Freeland

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THOMAS JOHNSTON (_Freeland_): The previous speaker makes a mistake when he
ascribes the success of the Freeland undertaking to exceptionally
favourable conditions. That our soil is more fertile than that of most
other parts of the world is, it is true, a permanent advantage, which,
however, accrues to us merely in the item of cost of carriage; for, after
allowing for this, the advantage of the fertility of our soil is equally
shared by all of you everywhere, wherever railways and steam-vessels can be
made use of. Isolation from the market of the world by broad deserts was at
first an advantage; but it would now be a disadvantage if we had not made
ourselves masters of those deserts. And as to the abilities of the Freeland
government, I must--not out of modesty, but in the name of truth--decline
the compliments paid us. We are not abler than others whom you might find
by the dozen in any civilised country. Only in one point were we in advance
of others, namely, in perceiving what was the true basis of human
economics. But the advantage which this gave us was only a temporary one,
for at present you have men in abundance in every part of the civilised
world who have become as wise as we are even in this matter. The advantage
we derived from being the first in this movement was that we have enjoyed
for nearly a generation the happiness in which you are only now preparing
to participate. Freeland's advantages are due simply to the date of its
foundation, and have now lost their importance. Now that the establishment
of a world-wide freedom is contemplated, there will no longer be any
national advantages or disadvantages. What belongs to us belongs to you
also, and what is wonderful is that we as well as you will become richer in
proportion as each of us is obliged to allow all the others to share
quickly, easily, and fully our own wealth. We have suffered from being
compelled to enjoy our wealth alone, and we shall become richer as soon as
you share that wealth; and in the same way will you become richer as others
share in your wealth. For herein lies the solidarity of interest that is
associated with true freedom, that every existing advantage in
production--such as wealth is--can be the more fully utilised the wider the
circle of those who enjoy its fruits.

That those attempts, of which the last speaker spoke, all miscarried is due
to the fact that they were all based upon wrong principles. The only thing
they have in common with what we have carried out in Freeland, and what you
now wish to imitate, is the endeavour to find a remedy for the misery of
the exploiting world; but the remedy which we seek is a different one from
that which they sought, and in that--not in exceptional advantages which we
may have had--lies the cause of our success and of their miscarriage.

For it was not by the aid of economic justice that they sought to attain
their end; they sought deliverance from the dungeon of exploitation,
whether by a way which did not lead out of it, or by a way which, though it
led out of that dungeon, yet led into another and more dreadful one. In
none of those American or other social experiments, from the Quaker
colonies to the Icaria of Cabet, was the full and undiminished produce of
labour ever assured to the worker; on the contrary, the produce belonged
either to small capitalists who, while themselves taking part in the
undertaking as workers, shared the produce according to the amount of
capital they had invested, or it belonged to the whole as a body, who as
such had a despotic right of disposal over both the labour and the produce
of the labour of every individual. These reformers were, without exception,
associated small capitalists or communists. They were able, if they had
specially good fortune, or if they were under specially able direction, to
achieve transient success; but a revolution of the current industrial
system by them was not to be thought of.

(_End of Second Day's Debate_)

CHAPTER XXV

THIRD DAY

(_Debate on Point 2 of the Agenda, continued_)

JOHANN STORM (_Right_): I think that the lack of any analogy between the
frequent attempts to save society undertaken by small capitalists or
communists and the institutions of Freeland has been made sufficiently
clear. I think also that we are convinced that the exceptional external
advantages, which may have at any rate favoured and assisted the success of
Freeland, are not of a kind to suggest a fear that our proposed work will
fail for the want of such advantages. But we do not yet know whether the
success of social reform is exposed to danger from any conditions inherent
in human nature, and therefore universally to be met with. We have, in our
discussion upon the first point of the agenda, established the fact that,
thanks to the control which has been acquired over the forces of nature,
exploitation has become an obstacle to civilisation, and its removal a
necessity of civilisation. But severe criticism cannot be satisfied with
this. For is everything which is necessary to the progress of civilisation
consequently also possible? What if economic justice, though an
extraordinary vehicle of civilisation, were for some reason unfortunately
impracticable? What if that marvellous prosperity, which astonishes us so
much in Freeland, were only a transient phenomenon, and carried in itself
the germ of decay, despite, nay, because of, its fabulous magnitude? In a
word, what if mankind could not permanently, and as a whole, participate in
that progress the necessary condition of which is economic justice?

