Now under normal conditions the belief that exceptional wealth is procurable by them is confined to men with exceptionally vivid imaginations and with certain exceptional talents and energies that correspond to them. They crave for wealth, in fact, because they believe themselves capable of creating it, and their craving keeps pace with their belief in the range of their capabilities. The more wealth they can create, the more they desire to create. Their desire for wealth, in fact, unlike their desire for necessaries, is proportionate not to their natural wants, but to the extent of their natural powers. It follows what may be called the law of expanding desire. Here, then, is the explanation of the fact which is at first sight so paradoxical—that whilst the desire of wealth is the strongest of all motives amongst a minority, the absence of wealth is not felt as any privation by the majority; and so long as the normal conditions that have just been indicated prevail, and the men who {366} can really produce exceptional wealth are the only men who believe it to be a thing attainable by them, and are consequently the only men who feel any actual craving for it, all goes well and healthily, and the desire of all classes may be at least approximately satisfied. Unfortunately, however, the belief that wealth is attainable, though it is naturally confined to men who have exceptional powers of creating it, is capable of being implanted under certain circumstances artificially in men who possess no exceptional powers at all.
A familiar case like the following will show how this is effected. A man, we will say, occupies an ornamental cottage, which is beautiful in itself, is embowered in beautiful gardens, and also commands views of a picturesque and magnificent park, into the glades of which one of the gates of his garden opens, and which the owner allows him to use precisely as if it were his own. All his friends tell him, and tell him truly, that there is no such place of its size within fifty miles of London. They envy him his dainty drawing-room, his verandah festooned with roses, his prospect of the timbered park, and his free access to its solitudes. His friends envy him, and he feels himself that he is enviable. One morning, however, he receives a lawyer’s letter, which gives him to understand that he is really the legal owner, not of his cottage only, but of the park and property adjoining, and that with adequate legal assistance he could certainly substantiate his claim to them. In an instant his whole {367} temper of mind with regard to his surroundings is changed. His pride in his cottage is gone, and its place is taken by indignation at having been kept out of possession of the park, and by a feverish craving to acquire it. He goes to law. The case is long and difficult. He lives for months distracted by fear and hope; and when the case is finally given against him, he comes back to his cottage with his mind unhinged by the shock, contemptuous of the dwelling which once was a source of pride to him, and cursing the prospects which once were his daily pleasure.
Now this craving for wealth, by which the man’s life is blighted, has been produced, precisely as such a craving normally is, by the belief on his part that certain wealth is attainable; but the belief here does not rest on a consciousness that he is able by his own abilities to create or earn it for himself; it rests on his intellectual assent to a delusive proposition that he has a legal right to it, or, in other words, that the law will make him the possessor of it without any exceptional productive effort of his own. And here we have a counterpart to the socialistic teaching of to-day. It excites, or aims at exciting, an artificial craving for wealth in men who would not naturally trouble their heads about it, by teaching them that they have a right to it, which is wholly independent of any exceptional productive power in themselves, or in any ancestors from whom they might claim to inherit. The only difference between men who are thus deluded, and {368} the claimant to the park and estate whose case we have been just imagining, is that whilst the latter is deceived into expecting that he individually can be made rich by a law-suit, the latter are deceived into expecting that they all can be made rich by legislation.
The desire for wealth, as something distinct from competence, is a desire which normally affects men only in proportion as they believe themselves to be possessed of power by which they may individually earn it; and so long as men recognise the truth that, apart from rare chances, the powers that earn wealth are the exceptional powers that create it, the craving for wealth which makes the non-possession of it a pain is confined to a minority composed of exceptionally constituted individuals. The absence of wealth amongst the majority causes unhappiness only when false theories with regard to its attainability and men’s natural rights to it have produced in the average man an artificial and diseased sensitiveness. There is no surer means of exaggerating inequalities in happiness than the false and pestilent teachings which encourage equality of expectations.
