Freeland: A Social Anticipation

by Theodor Hertzka

We have seen that exploitation transformed the earlier struggle, that aimed at annihilating the competitor, into one directed towards his subjugation. But now, when the productiveness of labour is so great that the consumption, kept down by exploitation, is no longer able to follow it, the suppression, the--if not the physical, yet the industrial--annihilation of the competitor is once more a necessary condition of everyone's prosperity, and the struggle for existence assumes at once the forms of subjugation and annihilation. In the domain of industry it now profits little to have arbitrary authority over any number of human subjects of exploitation; if the exploiter is not able to drive his co-exploiter from the market, he must succumb in the struggle for existence. And the exploited now have not merely to defend themselves from the harsh treatment of their masters: they must, if they would ward off hunger, fight with tooth and claw for the only too few places at the food-crib in the 'labour market.' Is it conceivable that such a terrible alteration in the fundamental conditions of the struggle for existence can remain without influence upon human ethics? Cause and effect must correspond--the ethics of the cannibal epoch must triumphantly return. In consequence of the altered character of the conflict of annihilation, the former cruel and malicious instincts will undergo a modification, but the fundamental sentiment, the unqualified animosity against one's fellow-man, must return. During the thousands of years when the struggle was directed towards the making use of one's neighbour, and especially when the exploited had become accustomed to reverence in the exploiter a higher being, there was possible between master and servant at least that degree of attachment which exists between a man and his beast. Neither masters nor servants had any necessary occasion to hate each other. Mutual consideration, magnanimity, kindness, gratitude, could in such a condition become--certainly very sparingly--substitutes for philanthropy. But now, when exploitation and suppression are at one and the same time the watchwords of the struggle, the above-mentioned virtues must more and more assume the character of obstacles to a successful struggle for existence, and must consequently disappear in order to make room for mercilessness, cunning, cruelty, malice. And all these disgraceful characteristics must not merely become universally prevalent: they must also become universally esteemed, and be raised from the category of the most shameful kinds of baseness to that of 'virtues.' As little as it is possible to conceive of a 'humane' cannibal or of an exploiter under the influence of real philanthropy, so little is it possible to think of a magnanimous and--in the former sense--virtuous exploiter permanently under the colossal burden of over-production; and as certainly as the cannibal society was compelled to recognise the thirst for murder as the most praiseworthy of all virtues, so certainly must the exploiting society, cursed by over-production, learn to reverence the most cunning deceiver as its ideal of virtue. But it will be objected that, logically unassailable as this position may be, it is contradicted by facts. Over-production, the disproportion between the productivity of labour and the capacity for consumption as conditioned by the existing social institutions, has practically existed for generations; and yet it would be a gross exaggeration to assert that the moral sensibilities of civilised humanity had undergone such a terrible degeneration as is indicated above. It is certainly true that, in consequence of the increasingly reckless industrial competitive struggle, many kinds of valueless articles are produced in larger and larger quantities--nay, that there is beginning to prevail a certain confusion in public opinion, which is no longer able clearly to distinguish between honest services and successful roguery; but it is equally true, on the other hand, that never before was humanity in all its forms so highly esteemed and so widely diffused as it is in the present. These undeniable facts, however, do not show that over-production can ultimately lead to any other than the above-indicated results--which would be logical nonsense; they only show, on the one hand, that this dreadful morbid phenomenon in the industrial domain of mankind has not yet been long enough in existence to have fully matured its fruit, and that, on the other hand, the moral instinct of mankind felt a presentiment of the right way out of the economic dilemma long before that right way had become practicable. It is only a few generations since the disproportion between productivity and consumption became