Boyd-Carpenter, William B., B.A., F.R.G.S. (Publicist, Address: Wynstones, Ascot, England.)
The world has always sighed after novelty. Even St. Paul found that the Athenians of old longed to hear some new thing. The craze for novelty, or an increasing curiosity are the symptoms of the decline of a philosophic outlook on life. It is the idea that a change means reform. Now reform can never be a change in the substance, but rather an application, a direct and precise application of a thought-out remedy for a particular and authentic grievance. Nor is innovation a real reform—we have to change our clothes because they are wet, but this does not mean we reform ourselves or our clothes. Woman makes an innovation in the shape of her clothes or her hats—she does not reform her clothes or her hats. But Socialists and syndicalists demand the immediate alteration of the capitalists' system of production—by which they mean, if they mean anything, such a reform as will give to them, as a political party within any State, the power of using the forces, political and capitalistic within the State on behalf of their own section of the community, unless they mean this, they cannot hope to benefit wages and employment. If they do not mean this, they are hoodwinking workingmen and merely are seeking a change, not a reform. Change is impermanent—therefore transitory change is merely the expression of want of tone in the political health of a people. But Socialism and syndicalism by seeking the benefit of the many workers at the expense of the few capitalists, is creating a form of injustice, which in their main doctrines Socialists assert they are hoping to avoid. Injustice to any section of a community is the creation of inequality again in a community. If we cannot reform with equity, let us not reform at all. As we put back the hands of the clock's progress, so we recreate inequalities. Life at best is a matter of compensation; it is the disturbance of this balance which makes for injustice and inequality.
Then again, Socialism has been tried and has always resulted in the re-erection of the capitalist system. The Revolutions of France—1789, 1832, 1848, 1871—all were to usher in the millennium. But France is capitalistic today and amongst the wealthiest nations on the earth. The German Revolution, 1848, or the Spanish Revolution—all began in high hopes of republics to be ruled by Democrats. All these countries have gone back to what the world has tried and found stands best the test of time. Nations, like individuals, are impatient and do damage in fits of temper for which many years of steady care are required to effect the repairs. The world wants more religion in active life and more ostracism of the irreligious. The fear of public disgust is the beginning of ordered honesty. The strength of a public opinion is the poor man's friend. "To complain of the age in which we live; to revile the possessors of power; to lament the past; to conceive wild hopes for the future, are the common dispositions of the vast majority of men." They are also the attributes of laziness and the form of a vulgar levity. A nation must have all classes—grumblers and saints, happy and querulous, in order to make strong men.
Garvin, Lucius Fayette Clark. (Ex-Governor of R.I.)
I am opposed to Socialism because its theory is not proved to my satisfaction. The public ownership of all artificial instruments of production, means that no interest upon capital should go to individuals. This means that the person who builds a boat to let should not own it, and that the payment made by a borrower for its use should not go to the builder, but into the public treasury.
Socialism asserts that if one person catches fifteen fish, another ten, and third but five, they are not each entitled to the proceeds of the sale of his fish. This is in violation of the natural law that the value produced is the just reward of labor.
Land values, being earned by the community, belong to the community; and economic rent should be taken by the community (in lieu of taxation) for public purposes.
The Socialist does not distinguish between the artificial and the natural instruments of production—two things wholly different in kind. He confuses the just return to capital with the unjust return to monopoly.