The evidence to the contrary, already advanced, culminates in the
proposition that the exploitation of man by man was necessary only so long
as the produce of human labour did not suffice to provide abundance and
leisure for all. But what if other influences made exploitation and
servitude necessary, influences the operation of which could not be stayed
by the increased productiveness of labour, perhaps could never be stayed?
The most powerful hindrance to the permanent establishment of a condition
of economic justice, with its consequences of happiness and wealth, is
recognised by the anxious student of the future in the danger of
over-population. But as this is a special point in the agenda, I, like my
colleagues who have already spoken, will postpone what occurs to my mind
upon the subject. There are, however, other and not less important
difficulties. Can a society, which lacks the stimulus of self-interest,
permanently exist and make progress, and succeed in making public spirit
and rational enlightenment take the place thoroughly, and with equal
effectiveness, of self-interest? Does not the same apply to private
property? Self-interest and private property are not altogether set aside
by the institutions of Freeland. I readily admit this, but they are
materially restricted. Even under the rule of economic justice the
individual is himself responsible for the greater or less degree of his
prosperity--the connection between what he himself does and what he gets is
not altogether dissolved; but as the commonwealth unconditionally protects
every man in all cases against want, therefore against the ultimate
consequences of his own mistakes or omissions, the stimulating influence of
self-responsibility is very materially diminished. Just so we see private
property abolished, though not entirely, yet in its most important
elements. The earth and all the natural forces inherent in it are declared
ownerless; the means of production are common property; will that, can
that, remain so everywhere, and for all time, without disastrous
consequences? Will public spirit permanently fill the office of that
affectionate far-seeking care which the owner bestows upon the property for
which he alone is responsible? Will not the gladsome absence of care, which
has certainly hitherto been brilliantly conspicuous in Freeland, eventually
degenerate into frivolity and neglect of that for which no one in
particular is responsible? The fact that this has not yet happened may
perhaps be due--for it is not yet a generation since this commonwealth was
founded--to the dominant enthusiasm that marked the beginning. New brooms,
it is said, sweep clean. The Freelander sees the eyes of the whole world
fixed upon him and his doings; he feels that he is still the pioneer of new
institutions; he is proud of those institutions, every worker here to the
last man holds himself responsible for the way and manner in which he
fulfils the apostolate of universal freedom to which he is called. Will
this continue permanently: in particular, will the whole human race feel
and act thus? I doubt it; at least, I am not fully convinced that it must
necessarily be so. And what if it is not so? What if, we will not say all,
but many nations show themselves to be unable to dispense with the stimulus
of want-inspired self-interest, the lure of unconditioned private property,
without sinking into mental stagnation and physical indolence? These are
questions to which we now require answers.

RICHARD HELD (_Centre_): The previous speaker finds that self-interest and
private property are such powerful spurs to activity that, without their
full and unrestricted influence, permanent human progress is scarcely
conceivable, and that it is extremely uncertain whether public spirit would
be an effective substitute for them. I go much farther. I assert that
without these two means of activity no commonwealth can be expected to
thrive, unless human nature is radically changed, or labour ceases to
require effort. Every attempt in the domain of economics to substitute
public spirit or any other ethical motive for self-interest must
immediately, and not merely in its ultimate issue, prove an ignominious
fiasco. I think it quite unnecessary to give special proof of this; but for
the very reason that self-interest and its correlative, private property,
are the best incitements to labour, and can be effectively replaced by no
surrogate--for this very reason, I contend, are the institutions of
economic justice immensely superior in this respect to those of the
exploiting system of industry. For they alone really give full play to
self-interest and the right of private ownership: the exploiting system
only falsely pretends to do this.

For servitude is, in truth, the negation of self-interest. Self-interest
assumes that the worker serves his 'own' interest by the trouble he takes;
does this apply to the _regime_ of exploitation: does the servant work for
his _own_ profit? With reference to the question of self-interest, anyone
who would show that economic justice was less advantageous than servitude
would have to assert that labour was the most productive and profitable
when the worker produced, not for his own, but for some one else's profit.
But it will perhaps be objected that the employer produces for his own
profit. Right. But, apart from the fact that this, strictly speaking, has
nothing to do with the stimulating effect of self-interest upon labour--for
here it is not the profit of his own but of some one else's labour that
comes in question--it is clear that a system which secures to only a
minority the profit of work must be infinitely less influential than the
one we are now considering, which secures the profit to every worker. In
reality the exploiting world, with very few exceptions, knows only men who
labour without getting the profit themselves, and men who do not labour
themselves yet get profit from labour; in the exploiting world to labour
for one's own profit is quite an accidental occurrence. With what right,
then, does exploitation dare to plume itself upon making use of
_self_-interest as a motive to labour? _Some one else's_ interest is the
right description of the motive to labour that comes into play under
exploitation; and that this should prove itself to be more effective than
the self-interest which economic justice has to introduce into the modern
world as a novelty it would be somewhat difficult to demonstrate.

