The Western World in the Twentieth Century: A Source Book from the Contemporary Civilization Program in Columbia College, Columbia University 9780231898188

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T H E WESTERN WORLD IN T H E TWENTIETH

CENTURY A SOURCE

BOOK

THE Western World in the Twentieth Century A

CONTEMPORARY

COLUMBIA

SOURCE

BOOK

CIVILIZATION

COLLEGE,

COLUMBIA

FROM

PROGRAM

THE

IN

UNIVERSITY

Edited by Bernard Wishy

NEW Y O R K

• Columbia University Press

COPYRIGHT

PUBLISHED

©

1961,

IN G R E A T

BY

THE

COLUMBIA

BRITAIN,

UNIVERSITY

I N D I A , AND

OXFORD U N I V E R S I T Y

LONDON, B O M B A Y , AND

PAKISTAN

PRESS

KARACHI

L I B R A R Y OF CONGRESS C A T A L O G C A R D N U M B E R : MANUFACTURED

IN T H E

PRESS

U N I T E D S T A T E S OF

61:8987

AMERICA

PREFACE T h i s volume is based on the Contemporary Civilization program in Columbia College. T h e most recent (third) edition of Columbia's two source volumes, Introduction

to Contemporary

Civilization

in the West, ends on the eve

of the First W o r l d W a r . T h e wide use of the earlier editions in schools other than Columbia seemed to justify a third volume of source documents on the world since 1900. M a n y of the principal political and economic documents on the period after 1900 in the second edition of V o l u m e II are included in this collection. T h e r e is, however, an even wider variety of additional sources. Every effort has been made to produce a book similar in format to the preceding volumes in the Columbia series. N e w selections have replaced those that proved less successful than others for classroom discussion and analysis. In a few cases selections from the old V o l u m e II have been retitled for the sake of coherence with the new documents. The

Western

World

in the Twentieth

Century

owes a great debt to the

traditions and prestige of two generations of w o r k in Contemporary Civilization at Columbia carried on by many scholars. Barry A u g e n b r a u n carried a great weight of responsibility in research on the sources. H i s fine scholarship matched his taste and

intelligence.

Benjamin K . Bennett provided several translations from the German. Jane Slater, Daisy Grandison, and Phyllis Holbrook shared the heavy job of typing the manuscript. John G . Palfrey, D e a n of Columbia College, concurred in the decision to prepare these additional sources for publication. BERNARD WISHY

CONTENTS I.

HOPES A N D F E A R S FOR T H E T W E N T I E T H C E N T U R Y H. G. Wells, 3; David Lloyd George, 14; Georges Sorel, 26; Max Weber, 35; John A. Hobson, 40; The Hague Peace Conferences, 53

i

II.

WORLD WAR AND PEACE Resolutions of the Second International: 1912, 67; The Crowe Memorandum, 72; Diplomacy: 1914, 87; Jules Romains, 114; Woodrow Wilson, 128; John Maynard Keynes, 138; Ernst Troeltsch, 151

65

III.

T H E RUSSIAN R E V O L U T I O N S 157 Reform under the Tsars, 159; Leon Trotsky, 1 7 1 ; Decrees of the Bolshevik Revolution, 184; Vladimir Ilyich Lenin, 187; The Communist International, 215

IV.

C R O S S C U R R E N T S : 1918-1929 231 Labour and the New Social Order, 233; Arthur Moeller van den Bruck, 247; Benito Mussolini, 257; R. H. Tawney, 269; Recent Economic Changes, 277

V.

T H E G R E A T DEPRESSION 285 William H. Beveridge, 287; Edmund Wilson, 300; Franklin D. Roosevelt, 309; John Dewey, 319

VI.

T O T A L I T A R I A N L I F E A N D T H E W A R A G A I N S T FASCISM 331 Adolf Hitler, 333; Nazism in Action, 343; Joseph Stalin, 353; The Purge of Bukharin, 365; Neville Chamberlain, 378; Winston Churchill, 386; Chester Wilmot, 394

VII.

T H E P R O B L E M OF P E A C E IN A R E V O L U T I O N A R Y W O R L D 413 Wendell L. Willkie, 415; George F. Kennan, 422; Nikita S. Khrushchev, 430; Milovan Djilas, 445; George Orwell, 455; Gamal Abdal Nasser, 468; K. M. Pannikar, 479; Henry A. Kissinger, 491; Andre Malraux, 504

H O P E S A N D FEARS FOR THE T W E N T I E T H CENTURY

H. G. WELLS

H

ERBERT GEORGE W E L L S (1866-1946) was one of the spokesmen for the generation of liberals that came to maturity between 1890 and 1914. Like them Wells looked forward confidently to the world-wide triumph of science, industrialism, and social justice. He was the son of an English cricket player and all his education through the University of London was financed by scholarships. He was active in the early work of the Fabian socialists but soon clashed with the highly individualistic leaders of that sect. He also developed a growing antipathy for what seemed their excessive dedication to efficiency and elitism. Most of Wells' ideas were expressed in his novels, but he was also a prolific writer of articles and tracts. For most of his life he was a republican, opposed to the continuation of the English monarchy. He was most successful as a writer of science fiction and such books as The Time Machine, The War of the Worlds, and The Invisible Man have become classics in that genre. Social history and social prophecy were also Wellsian genres; he was an early champion of the "new woman" and of the "new man" of science, efficiency, and intense practicality. Wells was not a profound thinker, but at his best he exemplified the humane cosmopolitanism of the enlightened classes in the West at the beginning of this century. Like many members of his generation he was shocked by the potentialities for senseless violence revealed by the First World War but his immensely popular The Outline of History (1920) still expressed faith in the ultimate triumph of reason and decency. This selection is one of many similar declarations of faith in Western ideals that were published in Europe and America on the eve of Sarajevo. It is taken from The Great State (New York: Harper and Brothers, 1912).

% THE PAST AND THE GREAT T H E N O R M A L SOCIAL L I F E

STATE

is a type of human association and employment,

of extreme prevalence and antiquity, which appears to have been the lot of the enormous majority of human beings as far back as history or tradition or the vestiges of material that supply our conceptions of the neolithic period can carry us. It has never been the lot of all humanity at any time, today it is perhaps less predominant than it has ever been, yet even to-day it is probably the lot of the greater moiety of mankind.

4

HOPES AND

FEARS

Essentially this type of association presents a localized community, a community of which the greater proportion of the individuals are engaged more or less directly in the cultivation of the land. With this there is also associated the grazing or herding over wider or more restricted areas, belonging either collectively or discretely to the community, of sheep, cattle, goats, or swine, and almost always the domestic fowl is a commensal of man in this life. T h e cultivated land at least is usually assigned, temporarily or inalienably, as property to specific individuals, and the individuals are grouped in generally monogamic families of which the father is the head. Essentially the social unit is the Family, and even where as in Mahomedan countries there is no legal or customary restriction upon polygamy, monogamy still prevails as the ordinary way of living. Unmarried women are not esteemed, and children are desired. According to the dangers or securities of the region, the nature of the cultivation and the temperament of the people, this community is scattered either widely in separate steadings or drawn together into villages. At one extreme, over large areas of thin pasture this agricultural community may verge on the nomadic; at another, in proximity to consuming markets it may present the concentration of intensive culture. There may be an adjacent Wild supplying wood, and perhaps controlled by a simple forestry. T h e law that holds this community together is largely traditional and customary, and almost always as its primordial bond there is some sort of temple and some sort of priest. Typically the temple is devoted to a local God or a localized saint, and its position indicates the central point of the locality, its assembly place and its market. Associated with the agriculture there are usually a few imperfectly specialised tradesmen, a smith, a garment-maker perhaps, a basket-maker or potter, who group about the church or temple. T h e community may maintain itself in a state of complete isolation, but more usually there are tracks or roads to the centres of adjacent communities, and a certain drift of travel, a certain trade in nonessential things. In the fundamentals of life this normal community is independent and self-subsisting, and where it is not beginning to be modified by the novel forces of the new times it produces its own food and drink, its own clothing, and largely intermarries within its limits. This in general terms is what is here intended by the phrase the Normal Social Life. It is still the substantial part of the rural life of all Europe and most of Asia and Africa, and it has been the life of the great majority of human beings for immemorial years. It is the root life. It rests upon the soil, and from that soil below and its reaction to the seasons and the moods of the sky overhead have grown most of the traditions, institutions, sentiments, beliefs, superstitions, and fundamental songs and stories of mankind.

H. G.

WELLS

5

But since the very dawn of history at least this N o r m a l Social L i f e has never been the whole complete life of mankind. Quite apart from the marginal life of the savage hunter, there have been a number of forces and influences within men and women and without that have produced abnormal and surplus ways of living, supplemental, additional, and even antagonistic to this normal scheme. . . . Indeed all recorded history is in a sense the history of these surplus and supplemental activities of mankind. T h e N o r m a l Social Life flowed on in its immemorial fashion, using no letters, needing no records, leaving no history. T h e n , a little minority, bulking disproportionately in the record, come the trader and sailor, the slave, the landlord and the tax-compeller, the townsman and the king. . . . N o w this human over-life may take either beneficent or maleficent or neutral aspects towards the general life of humanity. It may present itself as law and pacification, as a positive addition and superstructure to the Normal Social Life, as roads and markets and cities, as courts and unifying monarchies, as helpful and directing religious organisations, as literature and art and science and philosophy, reflecting back upon the individual in the N o r m a l Social L i f e from which it arose, a gilding and refreshment of new and wider interests and added pleasures and resources. O n e may define certain phases in the history of various countries when this was the state of affairs, when a country-side of prosperous communities

with a healthy

family life and a wide distribution of property, animated by roads and towns and unified by a generally intelligible religious belief, lived in a transitory but satisfactory harmony under a sympathetic government. . . . But the general effect of history is to present these phases as phases of exceptional good luck, and to show the surplus forces of humanity as on the whole antagonistic to any such equilibrium with the N o r m a l Social Life. . . . But

it never returns in precisely

its old form. T h e

surplus

forces have always produced some traceable change; the rhythm is a little altered. As between the Gallic peasant before the R o m a n conquest, the peasant of the Gallic province, the Carlovingian peasant, the French peasant of the thirteenth, the seventeenth, and the twentieth centuries, there is, in spite of a general uniformity of life, of a common atmosphere of cows, hens, dung,

toil,

ploughing,

economy,

and

domestic

intimacy,

an

effect

of

accumulating generalising influences and of wider relevancies. A n d the oscillations of empires and kingdoms, religious movements, wars, invasions, settlements leave upon the mind an impression that the surplus life of mankind, the less-localised life of mankind, that life of mankind which is not directly connected with the soil but which has become more or less detached

HOPES AND

6

FEARS

from and independent of it, is becoming proportionately more important in relation to the Normal Social Life. It is as if a different way of living was emerging from the Normal Social Life and freeing itself from its traditions and limitations. And this is more particularly the effect upon the mind of a review of the history of the past two hundred years. . . . T h e Normal Social Life has been overshadowed as it has never been overshadowed before by the concentrations and achievements of the surplus life. Vast new possibilities open to the race; the traditional life of mankind, its traditional systems of association, are challenged and threatened; and all the social thought, all the political activity of our time turns in reality upon the conflict of this ancient system whose essentials we have here defined and termed the Normal Social Life with the still vague and formless impulses that seem destined either to involve it and men in a final destruction or to replace it by some new and probably more elaborate method of human association. . . . Now most of the political and social discussion of the last hundred years may be regarded and rephrased as an attempt to apprehend this defensive struggle of the Normal Social Life against waxing novelty and innovation, and to give a direction and guidance to all of us who participate. And it is very largely a matter of temperament and free choice still, just where we shall decide to place ourselves. Let us consider some of the key words of contemporary thought, such as Liberalism, Individualism, Socialism, in the light of this broad generalisation we have made; and then we shall find it easier to explain our intention in employing as a second technicality the phrase of T h e Great State as an opposite to the Normal Social Life, which we have already defined. II

