THE LIMITS OF PURE DEMOCRACY 
 
THE LIMITS OF PURE 
 DEMOCRACY 
 
 BY 
 
 W. H. MALLOCK 
 
 AUTHOR OF 
 
 RELIGION AS A CREDIBLE DOCTRINE, "THE RECONSTRUCTION OF 
 \ HUMAN 
 ETC., ETC. 
 
 BELIEF," "A HUMAN DOCUMENT," 
 
 SECOND EDITION 
 
 LONDON 
 
 CHAPMAN AND HALL, LTD. 
 1918 
 

 
 PRINTED IN GREAT BRITAIN BY 
 
 RICHARD CLAY & SONS, LIMITED, 
 
 BRUNSWICK ST., STAMFORD ST., 8.E. 1, 
 
 AND BUNOAY. SUFFOLK 
 

 PREFACE 
 
 THIS work was planned, and the opening chapters 
 were written, in the earlier months of the year 1914, 
 when the outbreak of a great war was only a remote 
 contingency. Since then, and more especially during 
 the last twelve months, the subject here discussed 
 namely, the nature and the limits of the power of pure 
 democracy has acquired day by day a more immediate 
 importance. Indeed, all practical controversies may be 
 said now to turn on it. It thus has happened that the 
 principles here laid down in general terms have, whilst 
 the work was in progress, been illustrated by a series 
 of extraordinarily apt examples. References to many 
 of these have been added in brief footnotes. Four-fifths 
 of the work were, however, substantially complete before 
 the world was astonished by the revolution in Russia; 
 and, though it has been possible to add a few footnotes 
 relating to that movement, such notes are necessarily 
 inadequate to the magnitude and significance of the 
 occasion. The author has therefore thought it desirable 
 to rewrite the concluding pages, and substitute a more 
 detailed mention of recent events in Russia and other 
 countries also, for a final discussion of various general 
 facts and problems, such as the genesis and functions 
 of a leisured class, the possible equalising of certain 
 industrial faculties by education on the one hand, and 
 the probably increasing difference between the highest 
 and the lowest on the other, the increasing pressure of 
 
 3807.10 
 
vi PREFACE 
 
 the world-population against the means of subsistence, 
 and the increasing importance of mere mental efficiencies 
 in combating this pressure, etc. The publication of 
 these discussions (growing as they do out of the 
 questions here dealt with) is deferred. 
 
 The author desires to record his obligations to the 
 singularly interesting work on oligarchy in revolutionary 
 parties, by Professor Michels of Basle, which was pub- 
 lished in England in the year 1915 (see Book I, Chap. 
 I); to Mr. Stewart Graham's account, published some 
 years ago by Mr. Murray, of the socialist experiment in 
 Paraguay known as New Australia (see Book IV, Chap. 
 Ill); and also to The Daily Mail, for the letters pub- 
 lished by it from a socialist correspondent in Russia. 
 
 Further, the author regrets that it has been impossible 
 to include any reference to certain articles on " Indus- 
 trial Revolution or Ferment," which were published in 
 The Times in October, 1917, and attracted wide atten- 
 tion. The whole of the present work was by that time 
 in the printer's hands. 
 
 November, 1917. 
 
CONTENTS 
 BOOK I 
 
 POLITICAL DEMOCRACY 
 
 CHAPTEE I 
 
 PAQH 
 
 THE CONCEPTION OF A GENERAL WILL IN POLITICS . 1 
 
 The violation of thought by the use of inaccurate 
 language, as exemplified by Rousseau's fantastic concep- 
 tion of freedom (1-4). Its analogue in current conceptions 
 of democracy (4). Modern definitions of political de- 
 mocracy analysed (4-6). Pure democracy as government 
 by the spontaneous and identical wills of the units of the 
 average mass (6-10). Except, as to certain questions, no 
 spontaneous identity of average wills exists. Classifica- 
 tion of political questions with regard to which a pure 
 democratic will is possible and impossible (10-19). 
 
 CHAPTER II 
 
 OLIGARCHY AND WILL-FORMATION 20 
 
 A pure democratic will possible as to very simple ques- . 
 tions, but as to those only (20-21). As to the composite or __ - 
 complex questions which arise in great and complex states, 
 a general will requires the formative influence of the few 
 (21-22). Examples from English history, Electoral re- 
 form, Free Trade, the Right to Work, Scientific imple- 
 ments of war (22-25). The part played by oligarchy in the 
 formation of general wills as to such questions (25-29). 
 
 CHAPTER III 
 
 THE ARTS OF OLIGARCHY 30 
 
 The devising of definite measures by the few, which the 
 many are induced to ratify (30-31) . The methods by which, 
 in the absence of bribery, the necessary ratification is 
 obtainable (31-32). Concerted agitation, advertisement and 
 concerted exposition. The object of these and the object 
 of bribery the same (33-35). The Referendum as an imple- 
 ment of oligarchy (35-37). 
 
viii CONTENTS 
 
 PAOB 
 
 CHAPTEE IV 
 
 INEXPUGNABLE OLIGARCHY 38 
 
 Everyman an oligarch, whatever his rank, who intention- 
 ally influences the vote of any other man. Oligarchs of the 
 tap-room (39-40). Conversation as an implement of oli- 
 garchy (39-41). Pure democracy would suppress the public 
 meeting and all oratory (42). With regard to simple and 
 fundamental questions, such methods, as a fact, are not re- 
 sorted to (42-43). The fact that they are resorted to, with 
 regard to complex questions, shows that oligarchic methods 
 are necessary (43-45) 
 
 CHAPTEE V 
 
 REVOLUTIONARY OLIGARCHIES 46 
 
 Oligarchy in Trade Union and Labour Parties (46-47). 
 These parties at first purely democratic, but oligarchy has 
 inevitably developed in them (46-48). Socialist and Trade 
 Union leaders inevitably become oligarchs that is to say, 
 more than mere employees (48-49). Experience has shown 
 certain special gifts to be necessary in these leaders. When 
 once in power, it is difficult to dismiss them (48-49). A 
 " gregarious inertia " characteristic of the majority in all 
 revolutionary parties, the energy necessary for leadership 
 being found in small minorities only (50). The ambitions 
 of rival oligarchs (51). Causes which solidify the position 
 of leaders actually in office : examples from Germany and 
 Italy (51-52). The oligarchs of "The International," 
 Marx and Engels (53). Lassalle and Proudhon admit that 
 purely democratic wills must be merged in those of the 
 leaders (55-56). Recent admission by socialists to the same 
 effect (57). Syndicalist oligarchs, such as Labriola (58-59). 
 Open repudiation of pure democracy by modern revolution- 
 aries (59-61). 
 
 CHAPTEE VI 
 
 DISAPPEARING ILLUSIONS 62 
 
 Means and a general objective. Impotence of any purely 
 democratic will to prescribe complex means (62-64). The 
 conception of a will which is purely democratic as to objec- 
 tives, though not as to means (64-65). Confusion in this 
 conception between will and wish (66). A general wish for 
 welfare through governmental action (66-67) . This is totally 
 different from a will as to complex means (68). Welfare, 
 us subserved by government, is a plexus of definite means 
 to a generally wished-for end (69). The average man wholly 
 incompetent to define this plexus of means for himself, or 
 
I 
 
 CONTENTS ix 
 
 to specify it in a definite way to others (70). A will which 
 does not specify definite means is not a political will at 
 all (71). Popular awakening from the dream of pure demo- 
 cracy in politics (72-74). Transference of popular hopes 
 from political democracy to democracy in the spheres of 
 industrial or social life (75-77). 
 
 BOOK II 
 DEMOCRACY AND TECHNICAL PRODUCTION 
 
 CHAPTER I 
 
 THE DEFINITION OF INDUSTRY 78 
 
 The conception of Industrial Democracy as a means by 
 which the masses will appropriate all incomes now derived 
 from mere " possession " (78-79). This conception based 
 on a loose idea of what industry is (79). Industry is a 
 technical process affecting material substances (80). Trade 
 Unions and Labour Parties, as such, have nothing to do with 
 the details of this process (81). Industry is simply the 
 application of hand-work, knowledge, and other mental 
 forces to the fashioning and movement of material sub- 
 stances which are given to man by Nature (81-82) . 
 
 CHAPTER II 
 
 PURE DEMOCRATIC INDUSTRY ...... 83 
 
 Pure democracy in industry means hand-work directed 
 solely by the knowledge and mental powers common to all 
 average men, and excludes all authority or guidance exer- 
 cised by the exceptional few (83). This doctrine reduced 
 to a quasi-scientific form by Marx (84-85). Summary of 
 the Marxian doctrine that manual labourers are the sole 
 and equal producers of all wealth (85-87). This doctrine 
 true of production in its earlier stages (75-88). But if this 
 be the whole truth, how has production ever increased in 
 efficiency ? (88-89). Attempts made by Marx to answer 
 this question (89-91). Actual, but limited progress of 
 purely democratic hand-work (91). The four causes to 
 which this limited progress has been due (92-96). From 
 the decline of Roman slavery to the end of the eighteenth 
 century, the productivity per head of industrial workers 
 stationary (97). Extraordinary progress since that time. 
 To what has this progress been due ? (97-98). 
 
x CONTENTS 
 
 PAGE 
 
 CHAPTER III 
 
 THE SECRET OF MODERN PROGRESS 99 
 
 Inability of the Marxian doctrine of labour as the sole 
 producer to explain modern industrial progress. Analysis 
 of the gaps and errors of the Marxian argument (99105). 
 Marx ascribes progress largely to new subdivisions of 
 manual labour (105-106). The main cause (which Marx 
 entirely misses) is the subdivision of productive effort into 
 manual and purely mental, so that the two are performed 
 by different classes (107-108). This differentiation of the 
 mental workers from the manual is essentially a develop- 
 ment of oligarchy (108-109). 
 
 CHAPTER IV 
 
 PRODUCTIVITY OP THE FEW . . . . .110 
 
 Definite admissions by modern socialists on the special 
 functions and productivity of the industrial oligarchy 
 (109-111). Attempts made by socialists to reconcile an 
 oligarchic with a purely democratic formula. Five types of 
 argument (111). Three of these entirely futile (111-114). 
 Two deserve consideration. The evolutionary or monistic 
 argument which denies the reality of the individual. This 
 has no relation to practical life (115-116). The argument 
 borrowed from Mill, which represents all productive efforts 
 as equal if they are " equally necessary " (117). Radical 
 error of this argument (118). The true basis of all practical 
 reasoning which relates to production, and indeed to all 
 human causation (119-120). The exceptional productivity 
 of the few. How all men in practice really calculate this 
 (121-124). Practical concession by thinkers of all schools 
 (socialists included) that, relatively to their number, the 
 exceptional few produce incomparably more than the many 
 (124^127). Why, then, having admitted this fact, should 
 socialists endeavour to obscure it by idle argumentative 
 devices ? (127). 
 
 BOOK III 
 
 DEMOCRATIC DISTRIBUTION AS RELATED 
 TO THE FACTS OF PRODUCTION 
 
 CHAPTER I 
 
 DISTRIBUTION IN ENGLAND 
 
 The practical reason why socialists seek to obscure the 
 exceptional productivity of the few, even whilst formally 
 
CONTENTS xi 
 
 admitting it (128). The "enormous" unearned income 
 alleged to be stolen by the few from the actual products 
 of the many (129-130). Is the unearned income really an 
 " enormous share " of the total income of a typical modern 
 country ? This question can be answered only by reference 
 to typical facts (131). Analysis of the earned and unearned 
 income of England or the United Kingdom about the year 
 1907 : six classes of income Wages, Salaries, Professional 
 earnings, Earnings of small businesses, Earned portion of 
 the profits of the greater businesses (mostly companies), 
 Unearned profits of companies, together with rent of lands 
 and buildings, etc. (131-137). All income is earned except 
 income derived from inherited property (138-139). Total 
 income of the United Kingdom in 1907 compared to the 
 earned and unearned income of a professional man. Small 
 relative amount in a country like England of the actually 
 unearned portion (139-140). Aggregate of incomes above 
 5000 and 3000 (141). Fantastic exaggerations by 
 socialists (which they have now reduced) of the amount of 
 the unearned income of a typical modern country (141-142). 
 
 CHAPTER II 
 
 COMPAKATIVE DISTBIBUTION 143 
 
 Close similarities of distribution in all the great modern 
 countries (143-144). Detailed similarities of distribution 
 in the United Kingdom and the United States (144-146). 
 Incomes exceeding 3000 and 5000 in the two countries 
 (145-146). Similar graduation of wages in both countries 
 (146-149). These graduations totally incompatible with 
 the Socialist theory of wages (149-151). International 
 evidence as to the minute adjustment of wages to the 
 graduated efficiencies of the wage-earners (151-152). 
 Narrow limits of possible underpayment (151-152). Socialist 
 myths as to the millionaires and the lesser " rich " of 
 modern countries such as the United Kingdom and America 
 (153-155). Approximate, though not perfect, adjustment 
 of income in modern countries to the actual efficiency of 
 individuals (155-156). Why does modern distribution con- 
 form everywhere to the same precise scheme, and to no 
 other? An answer to this question is to be found in 
 history (156-157). 
 
 CHAPTEE III 
 
 A CENTURY OF CHANGING DISTRIBUTION .... 158 
 
 The income of England in the years 1801 and 1907. The 
 increment per head of the population between these two 
 dates (158-159). Directive Mind as the primary producer 
 
xii CONTENTS 
 
 PAGE 
 
 of the increment (159). Number of large and small busi- 
 nesses in England at the beginning of the nineteenth and 
 the beginning of the twentieth centuries (159-160). In- 
 creased number of employees subject to single units of 
 direction, or the increasing radius of the influence exercised 
 by each of the more powerful minds ; increased output 
 per worker thus resulting (161). Of this increment, attribu- 
 table primarily to Mind, the employers (as representing 
 Mind) get no more than a fifth. What becomes of the 
 remainder ? A large part goes to a novel class of sub- 
 ordinate mental workers (161-167). The larger part of the 
 increment goes to the manual labourers (168). Why should 
 this be, if labour itself is non-progressive ? (169). The 
 reason is, that industry, as intellectualised by a scientific 
 oligarchy, requires, and provides opportunities for novel 
 grades of labour which, except the lowest, command com- 
 petitive prices, which in varying degrees exceed the 
 minimum (170-172). The three productive classes (173). 
 
 CHAPTER IV 
 
 DISTRIBUTION AS IT IS 174 
 
 Summary of preceding chapter. The obvious question 
 is, if the Mind of the employers in any sense produces the 
 whole increment, why do the employers not appropriate 
 the whole ? (174-175). It does produce the whole in one 
 sense, but in another sense it does not, as shown by the 
 case of the Jesuits in Paraguay (175-177). If the oligarchy 
 is taken as a going concern, it practically produces part of 
 the increment only. If its existence is in danger, there 
 is practical truth in saying that it produces the whole 
 (177-178). Distribution as it is coincides with the three 
 forces Supreme mind, Subordinate mind and Labour 
 on condition that oligarchic industry is taken as a going 
 concern (178-179). Even socialists are beginning to admit 
 that distribution as it is conforms substantially to the 
 broad facts of distribution (179-181). Even socialists are 
 beginning to admit that if accord between production and 
 distribution were complete, distribution would not in any 
 vital way differ from what it is (181-184). Socialist theory 
 as revised in the light of this admission (183-184). The 
 new theory is that distribution must be determined by 
 moral sentiment, not by the facts of production. Incisive 
 exposition of this doctrine by an American socialist 
 (184-187). 
 
CONTENTS xiii 
 
 BOOK IV 
 DISTRIBUTION BY DEMOCRATIC SENTIMENT 
 
 CHAPTEE I 
 
 PAOH 
 
 THE SENTIMENTAL PROGRAMME 188 
 
 An interesting and typical exposition of the reasoned 
 content of socialism has been given by Mr. Bernard Shaw 
 (188-189). Analysis of Mr. Shaw's Exposition. Industrial 
 collectivism (which is merely the American Trust-system 
 nationalised) is demanded by, but is not in itself, socialism 
 (189-190). Collectivism (as the Trust-system shows) in- 
 volves inequality of effort, but socialism differs from the 
 Trust-system in demanding equality of payment, this 
 demand being based on an imperious moral sentiment 
 (190-191). If all are to be paid alike irrespective of what 
 they produce, how will work be secured from the idle? 
 Mr. Shaw answers : By quasi-military discipline (191). 
 But most men, according to him, will naturally work their 
 hardest for the sake of "being precious to humanity" 
 (191-192). All the highest work, he says, is done without 
 thought of " payment," and thus in ;a socialist polity, 
 though the idle would be whipped like slaves, the mass 
 of the citizens would perform industrial work with volun- 
 tary fervour, and would not require whipping (192-194). 
 Extraordinary confusions of thought involved in this conten- 
 tion shown : firstly, as to the nature of " work " (194-195) ; 
 secondly, as to the nature of " income " (195-197). Other 
 absurdities involved in Mr. Shaw's typical programme 
 (197-200). 
 
 CHAPTEE II 
 
 SOCIALIST EXPERIMENTS 201 
 
 Reluctance of socialists to test their industrial programme 
 by experiment (201-202). A large number of experiments 
 have nevertheless been made (202). Seven typical examples 
 here reviewed Religious experiments Their complete but 
 limited success (202-203). Five of the secularist experi- 
 ments which lasted for more than five years (203-204). 
 Socialism by solidarity of average sentiment (204-205). 
 Failure of such sentiment apart from eclectic religion 
 (205-207). Owen's experiment, and its final collapse 
 (207-210). Brook Farm (210-211). The Wisconsin and 
 Phalanx (211-213). The North American Phalanx (213- 
 216). Lane's experiment, "New Australia" (217-225) 
 Its collapse, Lane's second experiment, and his utter dis- 
 appointment (225-226). His emphatic recognition that the 
 requisite sentiment was wanting in even his most devoted 
 followers (227). 
 
xiv CONTENTS 
 
 PAOB 
 
 CHAPTEE III 
 
 THE DETAILED LESSONS OF EXPERIMENT . . . 228 
 
 The motives to industry and obedience paralysed by all 
 schemes of arbitrarily equalised reward. "Undivided 
 interests " lead to individual impotence (229). Insistence 
 on this fact by contemporary critics of the various socialist 
 ventures (229-231). A socialist sentiment does develop 
 itself in times of extreme danger, but passes away with the 
 crisis (231-232). Want of socialist sympathy on the part 
 of American and Australian labourers with the Japanese 
 (232-233). Actual limits of altruism in ordinary life (234- 
 235). Yet, within certain limits, socialism inseparable 
 from all societies (235-236). The vital task is to discover 
 the extent to which, and the limits within which alone 
 the principles and projects of socialism are applicable to 
 practical affairs (237). 
 
 BOOK V 
 THE PHILOSOPHY OF SANE REFORM 
 
 CHAPTEE I 
 
 THE IDEAL MINIMUM WAGE 238 
 
 Distribution presents no problems so long as societies 
 are simple and individual workers or families visibly get 
 what they produce, the amounts of their several products 
 being not notably different (238-239). Distribution pre- 
 sents a problem only when work becomes complex and 
 co-operative, and some units produce notably more than 
 others (239). Unless production is notably unequal, no 
 sentiment is needed to secure equal distribution (239). In 
 this case equalitarian sentiment must be of a double kind, 
 inciting the great producers to surrender, and the ordinary 
 producers to seize (239-240). Thus socialist sentiment is 
 a demand that the many shall live mainly on the products 
 of the few. Some element of truth even in this seeming 
 absurdity (240). All parties agree that the wage- earner 
 must not get less in wages than the value of what he could 
 produce as an independent worker (241). How is the per- 
 sonal product of any co-operative worker (whether wage- 
 earner or employer) to be measured ? As shown in a 
 former chapter, each man or class produces so much as 
 would not be produced were he or it inoperative (241-242) 
 Socialist experiments embodied applications of this prin- 
 ciple (241-242). The personal product of the wage-earners 
 
CONTENTS xv 
 
 as distinct from that of the employers, is thus a measurable 
 quantity (242-243). No wage can be just which is less 
 than the value of the worker's personal product (242). 
 Two supplements must be added to this, one being compen- 
 sation for the wage-earner's lost independence, the other 
 representing a balance of net advantage. We thus reach 
 the wage of Industrial Stability (244-247). The ideal 
 minimum must be compounded of these three elements, 
 partly as a matter of moral justice, and partly as a matter 
 of self-interest from the point of view of the employers 
 (247-249). 
 
 CHAPTEE II 
 
 MORALS, WAGES AND SECURITY 250 
 
 The actual amount of the minimum will vary according 
 to the wealth of different countries (250251). But it must 
 bear relation to moral facts as well as economic (251-252). 
 Papal encyclicals on a morally just minimum (252-253). 
 Fantastic estimates of the requisite amount of the morally 
 just minimum (253-254). Such exaggerations merely en- 
 gender a mood which nothing can satisfy. The just amount 
 must be limited by national powers of production (254-255), 
 The largest minimum practically possible must be taken as 
 representing the normal lot for the time being (255). Moral 
 justice, as distinct from commercial self-interest, relates to 
 the minimum only (255-256). But more is involved in the 
 conception of a just minimum than a mere pecuniary 
 quantity (256). Justice also demands for the wage-earner 
 secure opportunities of work (257-258). Highly-paid wage- 
 earners may be less secure than poor working owners (258- 
 259). All wealth, other than agricultural, is ultimately 
 precarious. Approximate security as an object of practical 
 endeavour (259-261). Two other conditions demanded by 
 justice for the wage-earner moral respect, and the right 
 to rise (261-263). 
 
 CHAPTEE III 
 
 THE RIGHT TO RESPECT 264 
 
 Just moral treatment demanded by wage-earners, as well 
 as just and secure wages (264-265). " Overbearing " treat- 
 ment of wage-earners by employers (265-266). Just moral 
 treatment is a recognition of actual moral equalities (266- 
 267). Unjust moral treatment on either side provokes ill- 
 temper which is fatal to mutual understanding (267-268). 
 Just moral treatment must take account of such inequali- 
 ties, as well as of such inequalities as actually exist (268 
 271). Examples of overbearing treatment in pre-revolu- 
 tionary France and elsewhere. Treatment of the labourer 
 
xvi CONTENTS 
 
 as though he were merely so much " labour " (271-273). 
 Just respect of wage-earners for employers (273). Exag- 
 gerated attempts at conciliation which disregard hard facts 
 (274-276). Men, if justly treated in respect of real equali- 
 ties, do not naturally demand any absolute and fictitious 
 equality (276-277). This is shown by actual popular de- 
 mands in respect of the Right to Rise (278). 
 