unmistakably evident: and what are a few generations in the life of mankind? The ethics of exploitation needed many centuries in order to subvert that of cannibalism: why should the relapse into the ethics of cannibalism proceed so much more rapidly? But the instinctive presentiment that growing civilisation will be connected, not with social stagnation and moral retrogression, but with both social and moral progress--this yearning for liberty, equality, and fraternity ineradicably implanted in the Western mind, despite all the follies and the horrors to which it for a time gave rise--it was just this 'drop of foreign blood in the European family of nations,' this Semitic-Christian leaven, which, when the time of servitude was past, preserved that Western mind from falling even temporarily into a servile and barbarous decay. Things will not follow the last indicated course of evolution--exploitation will not persist alongside of increased productivity; and that is the reason why the indicated moral consequences will not ensue. If, however, it be assumed that material progress and exploitation combined are the future lot of mankind, this cannot logically be conceived otherwise than as accompanied by a complete moral relapse. Yet a third form of evolution may be assumed as conceivable: in the antagonism between the productivity of labour and the current social rights, the former--the new form of labour--might succumb; in the face of the impossibility of making full use of the acquired industrial capacity, mankind might lose this capacity again. In such a case, the concord between productivity and consumption, labour and right, would have recovered the old basis, and as a consequence the ethics of mankind might also remain in the same track. Progress towards genuine philanthropy would necessarily be suspended, for the struggle for existence would, as before, be based upon the subjugation of one's fellow-men, but the necessity for the struggle of annihilation would be avoided. The presentiment of the possibility of such a development was not foreign to the Western mind; there have not been wanting, particularly during the last generations, attempts, partly conscious and partly unconscious, to load men's minds in this direction. Alarmed and driven nearly to distraction by the strangling embrace of over-production, whole nations have at times attacked the fundamental sources of production, sought to choke the springs of the fruitfulness of labour, and persecuted with violent hatred the progress of civilisation, whose fruits were for the time so bitter. These attacks upon popular culture, upon the different kinds of division of labour, upon machinery, cannot be understood except in connection with the occasional attempts to end the discord between production and distribution by diminishing the former. It is impossible not to see that in this way morality also would be preserved from a degeneracy the real cause of which this sort of reformers certainly did not understand, but which hovered before their mind's eye as an indistinct presentiment. And now, having noticed seriatim the three conceivable forms of evolution--namely, (1) the adaptation of social rights to the new and higher forms of labour and the corresponding evolution of a new and higher morality; (2) the permanent antagonism between the form of labour and social rights, and the corresponding degeneracy of morality; (3) the adaptation of the form of labour to the hitherto existing social rights by the sacrifice of the higher productivity, and the corresponding permanence of the hitherto existing morality--we now ask ourselves whether in the struggle between these three tendencies any but the first can come off as conqueror. They all three are conceivable; but is it conceivable that material or moral decay can assert itself by the side of both moral and material progress, or will ultimately triumph over these? It is possible, we will say even probable, that but for our successful undertaking begun twenty-five years ago, mankind would for the most part still longer have continued to traverse the path of moral degeneracy on the one hand, and of antagonism to progress on the other; yet there would never therefore have been altogether wanting attempts in the direction of social deliverance, and the ultimate triumph of such attempts could be only a question of time. No; mankind owes us nothing which it would not have obtained without us: if we claim to have rendered any service, it is merely that of having brought about more speedily, and perhaps with less bloodshed, that which must have come. [Vehement and long-continued applause and enthusiastic cheers from all sides. The leaders of the opposition one after another shook the hands of the speaker and assured him of their support.]