And not only do these teachings, so far as they have any effect at all, create private unhappiness and multiply private disappointments, but they give rise amongst masses of men to an impracticable temper, which is the source of many of the difficulties confronting us in the domain of politics, and most of those confronting us in the domain of industry. {369} The crude and childish philosophy which socialists and so-called labour-leaders endeavour to diffuse amongst the great masses of the population rests, so far as the masses of the population understand it, on the theory that society is composed of “approximately equal units,” and that whatever is produced within a community is produced by that community as a whole. Hence the members argue, and the socialists distinctly tell them, that property and capital are merely accidental possessions, which give to those who possess them a purely adventitious power. These teachers add that such possessions, in abstract justice, should be taken from their present possessors and divided amongst the community at large; and from this it follows that all claims to the profits of capital, as put forward by its present possessors, are, in an abstract sense, unjust. The consequence is that the employed, when stimulated into conflict with the employers, enter on the conflict in a temper which forbids them to be satisfied with any immediate result of it, however favourable to themselves. Whatever advance in wages, or reduction in hours, the employers may have conceded, the employed—so far as they are influenced by the socialistic fallacies of the day—consider themselves still wronged almost as much as ever, so long as the employers continue to exist at all; and thus any cordial understanding between the two classes is made impossible. When the employed strike or agitate for higher wages, they may be compared to a man who maintains that his tailor’s bill is {370} exorbitant, and desires to have a certain portion of the total deducted. Now if the tailor is reasonable and agrees to take off something, the matter may be easily adjusted to the satisfaction of both parties; for though the customer may think that the tailor has claimed too much, he admits that to a certain sum the tailor has an undoubted right. But if the customer were a madman, who believed when he ordered his clothes that in abstract justice he ought to be charged nothing for them, and that any claim on the tailor’s part was in reality robbery and oppression, whatever deduction the tailor might consent to make, the customer’s grievance against him would remain the same as ever. It is possible for customers and tradesmen to come to some satisfactory understanding, so long as the demand of the former is that their bills shall not be too high. No satisfactory understanding could be arrived at between them possibly—there would be nothing but friction, constant dunning, and writs—were it known that the customers entertained and meant to act on the theory that they ought not, in abstract justice, to pay their bills at all. Now such is the labour-leaders’ theory with regard to the employing classes. For a time some part of their bills must unfortunately be paid—that is, some part of their profits be allowed them. But to these profits they have no real right, and the employed must never be contented until they have absorbed the whole of them. So long as such a theory prevails, no satisfactory progress in the condition of labour is possible, {371} partly because the employed, whatever advantages they may gain, will be no nearer to content than they were before, partly because the employers are constantly forced into a position of unwilling antagonism to men whom they would wish to befriend.
The object of this present work, so far as the question of wealth and its distribution is concerned, has been to show how absolutely false to fact are the theories to which this impracticable discontent is due, and how intellectually ludicrous is the position of the school of thinkers who imagine that such theories represent accurate science. These thinkers, in their dealings with property and capital, in spite of the esoteric admissions of a certain number of them to the contrary, touch the truth in their more popular utterances, only by the process of inverting it, or of putting the cart before the horse. They represent the employing classes as possessing exceptional strength merely because they are accidentally the possessors of capital. The actual truth is that these classes are possessors of capital because they themselves or their fathers have possessed exceptional strength. The arrows of Ulysses were more formidable than those of the suitors because Ulysses shot with a stronger bow than they; but he shot with a stronger bow for the very simple reason that he was strong enough to bend it and they were not. The employing classes contribute to the processes of production not less than the employed; in certain senses they contribute incalculably more, {372} and in every sense they contribute as truly; and they contribute not primarily because they possess capital, but because as a class they possess exceptional faculties, of which the capital possessed by them is at once the creation and the instrument. In other words, the inequalities which socialists regard as accidental are the natural result of the inequalities of human nature, and constitute also the sole social conditions under which men’s unequal faculties can co-operate towards a common end.
Socialists contend that the source of all power is in the multitude. It is impossible to imagine a greater or more abject error. The multitude, or the mass of average men—the men undistinguished by any exceptional faculties—are the source of certain powers, or rather they possess certain powers. That is true; but what may these powers be? Their most striking characteristic is their limitation. In the domain of industry the many, if left to themselves, could produce only a very small amount, which would have, moreover, no appreciable tendency to increase. In the domain of government they could initiate the simplest movements only, and carry out only the simplest measures. The powers which they actually possess under existing circumstances are as much greater than these as the man is greater than the child; but these added powers acquired by the average men, or by the many, do not depend upon average men alone. They are developed only with the development of another set of powers altogether—the powers belonging to the exceptional men or to {373} the few; and if these latter powers were impaired, the former would be impaired also. In the domain of production and the domain of government alike, not all, but nearly all, the powers of a democracy presuppose the powers of a de facto aristocracy, and although they modify them, they depend upon them. Here are the two factors or forces which we can never get rid of unless we get rid of civilisation altogether—the force represented by the mass of ordinary men, and the force represented by those who in various ways are more than ordinary. Let us destroy society a hundred times over, and attempt to reconstruct it in what way we will, these two forces will inevitably reassert themselves, and reveal their existence in the form which society takes, as surely as a man’s figure will give its shape to whatever kind of cloak we hang on it. These two forces at the present time attract our attention principally by their activity in the domain of industry, where they show themselves under the forms of employer and employed. In order that any satisfactory solution of our industrial difficulties may be arrived at it is necessary that employers and employed alike should each recognise the importance of the part played by the other, the nature and extent of the other’s strength, and the permanent need each has of the other’s strenuous co-operation. It is hardly to be expected that between these two, serious disputes and difficulties will ever completely cease. In the interest of social progress it is not necessary that they should. What is necessary is that {374} whatever disputes between these two parties may arise, and however unreasonable or excessive on any given occasion the claims of the few may seem to the many, or the claims of the many to the few, neither party shall regard the other as its opponent, excepting with reference to the particular points at issue; that the few shall not deal with the many as though the many, in asserting themselves, were rebels, nor the many attack the few, as though the powers of the few were usurpations. What is necessary is that each should recognise its own position and its own functions, and the position and the functions of the other, as being, in a general sense, all equally unalterable, and although admitting of indefinitely improved adjustment, not admitting of any fundamental change.
