard of life are necessary to the redemption of commerce. For to redeem commerce, we must in the first instance, take away from it the power and the opportunity of exploiting life for the ends of private gain. But this process secures another result. It ensures for the mass of the people a reasonable security and sufficiency of physical subsistence, so that the pre-occupation with self-preservation need no longer arrest their spiritual development. We establish the foundations of freedom—freedom from fear, from anxiety, from the autocracy of the employer or his agent—and confer upon the ordinary man a new status, in which we may with good hope expect to find him susceptible to a social vision powerful to evoke his devotion and to bring his will into captivity to its obedience. Commerce and industry will then no longer be a vast scramble of competition and exploitation, but a generous social co-operation.