_ CHAPTER VIII - THE WORLD AS IT COULD BE MADE
IN the daily lives of most men and women, fear
plays a greater part than hope: they are more
filled with the thought of the possessions that others
may take from them, than of the joy that they might
create in their own lives and in the lives with which
they come in contact.
It is not so that life should be lived.
Those whose lives are fruitful to themselves, to
their friends, or to the world are inspired by hope
and sustained by joy: they see in imagination the
things that might be and the way in which they are
to be brought into existence. In their private relations
they are not pre-occupied with anxiety lest
they should lose such affection and respect as they
receive: they are engaged in giving affection
and respect freely, and the reward comes of
itself without their seeking. In their work they
are not haunted by jealousy of competitors, but
concerned with the actual matter that has to be done.
In politics, they do not spend time and passion defending
unjust privileges of their class or nation, but
they aim at making the world as a whole happier, less
cruel, less full of conflict between rival greeds, and
more full of human beings whose growth has not
been dwarfed and stunted by oppression.
A life lived in this spirit--the spirit that aims at
creating rather than possessing--has a certain
fundamental happiness, of which it cannot be wholly
robbed by adverse circumstances. This is the way
of life recommended in the Gospels, and by all the
great teachers of the world. Those who have found
it are freed from the tyranny of fear, since what they
value most in their lives is not at the mercy of outside
power. If all men could summon up the courage
and the vision to live in this way in spite of obstacles
and discouragement, there would be no need for the
regeneration of the world to begin by political and
economic reform: all that is needed in the way of reform
would come automatically, without resistance,
owing to the moral regeneration of individuals. But
the teaching of Christ has been nominally accepted
by the world for many centuries, and yet those who
follow it are still persecuted as they were before the
time of Constantine. Experience has proved that
few are able to see through the apparent evils of an
outcast's life to the inner joy that comes of faith
and creative hope. If the domination of fear is to be
overcome, it is not enough, as regards the mass of
men, to preach courage and indifference to misfortune:
it is necessary to remove the causes of fear,
to make a good life no longer an unsuccessful one in
a worldly sense, and to diminish the harm that can
be inflicted upon those who are not wary in self-
defense.
When we consider the evils in the lives we know
of, we find that they may be roughly divided into
three classes. There are, first, those due to physical
nature: among these are death, pain and the
difficulty of making the soil yield a subsistence.
These we will call "physical evils." Second, we may
put those that spring from defects in the character
or aptitudes of the sufferer: among these are ignorance,
lack of will, and violent passions. These we
will call "evils of character." Third come those
that depend upon the power of one individual or
group over another: these comprise not only obvious
tyranny, but all interference with free development,
whether by force or by excessive mental influence
such as may occur in education. These we will call
"evils of power." A social system may be judged
by its bearing upon these three kinds of evils.
The distinction between the three kinds cannot
be sharply drawn. Purely physical evil is a limit,
which we can never be sure of having reached: we
cannot abolish death, but we can often postpone it by
science, and it may ultimately become possible to
secure that the great majority shall live till old age;
we cannot wholly prevent pain, but we can diminish
it indefinitely by securing a healthy life for all; we
cannot make the earth yield its fruits in any abundance
without labor, but we can diminish the amount
of the labor and improve its conditions until it ceases
to be an evil. Evils of character are often the result
of physical evil in the shape of illness, and still more
often the result of evils of power, since tyranny
degrades both those who exercise it and (as a rule)
those who suffer it. Evils of power are intensified
by evils of character in those who have power, and by
fear of the physical evil which is apt to be the lot of
those who have no power. For all these reasons, the
three sorts of evil are intertwined. Nevertheless,
speaking broadly, we may distinguish among our
misfortunes those which have their proximate cause in
the material world, those which are mainly due to
defects in ourselves, and those which spring from our
being subject to the control of others.
The main methods of combating these evils are: for
physical evils, science; for evils of character, education
(in the widest sense) and a free outlet for all
impulses that do not involve domination; for evils
of power, the reform of the political and economic
organization of society in such a way as to reduce
to the lowest possible point the interference of one
man with the life of another. We will begin with the
third of these kinds of evil, because it is evils of power
specially that Socialism and Anarchism have sought
to remedy. Their protest against Inequalities of
wealth has rested mainly upon their sense of the evils
arising from the power conferred by wealth. This
point has been well stated by Mr. G. D. H. Cole:--
What, I want to ask, is the fundamental evil in our
modern Society which we should set out to abolish?