T h e Normal Social Life has been defined as one based on agriculture, traditional and essentially unchanging. It has needed no toleration and displayed no toleration for novelty and strangeness. Its beliefs have been of such a nature as to justify and sustain itself, and it has had an intrinsic hostility to any other beliefs. T h e god of its community has been a jealous god even when he was only a tribal and local god. Only very occasionally in history until the coming of the modern period do we find any human community relaxing from this ancient and more normal state of entire intolerance towards ideas or practices other than its own. . . . But with the steady development of innovating forces in human affairs, there has actually grown up a cult of receptivity, a readiness for new ideas, a

H. G.

WELLS

7

faith in the probable truth of novelties. Liberalism—I do not of course refer in any way to the political party which makes this profession—is essentially anti-traditionalism; its tendency is to commit for trial any institution or belief that is brought before it. It is the accuser and antagonist of all the fixed and ancient values and imperatives and prohibitions of the N o r m a l Social Life. A n d growing up in relation to Liberalism and sustained by it is the great body of scientific knowledge, which professes at least to be absolutely undogmatic and perpetually on its trial and under assay and re-examination. N o w a very large part of the advanced thought of the past century is no more than the confused negation of the broad beliefs and institutions which have been the heritage and social basis of humanity for immemorial years. T h i s is as true of the extremest Individualism as of the extremest Socialism. T h e former denies that element of legal and customary control which has always subdued the individual to the needs of the N o r m a l Social Life, and the latter that qualified independence of distributed property which is the basis of family autonomy. Both are movements against the ancient life, and nothing is more absurd than the misrepresentation which presents either as a conservative force. T h e y are two divergent schools with a common disposition to reject the old and turn towards the new. T h e Individualist professes a faith for which he has no rational evidence, that the mere abandonment of traditions and controls must ultimately produce a new and beautiful social order; while the Socialist, with an equal liberalism, regards the outlook with a kind of hopeful dread and insists upon an elaborate legal readjustment, a new and untried scheme of social organisation to replace the shattered and weakening Normal Social Life. Both these movements, and indeed all movements that are not movements for the subjugation of innovation and the restoration of tradition, are vague in the prospect they contemplate. T h e y produce no definite forecasts of the quality of the future towards which they so confidently indicate the way. But this is less true of modern socialism than of its antithesis, and it becomes less and less true as socialism, under an enormous torrent of criticism, slowly washes itself clean from the mass of partial statement, hasty misstatement, sheer error and presumption, that obscured its first emergence. But it is well to be very clear upon one point at this stage, and that is, that this present time is not a battle-ground between individualism and socialism; it is a battle-ground between the N o r m a l Social Life on the one hand and a complex of forces on the other which seek a form of replacement and seem partially to find it in these and other doctrines. . . . Nearly every individual nowadays is at least a little confused, and will be found to wobble in the course even of a brief discussion between one attitude

8

HOPES AND FEARS

and the other. This is a separation of opinions rather than of persons. And particularly that word Socialism has become so vague and incoherent that for a man to call himself a socialist nowadays is to give no indication whatever whether he is a Conservator like William Morris, a non-Constructor like Karl Marx, or a Constructor of any of half a dozen different schools. O n the whole, however, modern socialism tends to fall towards the Conservative wing. So, too, do those various movements in England and Germany and France called variously nationalist and imperialist, and so do the American civic and social reformers. All these movements are agreed that the world is progressive towards a novel and unprecedented social order, not necessarily and fatally better, and that it needs organised and even institutional guidance thither, however much they differ as to the form that order should assume. . . . With less arrogance and confidence, but it may be with a firmer faith than our predecessors of the Fabian essays, we declare that we believe a more spacious social order than any that exists or ever has existed, a Peace of the World in which there is an almost universal freedom, health, happiness, and well-being, and which contains the seeds of a still greater future, is possible to mankind. W e propose to begin again with the recognition of those same difficulties the Fabians first realised. But we do not propose to organise a society, form a group for the control of the two chief political parties, bring about "socialism" in twenty-five years, or do anything beyond contributing in our place and measure to that constructive discussion whose real magnitude we now begin to realise. W e have faith in a possible future, but it is a faith that makes the quality of that future entirely dependent upon the strength and clearness of purpose that this present time can produce. W e do not believe the greater social state is inevitable. Yet there is, we hold, a certain qualified inevitability about this greater social state because we believe any social state not affording a general contentment, a general freedom, and a general and increasing fulness of life, must sooner or later collapse and disintegrate again, and revert more or less completely to the Normal Social Life, and because we believe the Normal Social Life is itself thick-sown with the seeds of fresh beginnings. T h e Normal Social Life has never at any time been absolutely permanent, always it has carried within itself the germs of enterprise and adventure and exchanges that finally attack its stability. T h e superimposed social order of to-day, such as it is, with its huge development of expropriated labour, and the schemes of the later Fabians to fix this state of affairs in an organised form and render it plausibly tolerable, seem also doomed to accumulate catastrophic tensions. Bureaucratic schemes for establishing

H. G. W E L L S

9

the regular life-long subordination o£ a labouring class, enlivened though they may be by frequent inspection, disciplinary treatment during seasons of unemployment, compulsory temperance, free medical attendance, and a cheap and shallow elementary education, fail to satisfy the restless cravings in the heart of man. They are cravings that even the baffling methods of the most ingeniously worked Conciliation Boards cannot permanently restrain. T h e drift of any Servile State must be towards a class revolt, paralysing sabotage, and a general strike. T h e more rigid and complete the Servile State becomes, the more thorough will be its ultimate failure. Its fate is decay or explosion. From its debris we shall either revert to the Normal Social L i f e and begin again the long struggle towards that ampler, happier, juster arrangement of human affairs which we . . . at any rate believe to be possible, or we shall pass into the twilight of mankind. This greater social life we put, then, as the only real alternative to the Normal Social L i f e from which man is continually escaping. For it we do not propose to use the expressions the "socialist state" or "socialism," because we believe those terms have now by constant confused use become so battered and bent and discoloured by irrelevant associations as to be rather misleading than expressive. W e propose to use the term T h e Great State to express this ideal of a social system no longer localised, no longer immediately tied to and conditioned by the cultivation of the land, world-wide in its interests and outlook and catholic in its tolerance and sympathy, a system of great individual freedom with a universal understanding among its citizens of a collective thought and purpose. N o w the difficulties that lie in the way of humanity in its complex and toilsome journey through the coming centuries towards this Great State are fundamentally difficulties of adaptation and adjustment. T o no conceivable social state is man inherently fitted: he is a creature of jealousy and suspicion, unstable, restless, acquisitive, aggressive, intractible, and of a most subtle and nimble dishonesty. Moreover, he is imaginative, adventurous, and inventive. His nature and instincts are as much in conflict with the necessary restrictions and subjugation of the Normal Social L i f e as they are likely to be with any other social net that necessity may weave about him. But the Normal Social L i f e had this advantage, that it has a vast accumulated moral tradition and a minutely worked-out material method. All the fundamental institutions have arisen in relation to it and are adapted to its conditions. T o revert to it after any phase of social chaos and distress is and will continue for many years to be the path of least resistance for perplexed humanity. . . . Let us briefly recapitulate the main problems which have to be attacked

10

HOPES AND

FEARS

in the attempt to realise the outline of the Great State. At the base of the whole order there must be some method of agricultural production, and if the agricultural labourer and cottager and the ancient life of the small householder on the holding, a life laborious, prolific, illiterate, limited, and in immediate contact with the land used, is to recede and disappear, it must recede and disappear before methods upon a much larger scale, employing wholesale machinery and involving great economies. . . . A fully developed civilisation employing machines in the hands of highly skilled men will minimise toil to the very utmost, no man will shove where a machine can shove, or carry where a machine can carry; but there will remain, more particularly in the summer, a vast amount of hand operations, invigorating and even attractive to the urban population. Given short hours, good pay, and all the jolly amusement in the evening camp that a free, happy, and intelligent people will develop for themselves, and there will be little difficulty about this particular class of work to differentiate it from any other sort of necessary labour. One passes, therefore, with no definite transition from the root problem of agricultural production in the Great State to the wider problem of labour in general. . . . W e who look to the Great State as the present aim of human progress believe a state may solve its economic problem without any section whatever of the community being condemned to lifelong labour. And contemporary events, the phenomena of recent strikes, the phenomena of sabotage carry out the suggestion that in a community where nearly every one reads extensively, travels about, sees the charm and variety in the lives of prosperous and leisurely people, no class is going to submit permanently to modern labour conditions without extreme resistance, even after the most elaborate Labour Conciliation schemes and social minima are established. Things are altogether too stimulating to the imagination nowadays. Of all impossible social dreams that belief in tranquillised and submissive and virtuous Labour is the wildest of all. N o sort of modern men will stand it. They will as a class do any vivid and disastrous thing rather than stand it. Even the illiterate peasant will only endure lifelong toil under the stimulus of private ownership and with the consolations of religion; and the typical modern worker has neither the one nor the other. For a time, indeed, for a generation or so even, a labour mass may be fooled or coerced, but in the end it will break out against its subjection even if it breaks out to a general social catastrophe. W e have, in fact, to invent for the Great State, if we are to suppose any Great State at all, an economic method without any specific labour class. . . .

H. G. WELLS

ii

Adhesion to the conception of the Great State involves adhesion to the belief that the amount of regular labour, skilled and unskilled, required to produce everything necessary for every one living in its highly elaborate civilisation may, under modern conditions, with the help of scientific economy and power-producing machinery, be reduced to so small a number of working hours per head in proportion to the average life of the citizen, as to be met as regards the greater moiety of it by the payment of wages over and above the gratuitous share of each individual in the general output; and as regards the residue, a residue of rough, disagreeable, and monotonous operations, by some form of conscription, which will devote a year, let us say, of each person's life to the public service. If we reflect that in the contemporary state there is already food, shelter, and clothing of a sort for every one, in spite of the fact that enormous numbers of people do no productive work at all because they are too well off, that great numbers are out of work, great numbers by bad nutrition and training incapable of work, and that an enormous amount of the work actually done is the overlapping production of competitive trade and work, upon such politically necessary but socially useless things as Dreadnoughts, it becomes clear that the absolutely unavoidable labour in a modern community and its ratio to the available vitality must be of very small account indeed. But all this has still to be worked out even in the most general terms. An intelligent science of Economics should afford standards and technicalities and systematised facts upon which to base an estimate. . . . But behind all these conceivable triumphs of scientific adjustment and direction lies the infinitely greater difficulty on our way to the Great State, the difficulty of direction. What sort of people are going to distribute the work of the community, decide what is or is not to be done, determine wages, initiate enterprises; and under what sort of criticism, checks, and controls are they going to do this delicate and extensive work ? With this we open the whole problem of government, administration, and officialdom. . . . Whatever else may be worked out in the subtler answers our later time prepares, nothing can be clearer than that the necessary machinery of government must be elaborately organised to prevent the development of a managing caste, in permanent conspiracy, tacit or expressed, against the normal man. Quite apart from the danger of unsympathetic and fatally irritating government, there can be little or no doubt that the method of making men officials for life is quite the worst way of getting official duties done. Officialdom is a species of incompetence. T h e rather priggish, timid, teachable and well-behaved sort of boy who is attracted by the prospect of assured income and a pension to win his way into the civil service, and who