 CHAPTER IV 
 
 THE RIGHT TO RISE 279 
 
 The Right to Rise, or Equality of Opportunity, one of 
 the main demands of Revolutionary France (279-280). 
 This was due to artificial restrictions of opportunity (280). 
 Equal opportunity the Magna Charta of unequal achieve- 
 ment (280-282). The wages of exceptional skill (282-283). 
 " Democratic education " as a means of getting to " the top 
 of the tree" (283-288). Demands for absolute equality 
 mere protests against artificial inequality (288-289). The 
 elements of truth and justice which have been here set 
 forth as latent in the demands of socialism (289-290). 
 
 BOOK VI 
 THE DATA OF CONTENT 
 
 CHAPTER I 
 
 THE PSYCHOLOGY OF SANE REFORM 291 
 
 Three stages of socialist thought. Modern reversion to 
 sentiment as the basis of a socialist policy, instead of the 
 facts of production, which were the basis of the Marxian 
 doctrine (291-293). This adoption of a psychological, in- 
 stead of a purely industrial basis, involves an inverted 
 psychology (293). It involves the assumption that interest 
 in others stands first in the scale of motive, whereas it is 
 really derived from an antecedent interest in self (294). 
 No one desires equality, as a fact external to himself, for 
 its own sake (295). When such equality is really desired, 
 it is desired for the sake of certain accidental results, as 
 happens at times in cases of extreme want or danger ; 
 otherwise it appeals only to the idle and the jealous 
 (295-297). Even so, it appeals only to individuals, as 
 secretly dissociating themselves from the mass (297). Pure 
 socialist sentiment is a mere psychological mare's nest 
 (297-298). The minimum wage with its adjuncts (as de- 
 scribed in the foregoing chapters) is rational, as contrasted 
 
CONTENTS xvii 
 
 with socialist demands, because it is based primarily on the 
 self-interest of all (298-301). Summary of conditions here 
 described as the objects of sane reform (302-303). How 
 nearly are these attainable ? Certain difficulties in the 
 way of their complete attainment must be considered 
 (303-304). 
 
 CHAPTEE II 
 
 OBJECTIVE DIFFICULTIES 306 
 
 The objective difficulties most apparent in relation to the 
 minimum wage (305). The ideal minimum wage, as here 
 described, is essentially contingent on work (306). Un- 
 earned income possible for a few only. No conceivable 
 polity could satisfy all the idle (306). Security of work 
 completely attainable in some countries, but not in others 
 (306-310). Causes which rendered unqualified security of 
 occupation impossible in certain countries (310-311). But 
 even in such countries a reasonable security may be 
 approached (311-312). Yet apart from objective difficulties 
 in the way of ideal conditions there are other difficulties 
 which are subjective (312). 
 
 CHAPTEE III 
 
 SUBJECTIVE DIFFICULTIES 313 
 
 Popular discontent often due to ideas as distinct from 
 experienced facts (313). A just minimum must not only be 
 just ; the recipients must know it to be so (314). Further, 
 even should the recipients know that a certain minimum is 
 the amplest possible, the imagination of each might present 
 it to him as insufficient for himself (314-316). The indis- 
 criminate encouragement of personal ambition as a stimulus 
 to discontent with even the best conditions possible for 
 any large number of men (316). Two kinds of education 
 necessary to correct discontent which is due to mere ideas 
 (316-317). One is a dissemination of knowledge as to 
 broad statistical facts, the other is a training of the imagi- 
 nation (316-317). Statistical education, its scope (317-318). 
 Immense effect of false statistics, e.g. those of Marx and 
 Henry George. What false statistics can do, substantially 
 correct statistics will tend to undo (318-323). The imagina- 
 tion as a disturbing and protesting influence (323-324). 
 If not artificially inflamed, the imagination tends to 
 accommodate itself to possibilities (324). The inflammatory 
 effect of a falsification of general standards of living : 
 examples (325-326). Striking example of agitators revert- 
 ing to a natural standard in the case of the Highland 
 peasantry (326-327). A training of the imagination with 
 regard to life taken as a whole (328-329). 
 
xviii CONTENTS 
 
 BOOK VII 
 DEMOCRACY AND THE FINAL LIFE-PROCESS 
 
 CHAPTER I 
 
 PAGE 
 
 THE MATERIAL DATA OF CONTENT . ... 330 
 
 Government, war and industry alike subserve the drama 
 of individual life, or social intercourse (330-331). In all 
 highly civilised states these three subservient activities are 
 oligarchic ; but the final end, namely social intercourse, is 
 democratic (332). Social intercourse for the individual is 
 not a national process, but a group-process, each group 
 being numerically small (332-334). Within the limits of 
 each group social intercourse is democratic (334-335). The 
 inner democratic lives of these social groups are a democracy 
 imposing orders on the oligarchies of subservient effort, 
 and notably on the industrial oligarchy (334-335). The 
 influence of the social democracies on architecture (335-336). 
 The influence of social democracies on the production of all 
 superfluous goods, or " riches " (336). The real substance 
 of income not money but goods, which are bought mainly 
 at shops (337). Difference between Needs and Tastes 
 (337-338). Riches as distinct from bare sufficiencies are 
 goods that minister to Tastes, Tastes indefinitely various 
 (338-339). Democracy in shopping analysed (339-340). 
 Demand in shopping imposes purely democratic orders on 
 the oligarchy of production (340-341). Such democracy 
 much more complete than any democracy possible in 
 complex politics (341). Each customer determines the 
 substance of his real income (342). Examples of how the 
 same wage-income is converted into different real incomes, 
 of which some mean affluence, others poverty (342-344). 
 The real income is the man, so far as material things are 
 concerned (345). 
 
 CHAPTEE II 
 
 THE MENTAL DATA OP CULTURE 346 
 
 Just as politics and industry subserve real income, so 
 does real income subserve mental and moral culture (346- 
 347). The Life of Knowledge, the Life of Art, the Life of 
 Religion (346-347). These lives oligarchic in origin on one 
 side, but essentially democratic on another (348-349). 
 This is specially clear in the case of religion (349-350). 
 Democracy in one sense the final process, but the higher 
 forms of democratic life are only achieved through oli- 
 garchy (351). Current ideas which militate against content 
 under the best possible conditions re-examined (352). 
 
CONTENTS xix 
 
 CHAPTER III 
 
 THE MOOD OF VAGUE REBELLION . . 353 
 
 Any lot which man can reasonably covet must, by impli- 
 cation, be for himself possible (353). The exceptional man 
 may reasonably covet more than the man of ordinary 
 capacity (353-354). If the average reward does not con- 
 tent the ordinary man, his discontent must be due not to 
 reason, but mere mood or temper (354-355). Striking ex- 
 amples of mere Mood versus Reason (355-356). Methods 
 by which socialist thinkers endeavour to insinuate moods 
 which they cannot defend by direct reasoning (356-357). 
 These methods evade the direct facts of economics. Two 
 great examples. Practicability of exposing them. False 
 conception of the State. False interpretation of history 
 (357-358). Ludicrously false analogy between the State 
 and an animal organism (358-361). Partial analogy be- 
 tween the two, which is fatal to all socialist suggestion. 
 The State has no common sensorium (362). The socialist 
 mood as insinuated by an absurd misinterpretation of his- 
 tory (362-363). Analysis of this misinterpretation which 
 was formulated by Marx (362-365). The peculiar power 
 of the few, operative in all civilisations (e.g. those of the 
 Incas and the Aztecs (365-367). Origin of this paradoxical 
 power everywhere exercised by the few (367-369). Social- 
 ist history represents this power as due everywhere to 
 accidents. {Such a theory absolutely false. It excludes 
 the main fact which renders history intelligible (367-369). 
 Nevertheless in socialist history there is one element of 
 truth (369). In past times the few (mainly representing 
 military force) have lived on abstractions from national 
 wealth, not on additions to it (369-370). Difference be- 
 tween the modern industrial oligarchy and other forms of 
 oligarchy which preceded it (370-371). The wealth of the 
 scientific employer comes from additions, in which the 
 employed participate. The participation of the employed 
 the foundation of stability (371). Participation involves 
 obedience (371). The root of impracticable discontent is 
 comprised in the formula of pure democracy, which repre- 
 sents civilisation as a result of the co-operation of equals. 
 Experience will teach this, if the teaching of reason is 
 neglected (371-372). 
 
 CHAPTER IV 
 
 OBJECT-LESSONS OF TO-DAY 373 
 
 The few being necessary agents in all complex govern- 
 ment, in efficient production and. in culture, from what is 
 the power of the few derived ? (373). According to modern 
 
xx CONTENTS 
 
 thinkers, and even early Catholic theologians, it is an axiom 
 that all power is ultimately derived from " the people " 
 (373-374). Fundamental error of this doctrine (374). The 
 authority of the few ultimately derived neither from the 
 divine right of kings, nor from " the people," but from 
 Nature (374-375). Nature compels men to agriculture and 
 the production of necessaries (375). If " the people " wish 
 for a profusion of superfluities and for national security, 
 Nature compels them to" obey the few who alone can enable 
 them to achieve these ends (376-377). If " the people " do 
 not obey the few, Nature, teaching them by results, is the 
 power that will re-compel the many to obedience (376-377). 
 The example of the Russian revolution as a rebellion 
 " against all controlling persons " (377-378). Absurd and 
 suicidal conduct of Russian peasants, as described by an 
 English socialist (378-380). Curious absence of any senti- 
 ment of " each for all " (380). Similar conduct of factory 
 workers (381). The impending " economic crash " (381- 
 382). Comments of an English socialist. " Impossible 
 expectations " denounced (382). Agreement of such criti- 
 cisms with the argument of the present work (382-383). 
 Socialist demands for a revolutionary dictator, who shall 
 undo the results of his own previous teachings (383-384). 
 Pretence of a revolutionary dictator that he is still a revolu- 
 tionary democrat (384-385). The Russian revolution and 
 oligarchies of middle-class adventurers (385-387). Similar 
 claims of oligarchs to be pure democrats in England and 
 America (388-389). English labour-leaders as oligarchs in 
 secret session (389). Fatal tendency of statesmen of the 
 highest capacity to pose as pure democrats, and deny the 
 oligarchic power which alone makes them beneficially in- 
 fluential (389-390). Let all beneficial wielders of oligar- 
 chic power have the courage to show themselves in their 
 true colours (391-392). Democracy only knows itself 
 through the co-operation of oligarchy (392). 
 
THE 
 LIMITS OF PURE DEMOCRACY 
 
 BOOK I 
 POLITICAL DEMOCRACY 
 
 CHAPTER I 
 
 THE CONCEPTION OF A GENERAL WILL 
 
 ATTENTION has often been called to the astonishing 
 extent to which the thoughts, thepassions and the 
 actions of vast multitudes of merTTiave been vitiated 
 or misdirected by the use of ambiguous language. A 
 "signal example of this fact may be found in the doctrines 
 of a writer who, more perhaps than any other, was 
 instrumental in inflaming the passions which gave force 
 to the first French Revolution. 
 
 4 Man is born free, and is everywhere in chains." 
 Such are the opening words of the most celebrated work 
 of Rousseau ; and though the philosophy of Rousseau 
 himself is by this time largely obsolete, these words 
 to-day are significant in a sense far deeper, though quite 
 other, than that which their author and his disciples 
 imputed to them. To Rousseau they seemed, and to 
 multitudes they have seemed also, the condensed expres- 
 sion of some liberating and momentous truth. Indeed 
 even to-day, if repeated to audiences of a certain kind, 
 they would doubtless be received with acclamation. 
 But anybody who takes them to pieces in the daylight 
 of common intelligence, will now discover that they 
 either mean nothing at all, or else that they mean some- 
 thing which, even if true, is absolutely without import- 
 
2 LIMITS OF PURE DEMOCRACY 
 
 ance. It will be interesting here to submit them to a 
 short but a close analysis. 
 
 If there is anything really important in what they 
 profess to enunciate, this obviously is comprised in the 
 first four of them " Man is born free " : the assertion 
 that he is " everywhere," as an actual fact, " in chains " 
 being nothing more than a rhetorical way of saying that 
 the actions of the human unit are, under existing, con- 
 ditions, artificially hampered by the actions of -units 
 other than himself. Hence, when the man who is 
 kk free " and the man who is in " chains " are contrasted, 
 tlie former is understood to differ from the latter in the 
 fact that his way of life and his actions are determined 
 by himself only by his temperament, his desires, and 
 the extent of his personal faculties and are not 
 controlled by others in opposition to his own bent. 
 
 Such, then, being here the meaning of the word 
 " free," what, let us ask next, is the meaning of the 
 word "man"? Since here it is plainly synonymous 
 with "the individual human being," its meaning may 
 at first sight seem to be clear enough. But this is not 
 so ; for, even when defined thus far, it may mean either 
 the human being at any stage of its existence, or it may 
 mean the human adult as distinguished from the child 
 or baby. There is also an ambiguity which attaches 
 itself to the words "is born." If these are taken liter- 
 ally, the only human beings that are born at all are 
 babies; and to say that "man is born free " must mean, 
 and can mean only, that babies are born free ; and this 
 again must mean, if it means anything, that so long as 
 they are utterly helpless their condition and actions are 
 determined by no desires, by no intelligence, and by no 
 judgments but their own. The mothers of the human 
 race will hardly endorse this proposition as accurate, 
 nor will anybody claim much value for it as a contribu- 
 tion to social science. 
 
 Let us, however, suppose that when "man " is stated 
 to be "born free," the statement is not to be taken in 
 its strict obstetrical sense, but means that, though 
 doubtless born in a natural condition of dependence, 
 he naturally comes to be free by a process of post-natal 
 development. This meaning is at all events less absurd 
 
THE DREAM OF ROUSSEAU 3 
 
 than the other; but let us consider if it is true. If it is 
 true at all, it must be true of actual human beings, either 
 as they exist to-day or as they existed once on the 
 surface of the earth somewhere. That is to say, in the 
 lifetime of every average individual a period normally 
 arrives, or normally did so in the past, when his actions 
 cease or ceased to be " chained," controlled or limited 
 by the actions and existence of anybody except himself ; 
 for if no such freedom is exemplified in the history of 
 human nature it would be nonsense to represent such 
 freedom as natural, and it would similarly be nonsense 
 to represent the so-called "chains" as artificial. 
 
 Is it, then, possible to discover any portion of the 
 earth's surface where either now or formerly such free- 
 dom either is, or ever has been, achieved by the inhabit- 
 ants as a natural incident of their maturity, and enjoyed 
 by them in peace thenceforwards wjtb 1 * any " rha^ g " 
 to limit it? The answer is that, with a few chance 
 exceptions, a freedom of this kind is altogether ima- 
 ginary. Just as every baby is bound to have two 
 parents, most adults are bound to mate and to have 
 babies, for unless they did so the human race would 
 end ; and as soon as a man sets himself to woo, and keep 
 on terms with a mate, and as soon as children are born 
 for whom he must provide food, his actions begin 
 through the operations not of artifice, but of Nature, to 
 be so "chained " by the existence and the demands of 
 others that they differ inevitably from what they would 
 .4. be if he lived alone. To say that a man is naturally free 
 as soon as he achieves maturity is no truer than to say 
 that he is born free as a baby. Here and there, there 
 may be a free baby ; here and there, there may be a free 
 adult ; but the only kind of baby that is free is the baby 
 that is left to die, and the only kind of free adult is the 
 solitary on a desert island. 
 
 Here, then, in this insane proposition that "man is 
 born free," and in the wide effects produced by it on 
 the thoughts and temper of multitudes, we have a signal 
 example of the condition of moral and mental chaos to 
 which language used ambiguously is able to reduce man- 
 kind, causing their demands and arguments to resemble 
 the cries of animals vaguely conscious of anger, disease, 
 
4 LIMITS OF PURE DEMOCRACY 
 
 or wounds, rather than a rational diagnosis of what is 
 really the matter with them. From this prefatory 
 example we will now pass on to another, for ourselves 
 far more important namely, the chaos of thought and 
 sentiment, of which the nucleus is the word "Demo- 
 cracy " as used at the present time. 
 
 "-Demnrracy " is a word which, whatever it may mean 
 otherwise, is now, with equal frequency, used in several 
 senses, the epithet "political" being used to indicate 
 the one, the epithets "industrial" and "social" being 
 used to indicate the others. The first is of great 
 antiquity, the second and third are modern, and between 
 the first and the latter two, even popular thought draws 
 a fairly clear distinction. The principles, indeed, of 
 industrial and social democracy, by those who project 
 and look forward to their triumph in the near future, 
 are consciously regarded as novel extensions of a prin- 
 ciple the action of which is already familiar in the sphere 
 of political government. //Hence political democracy is 
 regarded by all parties as democracy in the basic form 
 with which all argument as to its nature and the extent 
 of its application starts; and political government, in 
 respect of its current functions and limitations, means 
 for all parties substantially the same thing. Its objects, 
 whether achieved by restriction, adjudication, or com- 
 mand, are understood to be limited to the maintenance 
 and improvement of such general conditions as will for 
 each_citizen, in respect of his private life, guarantee the 
 utmost freedom which consists with the freedom of 
 others, and which the scope of his own talents enables 
 him to utilise for himself. 
 
 This general conception of the functions of political 
 governments being assumed, the word "Democracy," if 
 ambiguous in its political sense, is not ambiguous for 
 want of attempts to define it. Professed democrats are 
 constantly addressing themselves to the task of describ- 
 ing Democracy as a peculiar system of government, and 
 defining its peculiar features with an ostentatious sem- 
 blance of precision; but, the moment their definitions 
 are analysed, all of them, as we shall see presently, fall 
 to pieces, leaving no idea behind them which has any 
 counterpart in the world of actual or of possible fact. 
 
DEFINITIONS OF DEMOCRACY 5 
 
 This assertion must not be taken to mean that such 
 persons are attempting to define a nothing. On the con- 
 trary, they have all of them at the back of their minds 
 a something so profoundly real that, although it is 
 operative in very various degrees, it is never absent from 
 the government of any human society; and if we want 
 to understand what this something really is, we must set 
 ourselves to consider exactly how far, and why, it differs 
 from those conceptions of it which all current definitions 
 popularise. 
 
 Of these current definitions, which naturally exhibit 
 much verbal variety, we will accordingly take three 
 versions, which everybody will recognise as signally, and 
 also as favourably, representative. 
 
 Our first shall be the most famous of all still un- 
 rivalled as a talisman for eliciting instant cheers 
 namely, the definition of a great American statesman : 
 
 ^ 
 people7T>2/ the people." 
 
 Our second shall be that of a more recent authority 
 an American likewise and a very distinguished publicist, 
 according to whom democracy is a special system of 
 government which ensures that " every man, in virtue 
 of his manhood alone, shall have an equal voice in the 
 affairs of the common country." 
 
 Our third definition shall be taken from a contem- 
 porary English writer, Mr. Cecil Chesterton, whose style 
 has a ring of homely common sense like Cobbett's, and 
 who, in a volume entitled The Great State ^ has joined 
 certain other reformers in a very temperate attempt to 
 harmonise the dreams of revolutionaries with the bald 
 actualities of life. The definition which Mjr._Cj3^sterJ.pn 
 contributes to this volume, being given at some lerrgtifi 
 and not in the form of an aphorism, may be briefly 
 summed up thus. n Democracy^in its essence is govern- 
 ment which, by whatever means, is actually in accord- 
 ance with the general will of the governed ; and ideally 
 this result might be realised by an ideal despot. Prac- 
 tically, however, ideal despotisms are impossible ; and 
 no less impossible, except in microscopic communities, 
 
 1 A Collection of Essays by English writers of Socialist or semi- 
 Socialist Sympathies, edited by Mr. H. G. Wells. 
 
6 LIMITS OF PURE DEMOCRACY 
 
 is government by the extreme alternative namely, the 
 voice of all the citizens assembled under the same tree. 
 The only device, therefore, which is practicable in the 
 great States of to-day is the election by the many of a 
 small number of delegates, to whom the mass of the 
 citizens specify what "the general will" is and whose 
 sole business is to execute it in accordance with the 
 terms specified. True democracy exists, so this writer 
 proceeds, in proportion, and only in proportion, as the 
 correspondence between the action of the delegates and 
 the general will is complete. 
 
 Let us now consider what these definitions come to, 
 beginning with the first and most famous of them. 
 
 This definition consists of three separate statements : 
 firstly, that Democracy is government of the people ; 
 secondly, that it is government for the people ; and, 
 thirdly, that it is government by the people. It is 
 obvious that the first purports to enunciate something 
 which, however profound, can at once be grasped by 
 everybody ; whilst the second adds something more pro- 
 found and distinctive still, and that both lead up to the 
 cumulative profundity of the last. Let us ask, then, 
 what intelligible meaning can be possibly read into each. 
 
 To begin, then, with the first "government of the 
 people " is a phrase which, with equal verbal propriety, 
 may be taken as meaning either of two opposite things. 
 It may mean government exercised over the people by 
 some power external to them a meaning like that of 
 the preacher when he speaks about the government of the 
 passions ; or it may mean government which the people 
 themselves exercise. It cannot, however, bear the latter 
 of these two meanings here ; for this, without any ambig- 
 uity, is reserved for the final statement that democracy 
 is government by the people, which either means this or 
 nothing. Unless, therefore, it is an instance of pure 
 tautology, government of the people must mean govern- 
 ment which is somehow exercised over them ; and it 
 must, in so far as it is realised in any concrete case, mean 
 government exercised over the people of some particular 
 country. As to the second statement, its meaning is as 
 plain as that of the last. Government for the people 
 must mean, in any concrete case, government carried on 
 
DEFINITIONS OF DEMOCRACY 7 
 
 in the interest of the people of a particular country, and \ 
 not in the interest of the people of any other. What, \ 
 then, is the meaning of the three statements in combina- ] 
 tion ? Its three clauses being combined, this world- 
 famous definition of democracy reduces itself to the fol- / 
 lowing propositions : that Democracy in any concrete 
 case let us say in the case of France is government / 
 which is exercised over the French people, and not (for 
 . example) over the German; that it is exercised by the 
 people of France, not by the people of Germany; and 
 that it is exercised by the people of France with a view 
 to their own advantage. -. 
 
 Now what, with all its solemn crescendo of emphasis, 
 does this definition convey to the mind of any human 
 being which was not in his mind already before he began 
 to listen to it ? What is it more than a sequence of 
 superlatively barren platitudes ? And yet after all it 
 must, as addressed to millions, be the vehicle of some- 
 thing vital : or it would never be quoted as a watchword, 
 and call forth plaudits, as a spark sets fire to gunpowder. 
 In what part of it, then, does its vital meaning reside ? 
 Its vital meaning, its sole distinctive meaning, resides 
 in nothing that the words say by way of an informative 
 proposition. It resides in some sense, altogether un- 
 stated, which is presupposed to be already attached to 
 one of them ; and that word is the word " people." This 
 presupposed sense is like the skin of a drum, and the 
 so-called definition is nothing but a drum-stick beating 
 a tattoo on it. 
 