It is nearly the same with private property. What boundless presumption it
is to claim for a system which robs ninety-nine per cent. of mankind of all
and every certainty of possessing property, and leaves to them nothing that
they can call their own but the air they breathe--what presumption it is to
claim for such a system that it makes use of private property as a stimulus
to human activity, and to urge this claim as against another system which
converts all men without exception into owners of property, and in fact
secures to them unconditionally, and without diminution, all that they are
able in any way to produce! Or does, perhaps, the superiority of the
'private property' of the exploiting system lie in the fact that it extends
to things which the owner has _not_ himself produced? Unquestionably the
adherents of the old system have no clear conception of what is _mine_ and
what is _thine_. What properly belongs to _me_? 'Everything you can take
from anyone, 'would be their only answer, if they were but to speak
honestly. Because this appropriation of the property of others has, in the
course of thousands of years, been formulated into certain established
rules, consecrated by cruel necessity, the adherents of the old system have
completely lost the natural conception of private property, the conception
which is inherent in the nature of things. It passes their comprehension
that, though force can possess and make use of whom it pleases, yet the
free and untrammelled use of one's own powers is the inalienable property
of everyone, and that consequently any political or social system which
overrides this inalienable personal right of every man is based, not upon
property, but upon robbery. This robbery may be necessary, nay, useful--we
have seen that for thousands of years it actually was useful--but
'property' it never will be, and whoever thinks it is has forgotten what
property is.

After what has been said, it seems to me scarcely necessary to spend many
words in dispelling the fear that frivolity or carelessness in the
treatment of the means of production will result from a modified form of
property. As to frivolity, it will suffice to ask whether hopeless misery
has proved itself to be such a superior stimulus to economic prudence as to
make it dangerous to supersede it by a personal responsibility which,
though it lacks the spur of misery, is of a thoroughly comprehensive
character. And as to the fear lest carelessness in the treatment of the
means of production should prevail, this fear could have been justified
only if in the former system the workers were owners of the means of
production. Private property in these will, it is true, not be given to
them by the new system, but instead of it the undiminished enjoyment of the
produce of those means; and he whose admiration of the beauties of the
existing system does not go so far as to consider the master's rod a more
effective stimulus to foresight than the profit of the workers may rest
satisfied that even in this respect things will be better and not worse.

CHARLES PHUD (_Right_): I do not at all understand how the previous speaker
can dispute the fact that in the former system self-interest is that which
conditions the quantity of work. No one denies that the workers must give
up a part of the profit of their labour; but another part remains theirs,
hence they labour for their own profit, though not exclusively so. At any
rate they must labour if they do not wish to starve, and one would think
that this stimulus is the most effectual one possible. So much as to the
denial that self-interest is the moving spring of so-called exploited
labour. As to the attack upon the conception of property advanced by those
of us who defend, not exactly the existing evil condition of things, but a
rational and consistent reform of it, I would with all modesty venture to
remark that our sense of justice was satisfied because no one compelled the
worker to share with the employer. He made a contract as a free man with
the employer.... [General laughter.] You may laugh, but it is so. In
countries that are politically free nothing prevents the worker from
labouring on his own account alone; it is, therefore, at any rate incorrect
to call the portion which he surrenders to the employer robbery.

BELA SZEKELY (_Centre_): It seems to me to be merely a dispute about a word
which the previous speaker has attempted to settle. He calls wages a part
of the profit of production. It may be that here and there the workers
really receive a part of the profit as wages, or as an addition to the
wages. With us, and, if I am rightly informed, in the country of the
speaker also, this was not generally customary. We rather paid the workers,
who were quite unconcerned about the profits of their work, an amount
sufficient to maintain them; profits--and losses when there were any--fell
exclusively to the lot of the production, the employers. He could have said
with nearly as much justice that his oxen or his horses participated in the
profits of production. When I say 'nearly,' I mean that this could as a
rule be said _more_ justly of oxen and horses, for, while those useful
creatures are for the most part better fed when their labour has enriched
their master, this happens very rarely in the case of our two-logged
rational beasts of labour.

