Freeland

T >> Theodor Hertzka >> Freeland

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And now let us look at the second side of the question which has been
thrown out. Is it correct that, in consequence of the solidarity of
interests which exists in the free community, the weal and woe of the whole
are indissolubly bound up with the success of any individual undertaking?
If it be meant by this that in such a community everyone is interested in
the weal of everyone else, and consequently in the success of every
undertaking, then it fully expresses what is the fact; but--and this was
evidently the meaning of the speaker--if it is meant that the weal of such
a community is dependent upon the success of every single undertaking of
its members, then it is utterly groundless. If an undertaking does not
thrive, its members leave it and turn to one that is more prosperous--that
is all. On the other hand, this mobility of labour, bound up with the
solidarity of interests, protects the free community from the worse
consequences of actual miscarriage. If there should be an ill-advised
choice of directors, the unqualified officials can do but relatively little
mischief; they see themselves--that is, the undertaking under their
control--promptly forsaken by the workers, and the losses are insignificant
because confined within a small area. In fact, this mobility proves itself
to be in the last resort the most effectual corrective of all kinds of
mistakes, the agency by which all the defective forms of organisation and
the less capable minds are thrust aside and automatically superseded by
better. For the undertakings which, from any cause whatever, fail to thrive
are always in a comparatively short time absorbed by better, without
involving in ruin--as happens under the exploiting system of society--those
who were engaged in the former undertakings. Hence it is not necessary that
these free organisations should in all cases strike the highest note at the
very beginning in order eventually to attain to perfect order and
excellence; for in the friendly competition what is defective rapidly
vanishes from sight, being merged in what is proved to be superior, which
then alone holds the field.

JOHN KILMEAN (_Right_): Let us grant, then, that the associations of free
labour are organised as well as, or better than, the capitalists'
associations of the old exploiting world. Is there, nevertheless, no ground
to fear that they will exhibit serious defects in comparison with
undertakings conducted by individual employers? That self-interest, so far
as concerns the workers themselves, can for the first time have full play
in stimulating activity is true; but with respect to the management the
reverse is the fact. At least one would think that the interest of the
individual undertaker in the success of the business belonging to him alone
must be a keener one than that of directors, who are nothing more than
elected functionaries whose industrial existence is in no way indissolubly
connected with the undertaking. The advantages which the private
undertaking conducted by the individual proprietor has hitherto exhibited
over the joint-stock company, it must, in the nature of things, also have
over the free associations.

THEODOR YPSILANTI (_Freeland_): Let us assume, for the present, that this
is so. But are the advantages of the individual undertaker over the
joint-stock company really so great? It is not necessary to theorise for
and against, since practice has long ago pronounced its verdict. And what
is this? Simply that the joint-stock undertaking has gradually surpassed,
nay, in the most important and the most extensive branches of business
totally superseded, the much-lauded private undertaking. It can be
confidently assorted that in every kind of undertaking which is large
enough to support the--certainly somewhat costly--apparatus of a
joint-stock company, the joint-stock company is undisputed master of the
field, so that there remains to the private undertaking, as its domain,
nothing more than the dwarf concerns with which our free society does not
meddle. It cannot be said that this is due to the larger money power of the
combined capital, for even relatively small undertakings, whose total
capital is many times less than that of a great many private millionaires,
prefer, I may say choose exclusively, the joint-stock form. It is quite as
great a mistake to ascribe this fact to the reluctance of private
capitalists to run the risk involved in certain undertakings, and to their
consequent preference for joint-stock undertakings; for, in the first
place, it is generally the least risky branches of business in which the
joint-stock form most exclusively prevails; and in the second place, we see
only too often that individual capitalists place enormous sums in single
companies, and even found undertakings in a joint-stock form with their own
capital. But a decisive proof of the superiority of the joint-stock company
is the universal fact that the great capitalists are everywhere entrusting
the control of their property to joint-stock companies. If the
account-books of the wealthy in every civilised exploiting country were to
be examined, it would unquestionably be found that at least nine-tenths of
the capitalists had employed the greatest part of their capital which was
not invested in land in the purchase of shares. This, however, simply shows
that the rich prefer not to manage their wealth themselves, but to allow it
to be managed by joint stock companies.