There are two possible answers to that question, and
I am sure that very many well-meaning people would
make the wrong one. They would answer POVERTY,
when they ought to answer SLAVERY. Face to face
every day with the shameful contrasts of riches and
destitution, high dividends and low wages, and painfully
conscious of the futility of trying to adjust the balance
by means of charity, private or public, they would answer
unhesitatingly that they stand for the ABOLITION
OF POVERTY.
Well and good! On that issue every Socialist is with
them. But their answer to my question is none the less
wrong.
Poverty is the symptom: slavery the disease. The
extremes of riches and destitution follow inevitably upon
the extremes of license and bondage. The many are not
enslaved because they are poor, they are poor because
they are enslaved. Yet Socialists have all too often
fixed their eyes upon the material misery of the poor
without realizing that it rests upon the spiritual degradation
of the slave.[59]
[59] "Self-Government in Industry," G. Bell & Sons, 1917, pp.
110-111.
I do not think any reasonable person can doubt
that the evils of power in the present system are
vastly greater than is necessary, nor that they
might be immeasurably diminished by a suitable form
of Socialism. A few fortunate people, it is true, are
now enabled to live freely on rent or interest, and
they could hardly have more liberty under another
system. But the great bulk, not only of the very
poor, but, of all sections of wage-earners and even
of the professional classes, are the slaves of the need
for getting money. Almost all are compelled to
work so hard that they have little leisure for enjoyment
or for pursuits outside their regular occupation.
Those who are able to retire in later middle age are
bored, because they have not learned how to fill
their time when they are at liberty, and such interests
as they once had apart from work have dried up.
Yet these are the exceptionally fortunate: the majority
have to work hard till old age, with the fear of
destitution always before them, the richer ones dreading
that they will be unable to give their children
the education or the medical care that they consider
desirable, the poorer ones often not far removed from
starvation. And almost all who work have no voice
in the direction of their work; throughout the hours
of labor they are mere machines carrying out the will
of a master. Work is usually done under disagreeable
conditions, involving pain and physical hardship.
The only motive to work is wages: the very idea that
work might be a joy, like the work of the artist, is
usually scouted as utterly Utopian.
But by far the greater part of these evils are
wholly unnecessary. If the civilized portion of mankind
could be induced to desire their own happiness
more than another's pain, if they could be induced to
work constructively for improvements which they
would share with all the world rather than destructively
to prevent other classes or nations from stealing
a march on them, the whole system by which the
world's work is done might be reformed root and
branch within a generation.
From the point of view of liberty, what system
would be the best? In what direction should we wish
the forces of progress to move?
From this point of view, neglecting for the
moment all other considerations, I have no doubt that
the best system would be one not far removed from
that advocated by Kropotkin, but rendered more
practicable by the adoption of the main principles of
Guild Socialism. Since every point can be disputed,
I will set down without argument the kind of organization
of work that would seem best.
Education should be compulsory up to the age
of 16, or perhaps longer; after that, it should be continued
or not at the option of the pupil, but remain
free (for those who desire it) up to at least the age
of 21. When education is finished no one should be
COMPELLED to work, and those who choose not to work
should receive a bare livelihood, and be left completely
free; but probably it would be desirable that there
should be a strong public opinion in favor of work,
so that only comparatively few should choose idleness.
One great advantage of making idleness economically
possible is that it would afford a powerful
motive for making work not disagreeable; and no
community where most work is disagreeable can be
said to have found a solution of economic problems.
I think it is reasonable to assume that few would
choose idleness, in view of the fact that even now at
least nine out of ten of those who have (say) 100 pounds
a year from investments prefer to increase their income
by paid work.