 This drum-beating, however, does us one service at all 
 events. Though answering no question itself, it loudly 
 calls attention to the question which requires to be 
 answered. What, in detail, for persons calling them- 
 selves " democrats," does this one word " people " mean, 
 thereby for them acquiring its peculiar resonance ? The 
 " people " of any country cannot, in this connection, be 
 merely a synonym for the inhabitants taken as a whole, 
 as it would be were we classifying peoples according to 
 their racial colours. It must carry with it some implica- 
 tion of a narrower and more incisive kind. It must 
 mean, and it obviously does mean, one or other of two 
 things either some particular section of the inhabitants, 
 
8 LIMITS OF PURE DEMOCRACY 
 
 which governs or ought to govern, to the specific exclu- 
 sion of some other section; or else the whole of the 
 inhabitants, regarded as a governing body, to the specific 
 inclusion of some section which is, under certain forms 
 of government, excluded. 
 
 Now there are doubtless many agitators who, animated 
 by passion or prejudice, would maintain that the former 
 of these two meanings is the correct one, and that 
 government by the people means the specific, and indeed 
 the vindictive, exclusion of all individuals from power 
 who are in any way sufficiently eminent to be distinguish- 
 able as a separate class. But no democrats of to-day, 
 who claim to be serious thinkers, commit themselves 
 intentionally to any position such as this. On the con- 
 trary, as Mill points out, they profess altogether to 
 repudiate it. The essence of " pure democracy " accord- 
 ing to modern conceptions of it is, says Mill, " govern- 
 ment by the people as a whole," no individuals being 
 excluded, whether high or low, and none of them having 
 less power, though none may have more, than any others. 
 This conception is expressed with unmistakable clearness 
 in the second of those definitions of Democracy which 
 have here been chosen for examination, and to which 
 we will now turn. 
 
 The essence of political democracy, according to this 
 definition of it, is "that every man shall have an equal 
 voice in the affairs of the common country," and that 
 he shall have this equal voice " in virtue of his manhood 
 alone." Here again we have a formula the ultimate 
 purport of which must be looked for in what it implies 
 rather than in what it enunciates; but what it does 
 enunciate is so precise that its full implications can be 
 reached by a use of the simplest logic; and in realising 
 what these are the author himself aids us. The formula 
 in question does not, he says with the utmost emphasis, 
 imply that all men are equal, or even approximately 
 equal in all respects. On the contrary, "the differences 
 between men and men in their capacities for rendering 
 honest service to society are," he says, "immense and 
 incalculable," as may be seen in the spheres of art, 
 philosophic thought, and more particularly the scientific 
 control of industry. In the general business of life, this 
 
GOVERNMENT BY AVERAGE MAN 9 
 
 writer freely admits, it is the influence of exceptional 
 men that makes the world move onwards; but in the 
 sphere pi-political government and here we come to 
 what his formula really means it is the essence of 
 democracy to render all such influence inoperative. The 
 doctrine that the right of each citizen to "an equal 
 voice," or to one vote and only one, " in the government 
 of the common country " is a right which belongs to him 
 "in virtue of his manhood alone," means this, and it 
 cannot mean anything else. It means that the ground 
 on which a citizen is entitled to vote is simply and solely 
 his possession of those residual characteristics which 
 enable an anthropologist to distinguish a man from an 
 erect monkey. It is these residual characteristics that 
 each vote represents, and it is Because these character- 
 istics are equal that each vote should have an equal 
 value. Hence, if this definition of political democracy 
 be correct, true democracy must be government deter- // 
 mined by faculties which, however unequal actually, . 
 have for this special purpose been reduced artificially ( 
 to their lowest common denominator. It might recog- 
 nise in a Newton a master of all mathematical science, 
 but it would not allow him, in examining the business 
 books of the nation, to impose on his fellows any con- 
 clusions with regard to them which his washerwoman 
 could not arrive at just as well as he by use of the simple 
 
 arithmetic required for adding up her bills. ^ ^~ 
 
 Such would be the result, in strict or abstract logic, if 
 democracy means government by all as units of equal 
 influence. But practically, though not in the abstract, 
 the principles of eVen the strictest doctrinaires lead to 
 a conclusion which is much more moderate than this. 
 All such persons recognise when they talk of equality 
 the existence of some men so low in the scale of intelli- 
 gence, or by temperament so perverse or slothful, that 
 no State which consisted solely of men like these could 
 thrive. Indeed, Socialists often admit that in dealing 
 with such a residuum a Socialist jgojjjy would have to 
 resort to measures not less'but more severe than any 
 which are applied to-day. They certainly would never 
 contend that men who, possessing nothing, refuse to 
 produce anything, or that idiots or obstinate drunkards, 
 
 
10 LIMITS OF PURE DEMOCRACY 
 
 should be able to influence legislation in accordance with 
 their own ideas. The extremest democrats, however, 
 may without practical inconsistency maintaiu that such 
 men should have votes nevertheless, for such men being 
 necessarily a small minority, the cumulative power of 
 their votes would, if it stood for anything mischievous, 
 be nullified by the votes of a normally sane majority. 
 Thus the abstract theorem that under a true democracy 
 the power of all citizens would be equal in virtue of their 
 manhood alone is modified by the theorem that the power 
 of each would in practice be contingent on his manhood 
 being of an average or a normal kind. And here we 
 reach what to all intents and purposes is the working 
 conception of democracy which is at the present day 
 implied in the formulae of doctrinaires, and which floats 
 in the minds of multitudes. It is a conception of a 
 government determined solely by the mass of incon- 
 spicuous men by what Whitman, the poet of demo- 
 cracy, celebrates as "the divine average." 
 
 Now, apart from certain facts which will claim our 
 attention presently, this conception is very far from 
 fantastic. For what is it that ideally the average man 
 represents ? He represents common honesty, common 
 sense, common neighbourly goodwill, and the common 
 family affections. He is moreover so far from being an 
 abstraction that, if average men in this sense did not 
 form the majority of mankind, no social life of a tolerable 
 kind would be possible. The most towering genius in 
 respect of his household conduct must reason, feel, and 
 comport himself like nine men out of every ten, or else 
 there will be no dealing with him. Why, then, it may be 
 asked, should not political government be determined 
 by men acting as equal units through an exercise of those 
 faculties only in respect of which all average men are 
 equal ? Is there anything in the nature of the case to 
 make such a regime impossible ? 
 
 The answer is that there are two things, the first of 
 which is as follows : We have seen that the most obvious 
 difficulty which, in strict or abstract logic, the theory 
 of democracy suggests namely, that it reduces, the units 
 of influence to their lowest common denominator is 
 solved by the fact that persons of appreciably subnormal 
 
EXCEPTIONAL TALENT 11 
 
 character would have in practice no influence at all. 
 But, though in this way the difficulty which comes from 
 below is eliminated, the corresponding difficulty which 
 comes from above remains. For just as, if the influence 
 of every unit is equal, the judgments of ninety average 
 men would nullify those of any ten men who were sub- 
 normal, so likewise would the judgments of the average 
 ninety nullify those of any ten men their superiors in so 
 far as these, by the exercise of superior talents, reached 
 any conclusions which anybody not notably imbecile 
 could not entirely understand, and was not on the point 
 of reaching by his own unaided faculties. Else, if the 
 ninety voters allowed the ten to guide them, ten men 
 would have the votes of ninety other men in their 
 pockets, and the primary principle of pure democracy 
 would be violated. 
 
 Here is one of the difficulties involved in the very 
 plausible conception of democracy as government deter- 
 mined by the people alone, the word " people" being 
 taken as meaning the units of the average mass. But 
 below this difficulty lies another of a yet more funda- 
 mental kind ; and in order to gain a clear idea of what 
 this difficulty is we will now pass on to the third of the 
 three definitions of democracy which have here been 
 cited as typical, and consider it more minutely. All 
 theories of democracy as government by the will of the 
 people involve an assumption, which we have not as yet 
 noted, that if we only exclude the upper and lower 
 minorities the" remainder of any population, or the units 
 of the average mass, are certain, with regard to all 
 political questions, to think, feel, and judge in sub- 
 stantially the same way ; and this aspect of the question 
 Mr. Chesterton's definition brings into full prominence. 
 
 Mr. Chesterton, as we have seen already, sets out with 
 observing that democracy, if conceived in terms of its 
 ultimate object, is simply an absolute harmony, no 
 matter how ensured, between the acts of the executive 
 government and "the general will" of the governed; 
 but he adds that, in practice, so far as large States are 
 concerned, it can be realised only through the agency of 
 elected representatives, to whom the general will is com- 
 municated by those electing them, and whose sole busi- 
 
12 LIMITS OF PURE DEMOCRACY 
 
 ness is to obey it with abject accuracy. He admits, 
 however, that the realisation of such a government is a 
 feat less simple than it seems. Elections, he says, may 
 rest on the widest possible suffrage, and the result may, 
 as ample experience shows, be not democracy, but a 
 kind of degraded oligarchy. For example, he says, " Sir 
 Josiah Gudge is elected to represent the radical borough 
 of Slocum," but does Sir Josiah, he asks, represent this 
 borough in reality ? Sir Josiah, as a member of Parlia- 
 ment, must, he says, do one of two things or the other. 
 "He must vote in accordance with the will of the 
 inhabitants of Slocum, or against it. If he does the 
 former, he is acting as a faithful representative. If he 
 does the latter, he is not a representative at all, but an 
 oligarch." How far, then, is the official conduct of the 
 typical Sir Josiah of to-day really determined by any 
 instructions which the inhabitants of Slocum have dic- 
 tated to him ? The inhabitants, says Mr. Chesterton, 
 will really have dictated nothing. Sir Josiah will have 
 come to them with a programme of measures already 
 formulated ; his opponent will have come to them with 
 another ; and all that the inhabitants will have had any 
 chance of doing will have been that of making through 
 the ballot-box a Hobson's choice between them. Such 
 a method of government is certainly not democratic ; 
 and yet, says Mr. Chesterton, it is the method which, as 
 modern experience shows, has thus far emerged invari- 
 ably from the most elaborately democratic institutions. 
 What, then, is the explanation of this practical paradox ? 
 The explanation, says Mr. Chesterton, is as follows : 
 Both the primary essentials of pure democracy are 
 present the general will, like a great toothed driving- 
 wheel on the one hand, and the executive body, like a 
 small wheel, on the other ; but in all democratic constitu- 
 tions which have thus far been elaborated, the mechan- 
 ism connecting the two has always been defective in some 
 way which prevents the former, except on rare occasions, 
 from imposing its own movements on the latter, thus 
 leaving those of the former for the most part quite 
 inoperative. Hence the only difficulty in the way of 
 rendering democracy complete is, says Mr. Chesterton, 
 altogether mechanical. It has no connection with the 
 
I 
 
 BRIBERY AND EXTERNAL INFLUENCE 13 
 
 nature of the democratic principle itself; and the task 
 of surmounting it, though not altogether simple, needs 
 only a few experiments and a little ingenuity for its 
 accomplishment . 
 
 Mr. Chesterton's explanation of a difficulty thus 
 emphasised by himself is interesting because, by its can- 
 dour, it exhibits him as looking for it in every place but 
 the right one. The fundamental difficulty does not lie 
 in the fact that the present machinery for realising the 
 general will is defective. It lies in the fact that any 
 general will, which does or which can exist, is something 
 widely different from Mr. Chesterton's own conception 
 of it, and from that which all modern theories of pure 
 democracy postulate. That such is the case will be 
 obvious if we only take the trouble to analyse this 
 conception carefully. 
 
 There are three points, then, as to which all democrats v 
 are agreed. *" One is that any will which can be called * 
 general is the sum of the judgments of the units of the 
 average mass. The second .is that the judgments of each 
 unit ' shaft be represented by a single vote, and thus be 
 of equal influence. The third is that the judgments of 
 each unit shall, as represented by his vote, be freely 
 formed by himself, and shall not, for governmental 
 purposes, have been warped into conformity with the 
 Judgments of any other person or group of persons, 
 whether by bribery, intimidation, or any other device 
 of any kind. 
 
 This last point deserves special attention ; for if large 
 numbers of men, though their votes are recorded by 
 themselves, are really expressing by them the dictated 
 judgments of others, these others will, as has been said 
 already, have, not their own votes only, but to all intents 
 and purposes an indefinite number added to them. That 
 such is the case when the judgments which votes express 
 are changed from what they otherwise would be by 
 brutal and direct bribery, is a fact on which democrats 
 themselves are the first persons to insist; but results 
 essentially similar are, as presently we shall see in greater 
 detail, producible by other methods. An lago might 
 revenge himself on a faithful Desdemona who had re- 
 pulsed him, by the simple process of bribing an assassin 
 
 
14 LIMITS OF PURE DEMOCRACY 
 
 to murder her; but he might compass the same end by 
 persuading an Othello that she was faithless, and thus 
 inciting the husband to do the deed on his own account. 
 What money would do in the former case, statement 
 would do in the latter. It would enable one man to 
 determine the conduct of a second, or to put the matter 
 in terms of political life to transfer the control of the 
 second man's vote to himself ; and in political life, under 
 a system of universal suffrage, the promulgation of state- 
 ments which are made with the deliberate object of 
 swaying the judgment in some special direction is one 
 of the most powerful means by which one man may 
 master the votes of many, and virtually multiply his 
 own. This is not true, it must be noted, of the publica- 
 tion of bare facts, if these be stated in their integrity; 
 but whenever, with a view to the effect of it on the 
 public mind, news is coloured by comment, or a cal- 
 culated distribution of emphasis, those responsible for 
 such procedure are, in so far as they are successful, 
 transferring the control of the votes of other men to 
 themselves. Inconvenient electors were, in the days of 
 Pickwick, kept from the polling-booth, and so deprived 
 of their votes, by "hocussing their whisky," and leaving 
 them drunk in a barn. Hocussing the facts is a method 
 of the same character; and in proportion to its success 
 is no less incompatible with the principles of pure 
 democracy. 
 
 No one could admit this more fully than democrats 
 themselves, as the violent outcries raised by them in 
 Great Britain and Germany against official manipulations 
 of news in time of war have testified. But let us sup- 
 pose that full purity of voting, in the sense here indi- 
 cated, were achieved. Would the difficulties involved 
 in the postulates of pure democracy be ended ? We 
 shall, on the contrary, be simply brought at last to the 
 ultimate difficulty out of which all the others spring. 
 
 This ultimate difficulty resides in the obvious fact, 
 which we have not as yet considered, that if the judg- 
 ment of the people, or the units of the average mass, are 
 to be so united as to acquire a force that is cumulative, 
 and thus constitute a will which deserves to be called 
 "general," it is necessary that these judgments shall be, 
 
SIMPLE AND ABSTRUSE PROBLEMS 15 
 
 in all important respects, identical. The question, 
 therefore, is whether or how far, with regard to govern- 
 mental matters, all average men are, if left to them- 
 selves, certain or even likely to judge, and therefore to 
 will, in the same way, simply because none of them are 
 distinguished by conspicuous incapacity on the one hand, 
 or even by the rudiments of conspicuous talent on the 
 other. To answer this question in a few words is impos- 
 sible. The matters with which governments have to 
 deal are various ; and, as we shall see, it is only with 
 regard to certain of them that any general will of a 
 spontaneous kind is possible. 
 
 Let us begin with taking two simple examples of 
 governmental action, with regard to one of which all 
 men do, as a fact, spontaneously judge alike ; whilst, 
 with regard to the other, the spontaneous judgments of 
 most men even men of considerable capacity are a 
 blank. Our first example shall relate to protection from 
 murder ; our second to the question of bi-metallism. 
 
 All men, even murderers themselves, so long as they 
 are left at large, desire that the Government, by laws 
 and the maintenance of an adequate police, should 
 minimise the risks which any citizen runs of being stuck 
 in the ribs when he is asleep or enjoying an evening 
 stroll. No prompting, no agitation, no bribery is needed 
 to bring even the stupidest citizen to this way of 
 thinking. 
 
 But let us suppose that the question with regard to 
 which the will of the average mass is consulted is the 
 question of whether the system of mono-metallism, as at 
 present established, shall be maintained or shall be 
 modified by what is called "the remonetisation of 
 silver." Here is a question the answer to which, accord- 
 ing as it was yes or no, might very appreciably affect 
 the well-being of everybody; but if it were put by any 
 member of Parliament to each of the voters who elected 
 him, the answer of all but a few of them, if they spoke 
 their minds, would be this : " The question of the re- 
 spective merits of mono-metallism and bi-metallism is 
 a remarkably difficult and, we may add, a remarkably 
 dry one. We know nothing about it ourselves, and the 
 most eminent experts disagree. You, however, though 
 
16 LIMITS OF PURE DEMOCRACY 
 
 you only muddle us when you talk about it, presumably 
 know more than we do, or else you are not worth your 
 salt. So do not worry us about our judgments. Make 
 the best use you can of your own." Mr. Chesterton lays 
 it down with an air of blunt finality that a representative 
 must always do one or other of two things "that he 
 must vote either in accordance with the will of his con- 
 stituents or against it." It does not occur to this often 
 very sensible writer that there is yet a third alternative 
 which is, with regard to many questions, the only one 
 ever realised that the constituents may have no definite 
 will at all. 
 
 These two illustrations show clearly enough what, if 
 considered broadly, the state of the case is. They show 
 us that a will of the kind which pure democracy postu- 
 lates is, with regard to certain questions, a permanent, 
 a familiar, and a completely realised fact; while they 
 show that, in contrast to such questions, others exist 
 also with regard to which such a will is so completely 
 a myth that it has in the world of realities no possible 
 counterpart. It is evident, therefore, that the postulate 
 of a general will in politics can, if we are to accept it as 
 more than an idle and academic dream, be so accepted 
 only with important and specific limitations. Let us 
 now take a bird's-eye view of governmental questions 
 as a whole, dividing them into groups, according to the 
 degree of completeness, or of incompleteness down to 
 the point of nullity, in which such a general will as pure 
 democracy postulates either does exist, or can possibly 
 exist, with regard to them. 
 
 We shall find that, roughly and for the purposes of the 
 present discussion, political questions are divisible into 
 four groups as follows : 
 
 (1) Fundamental, simple and unaltering questions ; 
 
 (2) Momentary and simple questions ; 
 
 (3) Temperamental questions; 
 
 (4) Composite questions, or questions which, though 
 not momentary, are constantly presenting themselves in 
 practically new forms, and which, though varying in 
 complexity, are all of them far from simple, whilst 
 certain of them constitute a sub-group meriting the 
 designation of Abstruse. 
 
POLITICAL PROBLEMS CLASSIFIED IT 
 
 Of these four groups of questions the first and fourth 
 the Fundamental and the Composite are normally the 
 most important. We will, therefore, begin with dis- 
 posing of the intermediate two, before turning to the 
 others, which will be the main subject of our discussion. 
 
 Of Momentary questions, the most striking example 
 is one which relates to war. It has nothing to do with 
 the conduct of war itself or the kinds of preparation and 
 action on which its success depends. It has to do solely 
 with the question of whether war on a given occasion 
 shall be undertaken or no. On certain occasions the 
 inhabitants of some one country become so exasperated 
 by the behaviour and the menaces of another that all 
 conflicting judgments as to the complex facts of the 
 situation give place to a common passion, and there is 
 thus developed a cumulative will to fight the force of 
 which is a multiple of individual wills formed by the 
 citizens severally "in virtue of their manhood alone." 
 But a general will of this kind, however vast its effects 
 on the course of human history, is in itself short-lived, 
 not outlasting the crisis which called it forth; and, as 
 such crises are happily rare, it is exceptional. It is not 
 a characteristic of the normal life of nations. 1 
 
 As examples of the questions here called Tempera- 
 mental, we may take those relating to the consumption 
 of alcoholic liquors and those into which a religious 
 element enters. Such questions, so far as the possibility 
 of any general will is concerned, not only differ from 
 those involved in any momentary crisis but are essen- 
 tially and diametrically opposed to them. With regard 
 to Temperamental questions, the units of the average 
 mass not only fail to arrive at judgments which even 
 approach identity, but they form and maintain judg- 
 ments which are intentionally and even violently con- 
 flicting. Who can contend that all average men, simply 
 because they are neither illustrious thinkers nor fools, 
 will feel and judge alike as to the drinking of beer or 
 
 1 Amongst Momentary questions may be included the abolition of 
 a monarchy. In many cases the dethronement of monarchs has been 
 the work of intrigue ; but regarded merely as a single act, a spon- 
 taneous general will may quite conceivably sanction it. But to abolish 
 one kind of government is a very different thing from governing. 
 C 
 
18 LIMITS OF PURE DEMOCRACY 
 
 spirits? Some of them will be for free drinking, some 
 of them for regulated drinking, some of them for pro- 
 hibiting the drinking of alcoholic liquors altogether. 
 They will judge and feel differently, not because their 
 intellects are unequal, but because their temperaments 
 and prepossessions are diverse. The same observation 
 holds good of the judgments of average men as to ques- 
 tions connected with religion. Many Socialists are at 
 great pains to explain that a man's religion, in any 
 reasonable polity, has no more to do with government 
 than the colour of his hair or trousers ; and so far as 
 religion is merely an inward conviction this is no doubt 
 true. But if in any country, whilst masses of men are 
 atheists, others are sincere Christians, and if the religion 
 of the latter has any effect on their lives, there are two 
 sets of questions at all events in which religion is closely 
 implicated, and which Government must deal with in 
 one way or another. These are questions relating to 
 education and marriage; and it is obvious that, as to 
 any legislation by which these two questions are affected, 
 any million of convinced Christians will spontaneously 
 differ in opinion from any million of similarly capable 
 atheists. In the case, then, of all those questions here 
 called Temperamental the postulate of pure democracy, 
 that all men of average intelligence will, as to questions 
 of government, come to the same conclusions, is so abso- 
 lutely contradicted by fact that it would not be worth 
 while to discuss it, if it were not one of the implications 
 of much popular argument. 1 
 
 Thus, if we set aside Momentary questions because 
 with regard to these, though a general will is possible, 
 it is possible only on signally rare occasions ; and if we 
 set aside Temperamental questions because, with regard 
 to these, average men, as such, have no natural pro- 
 clivity to will in the same way, or join together in 
 
 1 Amongst Temperamental questions must be included those into 
 which the racial element enters, such as those involved in the relation 
 of Ireland to the United Kingdom, and Ulster to the rest of Ireland. 
 Even in Ulster itself there is a Catholic will and a Protestant. Of 
 divergencies in popular opinion which are due to racial temperament, 
 examples on a still larger scale have been provided by the United States 
 in connection with the European war. 
 