The orthodox theory, spun out of the flimsiest fictions, is not able to do
anything with this fact; it therefore ignores it, or seeks to explain it by
a number of fresh fictions, such as the fable of divided risk, or some
other similar subterfuge. The truth is that the self-interest of the
employer has very little to do with the real direction of the businesses
belonging to him--so far as concerns great undertakings--for not the
employer, but specially appointed wage-earners, are, as a rule, the actual
directors; the alleged advantage of the private undertaking, therefore,
does not exist at all. On the other hand, the undertaking of the private
capitalist is at a very heavy disadvantage in competition with that of the
joint-stock company, inasmuch as the latter almost always attracts by far
the greater amount of intelligence. The capitalist, even the largest, is on
the average no cleverer than other men--that is, generally speaking, he is
_not_ particularly clever. It may, perhaps, be objected that he would
scarcely have attained to great wealth had he not possessed superior
abilities; but apart from the fact that it has yet to be established
whether in the modern exploiting society it is really special mental gifts,
and not rather other things, that lead to the accumulation of great wealth,
most large fortunes are no longer in the hands of the original acquirers,
but in those of their heirs. Consequently, in private undertakings, if not
the actual direction, yet certainly the highest authority, and particularly
the final decision as to the choice of the actual directors, lies in the
hands of men who, shall we say, half of them, possess less than the
average, nine-tenths of the rest about the average, and only one-twentieth
of them more than the average of human intelligence. Naturally
nineteen-twentieths of the undertakings thought out and established by such
men will be either indifferent or bad. It will be further objected that it
is in the main the same men to whom a similar _role_ falls in the creation
and officering of joint-stock companies. Very true. But here it is usual
for the few able men among the wealthy to take the _role_ of leaders; the
stupid or the moderately gifted are changed from autocratic despots into a
herd of common docile cattle, who, led by the instinct of self-interest,
blindly follow the abler men. And even when it is otherwise, when the
incapable rich man stubbornly insists upon thrusting forward his empty
pate, he finds himself compelled to give reasons for what he does, to
engage in the game of question and answer with his fellow shareholders, and
ordinarily he is thus preserved from the gross follies which he would be
sure to commit if the whole responsibility rested upon himself. In a word,
capitalists acting together as joint-stock companies as a rule exhibit more
ability than capitalists acting independently. But even if it were not so,
the selections which they make--as shareholders--in appointing the chief
managers of their business are infinitely better than those made by private
capitalists, because a whole category of intelligences, and that of the
highest and best kind, stands at the disposal of the joint-stock company,
but not of the private undertaker. Many persons who offer themselves as
directors, members of council of administration, presidents, of joint-stock
companies, would never condescend to enter into the service of an
individual. The general effect of all this is, that joint-stock companies
in the greater number of cases possess far abler, more intelligent managers
than private undertakings--a circumstance which no one will overlook who is
but even moderately well acquainted with the facts of the case.

The alleged superiority of the private undertaking, supposed to be due to
the personal care and oversight of the owner, is therefore nothing more
than one of the many fables in which the exploiting world believes in spite
of the most obvious lack of truth. But even the trifling advantages which
the private undertaking really has over the joint-stock company cannot be
claimed as against freely associated labour. Colleague Tonof has already
pointed out that ignorance and indifference, those most dangerous
characteristics of most shareholders, are not to be feared in those who
take part in labour associations. Here it can never happen that an
unscrupulous minority will obtain control of the management and exploit the
undertaking for the benefit of some private interest; here it is natural
that the whole body of members, who are interested in the successful
conduct of the business, should incessantly and attentively watch the
behaviour of the officials they have elected; and in view of the perfect
transparency of all the business transactions in the free community, secret
practices and crooked ways--those inevitable expedients of dishonour--are
not to be thought of. In a word, the form of labour organisation
corresponding to the higher stage of civilisation proves itself to be
infinitely superior in every respect to the form of organisation prevalent
in the past--a fact which, strictly speaking, is a matter of course.