Coming now to that great majority who will not
choose idleness, I think we may assume that, with the
help of science, and by the elimination of the vast
amount of unproductive work involved in internal and
international competition, the whole community
could be kept in comfort by means of four hours'
work a day. It is already being urged by experienced
employers that their employes can actually produce
as much in a six-hour day as they can when they
work eight hours. In a world where there is a much
higher level of technical instruction than there is now
the same tendency will be accentuated. People will
be taught not only, as at present, one trade, or one
small portion of a trade, but several trades, so that
they can vary their occupation according to the
seasons and the fluctuations of demand. Every industry
will be self-governing as regards all its internal
affairs, and even separate factories will decide for
themselves all questions that only concern those who
work in them. There will not be capitalist management,
as at present, but management by elected representatives,
as in politics. Relations between different
groups of producers will be settled by the Guild
Congress, matters concerning the community as the
inhabitants of a certain area will continue to be
decided by Parliament, while all disputes between
Parliament and the Guild Congress will be decided
by a body composed of representatives of both in
equal numbers.
Payment will not be made, as at present, only for
work actually required and performed, but for willingness
to work. This system is already adopted in
much of the better paid work: a man occupies a certain
position, and retains it even at times when there
happens to be very little to do. The dread of unemployment
and loss of livelihood will no longer haunt
men like a nightmare. Whether all who are willing
to work will be paid equally, or whether exceptional
skill will still command exceptional pay, is a matter
which may be left to each guild to decide for itself.
An opera-singer who received no more pay than a
scene-shifter might choose to be a scene-shifter until
the system was changed: if so, higher pay would
probably be found necessary. But if it were freely
voted by the Guild, it could hardly constitute a
grievance.
Whatever might be done toward making work
agreeable, it is to be presumed that some trades would
always remain unpleasant. Men could be attracted
into these by higher pay or shorter hours, instead of
being driven into them by destitution. The community
would then have a strong economic motive
for finding ways of diminishing the disagreeableness
of these exceptional trades.
There would still have to be money, or something
analogous to it, in any community such as we are
imagining. The Anarchist plan of a free distribution
of the total produce of work in equal shares
does not get rid of the need for some standard of
exchange value, since one man will choose to take his
share in one form and another in another. When
the day comes for distributing luxuries, old ladies
will not want their quota of cigars, nor young men
their just proportion of lap-dog; this will make it
necessary to know how many cigars are the equivalent
of one lap-dog. Much the simplest way is to
pay an income, as at present, and allow relative
values to be adjusted according to demand. But if
actual coin were paid, a man might hoard it and in
time become a capitalist. To prevent this, it would
be best to pay notes available only during a certain
period, say one year from the date of issue. This
would enable a man to save up for his annual holiday,
but not to save indefinitely.
There is a very great deal to be said for the
Anarchist plan of allowing necessaries, and all
commodities that can easily be produced in quantities
adequate to any possible demand, to be given away
freely to all who ask for them, in any amounts they
may require. The question whether this plan should
be adopted is, to my mind, a purely technical one:
would it be, in fact, possible to adopt it without much
waste and consequent diversion of labor to the production
of necessaries when it might be more usefully
employed otherwise? I have not the means of answering
this question, but I think it exceedingly probable
that, sooner or later, with the continued
improvement in the methods of production, this
Anarchist plan will become feasible; and when it does,
it certainly ought to be adopted.
Women in domestic work, whether married or unmarried,
will receive pay as they would if they were
in industry. This will secure the complete economic
independence of wives, which is difficult to achieve
in any other way, since mothers of young children
ought not to be expected to work outside the home.
The expense of children will not fall, as at present,
on the parents. They will receive, like adults,
their share of necessaries, and their education will
be free.[60] There is no longer to be the present
competition for scholarships among the abler children:
they will not be imbued with the competitive spirit
from infancy, or forced to use their brains to an
unnatural degree with consequent listlessness and lack
of health in later life. Education will be far more
diversified than at present; greater care will be taken
to adapt it to the needs of different types of young
people. There will be more attempt to encourage
initiative young pupils, and less desire to fill their
minds with a set of beliefs and mental habits regarded
as desirable by the State, chiefly because they help
to preserve the status quo. For the great majority
of children it will probably be found desirable to
have much more outdoor education in the country.
And for older boys and girls whose interests are not
intellectual or artistic, technical education, undertaken
in a liberal spirit, is far more useful in promoting
mental activity than book-learning which they
regard (however falsely) as wholly useless except for
purposes of examination. The really useful educa-
tion is that which follows the direction of the child's
own instinctive interests, supplying knowledge for
which it is seeking, not dry, detailed information
wholly out of relation to its spontaneous desires.
