Among the various movements which are by some expected to benefit character, the communistic ideals have enthusiastic support. But it must be remembered that all such types of society tend to repress ability. If any form of communism is to succeed there must be a fixed minimum of labour compulsory on each member; and it is certain that human nature will take the minimum limit as all that need be done. The tendency will be to drag down all energy to the speed of the weakest. Moreover, if there is to be any private peculium outside of the share of common produce, the able man will at once rise into a capitalist; if no private peculium is tolerated it is certain that ability will be driven out to other lands, or to other lines of life where communism cannot be enforced. It must always be kept in view that mediocrity hates ability, wherever it comes into comparison or competition; and in a uniform community, mediocrity must be dominant, and ability persecuted.
Again the communistic type tends to repress variation and diversity by making everyone subject to the control of the dull average; and this repression is most fatal to due advance by natural selection of beneficial variation. We may see in France how a centralised management by the State accompanies the lack of enterprise in affairs. It is notorious that in business the French will not spend freely on creating new openings and encouraging new demand. Probably the habit of mind and the type of government act and react by one intensifying the other.
Where we can study an actual working system of communism in such a climate as our own, we see that it only succeeded by some elaborate and very forcible regulations. To outsiders, ignorant of the machine, the less advanced states of society are generally supposed to be very simple, and to leave a large amount of liberty. On the contrary, whenever a barbaric or savage society is really understood, the complexity which is essential to its success is seen to be even greater than among ourselves. The movement of society has been from an earlier complexity of special restriction, to a later generalised simplicity. The whole of northern Europe appears to have had a very similar system of communal organisation, which has been mainly brought to light by the researches of Dr. Seebohm. The peace was kept by making every relation of a man responsible for his actions; either wounding in any degree, or murder, had to be compounded for by fines extending even to distant cousins, which were payable to the similar relations of the injured or murdered man. The immediate male relatives, father, son, brother, and first cousin, were responsible for two-thirds of the blood money, and other relations to the fifteenth degree made up the remainder. Thus the criminal law was communal in a full sense; and injuries were fully compensated in a manner which made every man his brother's keeper in a real communism. How would modern admirers of communism like to undertake the responsibilities of making up for the misdeeds of every relative? Yet that is an essential part of communal duties.
The poor-law system, as revealed in the Norse laws, was that all the poorer men were bound to do a certain amount of work for their chief, like the payment of taxes at present, which amounts now to more than a month's work in the year. In return the chief was bound to see that they were insured against extreme-poverty or distress. They were free to accumulate wealth if they had the ability to do so, but their bargains and marriages had to be ratified by the chief in order to safeguard them from the follies of incapacity. When a man wished to resign this position of insurance against misfortune there was no objection to his independence, and he could do so on paying a small fee, and having a feast with the chief and witnesses. But if after that he played the fool, and his family came to naught, no one was responsible for them, as he had resigned his insurance. There was but one course left, a wide grave in the churchyard received the whole family alive, and only the one who survived longest had the right to live at the cost of his chief afterwards. Such was the price of communal support; and this decisive treatment, even in Christian times, ensured the sturdiness of the hardy Norseman, by effectively weeding the incapable. This was the practical working of the communal system which did not check ability, and which succeeded in our climate in past times. It needed a fuller organisation of penalties and obligations than our present individualism; and whether any communism could permanently succeed with less compulsion may gravely be doubted. In using the terms Socialism and Communism they are taken here in their widest sense, as referring to all the courses opposed to individualism. Such is the general usage of our language at present, and we cannot restrict these terms solely to extreme views, as some of their advocates would wish. Moreover, it is the influence of views on practical life that we are considering, and not an ideal state which never has been realised, and probably never can be put in practice.
