A Critical Examination of Socialism

by W. H. Mallock

If, then, in any capitalistic country, such as Great Britain or America, the business of production could become socialised to-morrow, the best that could possibly happen would be the transformation of the present employers into so many state officials, who industrially would be the state itself. The only difference would be that they would have lost all personal interest in the pecuniary results of the talents which they would still be expected to exercise.[9]

Now, if such a transformation of circumstances could be suddenly effected to-morrow, without any corresponding change in the dispositions of these men themselves, there is theoretically no reason for supposing that the process of production might not continue to be as efficient as it is now, so long as this precise situation lasted. But it could not last. It would be transitory in its very nature. The present generation of industrial directors would die, and in order that the efficiency of the state as the director of labour might be maintained, other men would have to be discovered who were possessed of equal ability in the first place, and who in the second could be trusted or compelled to use it unremittingly to the utmost, in the absence of the main motive which has actuated such men hitherto.

Apart from the problems involved in these two requirements, neither the theory of production which is put forward, nor the productive system which is advocated, by the intellectual socialists of to-day, contains anything with which theoretically the most uncompromising of their opponents could quarrel. It is on these two problems that everything will be found to turn—one being the problem of how, under the conditions which socialism would introduce, the ablest men could be discovered, and invested according to their efficiency with the requisite industrial authority; the other being the problem of how, under the same conditions, it would be possible to secure from such men that full exertion of their talents, on which the material prosperity of the entire community would depend.

For socialists these two problems may be said to be practically new. So long as socialism based itself on the Marxian theory of production, the selection, and the subsequent conduct of the men who would compose the industrial state presented no appreciable difficulties. For the state would, according to this theory, be in no sense the director of the labourers; it would merely be their humble servant. It would be like an old woman who sat all day long in a barn, counting, sorting, and making up into equal shares the different products brought in to her by her sons, who worked out of her sight in a dozen different fields; or, to quote the words of one of my late socialistic correspondents, the functions of the industrial state would be "simply industrial-clerical." The industrial state would consist of clerks and shop-boys, the former of whom added up accounts, while the latter weighed, sorted, and handed out goods over a counter. If the industrial state were to be nothing more than this, the selection of an adequate personnel would doubtless present no difficulties. But as soon as the socialistic theory recognises that the industrial state, instead of being the mere receiver and dispenser of products produced by labour, would represent the intellectual forces by which every process of labour is directed, the problems of how the individuals who compose the state are to be chosen, and of how the continuous exertion of their highest faculties is to be secured, become the fundamental problems which socialists are called upon to consider.

If we assume that under the régime of socialism a nation could always secure, as the official directors of its labour, the men whose ability would enable them to direct it to the best advantage, and could force these men to exert their exceptional faculties to the utmost, the exaction of obedience to their orders from the common labouring citizens, let me say once more, would present no theoretical difficulty. But the task of securing the requisite ability itself is of a wholly different kind. Let us consider why.

Any one armed with an adequate implement of authority, whether the control of the means of subsistence or the power of inflicting punishment, can secure, within limits, from any ordinary man the punctual performance of any ordinary manual task, and the performance of it in a prescribed way; but he is able to do this for the following reasons only: So far as ordinary labour is concerned, any one man, by simply observing another, can tell with approximate accuracy what the other man can do—whether he can trundle a wheel-barrow, hit a nail on the head, file a casting, or lay brick on brick. Further, the director of labour knows the precise nature of the result which he requires in each case that the individual labourer shall accomplish. Hence he can exact from each labourer conformity to the injunctions laid on him, in respect both of the general character and the particular application of his efforts. But in respect of the faculties distinctive of those exceptional men by whom alone ordinary labour can be directed to the best advantage, both these conditions are wanting. It is impossible to tell that any man of ability possesses any exceptional faculties for directing labour at all, unless he himself chooses to show them; and, indeed, until circumstances supply him with some motive for showing them, he may very well not be aware that he possesses such faculties himself. Moreover, even if he gives the world some reason to suspect their existence, the world at large will not know what he can do with them, and will consequently be unable to impose on him any definite task. A pressgang could have forced Columbus to labour as a common seaman; but not all the population of Europe could have forced him to discover a world beyond the Atlantic; for the mass of his contemporaries, until his enterprise proved successful, obstinately refused to believe that there was such a world to discover.

The men, therefore, on the exercise of whose directive ability the productive efficiency of a modern nation depends, would occupy, with regard to any nation organised on socialistic principles, a position fundamentally different from that of the ordinary labourer. The exercise of their distinctive powers, unlike those of the labourer, could never be secured by coercion; because neither the nation at large, nor any body of representatives, could possibly know that these powers existed until the possessors of them chose to reveal the secret. They could not be made to reveal it. They could only be induced to do so; and they could only be induced to do so by a society which was so constituted as to offer for an exceptional performance some exceptional reward, just as a reward is offered for evidence against an unknown murderer. The reward at present offered them is the possession of some exceptional share of the wealth to the production of which their efforts have exceptionally contributed; and, hence, since it is the object of all socialistic schemes to render the achievement of such a reward impossible, we shall find that the ultimate problem for socialists of the modern school is how to discover another which in practice will be equally efficacious.

But though this is the ultimate problem, it is very far from being the only one which the theory of socialism in its modern form raises. Directive ability, which is a compound of many faculties, varies greatly in degree and kind. Its value, if tested by the results of its actual application to labour, would in some cases be immense, in other cases very small, and in others it would be a minus quantity. Thus, even if we suppose that the exercise of it is so far its own reward that all who believe themselves to possess it—and these are a very large number—will, for the mere pleasure of exercising it, be eager to gain the positions which will make its exercise possible, the problem would remain of how to discriminate those who would, as industrial directors, achieve the greatest successes, from those who would bring about nothing but relative or absolute failure. This problem of how, under a régime of socialism, ability could be so tested that the practical means of direction could be granted to or withheld from it, according to its actual efficiency, is the problem which we will consider first; for though of secondary importance as compared with the problem of motive, it is in more immediate connection with the details of daily business.

FOOTNOTES:

[8] The economic condition of the great mass of the population, which this "up-to-date" socialist contemplates, is precisely analogous to that of the Helots in Sparta, whose subsistence was secured independently of their specific services, whilst their services to the directing class were wrung from them by a system of iron discipline.