12

HOPES AND

FEARS

then by varied assiduities rises to a sort of timidly vindictive importance, is the last person to whom we would willingly intrust the vital interests of a nation. W e want people who know about life at large, who will come to the public service seasoned by experience, not people who have specialised and acquired that sort of knowledge which is called, in much the same spirit of qualification as one speaks of G e r m a n Silver, Expert Knowledge. It is clear our public servants and officials must be so only for their periods of service. . . . A n d since the Fabian socialists have created a wide-spread belief that in their projected state every man will be necessarily a public servant or a public pupil because the state will be the only employer and the only educator, it is necessary to point out that the Great State presupposes neither the one nor the other. It is a form of liberty and not a form of enslavement. W e agree with the bolder forms of socialism in supposing an initial proprietary independence in every citizen. T h e citizen is a shareholder in the state. Above that and after that, he works if he chooses. But if he likes to live on his m i n i m u m and do nothing—though such a type of character is scarcely conceivable—he can. H i s earning is his own surplus. . . . I would like to underline in the most emphatic way that it is possible to have this Great State, essentially socialistic, owning and running the land and all the great public services, sustaining everybody in absolute freedom at a certain m i n i m u m of comfort and well-being, and still leaving most of the interests, amusements, and adornments of the individual life, and all sorts of collective concerns, social and political discussion, religious worship, philosophy, and the like to the free personal initiatives of entirely unofficial people. . . . T h e whole spirit of the Great State is against any avoidable subjugation; but the whole spirit of that science which will animate the Great State forbids us to ignore woman's functional and temperamental differences. A

new

status has still to be invented for women, a F e m i n i n e Citizenship differing in certain respects from the normal masculine citizenship. Its conditions remain to be worked out. W e have indeed to work out an entire new system of relations between men and women, that will be free from servitude, aggression, provocation, or parasitism. T h e public Endowment of Motherhood as such may perhaps be the first broad suggestion of the quality of this new status. A new type of family, a mutual alliance in the place of a subjugation, is perhaps the most startling of all the conceptions which confront us directly we turn ourselves definitely towards the Great State. . . . As our conception of the Great State grows, so we shall begin to realise the nature of the problem of transition, the problem of what we may best do in

H. G.

WELLS

the confusion of the present time to elucidate and render practicable this new phase of human organisation. O f one thing there can be no doubt, that whatever increases thought and knowledge moves towards our goal; and equally certain is it that nothing leads thither that tampers with the freedom of spirit, the independence of soul in common men and women. In many directions, therefore, the believer in the Great State will display a jealous watchfulness of contemporary developments rather than a premature constructiveness. W e must watch wealth; but quite as necessary it is to watch the legislator, who mistakes propaganda for progress and class exasperation to satisfy class vindictiveness for construction. Supremely important is it to keep discussion open, to tolerate no limitation on the freedom of speech, writing, art and book distribution, and to sustain the utmost liberty of criticism upon all contemporary institutions and processes. T h i s briefly is the programme of problems and effort to which this idea of the Great State, as the goal of contemporary progress, directs our minds.

DAVID LLOYD GEORGE

T

HE BRITISH statesman David Lloyd George (1863-1945) was one of the most dramatic English political leaders in the early twentieth century. He came from obscurity in Wales into the House of Commons at the age of twenty-seven. Behind him lay poverty, a small-town solicitorship, and the Welsh tradition of great speaking for Godly causes. Within ten years he was the most flamboyant of the Welsh radicals in the Liberal party group in the House who gave their support in return for favors to Wales. Lloyd George was a controversial person whose sincerity and high style were often suspected. He came into prominence first during the Boer War (1899) when he practiced a favorite pastime of preaching political morality to England, "While England and Scotland are drunk with blood the Welsh continue sane; they are walking along the road of progress and liberty." Previous cabinet experience under the Liberals brought him the chancellorship of the exchequer (1908-15) under the Asquith ministry. In 1909 Lloyd George introduced the first welfare-state budget in English history. Although it was by no means the first proposal for English social legislation, his speech did mark the emergence of a new liberalism as high public policy. When this budget was rejected by the House of Lords later in 1909, there was precipitated a notable constitutional crisis that ended in 1911 with new limits on the Lords' powers. Lloyd George's ministerial performance in the early years of the war was outstanding and in 1916 he became prime minister. At the Paris Peace Conference he was as vigorous in defending British interests as he had been in helping to prosecute the war but he was overshadowed by Clemenceau and Woodrow Wilson. His ministry fell in 1922 and he never again returned to political power, however powerful a figure he remained in the Liberal party and in House debates. Auspiciously enough, his last impressive moment in the House came on May 8, 1940 when he urged Neville Chamberlain to resign. When this was accomplished, Lloyd George's former first lord of the admiralty, Winston Churchill, was brought to power. Near the end of his life, the former Welsh radical entered the House of Lords as an earl. The following extract from the budget speech of 1909 is from the collection of Lloyd George's speeches in Better Times (London: Hodder and Stoughton, 1910).

THE PEOPLE'S I

COME

BUDGET,

i9o9

to the consideration of the social problems which are urgently press-

ing for solution—problems affecting the lives of the people. T h e solution of all these questions involves finance. What the Government have to ask

DAVID LLOYD

GEORGE

15

themselves is this: Can the whole subject of further social reform be postponed until the increasing demands made upon the National Exchequer by the growth of armaments have ceased ? Not merely can it be postponed, but ought it to be postponed? Is there the slightest hope that if we deferred consideration of the matter we are likely within a generation to find any more favourable moment for attending to it? A n d we have to ask ourselves this further question. If we put off dealing with these social sores, are the evils which arise from them not likely to grow and to fester, until finally the loss which the country sustains will be infinitely greater than anything it would have to bear in paying the cost of an immediate remedy ? There are hundreds of thousands of men, women, and children in this country now enduring hardships for which the sternest judge would not hold them responsible; hardships entirely due to circumstances over which they have not the slightest command; the fluctuations and changes of trade, even of fashions; ill-health and the premature breakdown or death of the breadwinner. Owing to events of this kind, all of them beyond human control—at any rate beyond the control of the victims—thousands, and I am not sure I should be wrong if I said millions, are precipitated into a condition of acute distress and poverty. H o w many people there are of this kind in this wealthy land the figures as to Old A g e Pensions have thrown a very unpleasant light upon. Is it fair, is it just, is it humane, is it honourable, is it safe to subject such a multitude of our poor fellow-countrymen and countrywomen to continued endurance of these miseries until nations have learnt enough wisdom not to squander their resources on these huge machines for the destruction of human life? I have no doubt as to the answer which will be given to that question by a nation as rich in humanity as it is in store. . . . What are the dominating causes of poverty amongst the industrial classes ? For the moment I do not refer to the poverty which is brought about by a man's own fault. I am only alluding to causes over which he has no control. Old age, premature breakdown in health and strength, the death of the breadwinner, and unemployment due either to the decay of industries and seasonable demands, or to the fluctuations or depressions in trade. T h e distress caused by any or either of these causes is much more deserving of immediate attention than the case of a healthy and vigorous man of 65 years of age, who is able to pursue his daily avocation, and to earn without undue strain an income which is quite considerable enough to provide him and his wife with a comfortable subsistence. When Bismarck was strengthening the foundations of the new German Empire one of the very first tasks he undertook was the organisation of a scheme which insured the German workmen and their families against the

i6

HOPES AND

FEARS

worst evils arising from these common accidents of life. A n d a superb scheme it is. It has saved an incalculable amount of human misery to hundreds of thousands and possibly millions of people. Wherever I went in Germany, north or south, and whomever I met, whether it was an employer or a workman, a Conservative or a Liberal, a Socialist or a Trade Union leader—men of all ranks, sections and creeds, with one accord joined in lauding the benefits which have been conferred upon Germany by this beneficent policy. Several wanted extensions, but there was not one who wanted to go back. T h e employers admitted that at first they did not quite like the new burdens it cast upon them, but they now fully realised the advantages which even they derived from the expenditure, for it had raised the standard of the workman throughout Germany. By removing that element of anxiety and worry from their lives it had improved their efficiency. Benefits which in the aggregate amounted to 40 millions a year were being distributed under this plan. . . . A t the present moment there is a network of powerful organisations in this country, most of them managed with infinite skill and capacity, which have succeeded in inducing millions of workmen in this country to make something like systematic provision for the troubles of life. But in spite of all the ability which has been expended upon them, in spite of the confidence they generally and deservedly inspire, unfortunately there is a margin of people in this country amounting in the aggregate to several millions who either cannot be persuaded or perhaps cannot afford to bear the expense of the systematic contributions which alone make membership effective in these great institutions. A n d the experience of this and of every other country is that no plan or variety of plans short of an universal compulsory system can ever hope to succeed in coping adequately with the problem. In this country we have trusted until recently to voluntary effort, but we found that for old age and accidents it was insufficient. In Belgium they have resorted to the plan of granting heavy subsidies to voluntary organisations, and they have met with a certain amount of success. But whether here or in Belgium, or in any other land, success must be partial where reliance is absolutely placed upon the readiness of men and women to look ahead in the days of abounding health and strength and buoyancy of spirit to misfortunes which are not even in sight, and which may be ever averted. T h e Government are now giving careful consideration to the best methods for making such a provision. W e are investigating closely the plans adopted by foreign countries, and I hope to circulate papers on the point very soon. W e have put ourselves into communication with the leaders of some of the

DAVID LLOYD

GEORGE

17

principal friendly societies in the country with a view to seeking their invaluable counsel and direction. W e could not possibly get safer or more experienced advisers. W e are giving special attention to the important reports of the Poor Law Commission, both Majority and Minority, which advise that the leading principle of Poor Law legislation in future should be the drawing of a clear and definite line between those whose poverty is the result of their own misdeeds and those who have been brought to want through misfortune. All I am in a position now to say is that, at any rate, in any scheme which we may finally adopt we shall be guided by these leading principles or considerations. T h e first is that no plan can hope to be really comprehensive or conclusive which does not include an element of compulsion. T h e second is that for financial as well as for other reasons, which I do not wish to enter into now, success is unattainable in the near future, except on the basis of a direct contribution from the classes more immediately concerned. T h e third is that there must be a State contribution substantial enough to enable those whose means are too limited and precarious to sustain adequate premiums to overcome that difficulty without throwing undue risks on other contributors. T h e fourth, and by no means the least important, is that in this country, where benefit and provident societies represent such a triumph of organisation of patience and self-government, as probably no other country has ever witnessed, no scheme would be profitable, no scheme would be tolerable, which would do the least damage to those highly beneficent organisations. On the contrary, it must be the aim of every well-considered plan to encourage, and, if practicable, as I believe it is, to work through them. . . . W e recognise in this matter that we must walk with caution, and that it will be best to begin with certain groups of trades peculiarly liable to the fluctuations I have referred to and in other respects suitable for insurance, rather than to attempt to cover the entire area of industry. T h e Royal Commission were emphatic in recommending that any scheme of unemployment insurance should have a trade basis, and we propose to adopt this principle. Within the selected trades, however, the scheme will apply universally to all adult workers. Any insurance schemes of this kind must necessarily require contributions from those engaged in the insured trades, both as employers and employed; but we recognise the necessity of supplementing these contributions by a State grant and guarantee. W e cannot, of course, attempt to pass the necessary Bill to establish unemployment insurance during the present Session. But the postponement will not involve any real delay, for the establishment of labour exchanges is a necessary preliminary to the work

i8

HOPES AND

FEARS

of insurance, and this will occupy time which may also be advantageously employed in consulting the various interests upon the details of the scheme and in coordinating its financial provisions with the machinery of invalidity and other forms of insurance. So much for the provision which we hope to be able to make for those who, under the changing conditions which are inevitable in trade and commerce, are temporarily thrown out of employment. W e do not put this forward as a complete or an adequate remedy for all the evils of unemployment, and we do not contend that when this insurance scheme has been set up and financed the State has thereby done all in its power to help towards solving the problem. After all, it is infinitely better, in the interests both of the community and of the unemployed themselves, that the latter should be engaged on remunerative work, than that they should be drawing an allowance from the most skillfully contrived system of insurance. This country is small—I suppose it is the smallest great country in the world— but we have by no means exhausted it possibility for healthy and productive employment. It is no part of the function of a Government to create work; but it is an essential part of its business to see that the people are equipped to make the best of their own country, are permitted to make the best of their own country, and, if necessary, are helped to make the best of their own country. A State can and ought to take a longer view and a wider view of its investments than individuals. T h e resettlement of deserted and impoverished parts of its own territories may not bring to its coffers a direct return which would reimburse it fully for its expenditure; but the indirect enrichment of its resources more than compensates it for any apparent and immediate loss. T h e individual can rarely afford to wait, a State can; the individual must judge of the success of his enterprise by the testimony given for it by his bank book; a State keeps many ledgers, not all in ink, and when we wish to judge of the advantage derived by a country from a costly experiment we must examine all those books before we venture to pronounce judgment. . . . T h e State can help by instruction, by experiment, by organisation, by direction, and even, in certain cases which are outside the legitimate sphere of individual enterprise, by incurring direct responsibility. I doubt whether there is a great industrial country in the world which spends less money on work directly connected with the development of its resources than we do. Take, if you like, and purely as an illustration, one industry alone—agriculture—of all industries the most important for the permanent well-being of any land. Examine the Budgets of foreign countries—we have the advantage in other directions—but examine and compare them with our own, and hon.