[60] Some may fear that the result would be an undue increase
of population, but such fears I believe to be groundless. See
above, (Chapter IV, on "Work and Pay." Also, Chapter vi of
"Principles of Social Reconstruction" (George Allen and
Unwin, Ltd.).
Government and law will still exist in our
community, but both will be reduced to a minimum.
There will still be acts which will be forbidden--for
example, murder. But very nearly the whole of that
part of the criminal law which deals with property
will have become obsolete, and many of the motives
which now produce murders will be no longer operative.
Those who nevertheless still do commit crimes
will not be blamed or regarded as wicked; they will
be regarded as unfortunate, and kept in some kind
of mental hospital until it is thought that they are
no longer a danger. By education and freedom and
the abolition of private capital the number of crimes
can be made exceedingly small. By the method of
individual curative treatment it will generally be
possible to secure that a man's first offense shall also
be his last, except in the case of lunatics and the
feeble-minded, for whom of course a more prolonged
but not less kindly detention may be necessary.
Government may be regarded as consisting of
two parts: the one, the decisions of the community
or its recognized organs; the other, the enforcing of
those decisions upon all who resist them. The first
part is not objected to by Anarchists. The second
part, in an ordinary civilized State, may remain
entirely in the background: those who have resisted
a new law while it was being debated will, as a rule,
submit to it when it is passed, because resistance is
generally useless in a settled and orderly community.
But the possibility of governmental force remains,
and indeed is the very reason for the submission which
makes force unnecessary. If, as Anarchists desire,
there were no use of force by government, the majority
could still band themselves together and use
force against the minority. The only difference
would be that their army or their police force would
be ad hoc, instead of being permanent and professional.
The result of this would be that everyone
would have to learn how to fight, for fear a well-
drilled minority should seize power and establish an
old-fashioned oligarchic State. Thus the aim of the
Anarchists seems hardly likely to be achieved by
the methods which they advocate.
The reign of violence in human affairs, whether
within a country or in its external relations, can only
be prevented, if we have not been mistaken, by an
authority able to declare all use of force except by
itself illegal, and strong enough to be obviously
capable of making all other use of force futile, except
when it could secure the support of public opinion as
a defense of freedom or a resistance to injustice.
Such an authority exists within a country: it is the
State. But in international affairs it remains to be
created. The difficulties are stupendous, but they must
be overcome if the world is to be saved from periodical
wars, each more destructive than any of its predecessors.
Whether, after this war, a League of Nations
will be formed, and will be capable of performing this
task, it is as yet impossible to foretell. However that
may be, some method of preventing wars will have to
be established before our Utopia becomes possible.
When once men BELIEVE that the world is safe from
war, the whole difficulty will be solved: there will then
no longer be any serious resistance to the disbanding
of national armies and navies, and the substitution
for them of a small international force for protection
against uncivilized races. And when that stage has
been reached, peace will be virtually secure.
The practice of government by majorities, which
Anarchists criticise, is in fact open to most of the
objections which they urge against it. Still more
objectionable is the power of the executive in matters
vitally affecting the happiness of all, such as
peace and war. But neither can be dispensed with
suddenly. There are, however, two methods of diminishing
the harm done by them: (1) Government by
majorities can be made less oppressive by devolution,
by placing the decision of questions primarily affecting
only a section of the community in the hands of
that section, rather than of a Central Chamber. In
this way, men are no longer forced to submit to decisions
made in a hurry by people mostly ignorant of
the matter in hand and not personally interested.
