Freeland: A Social Anticipation

by Theodor Hertzka

(Debate on Point 2 of the Agenda, continued)

Johann Storm (Right): I think that the lack of any analogy between the frequent attempts to save society undertaken by small capitalists or communists and the institutions of Freeland has been made sufficiently clear. I think also that we are convinced that the exceptional external advantages, which may have at any rate favoured and assisted the success of Freeland, are not of a kind to suggest a fear that our proposed work will fail for the want of such advantages. But we do not yet know whether the success of social reform is exposed to danger from any conditions inherent in human nature, and therefore universally to be met with. We have, in our discussion upon the first point of the agenda, established the fact that, thanks to the control which has been acquired over the forces of nature, exploitation has become an obstacle to civilisation, and its removal a necessity of civilisation. But severe criticism cannot be satisfied with this. For is everything which is necessary to the progress of civilisation consequently also possible? What if economic justice, though an extraordinary vehicle of civilisation, were for some reason unfortunately impracticable? What if that marvellous prosperity, which astonishes us so much in Freeland, were only a transient phenomenon, and carried in itself the germ of decay, despite, nay, because of, its fabulous magnitude? In a word, what if mankind could not permanently, and as a whole, participate in that progress the necessary condition of which is economic justice?

The evidence to the contrary, already advanced, culminates in the proposition that the exploitation of man by man was necessary only so long as the produce of human labour did not suffice to provide abundance and leisure for all. But what if other influences made exploitation and servitude necessary, influences the operation of which could not be stayed by the increased productiveness of labour, perhaps could never be stayed? The most powerful hindrance to the permanent establishment of a condition of economic justice, with its consequences of happiness and wealth, is recognised by the anxious student of the future in the danger of over-population. But as this is a special point in the agenda, I, like my colleagues who have already spoken, will postpone what occurs to my mind upon the subject. There are, however, other and not less important difficulties. Can a society, which lacks the stimulus of self-interest, permanently exist and make progress, and succeed in making public spirit and rational enlightenment take the place thoroughly, and with equal effectiveness, of self-interest? Does not the same apply to private property? Self-interest and private property are not altogether set aside by the institutions of Freeland. I readily admit this, but they are materially restricted. Even under the rule of economic justice the individual is himself responsible for the greater or less degree of his prosperity--the connection between what he himself does and what he gets is not altogether dissolved; but as the commonwealth unconditionally protects every man in all cases against want, therefore against the ultimate consequences of his own mistakes or omissions, the stimulating influence of self-responsibility is very materially diminished. Just so we see private property abolished, though not entirely, yet in its most important elements. The earth and all the natural forces inherent in it are declared ownerless; the means of production are common property; will that, can that, remain so everywhere, and for all time, without disastrous consequences? Will public spirit permanently fill the office of that affectionate far-seeking care which the owner bestows upon the property for which he alone is responsible? Will not the gladsome absence of care, which has certainly hitherto been brilliantly conspicuous in Freeland, eventually degenerate into frivolity and neglect of that for which no one in particular is responsible? The fact that this has not yet happened may perhaps be due--for it is not yet a generation since this commonwealth was founded--to the dominant enthusiasm that marked the beginning. New brooms, it is said, sweep clean. The Freelander sees the eyes of the whole world fixed upon him and his doings; he feels that he is still the pioneer of new institutions; he is proud of those institutions, every worker here to the last man holds himself responsible for the way and manner in which he fulfils the apostolate of universal freedom to which he is called. Will this continue permanently: in particular, will the whole human race feel and act thus? I doubt it; at least, I am not fully convinced that it must necessarily be so. And what if it is not so? What if, we will not say all, but many nations show themselves to be unable to dispense with the stimulus of want-inspired self-interest, the lure of unconditioned private property, without sinking into mental stagnation and physical indolence? These are questions to which we now require answers.

Richard Held (Centre): The previous speaker finds that self-interest and private property are such powerful spurs to activity that, without their full and unrestricted influence, permanent human progress is scarcely conceivable, and that it is extremely uncertain whether public spirit would be an effective substitute for them. I go much farther. I assert that without these two means of activity no commonwealth can be expected to thrive, unless human nature is radically changed, or labour ceases to require effort. Every attempt in the domain of economics to substitute public spirit or any other ethical motive for self-interest must immediately, and not merely in its ultimate issue, prove an ignominious fiasco. I think it quite unnecessary to give special proof of this; but for the very reason that self-interest and its correlative, private property, are the best incitements to labour, and can be effectively replaced by no surrogate--for this very reason, I contend, are the institutions of economic justice immensely superior in this respect to those of the exploiting system of industry. For they alone really give full play to self-interest and the right of private ownership: the exploiting system only falsely pretends to do this.

For servitude is, in truth, the negation of self-interest. Self-interest assumes that the worker serves his 'own' interest by the trouble he takes; does this apply to the régime of exploitation: does the servant work for his own profit? With reference to the question of self-interest, anyone who would show that economic justice was less advantageous than servitude would have to assert that labour was the most productive and profitable when the worker produced, not for his own, but for some one else's profit. But it will perhaps be objected that the employer produces for his own profit. Right. But, apart from the fact that this, strictly speaking, has nothing to do with the stimulating effect of self-interest upon labour--for here it is not the profit of his own but of some one else's labour that comes in question--it is clear that a system which secures to only a minority the profit of work must be infinitely less influential than the one we are now considering, which secures the profit to every worker. In reality the exploiting world, with very few exceptions, knows only men who labour without getting the profit themselves, and men who do not labour themselves yet get profit from labour; in the exploiting world to labour for one's own profit is quite an accidental occurrence. With what right, then, does exploitation dare to plume itself upon making use of self-interest as a motive to labour? Some one else's interest is the right description of the motive to labour that comes into play under exploitation; and that this should prove itself to be more effective than the self-interest which economic justice has to introduce into the modern world as a novelty it would be somewhat difficult to demonstrate.