POLITICAL PROBLEMS CLASSIFIED 19 
 
 developing any general will at all, it is with the Funda- 
 mental questions and the Composite questions that we 
 are here mainly concerned; and we shall see that, if 
 regarded as the subjects of a general will of any kind, 
 the difference between these last, though mainly one of 
 degree, is practically so profound that, whilst a purely 
 democratic will is a reality with regard to the former it 
 is, from the nature of things, with regard to the latter 
 impossible. 
 
CHAPTER II 
 
 OLIGARCHY AND WILL-FORMATION 
 
 OF Fundamental questions an example has been given 
 already namely that of protection from murder; and 
 to this may be added the protection of chattels from 
 theft, the protection of the home from intrusion, and the 
 fulfilment of contracts in accordance with terms specified. 
 Such questions are Fundamental because they relate to 
 the maintenance of certain primary conditions in the 
 absence of which no society could exist. 
 
 Now, with regard to questions such as these, little 
 reflection is necessary to show us that in all societies a 
 general will is present the correspondence of which to 
 the requirements of pure democracy is complete. Every 
 will which is capable of being translated into action is 
 related to two things a desired end, and the means or 
 machinery by which this end may be realised; and in 
 both respects, so far as Fundamental questions are con- 
 cerned, the completeness of the general will is an obvious 
 and universal fact. In the first place as to ends, the 
 individual judgments of which such a will is the sum are 
 the same for the simple reason that all men, as to ends 
 like these, naturally feel or think in precisely the same 
 way. No man, however stupid, requires to be persuaded 
 by a neighbour, or an oligarchy of superior persons, that 
 the Government should protect him from the chances 
 of being murdered any night in his bed, or of having his 
 teaspoons stolen before he comes down to breakfast. In 
 the second place, the means by which ends of this kind 
 are to be achieved are, in their main features, as familiar 
 as the ends themselves. They consist of some system 
 of police, law-courts, and penalties, with which, though 
 its minor details vary with place and circumstance, all 
 men, in respect of its essentials, have been acquainted 
 
 20 
 
PRIMITIVE DEMOCRACY 21 
 
 since the dawn of history. Here, therefore, there is a 
 general will as to means which is no less spontaneous 
 and unanimous, and hardly less specific, than the general 
 will with regard to ends which accompanies it. 
 
 That such is the case is sufficiently obvious from the 
 fact that, whenever Governments are too weak to accom- 
 plish these ends efficiently, every man seeks to accom- 
 plish them as best he can for himself. Thus on a 
 well-known occasion a prominent English Socialist was 
 attacked by a man in Paris who attempted to steal his 
 watch. No police being present, the Socialist very 
 rightly knocked his assailant down. If the then Govern- 
 ment of France had but given effect to the general will 
 completely, it would merely with the arm of the law 
 have done what the alien democrat did instinctively with 
 his own. 
 
 Let us now pass on to the questions here called Com- 
 posite, which comprise in normal times the whole of the 
 subject-matter of political government in so far as 
 political government has any history at all, or' suggests 
 any controversy as to the will, democratic or otherwise, 
 by which its actions are, or by which they ought to be, 
 determined. 
 
 Composite questions differ from Fundamental ques- 
 tions in the fact that they are far more complex, and at 
 the same time are always changing. With regard to 
 Fundamental questions, the will of the units governed, 
 except when it takes the form of a protest against ineffi- 
 cient administration, is simply a standing demand, not 
 requiring to be reaffirmed, for the effective maintenance 
 of a routine already established. As to composite ques- 
 tions, the case is essentially otherwise. Composite 
 questions have their root in Fundamental questions, and ' 
 up to a point coincide with them ; but they represent 
 such questions as multiplied, complicated, combined, 
 and recombined, by the evolution of new circumstances, 
 such as new industrial methods, increases in wealth and 
 population, and the growth of commercial relationships 
 between one country and another. Thus, whereas in 
 societies which are small, isolated, and stationary Funda- 
 mental questions of government are practically the only 
 questions, the questions as to which alone in the great 
 
22 LIMITS OF PURE DEMOCRACY 
 
 States of to-day the Government requires any positive 
 guidance, either from the brains of the governed or from 
 those of the executive itself, are questions in respect 
 of which the ends to be achieved are novel, whilst the 
 means present themselves in the form of many untried 
 alternatives, each of which requires to be very carefully 
 devised, for and against each of which there are many 
 things to be said, and from which it is impossible for 
 anybody to select the best except by the use of a keen 
 and balanced intellect, corroborated by vigour of 
 character, and acting on wide knowledge. 
 
 Of the growth, as just described, of Fundamental ques- 
 tions into Composite, we may take from English history 
 the following four examples : The question of the dis- 
 tribution of Parliamentary seats prior to the first Reform 
 Bill; the question of Free Trade versus Protection; the 
 question of the Right to Work ; and a fourth, which shall 
 be specified presently. 
 
 To all who acquiesce in the system of government by 
 elected legislators it is obvious that, whatever be the 
 qualifications on which the right to a vote depends, there 
 must logically at all events be some approach to equality 
 in the number of voters or citizens for whom each repre- 
 sentative speaks ; and if the number and distribution of 
 a population always remained the same, the question 
 of "the distribution of seats," if settled satisfactorily 
 once, would be settled for all time. Now, when George 
 III succeeded to the throne of England, the then dis- 
 tribution of seats, if not ideally perfect, was not obtru- 
 sively at variance with the size and distribution of the 
 constituencies. Hence, if number and distribution of 
 the population of England had never since then changed, 
 a distribution of seats which satisfied the men of the 
 eighteenth century would have satisfied the men of the 
 next century also. As a matter of fact, however, be- 
 tween the accession of George III and his death the 
 population of England had not only so increased, but 
 its distribution also had altered in so rapid and extra- 
 ordinary a way that, whilst huge towns in the north 
 were represented by no member at all, there were two 
 members in the south for three men and a hay-stack. 
 Here is one case in which it is easy to understand how 
 
DEMOCRACY AND COMPLEX PROBLEMS 23 
 
 an old question, taken for a time as settled, may become 
 a new one, and one, as we shall see presently, which 
 required a solution involving many new complexities. 
 
 The question of Free Trade versus Protection, as it 
 finally shaped itself in England at the beginning of the 
 Victorian epoch, will be readily recognised as one of 
 similar character. The main issue involved related to 
 national food supply more especially to the supply of 
 bread, and came to be known as the question of "the 
 big and the little loaf." Here we have a question as old 
 as the days of Jacob. But in Georgian England it was 
 absent till the close of the eighteenth century, for Eng- 
 land till then, so far as corn was concerned, was not an 
 importing on the contrary she was an exporting 
 country, and there was no staple food on which a pro- 
 tective tax could fall. Owing to the subsequent growth 
 of the population, coupled with other changes, this ques- 
 tion which till then meant nothing for the public con- 
 sciousness, formed fifty years later the subject of the 
 bitterest non-military conflict which had ever agitated 
 the nation in the whole course of its history. 
 
 The question commonly indicated by the phrase " The 
 Right to Work " is one which has always been latent in 
 all coherent polities ; but in primitive times it was simple, 
 and carried with it its own solution. In the case of 
 populations which were stationary, and drew most of 
 their wealth from agriculture or from pasture, or from 
 both, it did not emerge into a practical form at all ; for 
 a territory which had provided each man out of a 
 thousand with enough for his wants in one age would 
 continue to do so in another. Or, again, in primitive 
 times, when the earth was sparsely occupied, if a given 
 population increased, it had merely to enlarge its borders, 
 or else, like the Scythian nomads, move in a body from 
 one territory to another. And, indeed, in countries such 
 as Canada and Australia such a solution is theoretically 
 adequate to-day. But the question as it presents itself 
 in modern, especially in Western Europe, and has already 
 begun to present itself in the United States, is novel and 
 far more complex, and it is so for two main reasons. In 
 the first place, in some of these countries the whole of 
 the fruitful area is by this time occupied already, whilst 
 
24 LIMITS OF PURE DEMOCRACY 
 
 in others the unoccupied portion is very rapidly con- 
 tracting. In the second place, work itself, which was 
 primitively of a few kinds only, is now divided into 
 kinds so numerous and so diverse in character that dif- 
 ferent men, in demanding that work should be found for 
 them, are not demanding productive work of any kind, 
 but each is demanding some special kind out of many. 
 
 Let us now take our fourth example. This shall be 
 the question of providing a kind of gun by which German 
 airships may be destroyed on their way to London. Here 
 we have a question which, in respect of its general char- 
 acter, was present and vital in the first cluster of huts 
 which was ever threatened by the ferocity of any hostile 
 tribe. Like all practical questions, it is a question of 
 ends and means. With regard to ends, to-day as in 
 the earliest times, we have a general will of an absolutely 
 democratic character; for all men are equally anxious 
 "in virtue of their manhood alone " that the roofs and 
 the walls that shelter them shall not be burnt or shat- 
 tered; and in primitive times, when men had no other 
 weapons than stones, sticks, firebrands, and their naked 
 fists, there was a will equally democratic with regard 
 to the means also. In other words, the will of a tribe 
 to protect itself comprised a similar will in respect of the 
 weapons to be used. But, as weapons of war became 
 gradually more complex and various the will as to means 
 and the will as to ends became separated. So far as ends 
 are concerned, the average Londoner of to-day, in willing 
 that his home shall be guarded from German aircraft, 
 wills precisely what the savage wills in some primeval 
 kraal; but the question of the means by which aircraft 
 may be driven off or destroyed calls, as we shall see 
 presently, for a will profoundly different from that by 
 which the average savage is actuated when, equipped 
 only with the familiar arms of his ancestors, he cracks 
 the skull of another with a club or with a slung pebble. 
 
 These four illustrations are sufficiently indicative of 
 the manner in which questions, in themselves Funda- 
 mental and permanent, exfoliate under new circum- 
 stances into Composite questions which are new, and 
 each of which, as it arises, must be the subject-matter 
 of a new will. Let us, then, consider how far a will of 
 
OLIGARCHY AND POPULAR MEASURES 25 
 
 that purely democratic kind, which is with regard to 
 Fundamental questions an actually existing fact, is 
 capable of reproducing itself in relation to Composite 
 questions likewise. 
 
 Stated in a general way, what we shall see is this, that 
 in all countries possessing what is commonly called a 
 Constitution the action of the Government must reflect 
 a general will of some kind : and that this will is the 
 sum of a multitude of judgments which are all in sub- 
 stance identical; but that their identity is due to the 
 fact that, even if they are spontaneously recorded, they 
 are, in respect of Composite questions, not spontaneously 
 formed. 
 
 Let us turn again to the question of the distribution 
 of Parliamentary seats in England as it forced itself 
 on public attention at the beginning of the nineteenth 
 century. The scheme of distribution which that century 
 had inherited from the past was already so widely at 
 variance with the logical object of all representative 
 government that its anomalies were patent to the least 
 intelligent man who was sufficiently interested in the 
 subject to consider it worth a thought. Long before the 
 first Reform Bill, though numbers remained apathetic, 
 an opinion was widely prevalent which, as a vague 
 criticism of abuses and a vague demand for their aboli- 
 tion, was, so far as it went, of a genuinely democratic 
 character. But if each of the units by whom this 
 opinion was held had been invited to explain in writing 
 what representation, if proportional in any true sense, 
 would be, most of them could have formulated no series 
 of intelligible answers at all; and their answers taken 
 together would certainly have resulted in nothing which 
 a statesman could construe into a series of specific and 
 practicable orders. 
 
 The history of the popular will in England, in so far 
 as it reflected itself in the passing of the first Reform 
 Bill, is the history of a judgment which was in its 
 first stage the sum of individual judgments sponta- 
 neously formed and identical, but at the same time 
 vague, and for practical purposes futile, and which was 
 gradually by the influence of certain super-energetic 
 minorities endowed with a force and unity of which it 
 
 
26 LIMITS OF PURE DEMOCRACY 
 
 was itself incapable. This process was of a double 
 nature. It was, firstly, a process of raising a vague 
 opinion from a temperature of lukewarm protest to a 
 temperature at which, like scraps of lead in a ladle, indi- 
 vidual opinions are fused into a common passion. It 
 was, secondly, a process of forcing this fluid mass to 
 run itself into various moulds which minorities of active 
 men had deliberately prepared for its reception. Both 
 these processes, whose spectacular aspects are familiar 
 to readers of history, took the form of resolutions passed 
 at meetings, of quasi-military marches or riots, and of 
 monster petitions weighted with miles of signatures. 
 But though each of these phenomena seemed to be purely 
 popular, each as its active principle always had some 
 one man, or small cluster of men, exceptional in point of 
 energy, exceptional in powers of persuasion, and excep- 
 tional for the most part in mental alertness also, by sub- 
 mitting themselves to whom (and by this means only) 
 the masses acquired a unity and a temporary precision 
 of thought, without which they would have been power- 
 less for any definite purpose. Indeed, the meetings and 
 the marches and the riots were, if considered psycho- 
 logically, monster petitions changed into other forms- 
 petitions of which the definite substance was the work 
 of a leading few, whilst the miles of signatures were the 
 mere Amens of the multitude. If the substance had 
 been withdrawn, the meaning of the signatures would 
 have disappeared, as a Reform meeting in London melted 
 away at once when Hunt, the principal orator, was 
 frightened from his platform by a bullet through his 
 celebrated white hat. 
 
 The question of Free Trade versus Protection, and the 
 triumph in Great Britain of the former over the latter, 
 which was one of the main events of the middle of the 
 nineteenth century, constitute a case whose essentials 
 are precisely similar. Here again the principle involved 
 is one of extreme simplicity that a Government ought, 
 so far as a Government can affect the matter, to secure 
 for the masses the largest and cheapest supply which 
 under given conditions is possible of food, and more 
 particularly of bread. The question, moreover, at that 
 particular time had been simplified to an unusual degree 
 
THE RIGHT TO WORK 27 
 
 by a long experience of the evils of very ill-devised corn- 
 laws. And yet it required the tireless and protracted 
 efforts of a specially gifted minority, which had Bright 
 and Cobden for its heroes, their organising powers, their 
 powers of argument and presentation, and their sanguine 
 prophecies, many of which were totally falsified by 
 events, to fashion out of a vague opinion, however spon- 
 taneous in itself, a cumulative will sufficiently precise 
 and vehement to overbear all obstacles and accomplish 
 the end desired. 
 
 Let us now turn to the question of the Right to Work. 
 If in great modern States this were really as simple to- 
 day as many foolish persons imagine it, and as in primi- 
 tive times it was, everybody would will that the general 
 right to work should be admitted by the Government, 
 and secured by means as simple as those by which it 
 secures each citizen's right to live. " For if," said Louis 
 Blanc, "a Government is bound to protect life, it is 
 bound to secure the means by which men can be kept 
 alive." But, as Mill observes, this principle, though 
 simple enough in the abstract, presents itself in modern 
 States as one of extreme complexity; for, if a Govern- 
 ment is bound to find work for all the units of a given 
 population, it can do so only on condition that it is 
 empowered to control their numbers. Would such con- 
 trol be possible ? If possible, are there any means 
 by which it would be rendered tolerable ? Here we have 
 a host of difficulties emerging from the very roots of life, 
 like wasps from a disturbed nest, and provoking most 
 men merely to beat them off, or else to upset one another 
 in trying to run away from them. But Mill, in reviewing 
 this matter, sees one of its difficulties only. The very 
 idea of the right to work is in itself ambiguous. It may 
 mean the right of every man to have work found for 
 him by which he can gain a living, either within the 
 limits of a certain geographical area, or else to have it 
 found for him on the surface of the earth somewhere. 
 Early in the nineteenth century the inhabitants of the 
 Tyree one of the Hebridean islands were largely main- 
 tained by the manufacture of certain chemicals obtained 
 by burning a peculiar kind of seaweed. This industry 
 was destroyed by the triumph of Free Trade principles, 
 
28 LIMITS OF PURE DEMOCRACY 
 
 and the consequent admission to Great Britain of these 
 chemicals from abroad; some three-fourths of the 
 islanders being in this way deprived of their main 
 means of sustenance. Had these persons claimed from 
 the Government the right to have work found for 
 them, what would this claim have meant ? that such 
 work was to be found for them within the coastline of 
 their native islet, or that it was to be found for them 
 somewhere within the limits of the British Empire ? 
 Had the principle involved in it borne the former mean- 
 ing, it would have plainly been as great an absurdity 
 as the principle that a farmer, on a limited number 
 of acres, is bound to provide grazing for a limitless 
 number of cows. Had it meant, on the other hand, 
 that the Government was bound to provide work for 
 them somewhere, it would have meant that the Govern- 
 ment should be empowered to determine where ; and 
 this could only have meant that the Government should 
 be empowered to transport them to any spot whether 
 in Canada, Jamaica, Australia, or the recesses of British 
 Africa which Parliament or a State Department might 
 see fit to select. Here, then, we have again a question 
 with regard to which any number of answers is possible. 
 If any Government attempted to answer it practically 
 by asking each citizen for guidance " in virtue of his 
 manhood alone," it would elicit nothing but a babel of 
 conflicting voices, which individually meant little, and 
 which cumulatively meant nothing. If any practical 
 advance towards a general and systematic solution of the 
 question of the right to work is ever to be made and it 
 never has been made yet it will be made by an excep- 
 tional few imposing their own schemes on the many, not 
 by the many imposing the scraps of abortive thought, 
 as shaped spontaneously in their own minds, on the few. 
 Of our four typical questions, it remains for us to 
 review the last namely the question which first arose 
 during the great European war, of how the British 
 Islands should protect themselves from attack by in- 
 vading air-craft. No question, in respect of the end 
 involved in it, could evoke a will a general will more 
 purely democratic than this. The will of any one unit 
 is spontaneously the same as the will of every other. It 
 
OLIGARCHY AND INVENTION 29 
 
 presents itself to the imagination of each in precisely the 
 same picture an airship in ignominious flight, or an 
 airship falling down in flames. But a will as to ends, 
 let it be never so general, is, if we think of it as a power 
 which can definitely guide a Government, nothing unless 
 it carries with it a will as to specific means ; and in this 
 most illuminating case it is sufficiently clear from events 
 that the purely democratic will is a hopeless and helpless 
 blank. In a case like this, all that the units of the 
 average mass can do is to cry out for somebody whose 
 talents exceed the average, and who, presenting them 
 with some plan or mechanism by which the end in view 
 may be accomplished, ask them to say "Yes" to the 
 proposal that this mechanism shall be adopted. This 
 particular case is no doubt an extreme one; but all 
 political questions of the kind here called Composite 
 that is to say, all questions of government which are 
 possible subjects of controversy, and require that any 
 action of a novel kind shall be taken, conform to this 
 type of case in a greater or less degree. In respect of 
 such questions the many have wills of some kind, but 
 they are vague, incomplete, and, taken as a whole, 
 they are powerless, until the talents and energies of the 
 few present them with specific materials, on which, 
 whether by way of selection, of acceptance, or of rejec- 
 tion, they can act. But even when matters have reached 
 this point, the necessary functions of the few are so far 
 from being ended that they merely enter on a new career 
 of activity. What the nature of that activity is we will 
 consider in the following chapter. 
 
CHAPTER III 
 
 THE ARTS OF OLIGARCHY 
 
 As an approach to the fresh question which has just 
 now been indicated, let us continue for a moment longer 
 the use of our last illustration namely that of a general 
 will with regard to an anti-aircraft gun. The Many, 
 in merely willing the use of some gun or mechanism by 
 which hostile aircraft may be driven off or destroyed, 
 but the nature of which they themselves are quite incom- 
 petent to suggest, are like passengers trying in a boat 
 to be sick on an empty stomach; but we have assumed 
 that when once a contrivance sufficient for this end was 
 presented to them, they would with one consent all will 
 the adoption of it. This assumption, however, if we 
 apply it to actual life, is by no means so simple as it 
 seems. A contrivance of the kind in question would, 
 from the nature of the case, be novel, and, however 
 perfect it might be, only experts of very special capacity 
 could form, before it was tried, any independent judg- 
 ment with regard to its merits whatsoever. Indeed, 
 even Boards of experts have often rejected contrivances, 
 subsequently shown to possess the highest value, as not 
 being worth the cost of so much as a systematic trial. 
 And this difficulty is increased when, as usually happens, 
 not one contrivance only is submitted to their judgment, 
 but several. Now it is true that of contrivances such as 
 an anti-aircraft gun, the cost of which is individually not 
 enormous, several might be tried simultaneously or in 
 rapid succession before the occasion for the use of them 
 had altogether passed away ; and the Government might 
 invite the masses to record a general will that the type 
 of gun should be adopted which experiment had shown 
 to be the best. This is a part in the drama which the 
 masses, as a pure democracy, would be fully competent 
 
 30 
 
HOW OLIGARCHY OPERATES 31 
 
 to play, just as a crowd at Epsom is competent to 
 acclaim the Derby winner when it has won. But the 
 questions to which experiments of kinds like these are 
 applicable form but a small part of those Composite 
 Questions with which Governments have to deal. A 
 dozen different guns devised for the destruction of Zep- 
 pelins might be tested by practice at so many floating 
 targets, in a dozen consecutive days, or even in a single 
 morning ; but schemes of electoral reform, or of Protection 
 or of Free Trade, can be tested by no such preliminary 
 means as these. Of any electoral or fiscal schemes that 
 are possible, it is impossible at the same time to experi- 
 ment with more than one; and the one which happens 
 to be adopted must be kept in operation for years before, 
 as an experiment, it is able to teach us anything. Its 
 adoption must, therefore, be determined by psychological 
 processes whose action precedes the event, not by the 
 results which follow it. 
 
 All Composite questions, then, as related to the will 
 of the many, resemble the question of defences against 
 hostile aircraft in the fact, which this example so signally 
 illustrates, that before the many can collectively will 
 anything about them at all, two distinct tasks must be 
 carried out by the few. In the first place the question 
 at issue must be invested by the few with the form of 
 some definite scheme or schemes, for otherwise the 
 judgments of the many will have nothing to act on. In 
 the second place, if these judgments are to be so precise 
 on the one hand, and so absolutely unified on the other, 
 as to constitute an injunction that some one scheme shall 
 be adopted, the devisers of this scheme must so present 
 it to the mass of average men that a judgment in favour 
 of its adoption shall, somehow or other, develop itself in 
 the mind of each. Further, it is evident that, if such 
 a consensus of judgment cannot be elicited beforehand 
 by short and sharp experiment a feat which is possible 
 in exceptional cases only it must be elicited by the 
 arts of deliberate and systematic persuasion. 
 