Autonomy for internal affairs should be given, not
only to areas, but to all groups, such as industries or
Churches, which have important common interests
not shared by the rest of the community. (2) The
great powers vested in the executive of a modern
State are chiefly due to the frequent need of rapid
decisions, especially as regards foreign affairs. If
the danger of war were practically eliminated, more
cumbrous but less autocratic methods would be possible,
and the Legislature might recover many of the
powers which the executive has usurped. By these
two methods, the intensity of the interference with
liberty involved in government can be gradually
diminished. Some interference, and even some danger
of unwarranted and despotic interference, is of the
essence of government, and must remain so long as
government remains. But until men are less prone
to violence than they are now, a certain degree of
governmental force seems the lesser of two evils. We
may hope, however, that if once the danger of war is
at an end, men's violent impulses will gradually grow
less, the more so as, in that case, it will be possible
to diminish enormously the individual power which
now makes rulers autocratic and ready for almost
any act of tyranny in order to crush opposition. The
development of a world where even governmental
force has become unnecessary (except against lunatics)
must be gradual. But as a gradual process it
is perfectly possible; and when it has been completed
we may hope to see the principles of Anarchism
embodied in the management of communal affairs.
How will the economic and political system that
we have outlined bear on the evils of character? I
believe the effect will be quite extraordinarily
beneficent.
The process of leading men's thought and imagination
away from the use of force will be greatly
accelerated by the abolition of the capitalist system,
provided it is not succeeded by a form of State Socialism
in which officials have enormous power. At present,
the capitalist has more control over the lives of
others than any man ought to have; his friends have
authority in the State; his economic power is the
pattern for political power. In a world where all men
and women enjoy economic freedom, there will not be
the same habit of command, nor, consequently, the
same love of despotism; a gentler type of character
than that now prevalent will gradually grow up. Men
are formed by their circumstances, not born ready-
made. The bad effect of the present economic system
on character, and the immensely better effect to be
expected from communal ownership, are among the
strongest reasons for advocating the change.
In the world as we have been imagining fit, economic
fear and most economic hope will be alike
removed out of life. No one will be haunted by the
dread of poverty or driven into ruthlessness by the
hope of wealth. There will not be the distinction of
social classes which now plays such an immense part
in life. The unsuccessful professional man will not
live in terror lest his children should sink in the scale;
the aspiring employe will not be looking forward to
the day when he can become a sweater in his turn.
Ambitious young men will have to dream other daydreams
than that of business success and wealth
wrung out of the ruin of competitors and the degradation
of labor. In such a world, most of the nightmares
that lurk in the background of men's minds
will no longer exist; on the other hand, ambition and
the desire to excel will have to take nobler forms than
those that are encouraged by a commercial society.
All those activities that really confer benefits upon
mankind will be open, not only to the fortunate few,
but to all who have sufficient ambition and native
aptitude. Science, labor-saving inventions, technical
progress of all kinds, may be confidently expected to
flourish far more than at present, since they will be
the road to honor, and honor will have to replace
money among those of the young who desire to
achieve success. Whether art will flourish in a
Socialistic community depends upon the form of Social-
ism adopted; if the State, or any public authority,
(no matter what), insists upon controlling art, and
only licensing those whom it regards as proficient, the
result will be disaster. But if there is real freedom,
allowing every man who so desires to take up an
artist's career at the cost of some sacrifice of comfort,
it is likely that the atmosphere of hope, and
the absence of economic compulsion, will lead to a
much smaller waste of talent than is involved in our
present system, and to a much less degree of crushing
of impulse in the mills of the struggle for life.
When elementary needs have been satisfied, the
serious happiness of most men depends upon two
things: their work, and their human relations. In the
world that we have been picturing, work will be free,
not excessive, full of the interest that belongs to a
collective enterprise in which there is rapid progress,
with something of the delight of creation even for
the humblest unit. And in human relations the gain
will be just as great as in work. The only human
relations that have value are those that are rooted in
mutual freedom, where there is no domination and no
slavery, no tie except affection, no economic or
conventional necessity to preserve the external show when
the inner life is dead. One of the most horrible
things about commercialism is the way in which it
poisons the relations of men and women. The evils of
prostitution are generally recognized, but, great as
they are, the effect of economic conditions on marriage
seems to me even worse. There is not infrequently,
in marriage, a suggestion of purchase, of acquiring
a woman on condition of keeping her in a certain
standard of material comfort. Often and often, a
marriage hardly differs from prostitution except by
being harder to escape from. The whole basis of
these evils is economic. Economic causes make marriage
a matter of bargain and contract, in which
affection is quite secondary, and its absence constitutes
no recognized reason for liberation. Marriage
should be a free, spontaneous meeting of mutual
instinct, filled with happiness not unmixed with a
feeling akin to awe: it should involve that degree of
respect of each for the other that makes even the
most trifling interference with liberty an utter
impossibility, and a common life enforced by one against
the will of the other an unthinkable thing of deep
horror. It is not so that marriage is conceived by
lawyers who make settlements, or by priests who give
the name of "sacrament" to an institution which pretends
to find something sanctifiable in the brutal lusts
or drunken cruelties of a legal husband. It is not in
a spirit of freedom that marriage is conceived by
most men and women at present: the law makes it an
opportunity for indulgence of the desire to interfere,
where each submits to some loss of his or her own liberty,
for the pleasure of curtailing the liberty of the
other. And the atmosphere of private property
makes it more difficult than it otherwise would be for
any better ideal to take root.
