◆3 The industrial discipline of the State would necessarily be much harder than that of the private employer.
Of course, in these representations there is a certain amount of truth: but it is difficult to conceive of anything more stupidly and more wantonly misleading, than the actual meaning which they are employed by the agitators to convey. For that meaning is nothing else than this—◆¹ that under improved conditions, when wealth is better distributed, the so-called slavery will disappear, the workers will be their own masters again, and will each own, as formerly, the implements and the materials of his work. But, as no one knows better than the extreme socialists, and as any intelligent man can see easily for himself, such a course of events is not only not possible, but is the exact reverse of that on which the progress of the workers must depend. ◆² The wildest agitator admits, and the most ignorant agitator knows, that the wealth of the modern world, on the growth of which they insist, and which, for the very reason that its growth has been so enormous, is declared by them to offer so rich a prize to the workers, mainly owes its existence to improved conditions of production. Such persons know also that of these conditions the chief have been the development of machinery, the increased subdivision of employments, and the perfected co-operation of the workers. But the development of machinery necessarily means this—the transformation of (say) each thousand old-fashioned implements into a single vast modern one of a hundred times their aggregate power: and it means that at this single implement a thousand men shall work. The increased subdivision of labour means that no man shall make an entire thing, but merely some small part of it; and perfected co-operation is another name for perfected discipline. It will be thus seen that the conditions which the agitator calls those of slavery are essential to the production of the wealth which is to constitute the workers’ heritage. ◆³ It will be seen that the workers’ hope of bettering their own position is so far from depending on a recovery of any former freedom, that it involves yet further elaboration of industrial discipline; and puts the old ownership of his own tools by the individual farther and further away into the region of dreams and impossibilities: and that no redistribution of wealth would even tend to bring it back again. The weaver of the last century was the owner of his own loom: and a great cotton-mill may now be owned by one capitalist. But a co-operative cotton-mill that was owned by all the workers, in the old sense of the word would not be owned by anybody. Could any one of these thousand or more men say that any part of the mill was his own personal property? Could he treat a single bolt, or a brick, or a wheel, or a door-nail, as he might have treated a loom left to him in his cottage by his father? Obviously not. No part of the mill would be his own private property, any more than a train starting from Euston Station is the property of any shareholder in the London and North-Western Railway. His ownership would mean merely that he was entitled to a share of the profits, and that he had one vote out of a thousand in electing the managers. But however the managers were elected, he would have to obey their orders; and their discipline would be probably stricter than that of any private owner. Much more would this be the case if the dream of the Socialist were fulfilled, and if instead of each factory or business being owned by its own workers, all the workers of the country collectively owned all the businesses—all the machinery, all the raw materials, and all the capital reserved for and spent in wages. For though the capital of the country would be owned by the workers nominally, their use of it would have to be regulated by a controlling body, namely the State. The managers and the taskmasters would all be State officials, and be armed with the powers of the State to enforce discipline. The individual under such an arrangement, might gain in point of income; but if he is foolish enough to adopt the view of the agitator, and regard himself as the slave to capital now, he would be no less a slave to it were all capitals amalgamated, and out of so many million shares he himself were to own one.
◆1 For it must always be remembered that the idea of an equal distribution of wealth necessarily presupposes the State as sole employer and capitalist.
◆¹ It is particularly desirable in this particular place to fix the reader’s attention on this aspect of the question, because it is inseparably associated with the point we are preparing to consider—namely, the pecuniary position in which the individual would be placed by an equal division, were such possible, of the entire national income. For we must bear in mind that not even in thought or theory is an equal division of the national income possible, unless all the products of the labour of every citizen are in the first place taken by the State as sole employer and capitalist, and are then distributed as wages in equal portions. Under no other conditions could equality be more than momentary. If each worker himself sold his own products to the consumer,—which he could not do, because no one produces the whole of anything,—the strong and industrious would soon be richer than the idle; and the man with no children richer than the man with ten. Inequality would have begun again as soon as one day’s work was over. Equality demands, as the Socialists are well aware, that all incomes shall be wages paid by the State; and it implies further, as we shall presently have occasion to observe—that equal wages shall be paid to all individuals, not because they are equally productive, but because they are all equally human. When therefore I speak, as I shall do presently, of what each individual would receive, if wealth were divided equally, I must be understood as meaning that he would receive so much from the State.
◆1 A redistribution of wealth, if it increased the incomes of some, would lessen the labour of nobody.
◆2 The next chapter contains an examination of the amount of income which would theoretically result from an equal distribution in this country.
◆¹ Let us remember then that a redistribution of wealth would have in itself no tendency to alter the existing conditions of the workers in any respect except that of wages only. It would not tend to relieve any man of a single hour of labour, to give him any more freedom in choosing the nature of his work or the method of it, or make him less liable to fines or other punishments for disobedience or unpunctuality. ◆² His only gain, if any, would be a simple gain in money. Let us now proceed to deal with the pounds, shillings, and pence; and see what is the utmost that this gain could come to.
CHAPTER III
The Pecuniary Results to the Individual of an Equal Division, first of the National Income, and secondly of certain parts of it.
◆1 The gross income of the United Kingdom.