It does not follow that this form of organisation is the most suitable for
every kind of labour; there are branches of production--I mention merely
the artistic or the scientific--in which the individual must stand by
himself; but we do not apply the principle of association to these
branches. For no one would forcibly impose this principle, and the
individual freedom that is nowhere interfered with is able of itself to
take care that what is done is everywhere done in the way that has been
found to be most consistent with nature, and best.

MIGUEL DIEGO (_Right_): We know now that the new system unites in itself
all the natural requisites of success; it has been shown before that its
introduction was demanded by the progress of civilisation. How comes it
that, in spite of all, the new system enters the world, not as the product
of the co-operation of elementary automatically occurring historical
events, but rather as a kind of art-product, as an artificially produced
outcome of the efforts of certain individuals? What if the International
Free Society had not been formed, or if its appeal had been without
response, its work crushed in the germ, or in some other way made to
miscarry? It will be admitted that these are conceivable contingencies.
What would have become of economic justice if any one of these
possibilities had occurred? If social reform is in truth an inevitable
necessity, it must ultimately be realised in spite of the opposition of the
whole world; it must show itself to be indissolubly bound up with forces
which will give it the victory over prejudice, ill-will, and adverse
accident. Thus alone would proof be given that the work in which we are
engaged is something more than the ephemeral fruit of fallible human
ingenuity--that rather those men who gave it the initial impulse and
watched over its development were acting simply as the instruments of the
universal force which, if _they_ had not done the work, would have found
other instruments and other ways to attain the inevitable end.

HENRI NEY (_Freeland_): If the existence of economic justice as an
established fact depended upon the action of the founders of Freeland,
little could have been said, not merely as to its necessary character, but
also as to the certainty of its continuance. For what individual men
attempt, other men can frustrate. It is true that, as far as outward
appearances go, all historical events are human work: but the great
necessary events of history are distinguished from merely accidental
occurrences by the fact that in them all the actors are clearly seen to be
simply the instruments of destiny, instruments which the genius of mankind
calls into being when it is in need of them. We do not know who invented
language, the first tool, writing; but whoever it was, we know that he was
a mere instrument of progress, in the sense that, with the same certainty
with which we express any other natural law, we can venture to assert that
language, the tool, writing, would have been invented even if their
respective accidental inventors had never seen the light. The same holds
good of economic freedom: it would have been realised, even if none of us
who actually realised it for the first time had existed. Only in such a
case the form of its entrance into the world of historical fact would
probably have been a different, perhaps a more pacific, a more joyous one
still than that of which we are the witnesses; but perhaps it might have
been a violent and horrible one.

In order to show this in a manner that excludes all doubt, it must first be
demonstrated that the continuance of modern society as it has been evolved
in the course of the last century is in the very nature of things an
impossibility. For this purpose you must allow me to carry you back some
distance.

In the original society of barbarism, when the productiveness of labour was
so small that the weaker could not be exploited by the stronger, and one's
own prosperity depended upon the suppression and annihilation of
competitors, a thirst for blood, cruelty, cunning, were not merely
necessary to the self-preservation of the individual, but they were
obviously serviceable to the society to which the individual belonged. They
were, therefore, not only universally prevalent, but were reckoned as
virtues. The most successful and most merciless slayer of men was the most
honourable member of his tribe, and was lauded in speech and song as an
example worthy of imitation.

When the productiveness of labour increased, these 'virtues' lost much of
their original importance; but they were not converted into vices until
slavery was invented, and it became possible to utilise the labour instead
of the flesh of the conquered. Then bloodthirsty cruelty, which hitherto
had been profitable, became injurious, since, for the sake of a transient
enjoyment--that of eating human flesh--it deprived the victorious
individual, as well as the society to which he belonged, of the permanent
advantage of augmented prosperity and increased power. Consequently, the
bestial thirst for blood gradually disappeared in the new form of the
struggle for existence, and from a cherished virtue it passed into a
characteristic which met with increasing disapproval--that is, it became a
vice. It necessarily became a vice, for only those tribes which were the
subjects of this process of moral transformation could enjoy all the
advantages of the new forms of labour and of the new social institution,
slavery, and could therefore increase in civilisation and power, and make
use of their augmented power to extirpate or to bring into subjection the
tribes that persisted in their old cannibal customs. In this way, in the
course of thousands of years, there grew up among men a new ethics which,
in its essential features, has been preserved until our days--the ethics of
exploitation.