And what is true of the social forces that are involved in the production of wealth, is true of those that are involved in political government. In political government, just as in the production of wealth, the power of the few has a root in the nature of things as indestructible as has that of the many; and though the few can produce progress only when the many can co-operate with them, it is not from the many that their power is primarily derived. In the domain of speculative knowledge this is self-evident. The ordinary brains are pensioners of the few brains that are superior to them; and yet the superior brains are powerless to produce social results, except in so far as the ordinary brains respond to what their superiors {375} teach them. So it is in economic production, so it is in political government. The power of democracy is not only an actual power; it is a power from which no society can ever wholly escape; but never—not even when nominally it reaches its extreme development—is it, or can it be, or does it ever tend to be, a power which is self-existent. It always implies and rests upon the corresponding power of the few, as one half of an arch implies and rests upon the other. The whole object of the democratic formulas popular to-day is to deny or to obscure this fundamental truth; and no greater obstacle to general progress exists than the prevalence of the spirit which the acceptance of these formulas engenders. If there is anything sacred in the rights of the poorest wage-earners, there is something equally sacred in those of the greatest millionaires; and if the latter are capable of abusing their power, so also are the former; but nothing will tend to prevent their abuse of it so much as the recognition that such an abuse on either side is possible. If there is any wisdom and power in the cumulative opinions of ordinary men, there is another kind of wisdom and another kind of power in the ideas, the insight, the imagination, and strength of will which belong to exceptional men; and these last, though they may give effect to what the many wish, do so only because they represent what the many do not possess. What is required to bring our political philosophy—and not only our political philosophy but our political temper—into correspondence with facts is not to {376} deny the power that has been claimed during this century for the many, but to recognise that this power does not stand alone, and that those other powers represented by the wealthy few are not only essential to the wealth of the few themselves, but also to the prosperity, and most emphatically to the progress, of all.
The progress of all, instead of being incompatible with the fact that the positions of all have no tendency to become equal, assumes, on the contrary, a more and more practicable aspect in proportion to the accuracy with which this fact is recognised; and that such is the case shall, in conclusion, be briefly shown by reference to the theory of progress which at present deceives the socialists. This theory, which was formulated by Karl Marx, bases itself on the fact, which is indubitable, that the industrial systems of the civilised races of the world have undergone great changes in the past, and may therefore be expected to undergo changes as great in the future. The three most marked stages in the sequence of change referred to are slavery, feudalism, and capitalism; and the practical conclusion drawn from them by the socialists is that as feudalism arose out of slavery, and capitalism arose out of feudalism, so will socialism arise out of capitalism. This argument is merely another example of those self-confusions by which the socialists are distinguished as reasoners. It is an argument which depends for its whole apparent point on the defective manner in which these various systems—socialism {377} included—have been analysed. For, though slavery, feudalism, and capitalism differ from one another in many most important points, they happen not to differ at all as regards that one particular point in respect of which socialism will have to differ from all three of them. That is to say, in whatever way these three systems differ from one another, they all agree with one another in being systems under which the few, the strongest, the most intellectual, the most energetic, not only controlled the actions of the average many, but received for their exceptional action a correspondingly exceptional recompense. The few who occupied this commanding position differed, at different times, in the nature of the powers which gave them the command. Sometimes it was the great fighters who were paramount, sometimes the great legislators, sometimes the great industrialists. But into whatever mould human society has been cast, with whatever circumstances it has been surrounded, and whatever kind of talent or strength has been most essential to it at given periods, the few who have possessed this kind of talent and strength to the highest degree have, as a whole, and with them their families, invariably occupied a position of exceptional wealth and power. We may deplore this fact or no, but the fact still remains, and consequently the argument of the socialists from the facts of social evolution, when reduced to its true terms, merely amounts to this—that because many social changes have taken place already, but one particular change in spite of these has never taken {378} place, yet this particular change which has refused to take place in the past is perfectly certain to take place in the future.
The historical evolution of society, however, and the social changes that have taken place, do indeed convey to us a very important moral; but this moral which the changes convey to us is curiously different from that which the socialists draw from them. They draw from them the moral that because social arrangements have been greatly changed, therefore they can be fundamentally changed. The true moral is that, although they may be changed greatly, they can never be changed fundamentally; and from this there follows another as its yet more important corollary—that although social arrangements can never be changed fundamentally, they can, nevertheless, be progressively and indefinitely improved, but that real reforms can be accomplished only by those who abandon altogether every dream of fundamental revolution. Many reforms which socialists eagerly recommend, and many wishes which socialists entertain, may meet with the approval and sympathy of the most determined conservatives; but the error of the socialists is sufficiently indicated by the fact, already remarked upon in the course of this work, that the changes which they advocate, and whose advent they delight to prophesy, leave the possible and approach the absolutely impossible, in precise proportion as these visionaries set value upon them.