 It is in the practice of such arts, which are essentially 
 the arts of an oligarchy, that at least one half of the 
 activity of any Constitutional Government, actual or 
 possible, consists; and the more nearly a Constitution 
 
32 LIMITS OF PURE DEMOCRACY 
 
 conforms in outward semblance to the principles which 
 the theory of pure democracy postulates, the more 
 necessary does the practice of such arts become, and the 
 more industriously do statesmen who call themselves 
 democrats practise them. Let us consider this fact 
 further in the light of well-known examples. 
 
 The object of such arts may be briefly restated thus. 
 Owing to changed social conditions some Composite 
 question arises, such as that of providing some new 
 military weapon or some new fiscal system. Before the 
 many can play any part in the matter, some new weapon 
 or some new fiscal system or, as generally happens, 
 several complete in respect at least of their main 
 details, must be devised. The devising of this or of these 
 requires special abilities, and is necessarily the work of 
 the few. The many can, as a whole, play no part in the 
 matter except that of agreeing to pronounce that some 
 one device, if there be only one, is satisfactory, or, if 
 several be offered, that some one of these is the best. 
 The situation of the many with regard to such devices 
 is very much what it would be with regard to a medicine 
 which nobody had ever tried, and the probable effects 
 of which could not reasonably be anticipated by anybody 
 otherwise than from some knowledge of its chemical 
 composition and the action of chemical substances on 
 the tissues of the human body. The only means by 
 which in each of a countless number of people, most of 
 them certainly not chemical experts, a confidence in the 
 merits of an untried medicine could be elicited would be 
 a system of puffs on the part of the would-be vendor. 
 Now such puffs or advertisements are of various kinds 
 and grades, but they all conform to one or other of two 
 types. They may contain some fragments of vague 
 scientific information which even to the most ignorant 
 man is in a vague way familiar, and suggests to him 
 some judgment which he attributes to his own intelli- 
 gence; or else they may consist of a number of bare 
 assertions, the efficacy of which depends on the art with 
 which they are emphasised. 
 
 Thus, if a man has invented a compound called 
 "Radium Cocoa," he may commend its virtues to the 
 public in either or both of the two following ways. 
 
OLIGARCHIC PERSUASION 33 
 
 4 'Madame Curie, the renowned French scientist, has," 
 he may say, "pronounced that one atom of radium is 
 beyond all doubt an epitome of the self-renewing vitality 
 of Nature. Those who drink Radium Cocoa are taking 
 the vitality and undying youth of Nature into their own 
 systems." Or else, adopting a style which for many is 
 more insidious, he may say, "What YOU so often suffer 
 from is that Tired Feeling, that Bored Feeling, a Feeling 
 that you've had Enough of it. Whenever you feel that 
 way, just drink a cup of Radium Cocoa. The House of 
 Lords drinks it. The House of Commons drinks it. 
 Your Best Girl drinks it, directly after you have been 
 talking to her. Baby Bubbles, of Paradise Mews, Clac- 
 ton, drinks it. Here are two pictures, showing Baby 
 Bubbles before a cup of Radium Cocoa, and after." 
 But whichever method the advertiser of an untried com- 
 pound may adopt, the object of his advertisements will 
 be to create in the minds of all who look at them a 
 similar will or judgment, which they would not and could 
 not have formed if left to their own devices. And any 
 Government which, in respect of any composite or com- 
 plex questions, requires the definite support of any 
 general will at all, is bound, so long as it cannot resort 
 to bribery, to manufacture such a will for itself in 
 substantially the same ways. 
 
 As practised by statesmen, whether actually in office 
 or struggling for it, the arts of eliciting from each unit 
 of a miscellaneous mass an identical judgment with 
 regard to any complex measures, are, as history shows 
 us, divisible roughly into three. One of these may be 
 called the Art of Political Incendiarism ; another the Art 
 of Political Stimulation; whilst the third, which alone 
 gives meaning to either of the two others, is the Art of 
 Popular Exposition, or the art of placing before the 
 public in a manner which compels conviction statements 
 as to fact which have been so chosen and marshalled 
 that average minds, unconscious of external pressure, 
 shall naturally tend to draw from them some desired 
 conclusion. 
 
 What is here meant by the art of Political Incendiarism 
 is the art of kindling in multitudes by loose and popular 
 rhetoric a belief that they are suffering from some par- 
 
34 LIMITS OF PURE DEMOCRACY 
 
 ticular grievance for which some statesman professes to 
 have devised a cure, his object being to achieve or retain 
 power as the social saviour by whom alone the cure can 
 be applied. This art is like that of the quack American 
 doctor, of whom the story is told that, when asked to 
 cure a child of smallpox, he began with giving it a 
 powder, saying to the parents as he did so, " This powder 
 will bring on the convulsions. I'm not much at pustules, 
 but I reckon I'm hell on fits." 
 
 The art of Political Stimulation has for its object a 
 mere overcoming of the inertia which disinclines a vast 
 number of persons, even when suffering from conditions 
 really onerous and remediable, not only to think out 
 political remedies for themselves, but even to accept 
 with interest those thought out by others. Except for 
 the fact that one of these arts is fraudulent whilst the 
 other is legitimate and on most occasions necessary, it 
 is impossible to draw any definite line between them. 
 The nature of both is very vividly illustrated by a remark 
 which an English statesman of the extreme radical school 
 is reported to have addressed to a friend, who endowed 
 it with immortality by repeating it. "I have sometimes 
 feared of late that my personal influence was declining. 
 I find, however, that my fears were groundless. Let me 
 only make the people angry, and I can do with them 
 what I please." 
 
 Of the last of these three arts namely that of Popular 
 Exposition, or the art of creating a will in favour of 
 specific measures, not by rhetorical statements calculated 
 to inflame opinion, but by plying the public with facts 
 which, even if accurately stated, are so selected and 
 emphasised that the average mind will draw from them 
 some special conclusion for itself, signal examples have 
 been provided by various governments during the great 
 European war. During the earlier months of that war 
 the German Government spent more than 1,000,000 in 
 America with the object of manufacturing an opinion by 
 this precise method we may call it a campaign of 
 emphasis. It may have been, as is said, a campaign of 
 falsehoods also ; but this, if such were the case, is no 
 more than an accident. It is the art with which state- 
 \ments are selected, whether true in themselves or no, 
 
OLIGARCHIC PERSUASION 35 
 
 and the concerted emphasis which they thus acquire \ 
 when presented, that gives them their cumulative effect, j 
 and converts them into an instrument for securing the j 
 end desired. 
 
 Such methods of manipulating the judgments of 
 average men by systematising the supply of facts on 
 which judgments are formed are certainly not what is 
 commonly meant by bribery, though when emissaries 
 are paid to conduct the process these methods very 
 closely resemble it ; but they are no less inconsistent than 
 bribery with the pure democratic principle. If a witness 
 by manipulating or merely suppressing facts causes a 
 jury to do what they would not have done otherwise 
 to acquit a man really innocent, or acquit a man really 
 guilty he is no less interfering with the natural action 
 of others than he would be had he bought the verdict 
 by slipping a banknote into each juryman's pocket. 
 Whichever were his object a just result or an unjust 
 the nature of his conduct would in this respect be the 
 same, namely an influencing of the recorded judgments 
 of men other than himself. For, except in the case here 
 described as that of Political Incendiarism, it must not 
 be supposed that these arts of oligarchic influence are 
 in any way necessarily sinister, nor are they peculiar to 
 one party only. On the contrary, they are compatible 
 though not always associated with the strictest moral 
 integrity. In any constitutional country their employ- 
 ment is inseparable from statesmanship. In so far as 
 it is necessary, with regard to any Composite question, 
 that a government should secure the support of any 
 general will at all a will possessing any definite 
 content these arts of manipulation must be prac- 
 tised by all statesmen equally. Neither the will of 
 the governing few nor the will of the governed many 
 could, without such oligarchic arts, become so much as 
 articulate. 
 
 These observations are primarily made with reference 
 to the action of persons or parties either actually in 
 power, or competing for it with a reasonable prospect 
 of obtaining it. In all modern countries, however, much 
 of the business of eliciting corporate wills is performed 
 by sectional bodies, or parties in a narrower sense ; and 
 
36 LIMITS OF PURE DEMOCRACY 
 
 in these the arts of the few are not confined to the arts 
 of mere incitation or persuasion, but are to a considerable 
 extent supplemented by those of discipline. Such sec- 
 tional bodies as these, which have no general authority, 
 will be dealt with in another chapter. We are for the 
 moment concerned with national government only ; and 
 here we must proceed to note that, in the opinion of 
 many persons, absolutely pure democracy may, despite 
 all difficulties, be realised by a constant use of the 
 Referendum, or plebiscite, this being taken to carry with 
 it the popular right, not only of decision but of personal 
 initiative also. The opinion is specious, but it is alto- 
 gether illusory, merely bringing us back to oligarchy 
 under a new disguise. 
 
 The device of the Referendum, or plebiscite, though 
 often very effective, is effective only when the questions 
 which form its subject have been previously reduced by 
 the few to the last state of real or seeming simplicity. 
 Those who formulate the questions do not, indeed, give 
 the answers, but they determine within narrow limits 
 what the nature of the answers shall be, and they alone 
 make definite answers possible. A plebiscite might 
 elicit an answer of the kind required to the question of 
 whether the parish wants a new pump or no; but it 
 certainly could not do so if what each parishioner was 
 asked for were an accurate description or sketch of 
 the pump which he thought most suitable. If a bride 
 and bridegroom, whose cherished dream was to visit the 
 north of Ireland, had been promised by a tribe of rela- 
 tions the costs of their wedding tour on condition that 
 they asked the relations what the course of their tour 
 should be, it would be idle for them to ask each one of 
 a hundred aunts or cousins, each haunted by personal 
 recollections and preferences, for the route, the hotels, 
 the excursions, which he or she would recommend. They 
 would if they did this get a hundred answers, which 
 would practically amount to none. If they wished to 
 get an answer at once distinct and general, they would 
 have to frame their question in a very different way. 
 Instead of saying to each, "Where do you wish us to 
 go ? ", they might say to all at once, " Shall we go to 
 Hell or Connaught?", and they thus would elicit an 
 
c 
 
 OLIGARCHY AND THE REFERENDUM 37 
 
 answer which was not only clear and general, but was 
 also the precise answer which they themselves desired. 
 When a plebiscite established the dynasty of Victor 
 Emmanuel, the question addressed to each unit of the 
 Italian people was not " What kind of government would 
 you wish to establish if you could?" It was simply 
 "Do you wish that Italy shall remain what it is now 
 a collection of petty States each afraid of its neighbours, 
 or else that it shall be a great kingdom united under one 
 great king?" If each Italian had been asked for a 
 sketch of whatever government ducal, royal, papal, 
 federal, republican, or communist corresponded to his 
 own ideal, the plebiscite would have meant no more than 
 a buzz of quarrelling voices heard through a single 
 telephone, instead of what statesmen were waiting for 
 a clear business-like message on which business men 
 could act. 
 
 Nor would the situation be mended by the popular 
 right of initiative the right of every citizen "in virtue 
 of his manhood alone " to submit to the Executive any 
 proposal he might please, and to claim that it should 
 for this is what the matter comes to have in the last 
 resort a special little plebiscite to itself. Such a right, 
 no doubt, might be possibly exercised with effect by a 
 citizen here and there, and on very rare occasions; but 
 it could not be exercised by all. Were it exercised by 
 all, the life-work of each adult would be mainly taken 
 up with examining the vagaries of all the rest. On the 
 other hand, if it were exercised by a few, and a few only, 
 the principle of oligarchy would be back again without 
 any disguise whatever. 
 
 The right of initiative would be meaningless even in 
 theory, except in so far as it enabled the individual who 
 insisted on using it to obtain for his own proposals the 
 support of a considerable number of other men, and 
 cause them to form some judgment which they would 
 not have formed otherwise a process which is essentially 
 that of imposing his will on theirs. If we ask how one 
 man would be able to do this, we can only say that, if 
 he did not do so by bribery, he would have to do so by 
 practising as a private individual, and for some one 
 isolated purpose, the essentially oligarchic arts which, as 
 
 
38 LIMITS OF PURE DEMOCRACY 
 
 we have seen already, are practised by leading statesmen 
 systematically and on a larger stage. 
 
 In other words, with regard to Composite questions, 
 the pure will of the many, unless it is unified by the 
 formative influence of the few, is neither a foolish will 
 nor a wise will. It is a will which does not exist. It 
 can only come into action and acquire a definite content 
 when the few have provided it with a subject-matter on 
 which to act. Hence, in all advanced states of society 
 the exceptional influence of a more or less numerous few 
 is absolutely essential to the operation of the democratic 
 principle, and this fact is at the same time fatal to the 
 theory of pure democracy. 
 
CHAPTER IV 
 
 INEXPUGNABLE OLIGARCHY 
 
 THE meaning of the paradoxical fact that, in any com- 
 plex society, democratic action would be impossible 
 under a regime of pure democracy, will be more clearly 
 appreciated if we consider with more minuteness what 
 the theory of pure democracy, when seriously taken, 
 implies the theory whose basic principle expresses - 
 itself in the common formula of "One man one vote," 
 or of " One man one unit of influence," or in the aphor- 
 ism of the Abbe Sieyes, who said of the King of France 
 that his rightful influence was to that of his subjects 
 exactly in the ratio of one to thirty millions. 
 
 If this theory or principle really means what it affects v 
 to mean, it would, were it translated into fact, have one \ 
 very startling consequence. It would not only mean 
 that a King, if kings were permitted to exist, should 
 have no more influence as a voter than the obscurest 
 man in the street. It would also mean that, if any 
 prestige were left to him, he should not use it, no matter 
 how informally, to influence the votes of any members / 
 of his entourage who respected the dignity of his office, ' 
 or were animated by loyalty to his person. But the 
 application of this principle would not be confined to 
 kings. It would apply with equal strictness to the men 
 in the street themselves. It would mean with regard to 
 the judgments by which votes are determined that no 
 one man, whatever his social status, should, by his 
 decision of character or his reputation for superior know- 
 ledge, so sway the mind of even a single companion 
 whether a worker in the same workshop, or a frequenter 
 of the same eating-house that the thoughts and votes of 
 two men were determined by the mind of one; and if 
 such a condition were to be realised, what would have 
 
 39 
 
40 LIMITS OF PURE DEMOCRACY 
 
 to happen would be this. Every voter would be bound 
 to form his judgments in an atmosphere artificially 
 sterilised like that of a sick-room, so that no germs of 
 suggestion should be able to attack him from without, 
 and inoculate his thoughts or feelings with those of any 
 other person. If this regulation were pushed to its full 
 logical consequences, it would be necessary to treat all 
 questions of politics as though they were obscene 
 subjects which each man might have to confront in the 
 hermitage of his own mind, but about which no con- 
 versation between man and man was to be tolerated. 
 For let any dozen men begin to discuss politics round the 
 hearth of any village inn, there will always be one or 
 more who will, through some special alertness alike of 
 mind and speech, influence to some extent the judgments 
 of the larger number; and the first faint breath of 
 oligarchy will mix itself with the smoke of pipes, and the 
 odours of the fraternal tap-room. Oligarchs need not be 
 men distinguished by wealth or station, or by any of 
 the advantages possible for a small class only. The 
 officials of a trade union, who order a strike or prohibit 
 it, may be oligarchs just as truly as a senate of hereditary 
 peers, or any elected chamber packed with aristocratic 
 landlords. When, as sometimes happens, a number of 
 trade unionists refuse to obey the orders which their 
 leading officials issue, such movements, though often 
 described as outbursts of democracy pure and simple, 
 are always found to have, as their cause and nucleus, the 
 activity of new oligarchs struggling to displace the old, 1 
 and in all such cases one main instrument of oligarchy 
 is some special power of speech of speech whether 
 uttered by the mouth or committed to printed paper. 
 If there were a hundred men who could think and could 
 understand language, but who could themselves neither 
 utter a word nor read it, one man who could speak would 
 necessarily rule the rest. Only through him, who inter- 
 preted each to all, would any concerted action on the 
 part of the rest be possible. All men, as a matter of 
 
 1 It is hardly necessary to call the reader's attention to the frequency 
 with which this fact was illustrated by strikes amongst munition 
 workers on the Clyde, in Sheffield and elsewhere, contrary to the 
 orders of the official heads of the unions. 
 
REPRESSION OF OLIGARCHY 41 
 
 fact, are able to talk somehow, and consequently take 
 or attempt concerted action of some sort ; but since some 
 men can notoriously talk with much more effect than 
 others, the mere use of unrestricted speech inevitably 
 communicates to a few certain powers inconsistent, no 
 matter whether they are small or large, with the absolute 
 equality of influence which pure democracy postulates. 
 
 It is true that no democrats, however rigid their creed, 
 would propose that for this reason all political conversa- 
 tion should be suppressed. 1 They would reject such a 
 plan as absurd, even if it were not impracticable. But 
 this does not show that it is not in strict logic impera- 
 tively demanded by the principles of pure democracy. 
 It shows that, with regard to the affairs of any complex 
 policy, these principles are not strictly compatible with 
 the unalterable facts of life. 
 
 But let this argument be waived as merely academic 
 or captious. Let us suppose that, if reasonably inter- 
 preted, the principles of even fhe purest democracy 
 would not demand the suppression of such political talk 
 as forms a natural incident of ordinary social intercourse, "T 
 or of such inequalities of influence as are naturally bound 
 to result from it. Other things remain, however, the 
 suppression of which they would demand, and these, in 
 the eyes of democrats, are very much more important. 
 The principles of pure democracy would, if applied with 
 even the roughest semblance of logic, suppress all poli- 
 tical discussion which, emerging from the conversational 
 and wholly informal stage, develops into discussion the 
 conditions of which have been deliberately prearranged 
 
 1 Since these words were written, the precise conditions there sug- 
 gested as logical necessity but a practical impossibility, were actually 
 realised by the German Government. In a London Journal (June 9, 
 1917) it was reported that, with a view to preventing " discouraging 
 statements as to the war," no one " of lower rank than a member of 
 parliament" should be permitted to make any such statement to any 
 other person, and a reward was offered of 150 to anyone who " should 
 bring any violator of this regulation to book." ft Police regulations to 
 this effect," the report continued, " adorn the advertisement pillars 
 in the streets. Nobody is safe in even the most confidential conver- 
 sation." Pure autocracy, in order to suppress any general will or 
 opinion, creates the very conditions which pure democracy logically 
 postulates, and which at the ame time prevent the development of any 
 general will at all. 
 
42 LIMITS OF PURE DEMOCRACY 
 
 ~-*-^ 
 
 by a few men for the purpose of influencing many in any 
 special and calculated way. In other words, the prin- 
 ciples of pure democracy, which demand before all things 
 else that no one voter of any kind shall, so far as such 
 an abuse is preventable, exercise more than one unit of 
 influence, would suppress everything which partakes of 
 the nature of oratory, under which heading we may 
 include all incitation or persuasion which is, with a 
 political object, accomplished either by voice or litera- 
 ture. Wherever the orator begins pure democracy ends ; 
 for if the aim of the political orator is not to make men 
 vote as they would not have voted if he had not been 
 there to move them, the labour of the orator would be 
 labour thrown away. 
 
 Now here again, it may be urged by the doctrinaires 
 of pure democracy, we have a conclusion which, if it be 
 true at all, is true only in a cloudland of idle academic 
 quibbling. It is, they may say, a conclusion which 
 would, if practically accepted, destroy all such move- 
 ments as are now called " campaigns," all newspapers 
 which did not strictly confine themselves to the publica- 
 tion of bare news unaccompanied by explanation or 
 comment, and more unthinkable still it would actually 
 destroy the great political meeting. These things can, 
 these things must co-exist, so such persons will say, with 
 democracy which is pure in the highest degree possible 
 in other words, which is pure to all reasonable intents 
 and purposes ; and no truth can be established of any 
 practical value by comparing it with a democracy in 
 which all such things were absent, and which could not 
 exist anywhere except in a fantastic dream. And in 
 arguing thus, such persons would up to a point be right. 
 The logic of pure democracy, if applied in the way here 
 indicated, would make a clean sweep of all those methods 
 and institutions with which democratic action has thus 
 far been identified. But should such persons go on to 
 object that, if these methods and these institutions were 
 absent, no democracy of any kind, pure or impure, 
 would be possible, they would be wrong. 
 
 It must be remembered that throughout the discussion 
 in which we are immediately engaged we have been 
 dealing only with those Composite questions which, 
 
PURE DEMOCRACY IN ACTION 43 
 
 constantly changing their form, always highly complex, 
 and peculiar to the life of great and elaborately civilised 
 States, comprise nearly all the questions which, to any 
 important extent, demand the formation of any novel 
 will by anybody. But let us only turn back to the 
 questions which have here been called Fundamental, and 
 which still persist everywhere, though constantly inter- 
 tangled with others ; and we shall find, as has been said 
 already, that with regard to these a pure democratic 
 will, which requires for its formation and maintenance 
 neither campaigns, newspapers, meetings, nor even 
 private discussion, is so far from being an impossible 
 fancy that it is an inexpugnable fact in the life of all 
 societies ; and if we compare this will with the only kinds 
 of general will which can, with regard to Composite ques- 
 tions, be induced to form and record themselves, we have 
 a standard by which to measure the difference between 
 these last and the will on which pure democracy, as a 
 political theory, rests. 
 
 Let us suppose, then, that a formal reamrmation was 
 necessary of a general judgment to the effect that robbery 
 and arson were evils of an intolerable kind, and that a 
 police force, with whose efficiency the public was already 
 familiar, should be maintained as a defence against them. 
 What need would there be of meetings all over the 
 country to secure the due expression of such a judgment 
 by everybody ? If a meeting were called for this pur- 
 pose, the most powerful orator on the platform could tell 
 the audience nothing which every member of the audi- 
 ence could not tell the orator. A meeting might as 
 well be held for the purpose of expressing a belief in the 
 fact that Queen Anne was dead. Why, then, is it that, 
 when Composite questions are at issue, such as that of 
 Free Trade for England in the middle of the nineteenth 
 century, meetings are, in all constitutional countries, one 
 of the principal expedients to which all parties resort? 
 Why are public buildings packed with excited crowds ? 
 Why does a Bright or a Chamberlain strain every nerve 
 in addressing them, often continuing patiently this 
 arduous labour for years ? The reason why public meet- 
 ings would be superfluous and ridiculous in connection 
 with Fundamental questions, whilst they are in connec- 
 
44 LIMITS OF PURE DEMOCRACY 
 
 tion with Composite questions necessary, is this. Whereas 
 in the former case the wills of the many, as freely 
 formed by each, are practically the same in substance 
 and are thus spontaneously united in a cumulative will 
 already, the wills of the many in the latter case are 
 vague, various, and for the most part practical nullities, 
 and cannot acquire any general meaning whatever, until 
 the few, treating them as so much raw material, manu- 
 facture such a meaning out of them by intricate processes 
 of their own. 
 