(End of Third Day's Debate)

CHAPTER XXVI

Fourth Day

The President (Dr. Strahl): We have reached the third point in the agenda: Are not want and misery necessary conditions of existence; and would not over-population inevitably ensue were misery for a time to disappear from the earth? I call upon Mr. Robert Murchison.

Robert Murchison (Right): I must first of all, in the name of myself and of those of my colleagues who entertained doubts of the practicability of the work of social reform, formally declare that we are now thoroughly convinced, not only of the practicability, but also of the inevitable accomplishment of that reform. Moreover, what has already been advanced has matured our hope that the other side will succeed in removing as completely the doubts that still cling to our minds. In the meantime I hold it to be my duty, in the interest of all, to seek explanations by strongly stating the grounds of such doubts as I am not yet able to free myself from. By far the most important of these doubts, one which has not yet been touched upon, is the subject now before us for discussion. It refers not to the practicability, but to the durability of the work of universal freedom and prosperity. Economic justice must and will become an accomplished fact: that we know. But have we a right to infer that it will permanently assert itself? Economic justice will be followed by wealth for all living. Want and misery, with their retinue of destructive vices, will disappear from the surface of the earth. But together with these will disappear those restraints which have hitherto kept in check the numerical growth of the human race. The population will increase more and more, until at last--though that day may be far off--the earth will not be able to support its inhabitants. I will not trouble you with a detailed repetition and justification of the well-known principle of my renowned countryman, Malthus. Much has been urged against that principle, but hitherto nothing of a convincing character. That the increase in a geometric ratio of the number of living individuals has no other natural check than that of a deficiency of food is a natural law to which not merely man but every living being is inexorably subject. Just as herrings, if they could freely multiply, would ultimately fill the whole of the ocean, so would man, if the increase of his numbers were not checked by the lack of food, inevitably leave no space unoccupied upon the surface of the globe. This cruel truth is confirmed by the experience of all ages and of all nations; everywhere we see that it is lack of food, want with its consequences, that keeps the number of the living within certain limits; and it will remain so in all future times. Economic justice can very largely extend the area included in these sad limits, but can never altogether abolish the limits. Under its régime the food-supply can be increased tenfold, a hundredfold, but it cannot be increased indefinitely. And when the inevitable limit is reached, what then? Wealth will then gradually give place to privation and ultimately to extreme want; a want that is the more dreadful and hopeless because there will be no escape from its all-embracing curse--not even that partial escape which exploitation had formerly offered to a few. Will, then, mankind, after having passed from cannibalism to exploitation and from that to economic justice, revert to exploitation, perhaps even to cannibalism? Who can say? It seems evident that economic justice is not a phase of evolution which our race could enjoy for any great length of time. It is true that Malthus and others after him have proposed to substitute for the repressive law of misery certain preventives of over-population. But these preventives are all based upon artificial and systematic suppression of the increase of population. If they could be effectively employed at all, such an employment of them is conceivable only in a poor population groaning under the worst consequences of misery; I cannot imagine that men enjoying abundance and leisure, and in possession of the most perfect freedom, will subject themselves to sexual privations. In my opinion, this kind of prevention could not under the most favourable circumstances, come into play in a free society until the pressure of over-population had become very great, and the former prosperity, and with that perhaps the sense of individual liberty also, had been materially diminished. This is not a pleasant prospect, quite apart from the moral repulsiveness of all such violent interference with the relations of the sexes--relations which would be specially delicate under the régime of economic justice. The perspective shows us in the background a picture which contrasts sadly with the luxuriant promise of the beginning. Do the men of Freeland think that they are able to defend their creation from these dangers?

Franzisko Espero (Left): Man differs from other living beings in having to prepare food for himself, and, in fact, in being able, with increasing civilisation, to prepare it the more easily the denser the population becomes. Carey, an eminent American economist, has pointed this out, and has thereby shown that the otherwise indisputably operative natural law, according to which a species has an inevitable tendency to outgrow its means of sustenance, does not apply to man. The fact that want and misery have, notwithstanding, hitherto always operated as checks upon the growth of the population is not the result of a natural law but of exploitation. The earth would have produced enough for all if everyone had but been able to make free use of his powers. But, as we have seen, exploitation is an institution of men, not of nature. Get rid of that, and you have driven away the spectre of hunger for ever.