But to call this ethics 'philanthropy' is the strangest of mistakes. It is
true that the savage bloodthirsty hatred between man and man had given
place to milder sentiments; but it is a long way from those sentiments to
genuine philanthropy, by which we understand the recognition of our
fellow-man as our equal, and not merely that chilly benevolence which we
entertain towards even dumb animals. Real philanthropy is as inconsistent
with exploitation as with cannibalism. For though the new form of the
struggle for existence abhors the death of the vanquished, it substitutes
for it the oppression and subjugation of man by man as an imperative
requirement of social prosperity. And it should be clearly understood that
real and unselfish philanthropy is not merely not demanded by the kind of
struggle for existence which is carried on by the exploiting society, but
is known to be distinctly injurious, and is quite impracticable as a
universally operative race-instinct. Individuals may love their fellow-men
as themselves; but as long as exploitation is in force, such men must
remain rare, and by no means generally esteemed, exceptions. Only hypocrisy
or gross self-deception will question this. Certainly the so-called
civilised nations of the West have for more than a thousand years written
upon their banners the words 'Love thy neighbour as thyself,' and have not
shrunk from asserting that they lived up to those words, or that at least
they endeavoured to do so. But in truth they loved their fellow-man, in the
best of cases, as a useful domestic animal, have without the slightest
scruple profited by his painful toil, by his torture, and have not been
prevented by any sentiment of horror from slaughtering him in cold blood
when such a course was or seemed to be profitable to them. And such were
not the sentiments and feelings of a few particularly hard-hearted
individuals, but of the whole body of society; they were not condemned but
imperatively demanded by public opinion, lauded as virtues under all sorts
of high-sounding names, and, so far as deeds and not empty phrases were in
question, their antithesis, the genuine philanthropy, passed at best as
pitiable folly, or more generally as a crime worthy of death. He who
uttered the words quoted above, and to Whom prayers were offered in the
churches, would have been repeatedly crucified, burnt, broken on the wheel,
hanged by them all, in the most recent past perhaps imprisoned, had He
again ventured, as He did nineteen centuries ago, to preach in the
market-place, in burning living words that could not be misunderstood, that
which men's purblind eyes and their minds clouded by a thousand years of
ancient self-deception read, but did not understand, in the writings of His
disciples.

But the decisive point is, that in the epoch of exploitation mankind could
not have thought or felt, not to say acted, otherwise. They were compelled
to practise exploitation so long as this was a necessity of civilisation;
they were therefore unable either to feel or exercise philanthropy, for
that was as little in harmony with exploitation as repugnance to homicide
was with cannibalism. Just as in the first barbaric epoch of mankind that
which the exploiting period called 'humanity' would have been detrimental
to success in the struggle for existence, so, later, that which _we_ call
humanity, the genuine philanthropy, would have placed any nation that had
practised it at a disadvantage. To eat or to be eaten--that was the
alternative in the epoch of cannibalism; to oppress or to be oppressed, in
the epoch of exploitation.

A change in the form and productiveness of labour has recently been
effected; neither social institutions nor moral sensibilities can escape
the influence of that change. But--and here I come to the last decisive
point--there are certainly several alternatives conceivable. The first is
that with which we have hitherto been exclusively occupied: the social
institutions accommodate themselves to the change in the form of labour,
and the modification of the struggle for existence thus brought about leads
to a corresponding revolution in moral sentiments; friendly competition and
perfect solidarity of interests supersede the reciprocal struggle for
advantage, and the highest philanthropy supersedes the exploitation of man.