 If any one doubts whether this manufacturing pro- 
 cess is necessary, conclusive proof that it is so is to 
 be found in the mere fact that, in spite of its immense 
 cost in the way both of money and effort, the task of 
 conducting it is systematically and continually under- 
 taken; just as if proof were required that raw cotton 
 from America is not in itself cotton ready to be stitched 
 into night-shirts, such proof would be found in the mere 
 existence of the spindles and the mills of Lancashire. 
 Here, however, it must be noted is a fact which has a 
 converse side. If the process carried on by the few of 
 manipulating the wills of the many is shown to be neces- 
 sary by the mere fact of its being undertaken, the in- 
 tensity of effort involved in it shows something else as 
 well. It shows that the wills of the many, however 
 incapable in their crude and spontaneous forms of deter- 
 mining the actions of a government as to any questions 
 but the simplest, are far from being purely passive and 
 without some bent of their own ; for otherwise the process 
 of manipulating them would be far less laborious than 
 it is. There is not only action on the part of the rela- 
 tively few ; there is also reaction on the part of the rela- 
 tively many. This fact will be fully discussed hereafter 
 in connection with other questions, not merely with 
 those which are commonly called political ; but it does 
 not affect the counter-fact with which alone we are con- 
 cerned at present, that in the political government of 
 any large and complex society, unless some exceptional 
 influence were systematically exercised by the few, there 
 would be on the part of the many no effective action or 
 reaction at all. 
 
 Such being the case, then, the result of the preceding 
 
BOTH PRINCIPLES NEEDED 45 
 
 analysis may be summed up by saying that all current 
 definitions of democracy err, even before they are stated, 
 by reason of a false assumption which underlies the 
 formulation of all of them. They all assume that demo- 
 cracy is a system of government of some kind. This 
 is precisely what, except in primitive and minute com- 
 munities, pure democracy is not, nor ever has been, nor 
 ever can be. It is not and never can be a system of 
 government of any kind. It is simply one principle out 
 of two, the other being that of oligarchy, which two may 
 indeed be combined in very various proportions, but 
 neither of which alone will produce what is meant by 
 a government, any more than saltpetre or charcoal wiil 
 itself produce gunpowder. 
 
 It has, however, been pointed out already that this 
 general argument has thus far been mainly applied to 
 the government of entire nations, either as carried on by 
 some party actually in possession of power, or to the 
 conduct of some other party which, having possessed 
 it once, has some reasonable prospect of regaining it, 
 and is constantly on the watch to do so. We will now 
 turn our attention to those sectional parties which are 
 known by such names as Leagues, Associations, Federa- 
 tions or Unions, each of which aims at exercising over 
 public affairs some will which is democratic, at all events 
 so far as its own members are concerned, and consider 
 whether democracy without any oligarchic concomitant 
 is more practicable in the microcosm of the League than 
 it is in the macrocosm of a great and highly civilised 
 nation. With regard to this question, as will be seen 
 in the following chapter, evidence is available of a 
 signally pertinent kind. 
 
CHAPTER V 
 
 REVOLUTIONARY OLIGARCHIES 
 
 SHORTLY before the outbreak of the great European 
 war, a distinguished economist, Professor R. Michels, of 
 the Universities of Basle and Turin, issued an elaborate 
 volume devoted to an examination of the democratic 
 principle as operative in those sectional parties whose 
 one avowed aim is to exhibit it in its purest form. These 
 parties, he says, which side by side make their appear- 
 ance everywhere a Socialist Party on the one hand, a 
 Labour Party on the other are still everywhere a 
 minority; but they have for the last half century been 
 increasing with such rapidity that they are now an 
 important minority in most European countries. The 
 former is more comprehensive than the latter, and stands 
 for "the rights of man," whilst the latter stands more 
 particularly for the rights of a man as a labourer. The 
 attitude of both, however, towards existing systems of 
 government even towards those in which a radical ele- 
 ment preponderates is, says Professor Michels, 1 the 
 same. The object, or at all events the professed object, 
 of both is not to play a permanent part in these systems 
 of government as they are, but rather to establish in 
 their place a system altogether new, in which pure demo- 
 cracy, unadulterated by any alien element, and repre- 
 senting solely the will of equal and equally influential 
 units, shall be a realised fact at last. Hence, says the 
 author, if we wish to see what democracy means in 
 practice, it is in the actual development and working 
 of these two parties, and of the many and various sub- 
 
 1 Political Parties, by Robert Michels, Professor of Economics and 
 Statistics in the University of Basle, and Professor of Statistics in the 
 University of Turin. English translation by Eden and Cedar Paul. 
 London. Jarrold and Sons. 1916. 
 
 46 
 
TRADE UNION OLIGARCHS 47 
 
 sections of them, that the question can be most easily, 
 if not most comprehensively, studied. It will, therefore, 
 be instructive to consider the nature of the conclusions 
 drawn by him from a mass of detailed and accumulated 
 data, and compare them with the conclusions which have 
 already been elucidated here. 
 
 The general conclusion reached is in both cases the 
 same that , x except in the case of communities or organ- 
 isations which are small, and whose objects are extremely 
 simple, no corporate action which is purely democratic 
 is possible, and that every attempt to eliminate oligarchy 
 is bound to end in a re-creation of it.// This conclusion, 
 says Professor Michels, is rendered specially clear by the 
 case of those parties or organisations on which his own 
 attention has been concentrated, for the leaders of these, 
 together with the rank and file, have been clearly con- 
 scious from the first of what the primary principle of 
 pure democracy is. They have realised that pure demo- 
 cracy, as represented by any body of men bound together 
 in the pursuance of any united policy means that no 
 unit of this mass shall exercise any influence greater than 
 that which is exercised by any other, and that no one 
 unit shall, on behalf of the rest, do or execute anything 
 which any one of the rest could not have executed as 
 well and with equal ease, and would not have sponta- 
 neously executed in substantially the same way. They 
 have not only realised this as a matter of unambiguous 
 theory, but they set out with showing that such was 
 the case by their conduct. Thus, says Professor Michels, 
 in England, which was the cradle of the Trade Union 
 movement, some of the Unions began with choosing their 
 officials by lot or else in alphabetical order, and the 
 agricultural unions of Italy, in their earlier days, went 
 farther. Every proposal of the officials had to be re- 
 duced to writing, and before it could be put into execu- 
 tion it had to be sanctioned by the signature of every 
 one of the members. Moreover, the official accounts 
 were open to the inspection of all, so that any member 
 might be able, as soon as his own turn came, to step at 
 a moment's notice into any vacated place. But as time 
 went on, as the membership of the Unions grew, and the 
 duties of the officials assumed a more complex character, 
 
48 LIMITS OF PURE DEMOCRACY 
 
 this primitive plan of election or selection at haphazard 
 was generally found to be more and more inadequate. 
 It was found that the duties of the officials comprised 
 some exercise of initiative, and that a leader, if he was 
 to be worth anything, must in most cases have natural 
 talents not to be found in everybody especially the 
 talents of a stimulating or explanatory speaker and 
 also some special equipment in the way of digested know- 
 ledge. Hence the more important of the democratic 
 organisations of to-day have abandoned choice by lot 
 from a medley of supposed equals for a method so elabor- 
 ately different that some of them have established 
 colleges at which certain students a carefully picked 
 minority who promise to be fit for leadership are hand- 
 somely paid and put through a course of training, so 
 that out of these a minority smaller still may be ulti- 
 mately chosen by their teachers as eligible for posts of 
 power. The existence of even a few institutions of this 
 kind is an index of how far the spirit by which they are 
 animated differs from that which prompted the pioneers 
 of the Trade Union movement to leave the selection of 
 their leaders, so far as was possible, to chance, and de- 
 liberately to ignore, rather than deliberately measure, 
 such differences in public efficiency as exist between man 
 and man. 
 
 It is argued by some, Professor Michels observes, that 
 the power as exercised by the leaders thus selected repre- 
 sents, not a negation of the democratic principle, but its 
 triumph, such men being nothing but specially skilled 
 employees, hired by the average mass to do its difficult 
 work for it, and liable to curt dismissal if they are not 
 punctual in obeying their masters' orders. But to speak 
 of such persons as nothing more than employees is 
 merely, he says, to play with words. Whether we call 
 them employees or no, the plain fact is that the men by 
 whom the affairs of the democratic parties are conducted, 
 though they may perhaps take some orders, give far 
 more orders than they take ; and although, like em- 
 ployees generally, they are as a matter of theory always 
 liable to be dismissed, it is rarely possible to dismiss 
 them by purely democratic means. The reasons why 
 this is so may, he says, be divided into two groups, the 
 
OLIGARCHIC LEADERS 49 
 
 first consisting of negative reasons which render dismissal 
 difficult, the other of positive reasons, which combine 
 to render tenures of office permanent, and augment in 
 so doing the kinds of power attached to them. 
 
 Of the negative reasons, the chief are, according to 
 Professor Michels, these. In the first place, as the in- 
 fluence of any democratic organisation grows, and its 
 points of contact with affairs in general multiply, many 
 of the duties of the leaders become so highly technical 
 that any serious discussion of them is over the heads 
 of laymen, and efficient criticism of the leaders in respect 
 of such duties as these is beyond the competence of the 
 mass of members collectively. In the second place, the 
 efficiency of the leaders in the management of large 
 affairs becomes more and more dependent, not merely on 
 natural gifts whether these be moral or mental, but also 
 on powers of judgment and prompt action, which most 
 men can acquire by experience of office only. Hence 
 any leaders who, having once been chosen, have re- 
 mained in office for a certain number of years, will be 
 men whom, if their party dismissed them, it would be 
 very difficult to replace. Further, the democratic parties 
 have found out from experience how greatly their ex- 
 ternal influence and also their internal cohesion depend 
 on their actions possessing a certain substratum of con- 
 tinuity, and are therefore inclined on principle, except 
 in extreme cases, to preserve a continuity of leadership 
 as a thing desirable in itself. All these facts, except in 
 extreme cases (such as that in which an Italian agitator 
 was found to be taking fees from employers for his 
 services in settling strikes), tend to remove the leaders 
 from the category of mere employees, and endow them 
 with powers largely, if not wholly, independent of the 
 source from which they were first derived. Thus, the 
 Amalgamated Association of Operative Cotton-spinners 
 in England have a rule to the effect that the posts of 
 their officials shall be permanent, unless one or all of the 
 staff should provoke universal censure. Similarly, with 
 special reference to a strike of the first magnitude, a 
 resolution, says Professor Michels, was passed by the 
 Italian Federation of Labour, that even if the results of 
 a referendum should be adverse to the views of the 
 
 
50 LIMITS OF PURE DEMOCRACY 
 
 leaders then in office, this should not be construed as 
 invalidating the position of the leaders themselves ; whilst 
 still more widely significant is the general fact that in 
 Germany the leaders of the Socialist and the Trade Union 
 parties have proved to be practically irremovable except 
 by death or voluntary resignation. 
 
 Further, to such difficulties of a mental and tactical 
 kind which render dismissal of the leaders by the action 
 of the mass difficult, there are two more to be added, 
 one of which is purely mechanical, whilst the other, 
 which underlies this, has its roots in human nature 
 itself. 
 
 The mechanical difficulty consists of the simple fact 
 that, as soon as a party has become sufficiently numerous 
 to constitute, by pervading a country, a force in national 
 life, it becomes impossible that all, or even most of its 
 members, these being widely diffused, shall meet in their 
 thousands except on very rare occasions, and they would 
 even then be unmanageable for the purposes of detailed 
 criticism. But closely connected with this mechanical 
 result, increase of membership has brought to light 
 another which is in itself of wholly independent origin. 
 Although the parties of revolutionary protest are, in 
 every country where they exist, a minority of the nation 
 as a whole, and are thus presumably permeated by some 
 special democratic fervour, the majority of this minority, 
 with regard to questions of detail, is everywhere found 
 in practice to be apathetic to such a degree that critics 
 have described them as suffering from the malady of 
 "gregarious inertia." Impatient enthusiasts have said 
 of them that these masses of professed democrats are 
 no better than ordinary men, "being far more interested 
 in a road at the bottom of their back gardens " than 
 in any administrative details connected with democratic 
 policy, and that, except when excited by some sensa- 
 tional cry "A bas la vie chere," for instance they 
 signify no interest in party affairs whatever. Thus, says 
 Professor Michels, on occasions both in Holland and 
 Italy, when the conduct of the leaders was attacked with 
 regard to the most momentous questions, the number of 
 members who took the trouble to vote varied from one- 
 fifth to one-tenth of the whole. In France, of the mem- 
 
OLIGARCHIC LEADERS 51 
 
 bers of the General Federation of Labour, only one in 
 fifty is a reader of the party journal. In this case and 
 in that of similar organisations everywhere, the section 
 of the rank and file which alone keeps a watchful eye on 
 the doings of the party leaders is a certain small minor- 
 ity, which, distinguishable from the rest as oil is dis- 
 tinguishable from water, makes a habit, like the habit 
 of inveterate playgoers, of attending party meetings, and 
 fills hall after hall with the same familiar faces. It is 
 from this minority that, except on very rare occasions, 
 all close and effective criticisms of the party leaders 
 emanates, and it has, says Professor Michels, been found 
 that this minority, which alone realises what the diffi- 
 culties of party leadership are, is for the most part dis- 
 posed to support, rather than attack, those at present 
 in office who are taking such difficulties on themselves. 
 Amongst the minority in question there are on occasion, 
 doubtless, embittered malcontents, and in the activity 
 of such, not in spontaneous disaffection on the part of 
 the larger number, lies the only adverse influences which 
 the leaders have to fear. But influences of this kind, 
 Professor Michels observes, are not in their origin demo- 
 cratic, nor do they represent any protest against the 
 influence of an oligarchy as such. On the contrary, they 
 originate in men who are anxious to be oligarchs them- 
 selves, and who seek to convert the mass into an instru- 
 ment of their own ambition. Such revolts, when they 
 occur, may be formidable and at times successful, but, 
 says Professor Michels, definite experience has shown 
 that the actual leaders, as a rule, not only are able to 
 hold their own against them, but tend to acquire in- 
 creased powers in doing so, these indeed being thrust on 
 them by the mass of their respective parties, with a view 
 to preventing the recurrence of paralysing or useless 
 discords. Amongst the new powers thus placed in the 
 leaders' hands is the power, which according to circum- 
 stances is more or less fully developed, of choosing, as 
 posts fall vacant, new colleagues or subordinates at their 
 own personal discretion. Thus, in Germany, of the 
 Trade Union officials one in every five is a nominee of 
 the Central Council. By a congress of Trade Unions in 
 Italy, held at Modena in the year 1910, it was not only 
 
52 LIMITS OF PURE DEMOCRACY 
 
 permitted to the leaders, but enjoined on them as a 
 primary duty, that, exercising their best judgment, they 
 should nominate every member of their official staff 
 themselves; whilst as for the General Federation of 
 Labour in France, which of all labour organisations 
 claims to be most revolutionary, the highest posts in 
 this are, as they fall vacant, filled up by a process which 
 is tantamount to nomination by the chief secretary. 
 
 It is idle, the author proceeds, in the face of facts like 
 these, to pretend that the democratic leaders are no more 
 than employees. It is idler still to dismiss the conten- 
 tion that they are oligarchs as though it were a baseless 
 calumny due to conservative prejudice; for this is, on 
 the contrary, the precise contention or accusation which 
 the various democratic groups are constantly levelling 
 at one another. Indeed, the intellectual representatives 
 of certain of them do not altogether repel it, but are, as 
 we shall see presently, coming to admit that some ele- 
 ment of oligarchy is inevitable. 
 
 The groups, however, which still adhere to the strict 
 teaching of Marx are, Professor Michels observes, singu- 
 larly tart and vehement in declaring that the charge of 
 oligarchy has no application to themselves and that 
 they, at all events, still reflect in their organisation the 
 democratic teaching and the democratic mind of their 
 master. It will, therefore, be instructive to consider 
 what, as shown by his conduct, the practical mind of 
 their great master was. The principal life-work of 
 Marx, apart from his theoretical writings, was the found- 
 ing of the International a society which was to exhibit 
 his own theories in action. The International was to 
 be a Union of the manual labourers of the world, having 
 for its object to combine them as equal units in pure 
 democratic action against one common foe the ubiqui- 
 tous oligarchy of the present employing classes. It 
 was necessary that, like every other organisation, 
 this world-wide democracy should have some central 
 executive. There thus came into existence a supreme 
 General Council, and if this Council was to be an 
 implement of democracy in any sense, it was further 
 necessary that the labourers of every included coun- 
 try should, by some means or other, be represented 
 
SOCIALIST AUTOCRATS 53 
 
 in it. It was, therefore, not unnaturally proposed that 
 for this purpose the labourers of each country should 
 elect and be represented by a President a compatriot, 
 a labourer like themselves, and acquainted with their 
 own conditions. This proposal, however, through the 
 influence of Marx was negatived. It was, indeed, re- 
 solved that each country should be represented by a 
 Secretary, but this resolution was immediately followed 
 by another, to the effect that these secretaries need 
 have no connection whatever, by way either of birth or 
 election, with the country which they affected to repre- 
 sent, but should be chosen from amongst its own 
 members by the General Council itself. By this means, 
 so Marx and his friends announced, a glorious event had 
 been accomplished, new to human history. The world- 
 wide democracy of Labour "had at last been provided 
 with a common and purely democratic leadership," 
 which announcement was almost directly followed by 
 the nomination of Engels, the intimate friend of Marx, 
 as acting secretary for four countries at once. Such 
 were the first notes of the overture to the opera of uni- 
 versal democracy of the overthrow of the few by the 
 many under the guidance of scientific socialism. The 
 active performers were a small circle of men who pro- 
 posed to make all humanity dance to their own tunes, 
 and out of this small group there was one man whose 
 notes from the very first were heard above all the rest. 
 This one man was Marx, whose influence as time went 
 on asserted itself more and more. Not only did Marx, 
 in pursuance of his own tactical purposes, shift the 
 meeting-place of the Council from London to New York 
 at his pleasure, but he edited most of the documents 
 which the Council issued, revising them on his own 
 authority; and at last he was openly attacked by two 
 indignant colleagues for having dared to make public a 
 Manifesto to which their signatures were not attached. 
 Jealousy matured and spread. He, and Engels along 
 with him, were denounced as presuming upstarts. One 
 after another most of his colleagues deserted him, de- 
 claring that he and they could no longer work together ; 
 and mainly owing to the quarrels of these few individuals 
 the terrible International came to an early end. Its 
 
54 LIMITS OF PURE DEMOCRACY 
 
 collapse was not due to the action of democracy rebelling 
 against oligarchy, but of several oligarchs rebelling 
 against the superior power of one. "The larval mon- 
 archy of Marx," as Professor Michels calls it, perished, 
 not by the stones of the populace, but by the daggers 
 of his own associates. 
 
 When we consider that Marx is still revered by Social- 
 ists as the intellectual founder of the modern democratic 
 movement, his practical career as an autocrat has an 
 almost unique significance, as illustrating how inevitably 
 the power, which in theory is that of the multitude, is 
 bound, as the condition of its exercise, to centre itself in 
 the persons of a few, whilst when one of the few has 
 appreciably a stronger will than the rest, it tends to 
 centre itself in the person of one man only. 
 
 Cases like that of Marx in his role of autocrat are rare, 
 for the kinds of genius are rare which render such cases 
 possible ; but whether power be centred in the persons of 
 a small class or of an individual, it is at all events the 
 antithesis of that impossible power which the theory of 
 pure democracy ascribes to the homogeneous mass. It 
 may, says Professor Michels, be urged that the more 
 extreme of the oligarchic characteristics by which certain 
 leaders, such as Marx, have notoriously separated them- 
 selves from the people, are due, not to the necessities of 
 the situation, but merely to the fact that human nature 
 is weak, and that some of these men succumb, by a moral 
 accident, to the selfish whispers of insidiously disguised 
 ambition. But, says Professor Michels, in the case of 
 such extreme arrogations of power, mere selfish ambition 
 is not the primary cause, although it may be often 
 present. The most absolutely unselfish enthusiast, who 
 believes that he can accomplish great things for the 
 multitude, is, in proportion to his faith in his own 
 mission, bound to act as an oligarch, often as a bare- 
 faced autocrat, no less than the most selfish schemer, 
 for unless he is prepared to do so, he must cease to act 
 at all. Nobody has expressed this fact more clearly and 
 boldly than Lassalle, whose magnetic influence over his 
 followers was greater than that of any other modern 
 revolutionary. Lassalle was no doubt ambitious in the 
 strictly personal sense ambitious to an extraordinary 
 
SOCIALIST AUTOCRATS 55 
 
 degree, but his claims to autocracy were made on public 
 grounds, and these, he was able to boast, were under- 
 stood by his followers no less plainly than by himself. 
 "It is," he said, "well recognised by the masses of the 
 labourers themselves that, if their wills are to be effec- 
 tive they must be forged into a single hammer, and that 
 this hammer must be wielded by the sinews of one strong 
 hand. And this," he added, " which happens in our own 
 organisation already, represents in miniature the coming 
 social order." To the example of Lassalle two others 
 may be added, which are not mentioned by Professor 
 Michels, and to which we shall recur hereafter namely 
 those of Robert Owen, who attempted to establish a 
 community purely democratic in America, and of 
 William Lane, who attempted a similar feat in Paraguay. 
 Owen, who in some respects was wholly without thought 
 of self, had no sooner settled his adherents in their new 
 homes, than he did what Lassalle did not do. He in- 
 sisted on divesting himself of every shred of power which 
 was not shared equally by all. Left to themselves, how- 
 ever, and soon threatened with ruin, his adherents im- 
 plored him to save them by assuming the office of 
 dictator. With great reluctance he did so. Affairs 
 began to mend. Again he resigned his office. Troubles 
 again beginning, he was once more forced to resume it, 
 the moral of these events being ultimately emphasised 
 by the sequel. //Lane began as a preacher of the most 
 absolute democratic equality, denouncing every man who 
 aspired to be more influential than his fellows ; but even 
 whilst his practical experiment was no more than a 
 project, the question had been forced on him of whether 
 a pure democracy, if it is to have any practical success, 
 must not have at the head of it what he described as 
 " some better Napoleon, with the heart of Christ and the 
 brain of a Jay Gould "; and this question, as we shall 
 see in a future chapter, he answered by attempting the 
 part of all three characters himself. 
 
