That the wage-earning handworker often finds his freedom of self-disposal limited in practice, though his position is very far removed from slavery, I have pointed out above. Also, that modern facilities for movement have helped materially to assert and enlarge his freedom. From this point of view the discovery of the New World was the turning-point of European history. But in course of time capitalistic phenomena appeared there also, and on a larger scale. And now, almost the whole world over, the handworker is striving, not only for higher wages but for more complete self-disposal. This necessitates some control of the industries in which he works. Individual effort being vain, he forms unions to guard his interests. The unions, acting by strike-pressure, come into conflict with governments representing the state. The next step is to employ political pressure by gaining and using votes under representative systems, so as to remodel legislation and administration in a sense favourable to the handworker. This movement, now well under way in the most civilized countries, is not perhaps socialistic in principle, and we do not yet know how far it is likely to take that turn. In order to fight exploitation, the handworker has to surrender a good deal of his individual freedom: whether he will be content to surrender a good deal more, the coming age will see. This much at least is clear,—the handworking wage-earners are no longer, as in the ancient world, a class of no account. That they have wrung so many great concessions from unwilling capitalists seems to me a proof that their freedom, even under medieval[1820] restrictions, had always in it something real, some quality that sharply distinguished it from ancient slavery. In ancient slavery I can see no germ out of which betterment of labour-conditions could conceivably arise. It simply had to die, and modern attempts to revive it have had to die also.
In the foregoing pages I have recognized two lines of distinction. One is that commonly admitted, the line that parts freeman from slave. The other is that between free wage-earner and slave. In looking back from modern circumstances to ancient, the latter is much the more important. For, now that slavery in the proper sense has been abolished by modern civilized peoples, the conditions of wage-earning stand out as presenting the most momentous issues of the present age. To the statesmen the questions raised are full of anxiety as to the probable influence of present policies on future wellbeing. A student of Greco-Roman civilization must ask himself whether modern labour-questions and their attempted solutions may not indirectly furnish help in appraising and judging the conditions of the past. Now it so happens that in the case of agriculture recent events in Russia possess very marked significance, and it is therefore hardly possible to leave them unnoticed here.
It seems to be established[1821] beyond reasonable doubt that the genuine and effective doctrine of Leninite Bolshevism, in its definition of the ‘working class,’ excludes the peasantry. They are not ‘proletarian.’ That is, the great majority of peasants have something. This each wants to keep, and if possible to augment. In short, they are Individualists. Now Bolshevism builds on dogmas of Marxian Socialism, however much it may warp their application, however widely it may depart from Marxian theory in its choice of methods. Therefore it sees in the peasants only a class of petty bourgeoisie with the anti-socialistic instincts of that hated class, and will spare no effort to exclude them from political power. It disfranchises employers, even though the work they do is productive and useful to society. We need go no further: these principles of the Bolshevik creed, be it prophetic vision or be it crazy fanaticism blind to the facts of human nature and devoid of all practical sense of proportion, are enough for my present purpose. It results from them that all wage-earning is wrong: no man has the right to employ another man for his own purposes: that the relation benefits both employer and employed, even if true, is a consideration[1822] wholly irrelevant. For it is promised that the new civilization, recast on the Bolshevik model, will leave no room for wage-service of one man to another.
I am not to criticize this scheme of social and economic life, but to look at it coolly as an illustrative fact. It is surely a significant thing that, while slavery and serfdom are now reckoned as virtually obsolete phenomena of the past, the old distinction, between the man who works himself for himself and the man who works for another, is still before us as the vital line of division in labour-questions. Bloodshed and torture as means of enforcing the dogma may be confined to Russia, but the distinction is at the bottom of industrial unrest all over the world. Most significant of all is the admission that peasant landholders are not a ‘proletariate.’ Of course they are not. But to philosophers and statesmen of antiquity they appeared as an all-important class, not only as producers of food but as a solid element of population, promoting the stability of state governments. This stability was favourable to continuity of policy and enabled all interests to thrive in peace. Have the development of machinery and transport in recent times so far altered the conditions of agriculture that this is no longer the case? In other words, is the agricultural labourer, the present wage-earner, to supersede the peasant landholder as the dominant figure of rustic life? Is the large-scale farmer to survive only as the impotent figurehead of rural enterprises? Is a political proletariate competent to regulate the conduct of an industry directly dependent on soil climate and seasons? Wherever man is in immediate contact with forces of nature, in farm-life as in seafaring, the bodily energies of many can only be effective through subordination to the mind of one. How far, under the modern factory system, where the mill goes on as usual in all weathers, direction by wage-earners may be a practicable proposition, I cannot tell. That such a plan would be a failure on a farm, I have no doubt whatever.
