These proposals cannot be regarded as a mere utopia by anybody who has a sense of what is really practicable. For the kind of institutions here proposed are such as spring directly out of existing circumstances anywhere in life. Only, people will have to make up their minds, gradually to give up administering spiritual life and industrial economy within the “rights-State,” and not to raise opposition, when private schools and colleges are started and economic life put on its own footing,—seeing that this is just what is wanted. There is no need to abolish the State schools and the State economic undertakings straight away. But, beginning perhaps in quite a small way, it will be found increasingly possible to do away with the whole structure of State education and State economy.
This requires, however, first of all, individuals, convinced that these, or some such social ideas as these are the right ones, and able so thoroughly to imbue themselves with their rightness, that they will make it their business to spread them. Wherever such ideas find understanding, they will arouse confidence in the possibility of changing the present state of things into a healthy one, where the same evils will not arise. But this is the only kind of confidence which can lead to a really healthy state of things. For, before one can arrive at any such confidence, one must have a clear perception in what way, practically, it is possible to connect new institutions on to the existing old ones. The essential feature of the ideas here put forward would seem to be, that they do not propose to bring about a better future by destroying the present social order further than has already been done; but that their realisation will come through building upon what already exists; and that as the building-up process goes on, what is rotten and unsound will fall away. No new views nor teachings, that do not aim at establishing confidence in this respect, will attain the object which it is absolutely necessary to attain, namely, an unbroken course of evolution, in which all that men have hitherto achieved, the wealth they have worked for, and the faculties they have won, are not cast to the winds, but stored up. Even the most sweeping radical may feel confidence in a form of social reconstruction that still preserves the old heritage, when he has ideas laid before him which are capable of initiating really sane and healthy developments. Even he will have to recognise, that whatever class of men may get into power, they will not be able to remove existing evils, unless their impulses are supported by ideas that can put health and life into the body social. To despair,—to believe it impossible to find a sufficient number of people who, even in these days of turmoil will have understanding for these ideas, if only they are spread with enough energy,—this would be to despair of human nature and of its openness to healthful and purposeful impulses. Is it desperate? That is not the question to be asked. But rather, What must I do to give full force to the teaching and spread of ideas that can awaken men’s confidence?
Any effective spread of these ideas will find its first obstacle in the habits of thought of the present age, which will quarrel with them on two grounds:—Either it will be objected in some form or another, that any dismemberment in the unity of the social life is inconceivable, that its three supposed branches cannot be torn apart, seeing that in actual practice they are everywhere intertwined. Or else people will opine, that it is quite possible under the onefold state to give each of the three branches its necessary independent character; that all these ideas are mere cobweb-spinning, with nothing in them, and quite apart from all reality. The first objection comes from thinking unreally, from presupposing that unity of life is only possible in a community of human beings, when the unity is introduced by ordinance. What life in reality requires is, however just the reverse. Unity must be the result, the final outcome of all the streams of activity flowing together from various directions. This idea is the one in accordance with life; but it had the evolution of the latter age against it; and so the tide of life in men bore down against the artificial “order” in its path,—and landed in the present social conditions. The second preconception arises from inability to distinguish the radical difference in the working of the three systems of social life. People do not see, that man stands in a separate and peculiar relation to each of the three; that, for the full development of its special quality, each of these three relations requires a ground to itself in actual life, where it can evolve its own form apart from the other two, in order that all three may combine in their working.
There was a view held in time past by the physiocrats, that,—Either men make artificial government regulations for economic life, which check its free expansion,—and then these regulations are harmful;—Or else, the laws tend in the same direction as economic life does when left to itself,—and then they are superfluous. As an academic theory, this view has had its day; but it still crops up everywhere as a habit of thought, and plays havoc in men’s brains. People think, that if one department of life is guided by its own laws, then everything else whatever that is needed in life must follow as a consequence out of this one department. That if, for instance, economic life were regulated in a way to satisfy men’s wants, that then this well-ordered economic soil would infallibly produce the right sort of spiritual life and “rights” life as well. But it is not possible; and only a way of thinking foreign to all reality can believe it possible. In the circuit of economic life there is nothing whatever that affords of itself any motive to guide that which runs all through the relation of man to man and proceeds from the sense of right. And if people insist on regulating this relation by economic motive the result will be, that the human being, with his labour and his control of the means of labour, will be bound hand and foot to the economic life. Economic life will go on like clockwork, and man will be a wheel in it,—Economic life has a tendency always to go on in one course, which needs rectifying from another side. It is neither, that the “rights” regulations are good, provided they move in the course set by economic life—nor, that when they run counter to it, they are bad. But rather, that if the course taken by economic life is constantly under the influence of those rules of “right” which concern man simply as man, then a human existence within the economic life becomes possible. And not till individual ability grows on its own ground, quite detached from the economic system, conveying ever afresh to economic life those forces that economics and industry are powerless to produce, can economic life itself develope in a way beneficial to men. It is a curious thing:—in purely external matters, people are ready enough to see the advantage of a division of labour. They do not expect a tailor to milk his own cow. But when it comes to a general division and co-ordination of human life, then they think that no good can come of anything but a onefold system.