DAVID LLOYD GEORGE

19

Members will be rather ashamed at the contrast between the wise and lavish generosity of countries much poorer than ours and the short-sighted and niggardly parsimony with which we dole out small sums of money for the encouragement of agriculture in our country. W e are not getting out of the land anything like what it is capable of endowing us with. Of the enormous quantity of agricultural and dairy produce and fruit, and of the timber imported into this country, a considerable portion could be raised on our own lands. On this, hon. Members opposite and ourselves will agree. T h e only difference is as to the remedy. In our opinion, the remedy which they suggest would make food costlier and more inaccessible for the people; the remedies which we propose, on the other hand, would make food more abundant, better, and cheaper. What is it we propose?—and, let the Committee observe, I am only dealing with that part of the problem which affects finance. I will tell the House therefore, briefly, what I propose doing in regard to this and all kindred matters I have dwelt upon. There is a certain amount of money—not very much—spent in this country in a spasmodic kind of way on what I call the work of national development—in light railways, in harbours, in indirect but very meagre assistance to agriculture. I propose to gather all these grants together into one Development Grant, and to put in this year an additional sum of £200,000. Legislation will have to be introduced, and I will then explain the methods of administration and the objects in greater detail, but the grant will be utilised in the promotion of schemes which have for their purpose the development of the resources of the country. It will include such objects as the institution of schools of forestry, the purchase and preparation of land for afforestation, the setting up of a number of experimental forests on a large scale, expenditure upon scientific research in the interests of agriculture, experimental farms, the improvement of stock—as to which there have been a great many demands from people engaged in agriculture—the equipment of agencies for disseminating agricultural instruction, the encouragement and promotion of co-operation, the improvement of rural transport so as to make markets more accessible, the facilitation of all well-considered schemes and measures for attracting labour back to the land by small holdings or reclamation of wastes. . . . W e have . . . during the last 60 years, in this country

accumulated

wealth to an extent which is almost unparalleled in the history of the world, but we have done it at an appalling waste of human material. W e have drawn upon the robust vitality of the rural areas of Great Britain, and especially of Ireland, and spent its energies recklessly in the devitalising atmosphere of urban factories and workshops as if the supply were in-

20

HOPES AND

FEARS

exhaustible. W e are now beginning to realise that we have been spending our capital, and at a disastrous rate, and it is time we should make a real, concerted, national effort to replenish it. I put forward this proposal, not a very extravagant one, as a beginning. . . . N o w what are the principles upon which I intend to proceed in getting [the necessary] taxes? T h e first principle on which I base my financial proposals is this—that the taxation which I suggest, while yielding in the present year not more than sufficient to meet this year's requirements, should be of such a character that it will produce enough revenue in the second year to cover the whole of our estimated liabilities for that year; and, moreover, that it will be of such an expansive character as to grow with the growing demand of the social programme which I have sketched without involving the necessity for imposing fresh taxation in addition to what I am asking Parliament to sanction at the present time. T h e second principle on which I base my proposals is that the taxes should be of such a character as not to inflict any injury on that trade or commerce which constitutes the sources of our wealth. M y third principle is this, that all classes of the community in this financial

emergency ought to be called upon to contribute. I have never

been able to accept the theory which I have seen advanced that you ought to draw a hard-and-fast line at definite incomes and say that no person under a certain figure should be expected to contribute a penny towards the burden of the good government of the country. In my judgment all should be called upon to bear their share. N o

voluntary

associations,

religious,

philanthropic or provident, have ever been run on the principle of exempting any section of their membership from subscription. They all contribute, even to the widow's mite. It is considered not merely the duty, but the privilege and pride of all to share in the common burden, and the sacrifice is as widely distributed as is the responsibility and the profit. A t the same time, when you come to consider whether the bulk of the taxation is to be raised by direct or indirect means, I must point out at this stage—I shall have a little more to say on this subject later on—that the industrial classes, in my judgment, upon a close examination of their contributions to local and Imperial finance, are paying more in proportion to their incomes than those who are better off. Their proportion to local finances especially is heavier, because, although nominally the rates are not paid by them, as everyone knows, they are really. For that reason the burden at the present moment of new taxation bears much more heavily in proportion to their income on that class than it does upon the wealthier and betterto-do classes. . . .

DAVID LLOYD

GEORGE

21

N o w I come to m y direct taxation. It must be obvious that in meeting a large deficit of this kind I should be unwise to trust to speculative or f a n c y taxes. I therefore propose, first of all, to raise more money out of the income tax and estate duties. Income tax in this country only begins w h e n the m a r g i n of necessity has been crossed and the domain of comfort and even of gentility has been reached. A m a n w h o enjoys an income of over £ 3

a

week need not stint himself or his f a m i l y of reasonable food or of clothes a n d shelter. T h e r e m a y be an exception in the case of a m a n with a f a m i l y , whose gentility is part of his stock in trade or the u n i f o r m of his craft. T h e n , I agree, things often g o hard. W h e n you come to estate duties, what a m a n bequeaths, after all, represents what is left after he has provided for all his o w n wants in life. B e y o n d a certain figure it also represents all that is essential to keep his f a m i l y in the necessaries of life. T h e figure which the experience of 70 years has sanctified as being that which divides sufficiency f r o m gentility is ¿ 1 5 0 to £160

a

year. A capital sum that would, if invested in safe securities, provide anything over that sum ought to be placed in a different category f r o m any sum which is below that

figure.

T h e r e is one observation which is common to income tax and the death duties, more especially with the higher scales. W h a t is it that has enabled the fortunate possessors of these incomes and these fortunes to amass the wealth they enjoy or bequeath ? T h e security ensured for property by the agency of the State, the guaranteed i m m u n i t y f r o m the risks and destruction of w a r , ensured by our natural advantages and our defensive forces. T h i s is an essential element even n o w in the credit of the country; and, in the past, it means that w e were accumulating great wealth in this land, w h e n the industrial enterprises of less fortunately situated countries were not merely at a standstill, but their resources were being ravaged and destroyed by the havoc of w a r . W h a t , further, is accountable for this g r o w t h of wealth? T h e spread of intelligence amongst the masses of the people, the improvements in sanitation and in the general condition of the people. T h e s e have all contributed towards the efficiency of the people, even as wealth-producing

machines.

T a k e , for instance, such legislation as the Education Acts and the Public H e a l t h A c t s : they have cost much money, but they have made infinitely more. T h a t is true of all legislation which improves the conditions of life for the people. A n educated, well-fed, well-clothed, well-housed people invariably leads to the g r o w t h of a numerous well-to-do class. If property were to grudge

a substantial

contribution

towards

proposals

which

ensure

the

security w h i c h is one of the essential conditions of its existence, or towards

11

HOPES AND

FEARS

keeping from poverty and privation the old people whose lives of industry and toil have either created that wealth or made it productive, then property would be not only shabby, but shortsighted. N o w what do I propose? When it is remembered that the total yield of income tax on its present basis amounts to little more than five years' normal growth of the aggregate income upon which income tax is payable (which increased from ¿607,500,000 in 1901-2 to ¿640,000,000 in 1906-7), it will be seen that our present reserve of taxable capacity is as great at the present moment with the existing rate of the tax as it would have been five years ago if there had been no tax at all. If the tax were doubled in the present year income tax payers would, in the aggregate, after payment of the double rate, be in the enjoyment of almost exactly the same net income as five years ago. A careful consideration of these figures ought to convince the most sceptical that the maximum rate of the tax may be retained at is., or even increased, without seriously encroaching upon our available reserves for national emergencies. T h e time, however, has gone by when a simple addition of pence to the poundage of the tax, attractive as the simplicity of that expedient is, can be regarded as a satisfactory solution of a financial difficulty. . . . In the case of incomes not exceeding ¿ 5 0 0 , the pressure of the tax, notwithstanding the abatements at present allowed, is sorely felt by taxpayers who have growing families to support, and although a comparatively trifling additional burden will be imposed upon them by the increased rate, since the aggregate income of this class is to the extent of at least four-fifths exclusively earned income, I think that even upon the present basis they have a strong claim to further relief. Even from the purely fiscal point of view there is this essential difference between the position of a man with a family and that of the taxpayer who has no such responsibilities. T h e family man is, generally speaking, a much heavier contributor to that portion of the revenue which is derived from indirect taxation and inhabited house duty, so that in comparison with the bachelor he is taxed not so much in proportion to his income as in proportion to his outgoings. There is no class of the community which has a much harder struggle or a more anxious time than that composed of the men whose earnings just bring them within the clutches of the income tax collector. On a small income they have not merely to maintain themselves, but to exhaust a large proportion of their limited resources in that most worrying and wasteful of all endeavours known as "keeping up appearances." They are often much worse off and much more to be pitied than the artisan who earns half their wages. If they have only themselves to think about they do well, but when they have a family dependent upon them the obligation to keep up the

DAVID LLOYD

GEORGE

23

appearance of respectability of all their dependents is very trying. I am strongly of opinion that they deserve special consideration in the rearrangement of our finances. Continental countries recognise their claim, and I propose that for all incomes under ¿ 5 0 0 , in addition to the existing abatements, there shall be allowed from the income in respect of which the tax is paid a special abatement of ¿ 1 0 for every child under the age of 16 years. T a k e the case of the widow with a family, which is always cited in reference to proposals to tax income or property: she will in most cases be better off with this abatement, should her family be of average numbers, even though she is rated at is. 2d., than she was before. T h e new abatement will, like the existing abatements, be allowed irrespective of the source from which the income is derived, and earned incomes, upon which no new burden is to be imposed, as well as unearned incomes, will enjoy the advantage of the concession. . . . T h e imposition of a super-tax, however, upon large incomes, on the lines suggested by the Select Committee of 1906, is a more practicable proposition [than a complete system of graduation], and it is upon this basis that I intend to proceed. Such a super-tax might take the form of an additional poundage charged at a uniform rate upon the whole income of persons whose total income exceeds the maximum above which the tax is to be applied, or the poundage might be varied according to the amount of the income to be taxed. A third, and I think preferable, alternative is to adopt a uniform poundage, but to charge the tax not upon the total income, but upon the amount only by which the income exceeded a certain fixed amount, which would naturally, but need not necessarily, be the amount of the minimum income which attracts the tax. W e might begin, say, at ¿3,000, and levy the new tax upon all income in excess of ¿3,000, or at ¿5,000, and levy the tax upon income in excess of ¿5,000. In the former case some 25,000 assessments would be required, in the latter only 10,000—from the point of view of administration a very strong argument in favour of the adoption of the higher figure, at any rate, in the first instance. On the other hand, a general abatement of ¿5,000 per taxpayer would be extremely costly, and though it would have the effect of largely reducing the actual as compared with the nominal rate of the tax, except in the case of very large incomes indeed, the nominal rate necessary to produce an adequate revenue—though in reality no measure of the general burden—would

tend to appear

somewhat

alarming. . . . N o w I come to the question of land. T h e first conviction that is borne in upon the Chancellor of the Exchequer who examines land as a subject for taxation is this: that in order to do justice he must draw a broad distinction