 It is not, however, necessary for the purpose of our 
 immediate argument to lay any special stress on extreme 
 cases such as these. What here concerns us is the fact, 
 not that oligarchy on occasions tends to culminate in 
 autocracy, but that even in the case of those sectional 
 
56 LIMITS OF PURE DEMOCRACY 
 
 and eclectic parties which have the realisation of demo- 
 cracy as their conscious and primary object, any attempt 
 at democratic action with regard to any complex ques- 
 tions is bound to culminate in the establishment of a 
 more or less numerous oligarchy. This, indeed, in 
 general terms was admitted long ago by the arch-revolu- 
 tionary, Proudhon. As soon, he said, as any masses of 
 men depute the power latent in their mere numbers to 
 representatives or selected leaders in order that it may 
 be put to any effective use, these men, if they are so to 
 use it, are bound they cannot help themselves to con- 
 solidate it in their own persons. "All power," he 
 continues, "thus moves in a cycle. Issuing from the 
 People, it ends by raising itself above the People." 
 
 It remains for us to consider how experience since the 
 time of Proudhon has affected the theoretical as well as 
 the practical views of the intellectual leaders of the demo- 
 cratic parties of to-day. It will be found that, though 
 for the purpose of playing on popular sentiment the 
 formulae of pure democracy are as widely used as ever, 
 and are indeed adopted not only by would-be revolu- 
 tionaries, but also by parties whose views are conserva- 
 tive or conservatively liberal, serious revolutionary 
 thinkers, in so far as they speak seriously, are everywhere 
 modifying the theory which these formulae express, and 
 investing it with a new import which is widely different 
 from the old. They are seeking to justify in theory 
 those methods of conducting affairs which have been 
 found by their active leaders, whether autocrats or 
 oligarchic groups, to be absolutely inevitable in prac- 
 tice. This fact will be evident to any one who has given 
 any careful attention to their more recent utterances. 
 Professor Michels has collected a number of significant 
 and typical illustrations of it. Of these, for our present 
 purpose, it will be enough to mention the following. 
 They may be divided into two groups, the one relating 
 to the limitations of popular power, the other to its true 
 foundations, or the particular sources from which it 
 really emanates. 
 
 Of the various current definitions of absolutely pure 
 democracy, one of the most famous, as has here been 
 observed already, is "Government of the People, for the 
 
REVISED IDEA OF THE DEMOS 57 
 
 People, by the People." This formula, says Professor 
 Michels, the more serious democratic thinkers, especially 
 in Germany and England, have now radically revised, or 
 in other words repudiated. They assert with redoubled 
 emphasis that everything must be done for the People, 
 but they wholly deny that the People can accomplish 
 this "everything" by themselves. "If democracy is 
 to be effective," they say, "democracy must be taken 
 as including the personal authority 6 of leaders. 5 ' "In 
 all the affairs of management," says one of them, "for 
 the decision of which there is requisite specialised know- 
 ledge, and for the performance of which a certain degree 
 of authority is essential, a measure of despotism must 
 be allowed, and thereby a deviation from the principles 
 of pure democracy. From the democratic point of 
 view," he continues, "this is perhaps an evil, but it is 
 a necessary evil." The leader must, says a philosopher 
 of the English Labour Party, "have a scheme of his 
 own to which he works, and he must have the power 
 to make his will prevail." "Apart from his leaders," 
 says Bernstein, "the average man has no political com- 
 petence. . . . Everything which is tactically of import- 
 ance must of necessity devolve on the leaders; " and it 
 has been seriously suggested that the party of true 
 democracy in England would be directed to the best 
 advantage by a cabinet of "three persons." 
 
 The theory, then, being thus discarded that the great 
 mass of the people, as units of equal influence, can 
 determine the government of any complex society for 
 themselves, and the action of some power which is above 
 the people being thus admitted as necessary, it remains 
 to be asked from what popular source the power of the 
 autocrat, the triumvirate, or the leading minority (what- 
 ever its number) is to be derived. It is not contended 
 by any of the new theorists that those who hold this 
 power shall hold it in right of inheritance. They must, 
 therefore, have acquired it at some time of their lives 
 through a popular sanction of some kind, which commits 
 it to them personally, in personal preference to others. 
 If, then, the masses as a whole are incompetent to con- 
 duct the government of any complex society by them- 
 selves, in what sense are they competent to select with 
 
. 58 LIMITS OF PURE DEMOCRACY 
 
 any discretion the particular men best fitted to conduct 
 it on their behalf ? How is this question answered by 
 the new logic of democracy ? 
 
 The answer is one which has its basis in a broad, 
 empirical fact, of which mention has been made already, 
 and which fifty years of experience have taught demo- 
 cratic leaders to recognise and accept as general. This 
 is the fact that as soon as any revolutionary party so 
 far increases its membership as to make it a considerable 
 force by the mere weight of its numbers, it invariably 
 tends to divide itself into two well-marked sections- 
 one being a majority which, absorbed in its own private 
 affairs, would rather play skittles in a tavern with a 
 revolutionary name than concern itself with the details 
 of dry revolutionary tactics, which in mood, though not 
 in theory, is afflicted with "a gregarious inertia " often 
 akin to conservatism, and contents itself with shouting 
 for revolution in moments of rare excitement ; the other 
 being a minority relatively small, which pores over party 
 journals, which listens with upturned faces to the oratory 
 of the party platform, and whose party principles are 
 held with the energy of sincere conviction. Such being 
 the case, then, Professor Michels observes, the apathy of 
 the large majority, which the democratic leaders at first 
 found disconcerting, has now come to be viewed by them 
 in a very different light. Thus, he says, in France active 
 members of the General Federation of Labour argue that 
 the apathy of the mass is positively favourable to the 
 true revolutionary cause, for it eliminates what would 
 else be opposition to the policy of the more daring few. 
 Bakunin, who at one time was celebrated for the terrific 
 announcement that "the chariot of revolution was roll- 
 ing, and gnashing its teeth as it rolled," had expressed 
 the same view already in somewhat different language, 
 maintaining that the manual labourers, who were to 
 gain most from the movement, should not be allowed 
 any voting power in its management, and this same view 
 or admission is reduced to a definite formula by the 
 Italian revolutionist, Labriola, prominent as a preacher 
 of Syndicalism, who, having observed "that it is cer- 
 tainly not revolutionary tactics to entrust the sword of 
 Brennus to any body of men who, like peasant pro- 
 
SYNDICALIST OLIGARCHS 59 
 
 prietors, are inclined to the sloth of conservatism," 
 proceeds to define what democracy in its true sense is. 
 "In politics," he says, "as in everything else, the last 
 thing that true democracy means is the influence of all 
 men acting as units of equal influence, as though right 
 were always the sum of the largest assortment of like 
 individual wills. True democracy, on the contrary, is 
 the concentrating of power in an elite, who can best 
 judge of the interaction of social cause and effect." 
 
 Here we have a clear and temperate statement of 
 what, in the minds of the leaders of modern revolutionary 
 parties, the working conception of democracy has at last 
 come to be. This conception, says Professor Michels, 
 amounts "to a deliberate denunciation of democracy 
 in any sense of the word." It will, however, be more 
 accurate to say that it amounts to a conception of demo- 
 cracy founded on a new conception of the Demos. What 
 it means or implies is that of any given population a 
 certain minority alone is found to be endowed with 
 certain peculiar energies namely those which exhibit 
 themselves in connection with social and public questions 
 as the subject-matter of politics ; that for political pur- 
 poses this minority alone constitutes the Demos in any 
 reasonable sense of the word ; and that in virtue of its 
 susceptibility to suggestion on the part of the leaders 
 that is to say, of the men " who have their own schemes 
 to which they work " it forms a Praetorian guard on 
 which the authority of the leaders rests. In other words, 
 according to the modern theory, revolutionary demo- 
 cracy (whether in the case of a nation or a party) is 
 primarily government by a considerable but a relatively \ 
 small minority, who are not the people but are simply | 
 the most energetic section of them, and ultimately by a \ 
 group of persons "working to schemes of their own," 
 who are not this considerable minority, but only an 
 infinitesimal fraction of it. These two oligarchies the 
 larger oligarchy and the less are practically to settle 
 the conduct of affairs between them, and the mass of the 
 citizens some eighty per cent, of the whole are for 
 their own good, which they cannot understand them- 
 selves, to submit to the two oligarchies with the best 
 grace they may. 
 
60 LIMITS OF PURE DEMOCRACY 
 
 Conceptions of government such as these can hardly 
 be described as amounting to " a deliberate denunciation 
 of democracy in any sense of the word "; but they do 
 amount to a repudiation and this is all that concerns 
 us here of democracy in its pure form. They amount 
 to a negation of everything supposed to be represented 
 by the formula of "one man one vote," or of "equal 
 influence for every man in virtue of his manhood alone." 
 They amount to a direct negation of the idea that the 
 people, taken as a whole, and confronting political ques- 
 tions as an aggregation of equal units, possess any com- 
 mon, definite and effective will at all. They amount to 
 a direct affirmation that an oligarchic element is essen- 
 tial, and that no general will could possibly exist 
 without it. 
 
 We neecf not for the moment push this argument 
 farther, but may content ourselves with noting that the 
 experience of those revolutionary parties which aim at 
 realising democracy to the extremest degree which is 
 practicable, has compelled them in practice, and grad- 
 ually taught them in theory, not only to recognise that 
 in all complex government an element of oligarchy is 
 indispensable, but also to invoke its action in forms as 
 drastic as any which it ever tends to assume, in the wider 
 sphere of national government, or of the State. If, then, 
 even professional revolutionaries, whose war-cry is "the 
 will of the people," have discovered from experience 
 that the people, except as to the simplest questions, have 
 no definite and guiding will at all, unless it forms itself 
 under the influence, and expresses itself through the 
 action of an oligarchy, we have here a very remarkable 
 illustration of the necessary character of the fact that a 
 similar situation reveals itself in the case of national 
 governments, which have to deal with problems of much 
 greater complexity than any presenting themselves to 
 mere parties of protest. 
 
 There are, however, certain democratic optimists, by 
 no means revolutionary in the extreme sense of the word, 
 who, though recognising that the pure and independent 
 will of the people is incapable of dictating to an executive 
 all the details of any national policy, still maintain that 
 a popular will exists, which is quite sufficiently definite 
 
POPULAR OBJECTIVE 61 
 
 for the broad practical purpose of turning the Executive 
 into its humble though trusted servant, and is only 
 hindered from doing so by purely accidental impedi- 
 ments. In order to see how far their position is tenable, 
 we will now resume the main line of our argument, which 
 relates to the nation and the accepted national govern- 
 ment, rather than the internal discipline peculiar to this 
 or that disaffected and disruptive party. 
 
 
CHAPTER VI 
 
 DISAPPEARING ILLUSIONS 
 
 OUR general argument thus far may be briefly re- 
 stated thus. It starts with insisting on the fact that, 
 in communities small and primitive and isolated, pure 
 democracy, or government determined by the sponta- 
 neous wills of all, is not only a possible system, but is 
 practically the system which exists; and, further, that 
 it continues to exist with regard to those fundamental 
 questions which, in all communities, simple or complex, 
 are the same. In its relation, therefore, to questions 
 such as these, we have a working example of what pure 
 democracy is, by which we can measure how far, with 
 regard to others, its only effective action diverges from 
 the pure type. The extent and nature of its divergence 
 may be indicated once again by a series of simple 
 illustrations such as those which have been used already. 
 
 Let us suppose that all the voters of England are 
 assembled in some vast hall, and that the executive 
 government is represented in the person of a single 
 minister, who asks for their corporate will as to the 
 three following questions which he puts before them thus. 
 
 (1) "Of late, as you all know, there have been con- 
 stant attempts at incendiarism by the use of matches 
 and kerosene. Is it your will that the government shall 
 still maintain the police-force which, as you all know, 
 has proved itself able to frustrate them ? 
 
 (2) "Of late, as you all know, a number of conflagra- 
 tions have been caused, and might any day be caused 
 again, by incendiary bombs dropped from German air- 
 ships. Is it your will that the government shall produce 
 an anti-aircraft gun which will shoot down airships as 
 easily as a sportsman shoots a pheasant ? 
 
 62 
 

 POLITICAL ENDS AND MEANS 63 
 
 (3) " What is the precise construction, or what are the 
 vital peculiarities, of the gun which, for that purpose, 
 you will that the government shall produce ? " 
 
 The first question would at once be answered by 
 acclamation, and this would tell the minister everything 
 he asked to be told. All the citizens would know what 
 is meant by the word "policeman," and in expressing 
 by a unanimous shout their will that the police-force 
 should be maintained, they would be giving a definite 
 order which could at once be carried into execution. 
 
 The second question would probably be answered by 
 acclamation likewise, and this would tell the minister 
 something of what he asked to be told. It would 
 mean that the people spontaneously willed or ordered 
 the production of a gun of some sort. 
 
 But a gun of some sort is practically a gun of no sort. 
 If the minister wanted an order which could definitely 
 guide his actions, he would have to go on to the third 
 question ; and if he put this to his audience if he asked 
 for any working instructions as to what sort of gun this 
 particular gun should be his question would elicit a 
 response of a very different kind. Most of the assembled 
 voters would stare at him in awkward silence. Some of 
 them would giggle, and think that the minister was 
 laughing at them. Then from a miscellaneous minority 
 would come a volley of answers, most of them worthless, 
 whilst those which were not worthless were so conflicting 
 and various that no ingenuity could invest them with any 
 corporate meaning. The unhappy minister would be 
 driven to shout out to his instructors the very familiar 
 adjuration, "Don't all speak at once." 
 
 But that everybody should speak at once is the very 
 thing which the theory of pure democracy demands, and 
 the fact that this demand elicits in some cases the precise 
 result desired illustrates by contrast the absurdity of 
 supposing that it would, or ever could, do so in others. 
 Of the three typical questions which we have just now 
 been imagining, the first elicits a will which is sponta- 
 neous, which is unanimous, which is complete. The will 
 elicited by the second is spontaneous, it is unanimous, 
 but it is incomplete, stopping far short of the point at 
 which definite orders must begin. It is, therefore, for 
 
64 LIMITS OF PURE DEMOCRACY 
 
 purposes of practical guidance, a nullity. The third 
 question, which demands that this incomplete will shall 
 complete itself, fails to elicit any general will at all. 
 Between will and action there must be a further will 
 which is still missing. This must be the will of the 
 minister or oligarchy on whose behalf he speaks, and if 
 the construction of the desired weapon is ever to be 
 accomplished at all, the only will which can render its 
 accomplishment possible is not any will which the many 
 dictate to the few. It is essentially one which the few 
 dictate to the many, and which the many must somehow 
 or other be induced to make their own./ Or to put the 
 matter in more general terms, in proportion as political 
 questions recede from fundamental simplicity, the power 
 of unalloyed democracy to deal with such questions 
 evaporates, and, unless it is quasi-chemically changed 
 by combination with oligarchy, ceases practically to 
 exist. 
 
 Now the general truth of this argument, as we have 
 seen in the preceding chapter, has come to be admitted 
 even by the prophets of extreme revolution. In what 
 sense, then, can it be contended by persons of more 
 moderate principles that the people as a homogeneous 
 whole, or the units of the average mass, have, in spite 
 of all appearances to the contrary, some definite will of 
 their own, complete in itself, and independent of any 
 minority whose talents may happen to be necessary for 
 the transaction of detailed business ? The idea which 
 such persons have at the back of their minds is well 
 expressed by a writer who has here been quoted already 
 as able to state bluntly what many other persons mean. 
 This writer maintains that, with regard to political ques- 
 tions, no matter how complex, a will is naturally imma- 
 nent in the units of the average mass, which, due to the 
 likeness of one unsophisticated man to another, deserves 
 to be called the specific will of the people, in the only 
 important sense which that phrase is intended to suggest. 
 That is to say, in complex cases no less than in simple, 
 the mass of the people, as distinct from special minori- 
 ties, have a definite will with regard to "the general 
 objective of government," though they may not in 
 complex cases be able to prescribe the means. 
 
WILLS AND WISHES 65 
 
 There is enough of truth in this argument, and also of 
 very common error, to render it worth attention. 
 
 Both the truth and the error are connected with a 
 confusion of thought which, at once fostered and hidden 
 by an inaccurate use of language, makes the term " will " 
 interchangeable with the term "wish." The most care- 
 less thinker, if he only gives his mind to the matter, is 
 bound to recognise that, although he constantly confuses 
 them, they stand for two different things, and that 
 though a will must always include a wish, and the two 
 in practice may thus often coincide, a wish in itself is 
 very far from constituting a will. Thus a man may wish, 
 what is probably wished by most men, that he had not 
 perpetrated in his youth a number of foolish actions; 
 but nobody can will, and nobody would say that he 
 wills, not to have done something which twenty years 
 ago he did. He may wish that he could get to Mars, 
 and have a look at the supposed canals. He may wish 
 to get from London to York, and have a look at the 
 
 [inster. But his wish that he could get to Mars must 
 
 jmain a wish, or an idle emotion only. Why ? Because 
 LO means exist which he can possibly employ for getting 
 there. His wish to get from London to York may be 
 any day matured into a will. Why ? Because means 
 of getting there exist, such as trains or his own legs, 
 by choosing and employing which his wish any day may 
 be accomplished. In other words, a wish is no more 
 than a feeling of desire for a mentally imaged something 
 which, whether possible or absolutely impossible, the 
 imagination presents to the consciousness of the wisher 
 as desirable. A will is a feeling of desire for a mentally 
 imaged something which the person so desiring it knows 
 or believes to be possible by the use of specific means ; 
 and only becomes a will when it causes him to adopt, or 
 do his best to adopt them. 
 
 These observations as to the difference between wish 
 and will have a special bearing on the question of a 
 general will in politics. When the writer to whom we 
 are here referring claims that in the sphere of political 
 government there is always a general will with regard 
 to the governmental objective, though except in very 
 simple cases there is no such will as to means, what he 
 
66 LIMITS OF PURE DEMOCRACY 
 
 obviously intends to say and the nature of his argu- 
 ment shows this is that, with regard to the objective, 
 there is not a general will, but only some general wish. 
 In the statement, as thus amended, there is doubtless a 
 certain truth. Let us consider how much it comes to. 
 
 Governments and their actions are not ends in them- 
 selves. Free Trade is not an end in itself. Even the 
 legal administration of justice is not an end in itself. 
 Each is valued only as conducing to some end or objec- 
 tive ulterior to it. The objective in the former case is 
 some kind of prosperity. In the latter it is justice itself, 
 not the means of administering it. Every voluntary 
 action which man is capable of performing is performed, 
 says Aristotle, for the sake of some immediate end ; but 
 all such ends, except one, are one after another sub- 
 sidiary to some end which is beyond themselves; and 
 the ultimate end or objective which alone is desired for 
 its own sake, and which has often been identified with 
 pleasure, is best described, says Aristotle, as " eudai- 
 monia," or happiness. What Aristotle says of human 
 action in general is, with one qualification, true of the 
 actions performed by governments. The objective of 
 governmental action is not happiness itself, but it is the 
 next thing to it. It is best described as Welfare, or the 
 conditions out of which Happiness is most likely to arise, 
 in so far as regulation by an external power can produce 
 them. 
 
 The statement must, therefore, in a certain sense be 
 true, that, with regard to the governmental objective, 
 all the units of the average mass, and those indeed of 
 exceptional classes also, do spontaneously wish for one 
 and the same thing; for any one man may be trusted, 
 "in virtue of his manhood alone," to wish for his own 
 welfare just as devoutly as any other man. But a wish 
 of this kind, in so far as it has any relation to the detailed 
 possibilities of life or the possible action of any govern- 
 ment whatsoever, is general and unanimous so long only 
 as it is vague. Thus if each citizen, as one out of so 
 many millions, were asked to describe in detail his own 
 conception of the conditions which would constitute 
 welfare for himself, the first condition which they all 
 would agree in naming would no doubt be an income of 
 

 WILLS AND WISHES 67 
 
 at least some hundreds a year. Most people, while they 
 were about it, would probably say some thousands. 1 
 Here, in one sense, would be a very happy unanimity ; 
 and it is quite possible that a government might so act 
 (whether by granting monopolies, by creating new posts, 
 or otherwise) as to realise this wish in the case of a 
 citizen here and there. But since there is no country 
 under the sun whose resources could provide even half 
 of such an income for everybody, it is obvious that so 
 many millions of individual wishes, of which only a few 
 thousands or a few hundreds could be gratified, would 
 not, if considered as a guide to governmental actions, 
 be a general wish at all. It would, on the contrary, be 
 a general conflict of wishes, like the wishes of persons 
 pushing for the best seats in a theatre; for every man 
 would be wishing for himself a something which, if 
 obtained by him, would render the fulfilment of other 
 men's wishes impossible. 
 
 Let us suppose, however, that the citizens perceive 
 this, and that their wishes for welfare are sobered down 
 to wishes for such conditions only as governmental action 
 of any kind is competent to secure for all; and let us 
 consider how far in detail their wishes are likely to 
 coincide, and thus coalesce into any general will which, 
 to a government waiting for orders, would be clear or 
 even approximately intelligible. 
 
 In a simple society, or one relatively simple, which 
 has just emerged from the hunting stage into the agri- 
 cultural, welfare is spontaneously identified in the minds 
 of most of the citizens with the tenure by each of a 
 sufficient quantity of land, which tenure shall be so 
 secured to him by law that his sole means of earning 
 a livelihood shall never be taken away from him. All 
 such men, therefore, in wishing for their own welfare, 
 wish for the enactment or maintenance of some par- 
 ticular land-law, the essential content of which can be 
 grasped and expressed by everybody ; and the expression 
 
 1 Amongst the early incidents of the Russian revolution, the strike 
 was announced by a mass of workmen at Rostoff, who demanded wages 
 at the rate of 90 a month, or more than 1000 a year. The total 
 income of Russia did not come to as much as 13 per head of the 
 population. 
 