If we would once for all remove the last doubt as to the unqualified
necessity of this phase of evolution, let us suppose that the contrary has
happened, that the adaptation of the social institutions to the modified
form of labour is not effected. At any rate the mind can imagine such a
possibility; and I hold it to be superfluous, at this point in the
demonstration, to discuss the probability or the improbability of such a
supposition--we simply assume the case. But it would be absurd likewise to
assume that this persistence of the old form of the social institutions
could occur without being necessarily accompanied by very material
reactions both upon the forms of labour and upon the moral instincts of
mankind. Those over-orthodox but not less thoughtless social politicians
who accept the above assumption, hold it to be possible for a cause of such
enormous and far-reaching importance as is an increased productiveness of
labour, that makes it possible for all men to enjoy abundance and leisure,
to remain without the slightest influence upon the course of human
evolution. They overlook the fact that the struggle for existence in human
society must in any case be changed under the influence of this factor,
whether the social institutions undergo a corresponding adaptation or not,
and that consequently the inquiry must in any case be made what reaction
this changed form of the struggle for existence can or must exercise upon
the totality of human institutions?

And in what consists the change in the struggle for existence, in such a
case as that indicated above? _Simply in a partial reversion to the form of
struggle of the first, the cannibal, epoch of mankind!_

We have seen that exploitation transformed the earlier struggle, that aimed
at annihilating the competitor, into one directed towards his subjugation.
But now, when the productiveness of labour is so great that the
consumption, kept down by exploitation, is no longer able to follow it, the
suppression, the--if not the physical, yet the industrial--annihilation of
the competitor is once more a necessary condition of everyone's prosperity,
and the struggle for existence assumes at once the forms of subjugation and
annihilation. In the domain of industry it now profits little to have
arbitrary authority over any number of human subjects of exploitation; if
the exploiter is not able to drive his co-exploiter from the market, he
must succumb in the struggle for existence. And the exploited now have not
merely to defend themselves from the harsh treatment of their masters: they
must, if they would ward off hunger, fight with tooth and claw for the only
too few places at the food-crib in the 'labour market.' Is it conceivable
that such a terrible alteration in the fundamental conditions of the
struggle for existence can remain without influence upon human ethics?
Cause and effect _must_ correspond--the ethics of the cannibal epoch _must_
triumphantly return. In consequence of the altered character of the
conflict of annihilation, the former cruel and malicious instincts will
undergo a modification, but the fundamental sentiment, the unqualified
animosity against one's fellow-man, must return. During the thousands of
years when the struggle was directed towards the making use of one's
neighbour, and especially when the exploited had become accustomed to
reverence in the exploiter a higher being, there was possible between
master and servant at least that degree of attachment which exists between
a man and his beast. Neither masters nor servants had any necessary
occasion to hate each other. Mutual consideration, magnanimity, kindness,
gratitude, could in such a condition become--certainly very
sparingly--substitutes for philanthropy. But now, when exploitation and
suppression are at one and the same time the watchwords of the struggle,
the above-mentioned virtues must more and more assume the character of
obstacles to a successful struggle for existence, and must consequently
disappear in order to make room for mercilessness, cunning, cruelty,
malice. And all these disgraceful characteristics must not merely become
universally prevalent: they must also become universally esteemed, and be
raised from the category of the most shameful kinds of baseness to that of
'virtues.' As little as it is possible to conceive of a 'humane' cannibal
or of an exploiter under the influence of real philanthropy, so little is
it possible to think of a magnanimous and--in the former sense--virtuous
exploiter permanently under the colossal burden of over-production; and as
certainly as the cannibal society was compelled to recognise the thirst for
murder as the most praiseworthy of all virtues, so certainly must the
exploiting society, cursed by over-production, learn to reverence the most
cunning deceiver as its ideal of virtue. But it will be objected that,
logically unassailable as this position may be, it is contradicted by
facts. Over-production, the disproportion between the productivity of
labour and the capacity for consumption as conditioned by the existing
social institutions, has practically existed for generations; and yet it
would be a gross exaggeration to assert that the moral sensibilities of
civilised humanity had undergone such a terrible degeneration as is
indicated above. It is certainly true that, in consequence of the
increasingly reckless industrial competitive struggle, many kinds of
valueless articles are produced in larger and larger quantities--nay, that
there is beginning to prevail a certain confusion in public opinion, which
is no longer able clearly to distinguish between honest services and