A favourite idea has been that the New Testament teaching favours communism. To many such an authority would be decisive; and those who would not accept it as authoritative, must consider that the teaching is at least that of men who had such an instinctive knowledge of human nature, and such sympathy with the springs of action, that their views have held Western man more firmly than any other system. The first point to notice in looking at the teaching, is that it was given to a very severely selected group of persons. The early disciples were one of the hardest-weeded bodies of men that ever existed, like the Huguenots or the Quakers; ready perception, hearty conscientiousness, and a will to do right at all costs were the first qualifications, and incessant persecution from various sides weeded out all those who had no deep root of character. To such a body temporary communism was almost a need of existence at starting; all the causes and characters which would ordinarily make it a failure were weeded out, and such a highly selected group might safely benefit by a system which depended on self-abnegation. But so soon as the Church spread, no trace of communism remained; and even in general altruism the injunctions referred only to the Church and not to the world. The teaching was "Bear ye one another's burdens"; not, bear the burdens of the Roman rabble, but only those of the stringently weeded community. The one saying which survived most strongly of all the Gospel teaching, and is repeated oftenest, is, "To him that hath shall be given, and from him that hath not shall be taken away even that which he seemeth to have." The full benefit of capacity and its utmost gains, and the direst losses of incapacity, are the main principle that is inculcated.
In another point of view the parable of the prodigal son is sometimes felt to inculcate the ignoring of failure in life, and the permitting of follies to have no effect on the position of a person. The prodigal son among us is too often allowed to go on draining the resources on which his brethren rightfully have a claim. But the father in the parable, who had divided the family property already, was not intending to give anything more to the prodigal, however penitent he might be; forgiveness might be his, but the other brother was reassured at once by the formal declaration, "All that I have is thine." The greatest penitence, and the fullest forgiveness after it, will not give the prodigal a farthing beyond those rights which he has already misused.
Another appeal has been made, to a comparison with nature, in favour of communism. It is asked why we should be struggling like the carnivora, instead of peacefully browsing in amity like herbivora. But it would be hard to find a more intense example of competition than that among the cattle. Look at the skeleton of a bull, and see how every rib is broadened out into an armour plating for its vitals, each rib lapping over the other, so that no opening can be found for the point of its adversary's horn. None but those thus proof against goring have ever survived the desperate struggle of the strongest. In place of the artificial paddocks, where man has placed a single bull to lord the herd, look at the tragedy of the wild cattle, where the dispossessed chief of the Chillingham breed mopes apart in sullen anger, a Saturn dethroned and banished by the Jupiter who now leads the race. Then reflect how competition is more bitter and more intense in the bovine commune than among any individualistic carnivora.
The communistic view appears to tend to fatalism. This is practically seen for instance in Tolstoi's Peace and War, where the gigantic movements of the French and Russian hosts are looked on as inherent in the millions of people, and not originating in the leaders. And the habit of looking to the commune as the source of action will naturally tend toward a sense of the impossibility of altering the determination of a whole people, and the powerlessness of the individual against such forces. Now nothing more surely undermines activity and initiative than a fatalistic view. It saps the whole springs of action, and destroys the spirit of advance and improvement. In this aspect therefore we again see how injurious the communistic ideal is to solid character.
The recent growth of "municipalising" enterprises is another outcome of this spirit. The principle of it seems to be to absorb any public business which appears profitable, whether conveyance, supplies of material, or contracting for public work. Apart from the fact that only strong personal interest in management will make such enterprises profitable, there is also the inherent objection to the bad management which clings to the atrophy of mind of officials, as such; but there is also another serious influence upon character, which we should notice. The energy and initiative needed to start and work improvements, which is the essential source of profit in business, is easily suppressed or driven away. Many an enterprise which would succeed well is set aside because of the risks or the trouble of starting it, many another is left alone owing to little deterring causes; and if the great incentive of the possibility of large profits on some schemes, to compensate for the risks of many failures, is cut away by a municipality having the right of seizure of whatever succeeds, the whole enterprising character is cut down at the roots, to the immense injury of the nation at large. Supposing that some public enterprise makes 20 per cent. profit to its shareholders, the people who use it are certainly better off, or they would leave it alone, and the profit is no loss to the community, as it merely means so much transferred from one pocket to another, and none wasted. But if such enterprises are choked at the roots by fear of seizure, the whole community suffers. Who will care to develop suburbs by starting electric trams when the whole can be seized in twenty-one years, so soon as it begins to repay the risks incurred? This short-sighted grasping system has held England back behind most civilised countries, and been a gigantic public loss, not only by hindering specific enterprises, but more by thwarting most valuable characteristics.