It is not so that human relations will be conceived
when the evil heritage of economic slavery has ceased
to mold our instincts. Husbands and wives, parents
and children, will be only held together by affection:
where that has died, it will be recognized that nothing
worth preserving is left. Because affection will
be free, men and women will not find in private life an
outlet and stimulus to the love of domineering, but all
that is creative in their love will have the freer scope.
Reverence for whatever makes the soul in those who
are loved will be less rare than it is now: nowadays,
many men love their wives in the way in which they
love mutton, as something to devour and destroy.
But in the love that goes with reverence there is a
joy of quite another order than any to be found by
mastery, a joy which satisfies the spirit and not only
the instincts; and satisfaction of instinct and spirit
at once is necessary to a happy life, or indeed to any
existence that is to bring out the best impulses of
which a man or woman is capable.
In the world which we should wish to see, there
will be more joy of life than in the drab tragedy of
modern every-day existence. After early youth, as
things are, most men are bowed down by forethought,
no longer capable of light-hearted gaiety, but only of
a kind of solemn jollification by the clock at the
appropriate hours. The advice to "become as little
children" would be good for many people in many
respects, but it goes with another precept, "take no
thought for the morrow," which is hard to obey in a
competitive world. There is often in men of science,
even when they are quite old, something of the
simplicity of a child: their absorption in abstract
thought has held them aloof from the world, and
respect for their work has led the world to keep them
alive in spite of their innocence. Such men have
succeeded in living as all men ought to be able to live;
but as things are, the economic struggle makes their
way of life impossible for the great majority.
What are we to say, lastly, of the effect of our
projected world upon physical evil? Will there be
less illness than there is at present? Will the produce
of a given amount of labor be greater? Or will population
press upon the limits of subsistence, as Malthus
taught in order to refute Godwin's optimism?
I think the answer to all these questions turns,
in the end, upon the degree of intellectual vigor to be
expected in a community which has done away with
the spur of economic competition. Will men in such
a world become lazy and apathetic? Will they cease
to think? Will those who do think find themselves
confronted with an even more impenetrable wall of
unreflecting conservatism than that which confronts
them at present? These are important questions; for
it is ultimately to science that mankind must look
for their success in combating physical evils.
If the other conditions that we have postulated
can be realized, it seems almost certain that there
must be less illness than there is at present. Population
will no longer be congested in slums; children will
have far more of fresh air and open country; the
hours of work will be only such as are wholesome, not
excessive and exhausting as they are at present.
As for the progress of science, that depends very
largely upon the degree of intellectual liberty existing
in the new society. If all science is organized and
supervised by the State, it will rapidly become
stereotyped and dead. Fundamental advances will not be
made, because, until they have been made, they will
seem too doubtful to warrant the expenditure of
public money upon them. Authority will be in the
hands of the old, especially of men who have achieved
scientific eminence; such men will be hostile to those
among the young who do not flatter them by agreeing
with their theories. Under a bureaucratic State
Socialism it is to be feared that science would soon
cease to be progressive and acquired a medieval respect
for authority.
But under a freer system, which would enable all
kinds of groups to employ as many men of science as
they chose, and would allow the "vagabond's wage"
to those who desired to pursue some study so new as
to be wholly unrecognized, there is every reason to
think that science would flourish as it has never done
hitherto.[61] And, if that were the case, I do not believe
that any other obstacle would exist to the physical
possibility of our system.
[61] See the discussion of this question in the preceding chapter.