HOPES AND

24

FEARS

between land whose value is purely agricultural in its character and composition, and land which has a special value attached to it owing either to the fact of its covering marketable mineral deposits or because of its proximity to any concentration of people. Agricultural land has not, during the past 20 or 30 years, appreciated in value in this country. In some parts it has probably gone down. I know parts of the country where the value has gone up. But there has been an enormous increase in the value of urban land and of mineral property. A n d a still more important and relevant consideration in examining the respective merits of these two or three classes of claimants to taxation is this. T h e growth in the value, more especially of urban sites, is due to no expenditure of capital or thought on the part of the ground owner, but entirely owing to the energy and the enterprise of the community. Where it is not due to that cause, and where it is due to any expenditure by the urban owner himself, full credit ought to be given to him in taxation, and full credit will be given to him in taxation. I am dealing with cases which are due to the growth of the community, and not to anything done by the urban proprietor. It is undoubtedly one of the worst evils of our present system of land tenure that instead of reaping the benefit of the common endeavour of its citizens a community has always to pay a heavy penalty to its ground landlords for putting up the value of their land. . . . A n d yet, although the landlord, without any exertion of his own, is now in these cases in receipt of an income which is ten or even a hundredfold of what he was in the habit of receiving when these properties were purely agricultural in their character, and although he is in addition to that released from all the heavy financial obligations which are attached to the ownership of this land as agricultural property, he does not contribute a penny out of his income towards the local expenditure of the community which has thus made his wealth, in the words of John Stuart Mill, "whilst he was slumbering." Is it too much, is it unfair, is it inequitable, that Parliament should demand a special contribution from these fortunate owners towards the defence of the country and the social needs of the unfortunate in the community, whose efforts have so materially contributed to the opulence which they are enjoying? There is another aspect of this matter which I should like to say a word upon before I come to the actual proposals of the Government. I have dwelt upon the fundamental difference in the demeanour of landowners towards their urban tenants, and that which under the inspiration of more highminded and public-spirited principles marks their conduct towards their

DAVID LLOYD

GEORGE

2

5

agricultural tenants. There is no doubt that the spirit of greed is unconsciously much more dominant and unrestrained in the former case. One disastrous result of this is that land which is essential to the free and healthy development of towns is being kept out of the market in order to enhance its value, and that towns are cramped and their people become overcrowded in dwellings which are costly without being comfortable. You have only to buy an ordnance survey map and put together the sheets which include some town of your acquaintance and the land in its immediate vicinity, and you will see at once what I mean. You will find, as a rule, your town or village huddled in one corner of the map, dwellings jammed together as near as the law of the land will permit, with an occasional courtyard, into which the sunshine rarely creeps, but with nothing that would justify the title of "garden." For it is the interest of the landlord to pile together on the land every scrap of bricks and mortar that the law will allow; and yet, outside, are square miles of land unoccupied, or at least rebuilt upon. Land in the town seems to let by the grain, as if it were radium. Not merely towns, but villages (and by villages and towns I mean the people who dwell in them) suffer extremely from the difficulty which is experienced in obtaining land, and by the niggardliness with which sites are measured out. You cannot help feeling how much healthier and happier the community could have been made in these towns and villages if they had been planned on more spacious and rational principles, with a reasonable allowance of garden for every tenant, which would serve as a playground, as vegetable and flower garden, for the workman and his family, and which would even, in many districts, help materially to solve the problem of unemployment. T h e same observations apply to the case of mineral royalties. There, all the expenditure is incurred by the capitalist, who runs the risk of losing his capital, while the miner risks his life; and I do not think it is too much to ask the royalty owner, who has contributed no capital and runs no risk, to share in this emergency in bearing the large burden that is cast upon us for the defence of the country, and to help to pay the large sum of money needed to make provision for social needs, for the aged, and for those who have been engaged in digging out mining royalties all their lives. . . . This is a War Budget. It is for raising money to wage implacable warfare against poverty and squalidness. I cannot help hoping and believing that before this generation has passed away we shall have advanced a great step towards that good time when poverty, and the wretchedness and human degradation which always follow in its camp will be as remote to the people of this country as the wolves which once infested its forests.

GEORGES SOREL

G

EORGES SOREL (1847-1922) was until 1892 a respectable bourgeois, the chief engineer of highways and bridges for the French government and a recipient of a ribbon of the Legion of Honor. After 1892 he devoted himself exclusively to writing, and in 1908 published his best-known work Reflections on Violence. Sorel, during his lifetime and since his death, has become many things to many men. He was at one time a defender of Dreyfus but in his later days became a convinced anti-Semite. Content at one time to accept the alliance of democratic and socialist thought, he became eventually an ever more outspoken enemy of democracy; in endeavors to effect an alliance of radicals and reactionaries against democracy, he even became friendly with extreme royalists. Aligned with proletarian groups he nevertheless was not unsympathetic to attempts to translate his philosophy into bourgeois terms. And while Lenin called him "that notorious muddlehead," he looked with favor (though always pessimistically) on the Russian Revolution. Sorel's philosophy drew on many of the systems of thought current in his day. He regarded Proudhon as a precursor of his moralistic critique of contemporary society. Eduard von Hartmann's philosophy of the unconscious, a compound of Hegel and Schopenhauer, strengthened his belief that capitalism could be understood as the play of blind and irrational forces. Sorel considered the kernel of Marxism to be the conception of class struggle, but believed it important to remove from that idea any claim to scientific prediction of the future. In Reflections on Violence Sorel combines key Marxist ideas with an intuitionism borrowed from his contemporary, the idealist philosopher Henri Bergson, by whom he was also very much impressed. The Reflections gave vigorous expression to a syndicalist faith in direct action, the enmity felt towards the state as such, and a regard for placing "the forces of production in the hands of jree men." Sorel was not seriously involved in the day to day work of rank and file syndicalists, but he was disappointed when the faith in the general strike waned in France. In his last days, he returned for comfort to the "myths" of Christianity. The following passage is from Reflections on Violence (Glencoe, Illinois: The Free Press, 1950), translated from the French by T . E. Hulme and J. Roth, and reprinted here with the permission of the publisher.

REFLECTIONS

ON

VIOLENCE

Marx, capitalism, by reason of the innate laws of its own nature, is hurrying along a path which will lead the world of to-day, with the

ACCORDING TO

GEORGES SOREL

27

inevitability of the evolution of organic life, to the doors of the world of tomorrow. This movement comprises a long period of capitalistic construction, and it ends by a rapid destruction, which is the work of the proletariat. Capitalism creates the heritage which Socialism will receive, the men who will suppress the present régime, and the means of bringing about this destruction, at the same time that it preserves the results obtained in production. Capitalism begets new ways of working; it throws the working class into revolutionary organizations by the pressure it exercises on wages; it restricts its own political basis by competition, which is constantly eliminating industrial leaders. Thus, after having solved the great problem of the organization of labour, to effect which Utopians have brought forward so many naïve or stupid hypotheses, capitalism provokes the birth of the cause which will overthrow it, and thus renders useless everything that Utopians have written to induce enlightened people to make reforms; and it gradually ruins the traditional order, against which the critics of the idealists had proved themselves to be so deplorably incompetent. . . . Without any co-ordinated plan, without any directive ideas, without any ideal of a future world, it is the cause of an inevitable evolution; it draws from the present all that the present can give towards historical development; it performs in an almost mechanical manner all that is necessary, in order that a new era may appear, and that this new era may break every link with the idealism of the present times, while preserving the acquisitions of the capitalistic economic system. Socialists should therefore abandon the attempt (initiated by the Utopians) to find a means of inducing the enlightened middle class to prepare the transition to a more perfect system of legislation; their sole function is that of explaining to the proletariat the greatness of the revolutionary part they are called upon to play. By ceaseless criticism the proletariat must be brought to perfect their organizations; they must be shown how the embryonic forms which appear in their unions 1 may be developed, so that, finally, they may build up institutions without any parallel in the history of the middle class; that they may form ideas which depend solely on their position as producers in large industries, and which owe nothing to middle-class thought; and that they may acquire habits of liberty with which the middle class nowadays are no longer acquainted. This doctrine will evidently be inapplicable if the middle class and the proletariat do not oppose each other implacably, with all the forces at their disposal; the more ardently capitalist the middle class is, the more the proletariat is full of a warlike spirit and confident of its revolutionary strength, 1 [The French is sociétés de résistance. What is meant is the syndicate, considered principally as a means of combining workmen against the employers.—Trans. Note.]

28

H O P E S AND F E A R S

the more certain will be the success of the proletarian movement. . . . It is often urged, in objection to the people who defend the Marxian conception, that it is impossible for them to stop the movement of degeneration which is dragging both the middle class and the proletariat far from the paths assigned to them by Marx's theory. They can doubtless influence the working classes, and it is hardly to be denied that strike violences do keep the revolutionary spirit alive; but how can they hope to give back to the middle class an ardor which is spent? It is here that the role of violence in history appears to us as singularly great, for it can, in an indirect manner, so operate on the middle class as to awaken them to a sense of their own class sentiment. Attention has often been drawn to the danger of certain acts of violence which compromised admirable social worlds, disgusted employers who were disposed to arrange the happiness of their workmen, and developed egoism where the most noble sentiments formerly reigned. To repay with blac\ ingratitude the benevolence of those who would protect the workers, to meet with insults the homilies of the defenders of human fraternity, and to reply by blows to the advances of the propagators of social peace—all that is assuredly not in conformity with the rules of fashionable Socialism . . . but it is a very practical way of indicating to the middle class that they must mind their own business and only that. I believe also that it may be useful to thrash the orators of democracy and the representatives of the Government, for in this way you insure that none shall retain any illusions about the character of acts of violence. But these acts can have historical value only if they are the clear and brutal expression of the class war: the middle classes must not be allowed to imagine that, aided by cleverness, social science, or high-flown sentiments, they might find a better welcome at the hands of the proletariat. The day on which employers perceive that they have nothing to gain by works which promote social peace, or by democracy, they will understand that they have been ill-advised by the people who persuaded them to abandon their trade of creators of productive forces for the noble profession of educators of the proletariat. Then there is some chance that they may get back a part of their energy, and that moderate or conservative economics may appear as absurd to them as they appeared to Marx. In any case, the separation of classes being more clearly accentuated, the proletarian movement will have some chance of developing with greater regularity than to-day. . . . Every time that we attempt to obtain an exact conception of the ideas behind proletarian violence we are forced to go back to the notion of the general strike. . . .