It is nearly the same with private property. What boundless presumption it is to claim for a system which robs ninety-nine per cent. of mankind of all and every certainty of possessing property, and leaves to them nothing that they can call their own but the air they breathe--what presumption it is to claim for such a system that it makes use of private property as a stimulus to human activity, and to urge this claim as against another system which converts all men without exception into owners of property, and in fact secures to them unconditionally, and without diminution, all that they are able in any way to produce! Or does, perhaps, the superiority of the 'private property' of the exploiting system lie in the fact that it extends to things which the owner has not himself produced? Unquestionably the adherents of the old system have no clear conception of what is mine and what is thine. What properly belongs to me? 'Everything you can take from anyone, 'would be their only answer, if they were but to speak honestly. Because this appropriation of the property of others has, in the course of thousands of years, been formulated into certain established rules, consecrated by cruel necessity, the adherents of the old system have completely lost the natural conception of private property, the conception which is inherent in the nature of things. It passes their comprehension that, though force can possess and make use of whom it pleases, yet the free and untrammelled use of one's own powers is the inalienable property of everyone, and that consequently any political or social system which overrides this inalienable personal right of every man is based, not upon property, but upon robbery. This robbery may be necessary, nay, useful--we have seen that for thousands of years it actually was useful--but 'property' it never will be, and whoever thinks it is has forgotten what property is.

After what has been said, it seems to me scarcely necessary to spend many words in dispelling the fear that frivolity or carelessness in the treatment of the means of production will result from a modified form of property. As to frivolity, it will suffice to ask whether hopeless misery has proved itself to be such a superior stimulus to economic prudence as to make it dangerous to supersede it by a personal responsibility which, though it lacks the spur of misery, is of a thoroughly comprehensive character. And as to the fear lest carelessness in the treatment of the means of production should prevail, this fear could have been justified only if in the former system the workers were owners of the means of production. Private property in these will, it is true, not be given to them by the new system, but instead of it the undiminished enjoyment of the produce of those means; and he whose admiration of the beauties of the existing system does not go so far as to consider the master's rod a more effective stimulus to foresight than the profit of the workers may rest satisfied that even in this respect things will be better and not worse.

Charles Phud (Right): I do not at all understand how the previous speaker can dispute the fact that in the former system self-interest is that which conditions the quantity of work. No one denies that the workers must give up a part of the profit of their labour; but another part remains theirs, hence they labour for their own profit, though not exclusively so. At any rate they must labour if they do not wish to starve, and one would think that this stimulus is the most effectual one possible. So much as to the denial that self-interest is the moving spring of so-called exploited labour. As to the attack upon the conception of property advanced by those of us who defend, not exactly the existing evil condition of things, but a rational and consistent reform of it, I would with all modesty venture to remark that our sense of justice was satisfied because no one compelled the worker to share with the employer. He made a contract as a free man with the employer.... [General laughter.] You may laugh, but it is so. In countries that are politically free nothing prevents the worker from labouring on his own account alone; it is, therefore, at any rate incorrect to call the portion which he surrenders to the employer robbery.

Béla Székely (Centre): It seems to me to be merely a dispute about a word which the previous speaker has attempted to settle. He calls wages a part of the profit of production. It may be that here and there the workers really receive a part of the profit as wages, or as an addition to the wages. With us, and, if I am rightly informed, in the country of the speaker also, this was not generally customary. We rather paid the workers, who were quite unconcerned about the profits of their work, an amount sufficient to maintain them; profits--and losses when there were any--fell exclusively to the lot of the production, the employers. He could have said with nearly as much justice that his oxen or his horses participated in the profits of production. When I say 'nearly,' I mean that this could as a rule be said more justly of oxen and horses, for, while those useful creatures are for the most part better fed when their labour has enriched their master, this happens very rarely in the case of our two-logged rational beasts of labour.

Then the previous speaker made hunger absolutely identical with self-interest. The masses must labour or starve. Certainly. But the slave must labour or be whipped: thus this strange logic would make it appear that the slave is also stimulated to labour by self-interest. Or will the arguer fall back upon the assertion that self-interest refers merely to the acquisition of material goods? That would be false; self-interest does not after all either more or less prompt men to avoid the whip than to appease hunger. But I will not argue about such trifles: we will drop the rod and the whip as symbols of activity stimulated by self-interest. But how does it stand with those slave-holders who--probably in the interest of the 'freedom of labour'--do not whip their lazy slaves, but allow them to starve? Is it not evident that the previous speaker would, under their régime, set self-interest upon the throne as the inciter to work? That hunger is a very effectual means of compulsion, a more effectual one than the whip, no one will deny; hence it has everywhere superseded the latter, and very much to the advantage of the employer. But self-interest? The very word itself implies that the profit of the labour is the worker's own. So much as to hunger.