That social ideas which follow the line of real life will rouse objections on every side, is a matter of course. For real life breeds contradictions. And anyone, who is thinking in accordance with life, will determine on realising arrangements that involve living contradictions, needing again other arrangements to reconcile them. He must not suppose, that an institution which is demonstrably, to his thinking, an “ideally perfect” one, will involve no contradictions when realised in practice. The socialism of the present day is absolutely justified in laying down the proposition, that the institutions of the modern age, in which production is carried on for individual profit, must be replaced by a different system, under which production shall be carried on for the general consumption. But anyone, who fully and wholly accepts this proposition will not arrive at the deduction drawn by modern socialism: Ergo, the means of production must be transferred from private to communal ownership. Indeed, he will be forced to a very different conclusion, namely, that right methods must be taken for conveying to the general community that which is privately produced on the strength of individual energy and capacity. The tendency of the economic impulses of the new age has been to obtain revenue by manufacturing in mass. The aim of the future must be, to find out, by means of Associations, what, in view of the actual needs of consumption, is the best method of production, and what channels are open from producer to consumer. The “rights” institutions will take care, that a productive industry does not remain tied up with any individual or group of people longer than their personal ability warrants. Instead of communal ownership of the means of production, there will be a circulation of the means of production throughout the body social, bringing them constantly afresh into the hands of those persons whose individual ability can employ them to the best service of the community. That connection between personality and the means of production, which hitherto has been effected by private ownership, will thus be established for periods of time. For it will be thanks to the means of production that the head of a business and his subordinates are enabled by their personal abilities to earn the income that they asked. They will not fail to make production as perfect as possible, since every improvement brings them, not indeed the whole profits, but a portion of the returns. For profits,—as shewn above,—go to the community only to the extent of what is over, after deducting the quota due to the producer for improvements in production. And it is in the spirit of the whole thing, that, if production falls off, the producer’s income must diminish in proportion as it rises with the enhancement of production. But always, in every case, the manager’s income will come out of the spiritual work he has done. It will not come out of profits, depending on conditions that do not rest with the spiritual work of the directing personality, but with the interplay of the forces at work in the communal life.
It will be seen, that with the realisation of social ideas such as these, institutions that we already have will acquire an altogether new significance. The ownership of property ceases to be what it has been up till now. But instead of going back to an obsolete form, such as communal ownership would be, it is carried on a step further to something quite new. The objects of ownership are brought into the stream of social life. No private owner, for his own personal interests, can control them to the injury of the general public;—neither, again, can the general public control them bureaucratically to the injury of the private person;—but private persons, who are suitable, will have access to them, as a means of serving the public.
A sense for the general public interest will have a chance to grow up, when impulses of this sort are realised, which place production on a sound basis, and safeguards the body social from sudden crises. An administrature too, which occupies itself solely with the processes of economic life, will be able to bring about any adjustments for which necessity may arise in the course of these processes. Suppose, for instance, a business concern were not in a position to pay its creditors the interest due on the savings of their labour, then,—if it is a business that is nevertheless recognised as meeting a want,—it will be possible to arrange for other industrial concerns to subsidise it by the voluntary agreement of everyone concerned in them.
Self-contained, on a basis of “rights” determined from outside itself, and supplied from without by a constant flow of fresh human ability as it comes on the scenes, the economic life, within its own circuit, will concern itself with nothing but its proper work. Accordingly it will be possible for it to facilitate a distribution of wealth that will ensure each person receiving that which he is rightfully entitled to receive, according to the community’s general prosperity. And, if one person appears to have more income than another, it will only be because his individual abilities make this More, this “surplus,” of advantage to the community.