successful roguery; but it is equally true, on the other hand, that never
before was humanity in all its forms so highly esteemed and so widely
diffused as it is in the present. These undeniable facts, however, do not
show that over-production can ultimately lead to any other than the
above-indicated results--which would be logical nonsense; they only show,
on the one hand, that this dreadful morbid phenomenon in the industrial
domain of mankind has not yet been long enough in existence to have fully
matured its fruit, and that, on the other hand, the moral instinct of
mankind felt a presentiment of the right way out of the economic dilemma
long before that right way had become practicable. It is only a few
generations since the disproportion between productivity and consumption
became unmistakably evident: and what are a few generations in the life of
mankind? The ethics of exploitation needed many centuries in order to
subvert that of cannibalism: why should the relapse into the ethics of
cannibalism proceed so much more rapidly? But the instinctive presentiment
that growing civilisation will be connected, not with social stagnation and
moral retrogression, but with both social and moral progress--this yearning
for liberty, equality, and fraternity ineradicably implanted in the Western
mind, despite all the follies and the horrors to which it for a time gave
rise--it was just this 'drop of foreign blood in the European family of
nations,' this Semitic-Christian leaven, which, when the time of servitude
was past, preserved that Western mind from falling even temporarily into a
servile and barbarous decay. Things will _not_ follow the last indicated
course of evolution--exploitation will _not_ persist alongside of increased
productivity; and that is the reason why the indicated moral consequences
will not ensue. If, however, it be assumed that material progress and
exploitation combined are the future lot of mankind, this cannot logically
be conceived otherwise than as accompanied by a complete moral relapse. Yet
a third form of evolution may be assumed as conceivable: in the antagonism
between the productivity of labour and the current social rights, the
former--the new form of labour--might succumb; in the face of the
impossibility of making full use of the acquired industrial capacity,
mankind might lose this capacity again. In such a case, the concord between
productivity and consumption, labour and right, would have recovered the
old basis, and as a consequence the ethics of mankind might also remain in
the same track. Progress towards genuine philanthropy would necessarily be
suspended, for the struggle for existence would, as before, be based upon
the subjugation of one's fellow-men, but the necessity for the struggle of
annihilation would be avoided. The presentiment of the possibility of such
a development was not foreign to the Western mind; there have not been
wanting, particularly during the last generations, attempts, partly
conscious and partly unconscious, to load men's minds in this direction.
Alarmed and driven nearly to distraction by the strangling embrace of
over-production, whole nations have at times attacked the fundamental
sources of production, sought to choke the springs of the fruitfulness of
labour, and persecuted with violent hatred the progress of civilisation,
whose fruits were for the time so bitter. These attacks upon popular
culture, upon the different kinds of division of labour, upon machinery,
cannot be understood except in connection with the occasional attempts to
end the discord between production and distribution by diminishing the
former. It is impossible not to see that in this way morality also would be
preserved from a degeneracy the real cause of which this sort of reformers
certainly did not understand, but which hovered before their mind's eye as
an indistinct presentiment. And now, having noticed _seriatim_ the three
conceivable forms of evolution--namely, (1) the adaptation of social rights
to the new and higher forms of labour and the corresponding evolution of a
new and higher morality; (2) the permanent antagonism between the form of
labour and social rights, and the corresponding degeneracy of morality; (3)
the adaptation of the form of labour to the hitherto existing social rights
by the sacrifice of the higher productivity, and the corresponding
permanence of the hitherto existing morality--we now ask ourselves whether
in the struggle between these three tendencies any but the first can come
off as conqueror. They all three are conceivable; but is it conceivable
that material or moral decay can assert itself by the side of both moral
and material progress, or will ultimately triumph over these? It is
possible, we will say even probable, that but for our successful
undertaking begun twenty-five years ago, mankind would for the most part
still longer have continued to traverse the path of moral degeneracy on the
one hand, and of antagonism to progress on the other; yet there would never
therefore have been altogether wanting attempts in the direction of social
deliverance, and the ultimate triumph of such attempts could be only a
question of time. No; mankind owes us nothing which it would not have
obtained without us: if we claim to have rendered any service, it is merely
that of having brought about more speedily, and perhaps with less
bloodshed, that which must have come. [Vehement and long-continued applause
and enthusiastic cheers from all sides. The leaders of the opposition one
after another shook the hands of the speaker and assured him of their
support.]