My general conclusion then is that the old distinction observable under Greco-Roman civilization was in itself a sound one. Yet it led to no lasting and satisfactory solution of agricultural labour-problems. Many causes no doubt contributed to this failure; but the lack of a satisfactory labour-system was probably the greatest. Neither slavery nor serfdom was capable of meeting the need, and the wage-earning system never grew so as efficiently to supersede them. Now, after centuries of the wage-system, we are uneasily asking ourselves whether modern civilization is gravely endangered through the failure of this system also. It seems that in agriculture at least there are two possible alternatives, either a final settlement of the wage-question on a footing satisfactory to the labourer, or a return to αὐτουργία. Probably neither of these will be found to exclude the other or to be equally applicable to the circumstances of all countries. That communal ownership and shifting tenure can be revived seems impossible under modern conditions, whatever some Socialists may fancy. On the other hand voluntary cooperation in marketing seems to have a great future before it. Of a movement in that direction I have found no traces among the ancients: but modern developments in the way of transport may remove many difficulties. At any rate it is in such efforts of adaptation and compromise that expert agriculturists seem to be looking for help. As to labour, slavery and serfdom being excluded from modern civilized states, the coming problem is how to secure the performance of agricultural work. The choice lies between attractive wage-conditions, appealing to individual interest, and the Socialist scheme of tasks carried out under official direction, assumed to be in the best interests of a whole community. Both plans offer a substitute for the crude compulsory methods vainly employed in the ancient world. Which plan is the more suited to the demands of human nature, whether self-disposal or communism is to be the dominant aim and note of society, coming generations must decide.
APPENDIX.
SOME BYZANTINE AUTHORITIES.
To follow up the history of agricultural labour under the so-called Byzantine empire, after the Roman empire had fallen in the West, is beyond my scope. Yet there are certain matters on which light is thrown by surviving documents that it is hardly possible wholly to ignore. That the position of the agricultural classes did not follow the same lines of development in East and West, is in itself a fact worth noting, though not surprising. It may be said to run parallel with the general fate of the two sections of the once Roman world. In the West[1823] the growth of what we call Feudalism and the rise of new nation-states are the phenomena that in the course of centuries gradually produced our modern Europe. In the East the Empire long preserved its organization, declining in efficiency and power, but rallying again and again, serving as a bulwark of Christian Europe, and not extinguished finally till 1453. It might perhaps have been guessed that the conditions of rustic life would undergo some change, for the system of the later Roman colonate was already shewing signs of coming failure in the time of Arcadius and Honorius. The need of some system more favourable to individual energy and enterprise, more to be trusted for production of food, was surely not to be ignored. Food must have been a need of extreme urgency, with armies constantly engaged in northern or eastern wars, and the mouths of Constantinople ever hungry at home. After the Saracen conquest of Egypt in the seventh century, the food-resources on which the government could rely must have been seriously reduced, and the need greater than ever. Thus we are not to wonder if we find indications of great interest taken in agriculture, and direct evidence of reversion to a better land-system than that of the later Roman colonate.
A. GEOPONICA.
The curious collection known as Geoponica[1824] comes down to us in a text attributed to the tenth century, which is supposed to be a badly-edited version of an earlier work probably of the sixth or early seventh century. It is in a scrap-book form, consisting of precepts on a vast number of topics, the matter under each heading being professedly drawn from the doctrine of some author or authors whose names are prefixed. Some of these are Byzantine writers, others of much earlier date, including Democritus and Hippocrates, and the Roman Varro. Modern critics consider these citations of names untrustworthy, the collector or editor having dealt very carelessly with the work of his predecessors. I can only say that an examination of the chapters that are of special interest to me fully bears out this censure. I would add that a reference to the index shews that Cato Columella Pliny (elder) and Palladius are never cited, and express my suspicion that the omission of names is not always a proof that those authors were disregarded as sources. The general character of the work is unscientific and feeble, abounding in quackery and superstition. Technical and dogmatic, it has nevertheless an air of unreality, perhaps due in part to the later editor, but probably in part to the original compiler, whose name is given as Cassianus Bassus, a lawyer (σχολαστικός), apparently a Byzantine.