Then the previous speaker made hunger absolutely identical with
self-interest. The masses _must_ labour or starve. Certainly. But the slave
must labour or be whipped: thus this strange logic would make it appear
that the slave is also stimulated to labour by self-interest. Or will the
arguer fall back upon the assertion that self-interest refers merely to the
acquisition of material goods? That would be false; self-interest does not
after all either more or less prompt men to avoid the whip than to appease
hunger. But I will not argue about such trifles: we will drop the rod and
the whip as symbols of activity stimulated by self-interest. But how does
it stand with those slave-holders who--probably in the interest of the
'freedom of labour'--do not whip their lazy slaves, but allow them to
starve? Is it not evident that the previous speaker would, under their
_regime_, set self-interest upon the throne as the inciter to work? That
hunger is a very effectual means of _compulsion_, a more effectual one than
the whip, no one will deny; hence it has everywhere superseded the latter,
and very much to the advantage of the employer. But self-interest? The very
word itself implies that the profit of the labour is the worker's own. So
much as to hunger.

And now as to the security against the injustice of exploitation; for my
own part I do not understand this at all. The workers were 'free,' nothing
compelled them to produce for other men's advantage? Yes, certainly,
nothing but the trifle--hunger. They could leave it alone, if they wished
to starve! Just the 'freedom' which the slave has. If he does not mind
being whipped, there is nothing to compel him to work for his master. The
bonds in which the 'free' masses of the exploiting society languish are
tighter and more painful than the chains of the slave. The word 'robbery'
does not please the previous speaker? It is, indeed, a hard and hateful
word; but the 'robber' is not the individual exploiter, but the exploiting
society, and this was formerly, in the bitter need of the struggle for
existence, compelled to practise this robbery. Is the slaughter in battle
any the less homicide because it is done at the command, not of the
individual, but of the State, which is frequently acting under compulsion?
It will be said that this kind of killing is not forbidden by the penal
law, nay, that it is enjoined by our duty to our country, and that only
forbidden kinds of killing can be called 'homicide.' _Juridically_ that is
quite correct; and if it occurred to anyone to bring a charge of killing in
battle before a court of justice he would certainly be laughed at. But he
would make himself quite as ludicrous who, because killing in war is
allowed, would deny that such killing was homicide if the point under
consideration was, not whether the act was juridically penal, but how to
define homicide as a mode of violently putting a man to death. So
exploitation is no robbery in the eye of the penal law; but if every
appropriation to one's self of the property of another can be called
robbery--and this is all that the present case is concerned with--then is
robbery and nothing else the basis of every exploiting society, of the
modern 'free' society no less than of the ancient or mediaeval
slave-holding or serf-keeping societies. [Long-continued applause, in which
Messrs. Johann Storm and Charles Prud both joined.]

JAMES BROWN (_Right_): Our colleague from Hungary has so pithily described
the true characteristics of self-interest and property in the exploiting
society, that nothing more is to be said upon that subject. But even if it
is correct that these two motive springs of labour can be placed in their
right position only by economic justice, it still remains to be asked
whether the only way of doing this--namely, the organisation of free,
self-controlling, unexploited labour--will prove to be everywhere and
without exception practicable. Little would be gained by the solemn
proclamation of the principle that every worker is his own master, and the
complete concession to all workers of a right of disposal of the means of
production, if those workers were to prove incapable of making an adequate
use of such rights. The final and decisive question, therefore, is whether
the workers of the future will always and everywhere exhibit that
discipline, that moderation, that wisdom, which are indispensable to the
organisation of truly profitable and progressive production? The exploiting
industry has a routine which has taken many thousands of years for its
development. The accumulated experience of untold generations teaches the
employer under the old system how to proceed in order to control a crowd of
servants compelled dumbly to obey. He, nevertheless, frequently fails, and
only too often are his plans wrecked by the insubordination of those under
him. The leaders of the workers' associations of the future have as good as
no experience to guide them in the choice of modes of association; they
will have as masters those whom they should command, and yet we are told
that success is certain, nay, success must be certain if the associated
free society is not to be convulsed to its very foundations. For whilst the
exploiting society confines the responsibility for the fate of the separate
undertakings to those undertakings themselves, the so-often-mentioned
solidarity of interests in the free society most indissolubly connects the
weal and the woe of the community with that of every separate undertaking.
I shall be glad to be taught better; but until I am, I cannot help seeing
in what has just been said grounds for fear which the experience of
Freeland until now is by no means calculated to dissipate. The workers of
Freeland have understood how to organise and discipline themselves: does it
follow from this that the workers everywhere will be equally intelligent?