Stefan Való (Freeland): I think it will be well at once to state what is the Freeland attitude towards the subject now under discussion. The honourable member from Brazil (Espero) is correct in connecting the actual misery of mankind--in the epoch of exploitation--with human institutions instead of with the operation of natural forces. The masses suffered want because they were kept in servitude, not because the earth was incapable of yielding more copious supplies. I will add that this actual misery never prevented the masses from multiplying up to the point at which the further increase of population was checked by other factors--nay, that as a rule misery acted as a stimulus to the increase of the population. Our friend from Brazil is in error, however, when, relying upon the empty rhetoric of Carey, he denies that the growth of the population, if it could go on indefinitely, would necessarily at last lead to a lack of food. The first of the speakers of to-day has rightly remarked that in such a case the time must come when there would no longer be space enough on the earth for the men who were born. But can we conceive the condition possible in which our race should cover the surface of the earth like a plague of locusts? Nay, a really unlimited and continuous increase in the number of human beings would not merely ultimately cover the whole surface of the earth, but would exhaust the material necessary for the crowded masses of human bodies. The growth of the population must, therefore, have some limit, and so far are Malthus and his followers correct. Whether this limit is to be found exactly in the supply of food is another question--a question which cannot be satisfactorily answered in the affirmative until it has been positively shown, or at any rate rendered plausible, that other factors do not come into play long before a lack of food is felt--factors whose operation is such that the limit of necessary food-supply is never, except in very rare cases, even approximately reached, to say nothing of its being crossed.

Arthur French (Right): What I have just heard fills me with astonishment. The member of the Freeland government admits--what certainly cannot reasonably be denied--that unlimited growth of population is an impossibility; and yet he denies that a lack of food is the sought-for check of over-population. It may be at once admitted that Malthus was in error in supposing that this natural check had already been operative in human society. Men have suffered hunger because they were prevented from supplying themselves with food, not because the earth was incapable of copiously--or, at least, more copiously--nourishing them all. Exploitation has therefore proved to be a check upon over-population operating before the limit of necessary food has been reached; it has been a kind of hunger-cure which man has applied to himself before nature had condemned him to suffer hunger. I am less able to understand what the speaker means when he says the misery artificially produced by exploitation has sometimes proved to be, not a check, but rather a stimulus to the growth of population. But I should particularly like to hear more about those other factors which are alleged to have acted as effective checks, and which the speaker evidently anticipates will in future regulate the growth of the population. These factors are to produce the wonderful effect of preventing the population from ever getting even approximately near to the limit of the necessary food-supply. They cannot be artificial and arbitrarily applied means, otherwise a member of the Freeland government, of this commonwealth based upon absolute freedom, would not speak of them so confidently. But apart from all this, how can there be any doubt of the operation of such an elementary factor of restriction as the lack of food in human society, whilst it is to be seen so conspicuously throughout the whole of organic nature? Is man alone among living beings exempt from the operation of this law of nature; or do the Freelanders perhaps know of some means that would compel, say, the herrings so to control their number as not to approach the limit of their food-supplies, or, rather, induce them to preserve such a reasonable rate of increase as would be most conducive to the prosperous continuance of their species?

This cutting apostrophe produced a great sensation. The tension of expectancy was still further increased when several members of the Freeland government--including Stefan Való, who had already spoken--urgently begged the President to take part in the debate. The whole assembly seemed conscious that the discussion--not merely the special one of the day, but the general discussion of the congress--had reached its decisive point. If the advocates of economic justice were able successfully to meet the objections now urged by their opponents, and to show that those objections were groundless, then the great argumentative battle was won. What would follow would not concern the question whether, but merely the question how, the new social order could be well and lastingly established. But if the Freeland evidence failed upon this point--if the structure of Opposition argumentation could not in this case be blown down like a house of cards--then all the previous successes of the advocates of economic justice would count for nothing. To remove the misery of the present merely to prepare the way for a more hopeless misery in the future, was not that which had aroused men's enthusiasm. If there remained only a shadow of such a danger, the death-knell of economic justice had been sounded.