The President here asked if anyone else wished to speak upon point 1 of the Agenda; and, as no one rose, he declared the discussion upon this subject closed.
The Congress next proceeded to discuss point 2:--
Is not the success of the Freeland institutions to be attributed merely to the accidental and therefore probably transient co-operation of specially favourable circumstances; or do those institutions rest upon conditions universally present and inherent in human nature?
George Dare (Right) opened the debate: We have the splendid success of a first attempt to establish economic justice so tangibly before us in Freeland, that there is no need to ask whether such an attempt can succeed. It is another question whether it must succeed, and that everywhere, because it has succeeded in this one case. For the circumstances of Freeland are exceptional in more than one respect. Not to mention the pre-eminent abilities, the enthusiasm and the spirit of self-sacrifice which marked the men who founded this fortunate commonwealth, and some of whom still stand at its head, men such as it is certain will not everywhere be found ready at hand, it must not be overlooked that this country is more lavishly endowed by nature than most others, and that a broad band of desert and wilderness protected it--at least at first--from any disturbing foreign influence. If men of talent, enjoying the unqualified confidence of their colleagues, are able on a soil where every seed bears fruit a hundredfold to effect the miracle of conjuring inexhaustible wealth for millions out of nothing, of exterminating misery and vice, of developing the arts and sciences to the fullest extent,--all this is, in my opinion, no proof that ordinary men, given perhaps to squabbling with each other, and to being mutually distrustful, will achieve the like or even approximately similar results on poorer land and in the midst of the turmoil of the world's competitive struggle. My doubts upon this point will appear the more reasonable when it is remembered that in America we have witnessed hundreds upon hundreds of social experiments which have all either proved to be in a greater or less degree miserable fiascos, or at least have only assumed the proportion of isolated successful industrial enterprises. It is true that some of our efforts at revolutionising modern society have had remarkable pecuniary results; but that has been all: a new, practicable foundation of the social organisation they have not furnished, not even in germ. I wished to give expression to these doubts; and before allowing ourselves to be intoxicated by the example of Freeland, I wished to invite you to a sober consideration of the question whether that which is successful in Freeland must necessarily succeed in the rest of the world.
Thomas Johnston (Freeland): The previous speaker makes a mistake when he ascribes the success of the Freeland undertaking to exceptionally favourable conditions. That our soil is more fertile than that of most other parts of the world is, it is true, a permanent advantage, which, however, accrues to us merely in the item of cost of carriage; for, after allowing for this, the advantage of the fertility of our soil is equally shared by all of you everywhere, wherever railways and steam-vessels can be made use of. Isolation from the market of the world by broad deserts was at first an advantage; but it would now be a disadvantage if we had not made ourselves masters of those deserts. And as to the abilities of the Freeland government, I must--not out of modesty, but in the name of truth--decline the compliments paid us. We are not abler than others whom you might find by the dozen in any civilised country. Only in one point were we in advance of others, namely, in perceiving what was the true basis of human economics. But the advantage which this gave us was only a temporary one, for at present you have men in abundance in every part of the civilised world who have become as wise as we are even in this matter. The advantage we derived from being the first in this movement was that we have enjoyed for nearly a generation the happiness in which you are only now preparing to participate. Freeland's advantages are due simply to the date of its foundation, and have now lost their importance. Now that the establishment of a world-wide freedom is contemplated, there will no longer be any national advantages or disadvantages. What belongs to us belongs to you also, and what is wonderful is that we as well as you will become richer in proportion as each of us is obliged to allow all the others to share quickly, easily, and fully our own wealth. We have suffered from being compelled to enjoy our wealth alone, and we shall become richer as soon as you share that wealth; and in the same way will you become richer as others share in your wealth. For herein lies the solidarity of interest that is associated with true freedom, that every existing advantage in production--such as wealth is--can be the more fully utilised the wider the circle of those who enjoy its fruits.
That those attempts, of which the last speaker spoke, all miscarried is due to the fact that they were all based upon wrong principles. The only thing they have in common with what we have carried out in Freeland, and what you now wish to imitate, is the endeavour to find a remedy for the misery of the exploiting world; but the remedy which we seek is a different one from that which they sought, and in that--not in exceptional advantages which we may have had--lies the cause of our success and of their miscarriage.
For it was not by the aid of economic justice that they sought to attain their end; they sought deliverance from the dungeon of exploitation, whether by a way which did not lead out of it, or by a way which, though it led out of that dungeon, yet led into another and more dreadful one. In none of those American or other social experiments, from the Quaker colonies to the Icaria of Cabet, was the full and undiminished produce of labour ever assured to the worker; on the contrary, the produce belonged either to small capitalists who, while themselves taking part in the undertaking as workers, shared the produce according to the amount of capital they had invested, or it belonged to the whole as a body, who as such had a despotic right of disposal over both the labour and the produce of the labour of every individual. These reformers were, without exception, associated small capitalists or communists. They were able, if they had specially good fortune, or if they were under specially able direction, to achieve transient success; but a revolution of the current industrial system by them was not to be thought of.
(End of Second Day's Debate)
CHAPTER XXV
Third Day