MIGUEL SPADA (_Left_): I will confine myself to a brief answer to the
question with which the previous speaker closed. It certainly does not
follow that the attempt to organise and discipline labour without
capitalist employers must necessarily succeed among _all_ nations simply
because it has succeeded among the Freelanders, and will unquestionably
succeed among numerous other peoples. It is possible, nay, probable, that
some nations may show themselves incapable of making use of this highest
kind of spontaneous activity; so much the worse for them. But I hope that
no one will conclude from this that those peoples who are not thus
incapable--even if they should find themselves in the minority--ought to
refrain from such activity. The more capable will then become the
instructors of the less capable. Should the latter, however, show
themselves to be, not merely temporarily incapable, but permanently
intractable, then will they disappear from the face of the earth, just as
intractable cannibals must disappear when they come into contact with
civilised nations. The delegate who proposed the question may rest assured
that the nation to which he belongs will not be numbered among the
incapable ones.

VLADIMUR TONOF (_Freeland_): The honourable member from England (Brown) has
formed an erroneous conception of the difficulties of the organisation and
discipline now under consideration, as well as of the importance of any
miscarriage of individual enterprises in a free community. As to the former
matter, I wish to show that in the organisation of associated capital,
which is well known to have been carried out for centuries, there is an
instructive and by no means to be despised foreshadowing of associated
labour, so far as relates to the modes of management and superintendence to
be adopted in such cases. Of course there are profound distinctions which
have to be taken into consideration; but it has been proved, and it is in
the nature of things, that the differences are all in favour of associated
labour. In this latter, for instance, there will not be found the chief
sins of associations of capitalists--namely, lack of technical knowledge
and indifference to the objects of the undertaking on the part of the
shareholders; and therefore it is possible completely to dispense with
those useless and crippling kinds of control-apparatus with which the
statutes of the companies of capitalists are ballasted. As a rule, the
single shareholder understands nothing of the business of his company, and
quite as seldom dreams of interfering in the affairs of the company
otherwise than by receiving his dividends. Notwithstanding, _he_ is the
master of the undertaking, and in the last resort it is his vote that
decides the fate of it; what provisions are therefore necessary in order to
protect this shareholder from the possible consequences of his own
ignorance, credulity, and negligence! The associated workers, on the
contrary, are fully acquainted with the nature of their undertaking, the
success of which is their chief material interest, and is, without
exception, recognised as such by them. This is a decisive advantage. Or
does anyone see a special difficulty in the fact that the workers are
placed under the direction of persons whose appointment depends upon the
votes of the men who are to be directed? On the same ground might the
authority of all elective political and other posts be questioned. The
directors have no means of _compelling_ obedience? A mistake; they lack
only the right of arbitrarily dismissing the insubordinate. But this right
is not possessed by many other bodies dependent upon the discipline and the
reasonable co-operation of their members; nevertheless, or rather on this
very account, such bodies preserve better discipline than those
confederations in which obedience is maintained by the severest forcible
measures. It is true that where there is no forcible compulsion discipline
cannot so easily pass over into tyranny; but this is, in truth, no evil.
Moreover, the directors of free associations of workers can put into force
a means of compulsion, the power of which is more unqualified and absolute
than that of the most unmitigated tyranny: the all-embracing reciprocal
control of the associates, whose influence even the most obstinate cannot
permanently withstand. It is certainly indispensable that the workers as a
whole, or a large majority of them, should be reasonable men whose
intelligence is sufficient to enable them to understand their own
interests. But this is the first and foremost _conditio sine qua non_ of
the establishment of economic justice. That economic justice--up to the
present the highest outcome of the evolution of mankind--is suitable only
to men who have raised themselves out of the lowest stage of brutality, is
in no respect open to question. Hence it follows that nations and
individuals who have not yet reached this stage of development must be
educated up to it; and this educational work is not difficult if it be but
undertaken with a will. We doubt that it could altogether fail anywhere, if
undertaken seriously and in the right way.