G E O R G E S SOREL

29

The new school, which calls itself Marxist, Syndicalist, and revolutionary, declared in favor of the idea of the general strike as soon as it became clearly conscious of the true sense of its own doctrine, of the consequences of its activity, and of its own originality. It was thus led to leave the old official, Utopian, and political tabernacles, which hold the general strike in horror, and to launch itself into the true current of the proletarian revolutionary movement; for a long time past the proletariat had made adherence to the principle of the general strike the test by means of which the Socialism of the workers was distinguished from that of the amateur revolutionaries. Parliamentary Socialists can only obtain great influence if they can manage, by the use of a very confused language, to impose themselves on very diverse groups; for example, they must have working-men constituents simple enough to allow themselves to be duped by high-sounding phrases about future collectivism; they are compelled to represent themselves as profound philosophers to stupid middle-class people who wish to appear to be well informed about social questions; it is very necessary also for them to be able to exploit rich people who think that they are earning the gratitude of humanity by taking shares in the enterprises of Socialist politicians. . . . Against this noisy, garrulous, and lying Socialism, which is exploited by ambitious people of every description, which amuses a few buffoons, and which is admired by decadents—revolutionary Syndicalism takes its stand, and endeavors, on the contrary, to leave nothing in a state of indecision; its ideas are honestly expressed, without trickery and without mental reservations; no attempt is made to dilute doctrines by a stream of confused commentaries. Syndicalism endeavors to employ methods of expression which throw a full light on things, which put them exactly in the place assigned to them by their nature, and which bring out the whole value of the forces in play. Oppositions, instead of being glozed over, must be thrown into sharp relief if we desire to obtain a clear idea of the Syndicalist movement; the groups which are struggling one against the other must be shown as separate and as compact as possible; in short, the movements of the revolted masses must be represented in such a way that the soul of the revolutionaries may receive a deep and lasting impression. These results could not be produced in any very certain manner by the use of ordinary language; use must be made of a body of images which, by intuition alone, and before any considered analyses are made, is capable of evoking as an undivided whole the mass of sentiments which corresponds to the different manifestations of the war undertaken by Socialism against modern society. The Syndicalists solve this problem perfectly, by concentrating the whole of Socialism in the drama of the general strike; there is thus no longer

30

H O P E S AND F E A R S

any place for the reconciliation of contraries in the equivocations of the professors; everything is clearly mapped out, so that only one interpretation of Socialism is possible. This method has all the advantages which "integral" knowledge has over analysis, according to the doctrine of Bergson; and perhaps it would not be possible to cite another example which would so perfectly demonstrate the value of the famous professor's doctrines. The possibility of the actual realization of the general strike has been much discussed; it has been stated that the Socialist war could not be decided in one single battle. To the people who think themselves cautious, practical, and scientific the difficulty of setting great masses of the proletariat in motion at the same moment seems prodigious; they have analyzed the difficulties of detail which such an enormous struggle would present. It is the opinion of the Socialist-sociologists, as also of the politicians, that the general strike is a popular dream, characteristic of the beginnings of a working-class movement; we have had quoted against us the authority of Sidney Webb, who has decreed that the general strike is an illusion of youth, of which the English workers—whom the monopolists of sociology have so often presented to us as the depositaries of the true conception of the working-class movement —soon rid themselves. That the general strike is not popular in contemporary England, is a poor argument to bring against the historical significance of the idea, for the English are distinguished by an extraordinary lack of understanding of the class war; their ideas have remained very much dominated by medieval influences: the guild, privileged, or at least protected by laws, still seems to them the ideal of working-class organization; it is for England that the term working-class aristocracy, as a name for the trades unionists, was invented, and, as a matter of fact, trades unionism does pursue the acquisition of legal privileges. (This is seen, for example, in the efforts made by the trades unions to obtain laws absolving them from the civil responsibilities of their acts.) We might therefore say that the aversion felt by England for the general strike should be looked upon as strong presumptive evidence in favor of the latter by all those who look upon the class war as the essence of Socialism. Moreover, Sidney Webb enjoys a reputation for competence which is very much exaggerated; all that can be put to his credit is that he has waded through uninteresting blue-books, and has had the patience to compose an extremely indigestible compilation on the history of trades unionism; he has a mind of the narrowest description, which could only impress people unaccustomed to reflection. Those who introduced his fame into France knew nothing at all about Socialism; and if he is really in the first rank of contemporary authors of economic history, as his translator affirms, it is because the

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intellectual level of these historians is rather low; moreover, many examples show us that it is possible to be a most illustrious professional historian and yet possess a mind something less than mediocre. Neither do I attach any importance to the objections made to the general strike based on considerations of a practical order. T h e attempt to construct hypotheses about the nature of the struggles of the future and the means of suppressing capitalism, on the model furnished by history, is a return to the old methods of the Utopists. There is no process by which the future can be predicted scientifically, nor even one which enables us to discuss whether one hypothesis about it is better than another; it has been proved by too many memorable examples that the greatest men have committed prodigious errors in thus desiring to make predictions about even the least distant future. ( T h e errors committed by Marx are numerous and sometimes enormous. . . .) And yet without leaving the present, without reasoning about this future, which seems for ever condemned to escape our reason, we should be unable to act at all. Experience shows that the framing of a future, in some indeterminate time, may, when it is done in a certain way, be very effective, and have very few inconveniences; this happens when the anticipations of the future take the form of those myths, which enclose with them, all the strongest inclinations of a people, of a party or of a class, inclinations which recur to the mind with the insistence of instincts in all the circumstances of life; and which give an aspect of complete reality to the hopes of immediate action by which, more easily than by any other method, men can reform their desires, passions, and mental activity. W e know, moreover, that these social myths in no way prevent a man profiting by the observations which he makes in the course of his life, and form no obstacle to the pursuit of his normal occupations. (It has so often been remarked that English or American sectarians whose religious exaltation was fed by the apocalyptic myths were often none the less very practical men.) T h e truth of this may be shown by numerous examples. T h e first Christians expected the return of Christ and the total ruin of the pagan world, with the inauguration of the kingdom of the saints, at the end of the first generation. T h e catastrophe did not come to pass, but Christian thought profited so greatly from the apocalyptic myth that certain contemporary scholars maintain that the whole preaching of Christ referred solely to this one point. T h e hopes which Luther and Calvin had formed of the religious exaltation of Europe were by no means realized; these fathers of the Reformation very soon seemed men of a past era; for present-day Protestants they belong rather to the Middle Ages than to modern times, and the problems which troubled them most occupy very little place in contemporary

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Protestantism. Must we for that reason deny the immense result which came from their dreams of Christian renovation ? It must be admitted that the real developments of the Revolution did not in any way resemble the enchanting pictures which created the enthusiasm at its first adepts; but without those pictures would the Revolution have been victorious? Many Utopias were mixed up with the Revolutionary myth, because it had been formed by a society passionately fond of imaginative literature, full of confidence in the "science," and very little acquainted with the economic history of the past. These Utopias came to nothing; but it may be asked whether the Revolution was not a much more profound transformation than those dreamed of by the people who in the eighteenth century had invented social Utopias. In our own times Mazzini pursued what the wiseacres of his time called a mad chimera; but it can no longer be denied that, without Mazzini, Italy would never have become a great power, and that he did more for Italian unity than Cavour and all the politicians of his school. A knowledge of what the myths contain in the way of details which will actually form part of the history of the future is then of small importance; they are not astrological almanacs; it is even possible that nothing which they contain will ever come to pass,—as was the case with the catastrophe expected by the first Christians. In our own daily life, are we not familiar with the fact that what actually happens is very different from our preconceived notion of it? And that does not prevent us from continuing to make resolutions. Psychologists say that there is heterogeneity between the ends in view and the ends actually realized: the slightest experience of life reveals this law to us, which Spencer transferred into nature, to extract therefrom his theory of the multiplication of effects. The myth must be judged as a means of acting on the present; any attempt to discuss how far it can be taken literally as future history is devoid of sense. It is the myth in its entirety which is alone important: its parts are only of interest in so far as they bring out the main idea. No useful purpose is served, therefore, in arguing about the incidents which may occur in the course of a social war, and about the decisive conflicts which may give victory to the proletariat; even supposing the revolutionaries to have been wholly and entirely deluded in setting up this imaginary picture of the general strike, this picture may yet have been, in the course of the preparation for the Revolution, a great element of strength, if it has embraced all the aspirations of Socialism, and if it has given to the whole body of Revolutionary thought a precision and a rigidity which no other method of thought could have given. T o estimate, then, the significance of the idea of the general strike, all the methods of discussion which are current among politicians, sociologists, or

GEORGES

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33

people with pretensions to political science, must be abandoned. Everything which its opponents endeavor to establish may be conceded to them, without reducing in any way the value of the theory which they think they have refuted. T h e question whether the general strike is a partial reality, or only a product of popular imagination, is of little importance. All that it is necessary to know is, whether the general strike contains everything that the Socialist doctrine expects of the revolutionary proletariat. T o solve this question we are no longer compelled to argue learnedly about the future; we are not obliged to indulge in lofty reflections about philosophy, history, or economics; we are not on the plane of theories, and we can remain on the level of observable facts. W e have to question men who take a very active part in the real revolutionary movement amidst the proletariat, men who do not aspire to climb into the middle class and whose mind is not dominated by corporative prejudices. These men may be deceived about an infinite number of political, economical, or moral questions; but their testimony is decisive, sovereign, and irrefutable when it is a question of knowing what are the ideas which most powerfully move them and their comrades, which most appeal to them as being identical with their socialistic conceptions, and thanks to which their reason, their hopes, and their way of looking at particular facts seem to make but one indivisible unity. Thanks to these men, we know that the general strike is indeed what I have said: the myth in which Socialism is wholly comprised, i.e., a body of images capable of evoking instinctively all the sentiments which correspond to the different manifestations of the war undertaken by Socialism against modern society. Strikes have engendered in the proletariat the noblest, deepest, and most moving sentiments that they possess; the general strike groups them all in a co-ordinated picture, and, by bringing them together, gives to each one of them its maximum of intensity; appealing to their painful memories of particular conflicts, it colors with an intense life all the details of the composition presented to consciousness. W e thus obtain that intuition of Socialism which language cannot give us with perfect clearness—and we obtain it as a whole, perceived instantaneously. . . . [The] class war . . . is the point of departure for all Socialistic thought and stands in such great need of elucidation, since sophists have endeavored to give a false idea of it. Marx speaks of society as if it were divided into two fundamentally antagonistic groups; observation, it has often been urged, does not justify this division, and it is true that a certain effort of will is necessary before we can find it verified in the phenomena of everyday life. T h e organization of a capitalistic workshop furnishes a first approximation,

34

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and piece-work plays an essential part in the formation of the class idea; in fact, it throws into relief the very clear opposition of interest about the price of commodities; the workers feel themselves under the thumb of the employers in the same way that peasants feel themselves in the power of the merchants and the money-lenders of the towns; history shows that no economic opposition has been more clearly felt than the latter; since civilization has existed, country and town have formed two hostile camps. Piece-work also shows that in the wage-earning world there is a group of men somewhat analogous to the retail shopkeepers, possessing the confidence of the employer, and not belonging to the proletariat class. T h e strike throws a new light on all this; it separates the interests and the different ways of thinking of the two groups of wage-earners—the foremen, clerks, engineers, etc., as contrasted with the workmen who alone go on strike—much better than the daily circumstances of life do; it then becomes clear that the administrative group has a natural tendency to become a little aristocracy; for these people, State Socialism would be advantageous, because they would go up one in the social hierarchy.