The question of the number of hours of work
necessary to produce general material comfort is
partly technical, partly one of organization. We
may assume that there would no longer be unproductive
labor spent on armaments, national defense,
advertisements, costly luxuries for the very rich, or
any of the other futilities incidental to our competitive
system. If each industrial guild secured for a term of
years the advantages, or part of the advantages, of
any new invention or methods which it introduced, it
is pretty certain that every encouragement would be
given to technical progress. The life of a discoverer
or inventor is in itself agreeable: those who adopt it,
as things are now, are seldom much actuated by economic
motives, but rather by the interest of the work
together with the hope of honor; and these motives
would operate more widely than they do now, since
fewer people would be prevented from obeying them
by economic necessities. And there is no doubt that
intellect would work more keenly and creatively in
a world where instinct was less thwarted, where the
joy of life was greater, and where consequently there
would be more vitality in men than there is at present.
There remains the population question, which,
ever since the time of Malthus, has been the last
refuge of those to whom the possibility of a better
world is disagreeable. But this question is now
a very different one from what it was a hundred
years ago. The decline of the birth-rate in all
civilized countries, which is pretty certain to continue,
whatever economic system is adopted, suggests
that, especially when the probable effects of the war
are taken into account, the population of Western
Europe is not likely to increase very much beyond
its present level, and that of America is likely only to
increase through immigration. Negroes may continue
to increase in the tropics, but are not likely to
be a serious menace to the white inhabitants of temperate
regions. There remains, of course, the Yellow
Peril; but by the time that begins to be serious
it is quite likely that the birth-rate will also have
begun to decline among the races of Asia If not,
there are other means of dealing with this question;
and in any case the whole matter is too conjectural
to be set up seriously as a bar to our hopes. I conclude
that, though no certain forecast is possible,
there is not any valid reason for regarding the possible
increase of population as a serious obstacle to
Socialism.
Our discussion has led us to the belief that the
communal ownership of land and capital, which constitutes
the characteristic doctrine of Socialism and
Anarchist Communism, is a necessary step toward the
removal of the evils from which the world suffers at
present and the creation of such a society as any
humane man must wish to see realized. But, though
a necessary step, Socialism alone is by no means
sufficient. There are various forms of Socialism: the
form in which the State is the employer, and all who
work receive wages from it, involves dangers of
tyranny and interference with progress which would
make it, if possible, even worse than the present
regime. On the other hand, Anarchism, which avoids
the dangers of State Socialism, has dangers and
difficulties of its own, which make it probable that,
within any reasonable period of time, it could not
last long even if it were established. Nevertheless, it
remains an ideal to which we should wish to approach
as nearly as possible, and which, in some distant age,
we hope may be reached completely. Syndicalism
shares many of the defects of Anarchism, and, like it,
would prove unstable, since the need of a central
government would make itself felt almost at once.
The system we have advocated is a form of Guild
Socialism, leaning more, perhaps, towards Anarchism
than the official Guildsman would wholly approve. It
is in the matters that politicians usually ignore--
science and art, human relations, and the joy of life
--that Anarchism is strongest, and it is chiefly for the
sake of these things that we included such more or
less Anarchist proposals as the "vagabond's wage."
It is by its effects outside economics and politics, at
least as much as by effects inside them, that a social
system should be judged. And if Socialism ever
comes, it is only likely to prove beneficent if non-
economic goods are valued and consciously pursued.
The world that we must seek is a world in which
the creative spirit is alive, in which life is an adventure
full of joy and hope, based rather upon the impulse
to construct than upon the desire to retain
what we possess or to seize what is possessed by
others. It must be a world in which affection has free
play, in which love is purged of the instinct for
domination, in which cruelty and envy have been
dispelled by happiness and the unfettered development
of all the instincts that build up life and fill it with
mental delights. Such a world is possible; it waits
only for men to wish to create it.
Meantime, the world in which we exist has other
aims. But it will pass away, burned up in the fire
of its own hot passions; and from its ashes will spring
a new and younger world, full of fresh hope, with
the light of morning in its eyes.
_____
Content of PART II - PROBLEMS OF THE FUTURE: CHAPTER VIII -THE WORLD AS IT COULD BE MADE
-THE END-
Bertrand Russell's book: Proposed Roads To Freedom _