MAX WEBER

T

Max Weber (1864-1920) is preeminent among an extraordinary group of German social scientists of the era before the First World War. His father was a prominent well-to-do member of the National Liberal party and a Reichstag member under Bismarck. Weber inherited from him a lifelong interest in political affairs which he combined with a brilliant academic career. Raised and educated in Berlin for the bar, his first teaching post was at the University of Berlin. Thereafter he held high posts in economics at Freiburg, Heidelberg, and Munich. Constantly plagued by poor health from his early days at Heidelberg, he nevertheless was able to write many essays and longer studies of which the most famous is The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism (1904-5). Weber knew intimately many of the important political figures of his time and often served as their adviser. His most notable political labors came at the end of the war when he helped draft a memorandum denying German war guilt at the Paris Peace Conference, and later when he exercised a strong voice in the preliminary work on the Weimar Constitution. Weber was intellectually antipathetic to the traditions of German idealist philosophy and to the concern of his contemporaries with narrow historical fact. Early in his academic career he developed strong sympathies for Marxism, but then abandoned its emphasis on the paramount importance of economic forces in history and began to stress instead the interplay of army, bureaucracy, economy, and religion. His study of the influence of Calvinism on the growth of capitalism was, in fact, the first part of an incomplete three-volume work on the relation of various religious movements to economic organization. Although humane and progressive in his political beliefs, Weber was skeptical that there were any inherently liberating tendencies in the growth of modern science, industry, and the secular bureaucratic state. A cautious liberalism is the underlying personal creed in most of his topical works. The combination of this faith with his typical dramatic generalizations can be found in this selection from Weber's essay, "On the Status of Middle-Class Democracy in Russia" (1906), inspired by the Russian Revolution of 1905 and published in the Archiv jiir Sozialwissenschaft und Sozialpoliti\. This portion of that essay has been translated by Benjamin K . Bennett for this volume and has been specially titled. HE NAME OF

THE NEW THE

DEVELOPMENT

DESPOTISM

of capitalism [in Russia] will effect the destruction of

" f o l k " Romanticism, whose place for the most part will doubtless be taken by

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Marxism. But the latter's intellectual tools are entirely unequal to the pressing and fundamental agrarian problem, and it is precisely the encounter with this problem that can draw the two factions of the intelligentsia together again. The challenge can clearly be met only through the organs of selfgovernment, and for this reason alone it seems that, in order to survive, Liberalism must find its calling, now as before, in struggling against bureaucratic as well as Jacobin centralism, and in striving to fill the masses with the basic individualistic idea of the "inalienable rights of men,"—which idea has become as matter-of-fact to us west Europeans as black bread is to the man who has plenty to eat. Just as they do not indicate a single social and economic program, neither are these individualistic axioms of "natural law" produced exclusively by a single set of economic conditions—least of all by "modern" conditions. Quite the contrary: as much as the fight for such "individualistic" values has to reckon at every step with the "material" conditions of its environment—so much the less can their "realization" be left to "economic development." The chances for "democracy" or "individualism" would be very poor if we relied for their development upon the "automatic" workings of material interests. For these interests tend, as obviously as one could desire, in the opposite direction: in the American "benevolent feudalism," in the German so-called "welfare measures," in the Russian factory system—everywhere has been erected the shell of the new despotism: and it requires only, in order to finally be filled and completed, that the masses be rendered docile by the slowing of technological-economic "progress" and the victory of "revenue" over "profit" in connection with the eventual exhaustion of "free" land and "free" markets. At the same time, increasing complexity of economic management, partial nationalization and municipalization and the territorial extent of populations all continually create new paperwork, further specialization and division of labor, and job-training in government —in other words, a caste system. Those American workers who were against the "Civil Service Reform" knew what they were about: they would rather have been managed by ambitious climbers of doubtful morals then by a hallowed society of mandarins—but their protest is futile. . . . In the face of this fact, let those who live in constant fear that there could be in the future too much "democracy" and "individualism" and too little "authority," "aristocracy," "respect for office" and such like, let them finally calm themselves; it is all too inevitable that the trees of democratic individualism shall not grow to heaven. All experience teaches us that "history" relentlessly produces new "aristocracies" and "authorities" to which whoever finds it necessary for himself—or for the "people"—can cling.

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37

If it were only a question of "material" conditions and of the constellations of interest "created" by them, then any sober observer would have to say: all economic signs forecast increasing "un-freedom." It is completely ridiculous to ascribe to present-day capitalism, as it is imported in Russia and exists in America,—to ascribe to this "inevitability" of our economic development—a natural affinity for "democracy" or, as some go so far as to assert, "freedom" (in some sense or other of the word), when after all the real question can only be: under capitalism, are these things at all "possible?" In fact they are possible only where the definite will of a nation, not to let itself be run like a herd of sheep, constantly supports them. We are "individualists" and partisans of "democratic" institutions in that we strive "against the stream" of material circumstances. Whoever would be a weather-vane for "developmental tendencies," let him, as quickly as possible, forsake these old-fashioned ideals. The historical growth of modern "freedom" had unique, never-to-berepeated circumstances as a precondition. Let us enumerate the most important. First, Transoceanic expansion: in the armies of Cromwell, in the French Constituent Assembly, still today in our entire economic life, this wind is blowing from across the sea:—but there are no longer any new continents for expansion. It is the great land masses, North America on one side and Russia on the other, toward whose monotonous plains, so conducive to being parcelled out, the bulk of the civilized West's population increasingly tends, as once before in late antiquity. Second, the peculiar economic and social structure of the "early capitalist" epoch in Western Europe; and third, the victory of science over existence, the "self-realization of the spirit." But the rational ordering of objective existence has today, doubtless after the destruction of innumerable "values," at least "in principle" done its work. The increasingly uniform way of life, going hand in hand with "standardization" of production, is, under the present conditions of "commercial" existence, the universal result of this ordering,—and "science" as such is today creating no more "universal personality." . . . Finally: certain ideal notions of value which grew out of the concrete historical character of an established set of religious conceptions and which, working together with many equally characteristic political constellations and with the above-mentioned material preconditions, formed the "ethical" character and the "cultural values" of modern man. Can any material development as such, especially the present-day latecapitalist development, preserve or even perhaps create anew these unique

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historical conditions? This question need only be posed in order to be answered. Not a shadow of probability indicates that economic "socialization" as such must bear in its womb the development of either essentially "free" personalities or "altruistic" ideals. Are we supposed to find the germ of something like this among those who, in their opinion, will be carried to inevitable victory by "material development?" A "correct" Social-Democracy drills into the masses a spiritual parade march, and prods them not toward the eternal paradise (which, in Puritanism, also had many quite respectable services to offer in the cause of temporal "freedom") but toward the temporal paradise,—and, in so doing, turns this paradise into a sort of protective vaccination for those interested in the status quo. It accustoms its wards to docility before dogmas and party-authority, it accustoms them to the futile spectacle of the mass-strike and to the sedentary pleasure of listening to the unnerving shrieks of their journalistic prebendaries, which noise, however, in the eyes of its opponent, is as harmless as it is ultimately silly,—it accustoms them, in short, to a "hysterical affective enjoyment," which both replaces and represses all economic or political thought and action. In this barren soil, after the "eschatological" era of the movement has passed and generation after generation has clenched its fists in its pocket or bared its teeth toward heaven, only spiritual numbness can grow. And yet, the time presses us "to act while the day lasts." For the problem will remain open only during the next few generations, only so long as economic and spiritual "revolution," much-reviled "anarchy" in production and equally reviled "subjectivism" maintain an unbroken existence. By means of these movements, and only by means of them, can the life of the huge masses be made self-dependent. Whatever, in the way of "inalienable" rights of personality and freedom, is not won while these movements last, will then, when the world has once become economically "full" and intellectually "sated," will then perhaps never be won. Perhaps: so far, at least, as our feeble eyes can penetrate the obscuring mists of man's future. . . . No matter how strong the retrogressions of the near future, Russia is entering upon the path of specifically European development: the mighty influx of Western ideas is destroying both patriarchal and communal conservatism here, just as, conversely, the mighty immigration of Europeans, and specifically east Europeans, into the United States is at work undermining there the old democratic traditions—both of which movements are supported by the forces of capitalism. Despite the tremendous difference between them, the economic natures of capitalist development in both of these "communizing" population reservoirs are, in many respects, comparable (which idea admits of expansion sometime in the future). The

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emancipation from the "historical," especially, is in both cases inescapable and fits with the "continental" character of the nearly boundless geographical stage. Upon both developments, however,—and this is the more important comparison—depends the same thing: in a certain sense, both are perhaps "last chances" for the erection, "from the ground up," of "free" cultures. —"Millennia passed before you began life, and still more millennia await silently what you will do with that life,"—this thought, which Carlyle's passionate belief in personality would cry out to each new human being, can be applied without exaggeration not only to the present situation of the United States but also to that of Russia: Russia, partly as she is now and partly as she evidently will be after another generation. Therefore, leaving aside all differences in national character and—let us admit

them—in

national interest, we cannot but look with deep emotion and sympathy upon the fight for freedom in Russia and its fighters—of whatever "leaning" or "class" they may be.

JOHN A. HOBSON

J

. A. H O B S O N (1858-1940) was among those European socialists who, even before Lenin, analyzed the nature of modern imperialism. An Englishman, he became an economist and socialist early in life, and is known as one of the pioneers of "welfare economics." He published many books on subjects other than imperialism and economic policy. Hobson shared with writers like Lenin the now classic, and still popular, view that after 1870 the fundamental cause of imperialism was a deliberately sought expansion of Western capitalism overseas. He differed from Lenin by hoping that moral suasion and peaceful reform might turn the West from what seemed its ruinous course. Despite its seeming plausibility, Hobson's analysis does not square with the facts. Imperialism after 1870 was initially an enthusiasm of Western conservative and landed political parties; it was not the demand of industrialists. It did not have economic sources exclusively but was adopted at first as a political device to win votes and glories of empire for groups in the West losing prestige and power at home at the hands of challenging industrial and working-class forces. Trade undoubtedly followed the flag, however unevenly, but available evidence suggests that industrial and finance capital did not push Europe into its last round of imperial adventures or even into the First World War. By 1902, when Hobson published the first edition of Imperialism, the major European powers and the United States were cutting up the untaken regions of the world into spheres of influence. The rivalry for empire dangerously increased antagonism between the nations but in areas like China, Persia, the Sudan, and elsewhere, where rival Western powers clashed, accommodations were often worked out. It is noteworthy that when general war broke out in 1914 it was over an issue in Europe and involved, most directly, three of the least industrialized European nations. By 1914 few areas of the world were left for claims by Western powers. By 1918 the high tide of Western power in the non-Western world had passed. During the war the forces that eventually brought colonial nations their freedom were set in more rapid motion, but did not come to their final results until a generation or two later. This selection is from Hobson's Imperialism (London: Nisbet, 1902).

%

JOHN

A.

HOBSON

4i

IMPERIALISM THE POLITICAL SIGNIFICANCE OF IMPERIALISM T h e curious ignorance which prevails regarding the political character and tendencies of Imperialism cannot be better illustrated than by the following passage from a learned work upon " T h e History of Colonization": T h e extent of British dominion may perhaps be better imagined than described, when the fact is appreciated that, of the entire land surface of the globe, approximately one-fifth is actually or theoretically under that flag, while more than one-sixth of all the human beings living in this planet reside under one or the other type of English colonization. T h e names by which authority is exerted are numerous, and processes are distinct, but the goals to which this manifold mechanism is working are very similar. According to the climate, the natural conditions and the inhabitants of the regions affected, procedure and practice differ. T h e means are adapted to the situation: there is not any irrevocable, immutable line of policy: from time to time, from decade to decade, English statesmen have applied different treatments to the same territory. Only one fixed rule of action seems to exist; it is to promote the interests of the colony to the utmost, to develop its scheme of government as rapidly as possible, and eventually to elevate it from the position of inferiority to that of association. Under the charm of this beneficent spirit the chief colonial establishments of Great Britain have already achieved substantial freedom, without dissolving nominal ties; the other subordinate possessions are aspiring to it, while, on the other hand, this privilege of local independence has enabled England to assimilate with ease many feudatory States into the body politic of her system. H e r e then is the theory that Britons are a race endowed, like the R o m a n s , with a genius for government, that our colonial and imperial policy is animated by a resolve to spread throughout the world the arts of free selfgovernment which we enjoy at home, and that in truth we are accomplishing this work. N o w , without discussing here the excellencies or the defects of the British theory and practice of representative self-government, to assert that our "fixed rule of action" has been to educate our dependencies in this theory and practice is quite the largest misstatement of the facts of our colonial and imperial policy that is possible. U p o n the vast majority of the populations throughout our E m p i r e we have bestowed no real powers of self-government, nor have we any serious intention of doing so, or any serious belief that it is possible for us to do so. Of the three hundred and sixty-seven millions of British subjects outside

HOPES AND

42

FEARS

these isles, not more than eleven millions, or one in thirty-four, have any real self-government for purposes of legislation and administration. Political freedom, and civil freedom, so far as it rests upon the other, are simply non-existent £oç the overwhelming majority of British subjects. In the self-governing colonies of Australasia and North America alone is responsible representative government a reality, and even there considerable populations of outlanders, as in West Australia, or servile labour, as in Queensland, have tempered the genuineness of democracy. In Cape Colony and Natal events testify how feebly the forms and even the spirit of the free British institutions have taken root in States where the great majority of the population were always excluded from political rights. T h e franchise and the rights it carries remain virtually a white monopoly in so-called selfgoverning colonies, where the coloured population was, in 1903, to the white as four to one and ten to one respectively. . . . T h e overwhelming majority of the subjects of the British Empire are under Crown colony government, or under protectorates. In neither case do they enjoy any of the important political rights of British citizens; in neither case are they being trained in the arts of free British institutions. In the Crown colony the population exercises no political privileges. T h e governor, appointed by the Colonial office, is absolute, alike for legislation and administration; he is aided by a council of local residents usually chosen by himself or by home authority, but its function is merely advisory, and its advice can be and frequently is ignored. In the vast protectorates we have assumed in Africa and Asia there is no tincture of British representative government; the British factor consists in arbitrary acts of irregular interference with native government. Exceptions to this exist in the case of districts assigned to Chartered Companies, where business men, animated avowedly by business ends, are permitted to exercise arbitrary powers of government over native populations under the imperfect check of some British Imperial

Com-

missioner. Again, in certain native and feudatory States of India our Empire is virtually confined to government of foreign relations, military protection, and a veto upon grave internal disorder, the real administration of the countries being left in the hands of native princes or headmen. However excellent this arrangement may be, it lends little support to the general theory of the British Empire as an educator of free political institutions. Where British government is real, it does not carry freedom or self-government; where it does carry a certain amount of freedom and self-government, it is not real. Not five per cent of the population of our Empire are possessed of any appreciable portion of the political and civil liberties which are the

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basis of British civilization. Outside the eleven millions of British subjects in Canada, Australia, and N e w Zealand, no considerable body is endowed with full self-government in the more vital matters, or being "elevated from the position of inferiority to that of association." . . . T h e present condition of the government under which the vast majority of our fellow-subjects in the Empire live is eminently un-British in that it is based, not on the consent of the governed, but upon the will of imperial officials; it does indeed betray a great variety of forms, but they agree in the essential of un-freedom. Nor is it true that any of the more enlightened methods of administration we employ are directed towards undoing this character. Not only in India, but in the West Indies, and wherever there exists a large preponderance of coloured population, the trend, not merely of ignorant, but of enlightened public opinion, is against a genuinely representative government on British lines. It is perceived to be incompatible with the economic and social authority of a superior race. . . II

N o w this large expansion of British political despotism is fraught with reactions upon home politics which are deserving of most serious consideration. A curious blindness seems to beset the mind of the average educated Briton when he is asked to picture to himself our colonial Empire. Almost instinctively he visualises Canada, Australasia, and South Africa—the rest he virtually ignores. Yet the Imperialism which is our chief concern, the expansion of the last quarter of the nineteenth century, has nothing in common with Canada and Australasia, and very little with "white man's Africa." When Lord Rosebery uttered his famous words about "a free, tolerant and unaggressive Empire," he can scarcely have had in mind our vast encroachments in West and Central Africa, in the Soudan, on the Burmese frontier, or in Matabeleland. But the distinction between genuine Colonialism and Imperialism, important in itself, is vital when we consider their respective relations to domestic policy. Modern British colonialism has been no drain upon our material and moral resources, because it has made for the creation of free white democracies, a policy of informal federation, of decentralisation, involving no appreciable strain upon the governmental faculties of Great Britain. Such federation, whether it remains informal with the slight attachment of imperial sovereignty which now exists, or voluntarily takes some more formal shape, political or financial, may well be regarded as a source of strength, political and military.

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Imperialism is the very antithesis of this free, wholesome colonial connection, making, as it ever does, for greater complications of foreign policy, greater centralisation of power, and a congestion of business which ever threatens to absorb and overtax the capacity of parliamentary government. The true political nature of Imperialism is best seen by confronting it with the watchwords of progress accepted in the middle of the nineteenth century by moderate men of both great parties in the State, though with interpretations, varying in degree—peace, economy, reform, and popular selfgovernment. Even now we find no formal abandonment of the principles of government these terms express, and a large section of professed Liberals believe or assert that Imperialism is consistent with the maintenance of all these virtues. This contention, however, is belied by facts. The decades of Imperialism have been prolific in wars; most of these wars have been directly motived by aggression of white races upon "lower races," and have issued in the forcible seizure of territory. Every one of the steps of expansion in Africa, Asia, and the Pacific has been accompanied by bloodshed; each imperialist Power keeps an increasing army available for foreign service; rectification of frontiers, punitive expeditions, and other euphemisms for war have been in incessant progress. The Pax Britannica, always an impudent falsehood, has become a grotesque monster of hypocrisy; along our Indian frontiers, in West Africa, in the Soudan, in Uganda, in Rhodesia fighting has been wellnigh incessant. Although the great imperialist Powers kept their hands off one another, save where the rising empire of the United States found its opportunity in the falling empire of Spain, the self-restraint has been costly and precarious. Peace as a national policy is antagonized not merely by war, but by militarism, an even graver injury. Apart from the enmity of France and Germany, the main cause of the vast armaments which have drained the resources of most European countries is their conflicting interests in territorial and commercial expansion. Where thirty years ago there existed one sensitive spot in our relations with France, or Germany, or Russia, there are a dozen now; diplomatic strains are of almost monthly occurrence between Powers with African or Chinese interests, and the chiefly business nature of the national antagonisms renders them more dangerous, inasmuch as the policy of Governments passes under the influence of distinctively financial juntos. The contention of the si pacem vis para bellum (if you wish peace prepare for war) school, that armaments alone constitute the best security for peace, is based upon the assumption that a genuine lasting antagonism of real

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interests exists between the various peoples who are called upon to undergo this monstrous sacrifice. O u r economic analysis has disclosed the fact that it is only the interests of competing cliques of business men—investors, contractors, export

manu-

facturers, and certain professional classes—that are antagonistic; that these cliques, usurping the authority and voice of the people, use the public resources to push their private interests, and spend the blood and money of the people in this vast and disastrous military game, feigning

national

antagonisms which have no basis in reality. It is not to the interest of the British people, either as producers of wealth or as tax-payers, to risk a war with Russia and France in order to join Japan in preventing Russia from seizing Corea; but it may serve the interests of a group of commercial politicians to promote this dangerous policy. T h e South African war, openly fomented by gold speculators for their private purposes, will rank in history as a leading case of this usurpation of nationalism. . . . T h e patent admitted fact that, as a result of imperial competition, an ever larger proportion of the time, energy, and money of "imperialist" nations is absorbed by naval and military armaments, and that no check upon further absorption is regarded as practicable by Imperialists, brings "militarism" into the forefront of practical politics. Great Britain and the United States, which have hitherto congratulated themselves on escaping the militarism of continental Europe, are now rapidly succumbing. W h y ? Does any one suggest that either nation needs a larger army for the protection of its own lands or of any of its genuine white settlements in other lands? N o t at all. It is not pretended that the militarization of England is required for such protective work. Australia and N e w Zealand are not threatened by any power, nor could a British army render them adequate assistance if they were; equally impotent would British land forces be against the only Power which could conceivably attack our Canadian D o m i n i o n ; even South Africa, which lies on the borderland between colony and tropical dependency, cannot ultimately be secured by the military power of England. It is our mistaken annexation of tropical and sub-tropical territories, and the attempt to govern "lower races," that is driving us down the steep road to militarism. . . . Imperialism—whether it consists in a further policy of expansion or in the rigorous maintenance of all those vast tropical lands which have been earmarked as British spheres of influence—implies militarism now and ruinous wars in the future. T h i s truth is now for the first time brought sharply and nakedly before the mind of the nation. T h e kingdoms of the earth are to be ours on condition that we fall down and worship Moloch. . . .

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So far, I have regarded the issue on its narrowly economic side. Far more important are the political implications of militarism. These strike at the very root of popular liberty and the ordinary civic virtues. A few plain reflections serve to dispel the sophistical vapours which are used to form a halo round the life of the soldier. Respice finem. There exists an absolute antagonism between the activity of the good citizen and that of the soldier. The end of the soldier is not, as is sometimes falsely said, to die for his country; it is to kill for his country. In as far as he dies he is a failure; his work is to kill, and he attains perfection as a soldier when he becomes a perfect killer. This end, the slaughter of one's fellow-men, forms a professional character, alien from, and antagonistic to, the character of our ordinary citizen, whose work conduces to the preservation of his fellow-men. If it be contended that this final purpose, though informing and moulding the structure and functions of an army, operates but seldom and slightly upon the consciousness of the individual soldier, save upon the battlefield, the answer is that, in the absence from consciousness of this end, the entire routine of the soldier's life, his drill, parades, and whole military exercise, is a useless, purposeless activity, and that these qualities exercise a hardly less degrading influence on character than the conscious intention of killing his fellowmen. . . . The order and progress of Great Britain during the nineteenth century was secured by the cultivation and practice of the ordinary civic and industrial virtues, assisted by certain advantages of natural resources and historical contingencies. Are we prepared to substitute the military code of ethics or to distract the national mind and conduct by a perpetual conflict of two warring principles, the one making for the evolution of the good citizen, the other for the evolution of the good soldier ? Ignoring, for the present, the distinctively moral degradation of this reversion from industrial to military ethics, we cannot but perceive that the damage done to commercial morality must react disastrously upon the wealthproducing power of the nation, and sap the roots of imperial expenditure. But one loophole of escape from this dilemma presents itself, an escape fraught with still graver peril. The new Imperialism has been, we have seen, chiefly concerned with tropical and sub-tropical countries where large "lower races" are brought under white control. Why should Englishmen fight the defensive or offensive wars of this Empire, when cheaper, more numerous, and better-assimilated fighting material can be raised upon the spot, or transferred from one tropical dominion to another? As the labour of industrial development of tropical resources is put upon the "lower races" who reside there, under white superintendence, why should not militarism

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be organized upon the same basis, black or brown or yellow men, to whom military discipline will be "a wholesome education," fighting for the British Empire under British officers? Thus can we best economize our own limited military material, keeping most of it for home defence. This simple solution —the employment of cheap foreign mercenary armies—is no new device. T h e organization of vast native forces, armed with "civilized" weapons, drilled on "civilized" methods, and commanded by "civilized" officers, formed one of the most conspicuous features of the latest stages of the great Eastern Empires, and afterwards of the Roman Empire. It has proved one of the most perilous devices of parasitism, by which a metropolitan population entrusts the defence of its lives and possessions to the precarious fidelity of "conquered races," commanded by ambitious pro-consuls. . . . This mode of militarism, while cheaper and easier in the first instance implies less and less control from Great Britain. Though reducing the strain of militarism upon the population at home, it enhances the risks of wars, which become more frequent and more barbarous in proportion as they involve to a less degree the lives of Englishmen. T h e expansion of our Empire under the new Imperialism has been compassed by setting the "lower races" at one another's throats, fostering tribal animosities and utilising for our supposed benefit the savage propensities of the peoples to whom we have a mission to carry Christianity and civilization. That we do not stand alone in this ignominious policy does not make it better, rather worse, offering terrible prophetic glimpses into a not distant future, when the horrors of our eighteenth century struggle with France in North America and India may be revived upon a gigantic scale, and Africa and Asia may furnish huge cock-pits for the struggles of black and yellow armies representing the imperialist rivalries of Christendom. T h e present tendencies of Imperialism plainly make in this direction, involving in their recoil a degradation of Western States and a possible debacle of Western civilization. In any event Imperialism makes for war and for militarism, and has brought a great and limitless increase of expenditure of national resources upon armaments. It has impaired the independence of every nation which has yielded to its false glamour. Great Britain no longer possesses a million pounds which it can call its own; its entire financial resources are mortgaged to a policy to be dictated by Germany, France, or Russia. A move from any of these Powers can force us to expend upon more battleships and military preparations the money we had designed to use for domestic purposes. T h e priority and reckless magnitude of our imperial expansion has made the danger of an armed coalition of great Powers against us no idle chimera.