68 LIMITS OF PURE DEMOCRACY 
 
 of it, as addressed to the government, transforms a 
 general wish into a true general will. It must, however, 
 be observed that, simple though this case is, there is 
 one element in it which is not at first sight apparent. 
 If a government in obedience to such a will is to render 
 each man's right to a given plot of land inalienable, it 
 can do so only by depriving him of the right to quit it ; 
 and so long as a society consists mainly of cultivators 
 this deprivation will be hardly so much as noticed, for 
 no one would wish to run away from his sole means of 
 subsistence. But if trade and manufactures begin, as 
 they did in mediaeval England, to offer the cultivator 
 chances of greater gain than any which he can hope for 
 whilst he is tethered to the clods of a few acres, his idea 
 of welfare (as happened in mediaeval England) begins 
 to be complicated by the intrusion of a new element. 
 To the wish for security is added a wish for freedom. 
 Hence a further wish arises in a growing number of 
 minds that a law, which can only secure the means of 
 subsistence for a man by chaining the man to one means 
 of subsistence, shall be superseded by a law which will 
 render this connection dissoluble, and allow him to 
 choose, if he can find it, a means of subsistence for him- 
 self. At the same time, the new law, although it would 
 have its advantages, would obviously deprive him of 
 those secured by the old; and every interested person, 
 before his wish could mature itself into a will that the 
 new law should be enacted, would have to balance 
 against its promised advantages the advantages it would 
 take away to calculate which alternative would yield 
 him a net gain : and different minds would be certain 
 to work out such a sum differently. 
 
 This case is typical. In any complex society, out of 
 all the many wishes which, in the mind of every average 
 man, vaguely make up the general idea of welfare, there 
 are few which, if fulfilled completely, would not be found 
 inconsistent with the complete fulfilment of others. 1 
 
 1 Here, again, is a fact which has been strikingly illustrated by 
 incidents of the Russian revolution. The dockers at Archangel refused 
 to work for more than six hours a day or for more than three days a 
 week. The docks were blocked with cargoes of coal and other neces- 
 saries, which could not be unloaded. By the strikers themselves fuel 
 
IMPOTENCE OF MERE WISHES 69 
 
 ie wished-for objective is not a single condition, but 
 a plexus of many, each of which must be limited by the 
 co-existence of others, in order that all together may 
 produce the result, welfare. If the people, then, in 
 respect of their several complete objectives are to have 
 any common will which they are able to impose on the 
 government, this will must be a highly complex thing; 
 and if it is to be expressed in a manner which any 
 government can understand, the expression of it must 
 be equivalent to a picture representing welfare divided 
 into its component parts, the position, dimensions and 
 configuration of each being indicated with such precision 
 that the government may be able to shape its conduct 
 accordingly. Further, if a picture of this kind, with all 
 its complex details, is really to represent the will of the 
 average mass, all the units of the mass must, sponta- 
 neously and without prompting, draw it each for him- 
 self in precisely the same way. But there are two 
 reasons why such a result is impossible. In the first 
 place, a picture of this elaborate kind would have to be 
 drawn from a conception no less elaborate, which the 
 person drawing it had already thought out and matured ; 
 and the train of thought required for this purpose would 
 be not only so intricate, but would also deal with quan- 
 tities so incapable of exact measurement, that the con- 
 ception thus formed of welfare by any one mind would 
 rarely coincide, even in its main details, with that 
 formed by any other. In the second place, whatever 
 the conception of welfare in a man's own mind may be, 
 it would in most cases bear very little resemblance to 
 the only definite picture by means of which he would 
 be able to communicate it to a government or to any- 
 body else. Such a picture, as drawn by most men, 
 would be like a drawing of its mother by a child, who, 
 
 was hardly obtainable. The workmen in one great factory insisted on 
 an increase of wages in the ratio of 1 to 5. The value of the total 
 product, out of which alone their wages could come, had presently 
 sunk in the ratio of 200 to 15. Unskilled girls demanded and managed 
 to secure 3 10s. a week. They presently found that their boots cost 
 them 10 a pair. Peasants, who demanded communism in land, were 
 aghast when grain was demanded of them for certain other workers and 
 the army. 
 
70 LIMITS OF PURE DEMOCRACY 
 
 being lost in a crowd, should hand it to a policeman in 
 order that he might be able to find her. If the police- 
 man appeared at the door of the child's nursery after- 
 wards with a creature whose features and proportions 
 were like those of the child's drawing a creature with 
 legs like sticks, with one eye in its forehead, and another 
 eye in its cheek the child would certainly exclaim that 
 this was not its mother, but the devil. The truth of the 
 matter is that for any man to analyse accurately his own 
 conception of the welfare for which he himself wishes, 
 and express it in terms intelligible to any other human 
 being, is a task requiring talents of an exceedingly rare 
 order. The task of inducing millions of men to unify, 
 for governmental purposes, their various conceptions of 
 what they wish for, by adopting a single conception 
 which is not identical with any of these, is a task re- 
 quiring talent of a rarer order still ; and it is only when 
 this latter task has been accomplished with something 
 like substantial success that a multitude of wishes, 
 previously vague, unlike in their content, and ineffec- 
 tual, can be converted into a demand for a single 
 set of conditions, all of them absolutely specific, and 
 thus be made to constitute a cumulative and effective 
 will. 
 
 Those, then, who claim that the units of the average 
 mass, though they cannot dictate means to the govern- 
 ment or the executive oligarchy, have nevertheless, with 
 regard to the governmental objective, some corporate 
 will of their own which a government could be ordered 
 to execute, absolutely ignore the essential point at issue. 
 It is true, and has been said already, that just as will 
 must always precede voluntary action, so must wish 
 always precede will. The very idea of government, the 
 very idea of a people to be governed, presupposes on the 
 part of the people one common wish at all events that 
 is to say, the wish to live ; and the wish to live, owing 
 to the constitution of the human body, is primarily 
 identified with, and is indistinguishable from, the wish 
 for food. Now if all men were congregated on an abso- 
 lutely barren rock, the wish for food would be a wish 
 and a wish only. No action could follow it, and the 
 human race would die. Nature, however, has taught 
 
COMPLEXITY OF WELFARE 71 
 
 men for countless thousands of years that this wish can 
 be satisfied by the immemorial practice of agriculture ; 
 but the wish for food is not agriculture itself, although 
 there would be no agriculture without the wish for food. 
 Agriculture is a wish for food-stuffs which has translated 
 itself into a will to produce them by certain means, such 
 as ploughing, sowing, draining, selection of seeds, rota- 
 tion of crops, and so forth. Similarly, the wish for 
 welfare in a highly civilised State is not political govern- 
 ment, though there would be no political government 
 if nobody wished for welfare. Welfare, in so far as 
 political action can secure it, is in any complex society 
 a plexus of intricate and interconnected means, each of 
 which must represent some will as definite as itself ; and 
 if each of these means is to represent a will of the people 
 generally, each must represent an indefinite number of 
 wills, all so exactly unified that they practically amount 
 to one. For, just as the same pig can be killed in one 
 way only, so this plexus of means which, so far as 
 government can affect the matter, constitutes welfare in 
 its only possible form, cannot in any one country and at 
 any given moment be, even in the smallest detail, other 
 than the thing it is. 
 
 If, then, in order that any particular plexus may be 
 definitely willed by the people to the exclusion of all 
 others, it is necessary (as most serious democrats are 
 now coming to admit) that the means comprised in this 
 plexus, or at all events the larger part of them, shall be 
 first devised by the few, and the people in some way or 
 other induced to will the adoption of them, we are 
 brought by a new route back to the old conclusion. The 
 people, except with regard to simple and fundamental 
 questions, have, apart from an oligarchy, no place in 
 the arena of political life whatever. The contention, in 
 short, that the people, without any oligarchy to guide 
 them, have a definite will of their own as to a highly 
 complex objective, though they have, apart from an 
 oligarchy, no such will as to the means, is a contradiction 
 in terms. It is a contradiction which is disguised by, 
 and due to, a confusion of wish with will; for in the 
 world of political government, as in the world of action 
 generally, the bald truth is this that a wish which is 
 
72 LIMITS OF PURE DEMOCRACY 
 
 not identified with a will as to definite means is not a 
 will at all. 
 
 Nobody in his senses can deny that such is the case 
 with regard to certain governmental means or objectives 
 when these are taken individually such, for example, 
 as safety and an anti-aircraft gun. Welfare as a general 
 objective is not only no exception to this rule, but it is, 
 on the contrary, the crowning and the all-comprehensive 
 illustration of it. 
 
 The theory, however, of a phantom objective, the 
 realisation of which can be definitely willed by the people 
 though they cannot dictate the means by which such a 
 result may be accomplished, is not the less interesting 
 because it is altogether illusory. On the contrary, it is 
 more so; for it is simply the condensed expression of 
 a vague idea or feeling which the theory of pure demo- 
 cracy tends to develop in the consciousness of the 
 average man. That theory means for each average man 
 who accepts it that there is no individual in the world 
 whose wishes are more important than his own, and no 
 individual who, if all men had their rights, would have 
 greater power than he to impose his own wishes on the 
 government. It thus engenders in him the feeling 
 (which is far more intimate and less open to regulation 
 than the thought) that welfare, as wished for by himself, 
 he being secretly the hero of it, is the special kind of 
 welfare which the government ought to realise. 
 
 A homely illustration of this general fact may be found 
 in a letter which was addressed to an American journal 
 by a workman an immigrant from Austria after some 
 prolonged experience of affairs in the great Republic. 
 "I was brought up," he said, "in the most aristocratic 
 country in the world, and I have come here to the most 
 democratic. But what good has all this democracy 
 done me ? I am no more up to the top of the tree than 
 I ever was." This man's ingenuous complaint was an 
 expression of what millions of other men more or less 
 vaguely feel. Each of these others, animated by the 
 democratic idea that he has no superior either in rights 
 or power, wishes to be at or near the top of the tree 
 somehow. He expects the government somehow or 
 other to put him there; and since the top of the tree, 
 

 IMPOSSIBLE EXPECTATIONS 73 
 
 from the nature of things, can be occupied by a few men 
 only, each member of the majority, let the government 
 do what it may, will feel that he is defrauded by it of 
 his own democratic due. The more democratic a 
 government may be in semblance, and the more profuse, 
 as a consequence, it is in its popular promises, the 
 greater is the discrepancy between its promises and the 
 utmost it is able to perform. The more widely amongst 
 the governed does a sense of grievance diffuse itself 
 a mood of unrest and suspicion which makes it in- 
 creasingly difficult for any executive oligarchy to secure 
 a democratic assent to such limited measures as alone 
 can, when the time for action comes, be put before the 
 people by any statesmen as practicable. In a word, 
 the broad result of the theory of pure governmental 
 democracy, especially with reference to the general 
 governmental objective, is to render the people restive 
 by popularising impossible expectations. 
 
 That such is the case is shown clearly enough by the 
 course of modern and comparatively modern history. 
 If we take it roughly that the ideas at the root of modern 
 political democracy first became widely effective towards 
 the close of the eighteenth century, we may say that 
 such a mood of restiveness has from the very first, in 
 one country or another, accompanied all attempts at 
 translating the conception of pure democracy into 
 practice. The true content of such moods, however, 
 has been not precisely what it may seem to have been. 
 It has not amounted, and it does not amount, to a mere 
 uneasy protest that this or that particular government 
 (such as those which formed and dissolved themselves 
 during the course of the French Revolution) was not 
 governmental democracy in its pure and proper form. 
 It comprised from the first the germs of a wider judg- 
 ment, to the effect that no democracy, the scope of which 
 is purely political, can do anything to secure the con- 
 ditions which the idea of democracy suggests. The 
 Austrian immigrant in America who attacked political 
 democracy at the beginning of the twentieth century 
 because it had not enabled him to reach the "top of the 
 tree," did but express a feeling which had developed 
 itself, as we shall see hereafter, when the French Revolu- 
 
74 LIMITS OF PURE DEMOCRACY 
 
 tion was merely a maturing dream. Before the more 
 immediate effects of that movement had spent them- 
 selves Babeuf had boldly declared that no purely poli- 
 tical revolutions could have for the masses of the people 
 any meaning whatever, and lost his head in consequence 
 for conspiring against the French Republic. During the 
 earlier years of the nineteenth century, to mention a few 
 names only, (George Rapp, a German; St. Simon and 
 Fourrier, Frenchmen; and Robert Owen, an English- 
 man,) whilst political democracy was by a large majority 
 still regarded as the key to a near millennium, each 
 in their several ways, and supported by numerous fol- 
 lowers, denounced it as wholly incapable of fulfilling its 
 own promises. What these men and others said in 
 effect was this : "The great thing the people want, and 
 the only thing about which they really care, is not to 
 vote equally, but to live equally; and equal living is a 
 thing which political democracy by itself does not give, 
 and does not even tend to give them." 
 
 From the middle of the nineteenth century onwards 
 this kind of criticism has continued to increase in 
 volume, and to seek for justification in an increasing 
 number of illustrations. Thus, in France, those who 
 had hoped most from democracy in political govern- 
 ment, complain to-day that it has, as a working system, 
 replaced a noblesse by a bourgeoisie far more oppres- 
 sive; whilst in America, where political democracy has 
 been attempted on the largest scale, conditions are more 
 unequal than in any other country in the world. 
 
 But the judgments and the mood of mind which such 
 criticism expresses have been far from taking the turn 
 which at first sight might have seemed likely. Though 
 directed against democracy as a principle which vainly 
 attempts to realise itself so long as it is applied to prob- 
 lems of mere political government, they have not been 
 directed against the principle of pure democracy as 
 such. Their actual meaning has gradually developed 
 into one, which is merely the meaning foreshadowed by 
 men like Babeuf and Owen that the democratic prin- 
 ciple has failed to accomplish its promises hitherto, 
 because it has sought to display itself in too narrow a 
 field. It has followed men to their doorsteps, but has 
 
CHANGES OF POPULAR MOOD 75 
 
 left them when they went inside. Its action has stopped 
 short just where it ought to begin. If democracy is 
 ever to result in a scheme of equal living, it must mainly 
 be realised in connection with the affairs of private life, 
 such as industrial production, the distribution of indus- 
 trial products, and the social interests and intercourse 
 to which such distribution ministers. 
 
 The word " Democracy," when used in this extended 
 sense, is, as has been said already, commonly distin- 
 guished by the epithet " industrial " or "social," or by 
 both, these being taken to indicate two substantially 
 different, though closely associated things. Each of 
 these will here be considered in its proper order. Mean- 
 while, as to democracy in the sphere of political govern- 
 ment, the results of our analysis may be recapitulated 
 thus. 
 
 Pure political democracy, or government in which 
 every citizen plays really an equal part, is not in itself, 
 or under all circumstances, impossible. On the contrary, 
 it is the type of government which in certain communi- 
 ties actually tends to exist. These are communities 
 which are minute, primitively simple in their conditions, 
 and isolated. In such communities pure democracy is 
 possible, and indeed inevitable, because all the questions 
 are simple which the government has to settle, and 
 everybody tends to think about them in virtually the 
 same way. Thus, according to Caesar, the Gallic tribes 
 of his day were democracies in times of peace, and 
 oligarchies in times of war; for in times of war alone 
 was there any scope or need for the leadership of men 
 more sagacious and more courageous than the rest. 
 Further, since in all communities, no matter what their 
 character, certain simple questions persist as the basis 
 of associated life, there is an element of pure democracy 
 in all governments alike. In proportion, however, as 
 communities increase in size, advance in civilisation, and 
 come to have chronic dealings with communities other 
 than themselves, the problems of government multiply, 
 and most of them become more complex. With regard 
 to most of them there is room for endless differences of 
 opinion. The mere task of considering them carefully 
 is congenial only to men whose mental energy is some- 
 
76 LIMITS OF PURE DEMOCRACY 
 
 what above the average, whilst the task of solving them 
 successfully calls for talents and knowledge of special 
 and unusual kinds. For these reasons, two results are 
 inevitable. In the first place, the business of dealing 
 actively with political problems at all tends, from the 
 mere fact of its being laborious, to pass into the hands 
 of the more energetic minority, this body being thus a 
 sort of oligarchic nebula. In the second place, since the 
 solution of these complex problems is not only laborious 
 but difficult, out of this large and nebular oligarchy 
 smaller oligarchies nucleate themselves, which represent, 
 not energy only, but energy combined with various 
 unusual talents, until at last some group is reached (or 
 on critical occasions some one individual) under whose 
 will the wills of the nebular oligarchy range themselves, 
 and are transmitted by oratory or by other means to 
 the mass. 
 
 Such is the process which, in every highly civilised 
 country possessing a popular constitution, is taking 
 place under our very eyes. This persistence of oligarchic 
 action is not, as some thinkers contend, due to any 
 defect in the details of mere constitutional mechanism. 
 On the contrary, it becomes more and more pervasive 
 in proportion as such details conform in outer semblance 
 to the democratic ideal. It reveals itself, as we have 
 seen, in the internal organisation of even those sectional 
 parties whose avowed aim is to raise popular power to 
 a maximum. It is due to the permanent facts of human 
 nature on the one hand, and the inevitably complex 
 character of all civilised societies on the other. The 
 case, indeed, may be summed up thus. Nobody would 
 contend, in dealing with the affairs of any great country 
 or empire, whether in times of peace or war, that all 
 exceptional intellect, all exceptional knowledge, all 
 exceptional sagacity and strength of character were 
 superfluous. If talents like these, then, are not abso- 
 lutely superfluous, it follows that oligarchy of some 
 kind is a necessity ; for talent as applied to government 
 can exert itself in one way only namely that of an 
 influence exercised by a few men over many. The most 
 talented man in the world might be a Caesar, a Napoleon 
 or a Lincoln within the limits of his own bedroom; but, 
 
THE INDUSTRIAL OBJECTIVE 77 
 
 if he could influence nobody besides himself, his talents 
 would be paralysed if he sat as the chairman of a parish 
 council. 
 
 The paralysis of oligarchy would be, therefore, the? 
 paralysis of talent. It must, however, be clearly recog-! 
 nised for here we have a complementary fact which 
 is no less important that the activity of oligarchy is 
 not the paralysis of democracy. It leaves democracy, 
 in relation to simple and fundamental questions, un- 
 touched; whilst with regard to the composite questions 
 which civilisation adds to these, it provides the only 
 means by which, in any definite form, it is practically 
 possible for the principle of democracy to express itself. 
 
 We will now extend our inquiry, and consider whether 
 the expulsion of oligarchy and the establishment of pure 
 democracy are projects more practicable in the spheres 
 of industrial and social life than they are in the sphere 
 of politics, as the word " politics" is still commonly 
 understood. 
 
BOOK II 
 
 DEMOCRACY AND TECHNICAL PRODUCTION 
 CHAPTER I 
 
 THE DEFINITION OF INDUSTRY 
 
 THE idea of extending the application of the demo- 
 cratic principle beyond the scope of such government 
 as is commonly called political is in itself no novelty. 
 The speeches which Aristophanes in his play, Women in 
 Parliament, puts into the mouths of his agitators male 
 and female correspond almost word for word with count- 
 less actual speeches which are made on socialist plat- 
 forms and at street corners to-day. This idea, how- 
 ever, in the forms with which the world is now familiar 
 is distinctively modern in respect of its theoretical 
 details, and also of the extent to which it has become 
 prevalent. Democracy to-day, in the extended sense 
 of the word, is, as we have seen already, commonly 
 described as "Industrial" Democracy, or "Social." 
 These two epithets are often used interchangeably; but 
 implications of the latter, as we shall see more fully 
 hereafter, differ from those of the former in the fact 
 that they are more comprehensive, and less easy to 
 define. It will be necessary, therefore, to consider 
 Industrial Democracy first, and rigidly exclude, in doing 
 so, all reference to activities which do not pertain to the 
 process of actual industry itself. How important pre- 
 cision with regard to this point is, will be seen from the 
 following statement made by a well-known socialist, 
 which we may take here as our text. 
 
 "Every day," says Mr. Sidney Webb, "there is a 
 growing consensus of opinion that the inevitable out- 
 come of democracy is the control of the main instru- 
 
 78 
 
RECOVERY OF PRODUCTS 79 
 
 ments of production by the people themselves, and the 
 consequent recovery of what John Stuart Mill calls ' the 
 enormous share which the possessors of industry ' are 
 able to take of ' the total produce.' ' Now, this short 
 statement, which seems simple enough, is in reality a 
 combination of three. 
 
 The first is to the effect that, though the actual process 
 of production is carried on mainly by a body called " the 
 people themselves," they get at present only a part of 
 what they produce, the remainder being appropriated 
 by persons who are mere "possessors " of the materials 
 on which, and the great mechanisms and appliances by 
 which, the actual producers operate. 
 
 The second is to the effect that if the democratic 
 principle were really applied to industry, the present 
 privileges of these mere " possessors " would cease, and 
 "the people themselves " would be able, in accordance 
 with their several efficiencies, to secure that "share" 
 of their products which is now unjustly withheld from 
 them. 
 
 The third is to the effect that this share is " enor- 
 mous." 
 
 Now it is obvious that, even if all these statements 
 were correct, there would be no integral connection 
 between the first two and the third. Whether the 
 " share " alleged to be withheld is so great as to merit 
 the name "enormous " or no, is a question which can 
 be determined by statistical inquiry only, and it might 
 conceivably be answered in one way or another without 
 the first statement or the second being in point of 
 principle affected. But the difference between the first 
 and the second is even more fundamental. As Mr. 
 Webb puts these, they are indeed united by the implica- 
 tion that production and distribution should in justice 
 go hand in hand, and that no man should get more than 
 he produces, and no man should get less. But the fact 
 that these two processes are in their nature separable, 
 is shown by the socialists themselves, whose cl^ief com- 
 plaint is that under the existing system the facts of 
 individual production and the principles of distribution 
 are separated. 
 
 When Mr. Webb starts with saying that the inevitable 
 
80 LIMITS OF PURE DEMOCRACY 
 
 outcome of democracy is the transference of the control 
 of industry or production to the people, and that this 
 transference is to be accomplished by putting the people 
 in possession of the great modern instruments, which 
 must include the raw materials, of production, he shows 
 clearly enough what industry is understood to be. In- 
 dustry is the fashioning by men of the crude gifts of 
 nature into finished goods with the aid of appropriate 
 implements, and the transport of these goods to the 
 shops or other places where they pass at length into the 
 hands of the final user or consumer. But the process 
 which determines what share of the goods, when they 
 are finished, shall pass into the hands of one class of 
 consumer or another has no effect on the processes by 
 which goods of any given kind are produced. The 
 income, or, as Mill calls it, "the total produce" of a 
 nation may be compared to a great plum-pudding of 
 specified weight and quality. Now, if nobody was going 
 to eat it or get any share of it at all, it is perfectly true 
 that the pudding would never have been made ; but the 
 fact that it is there, and ready to be eaten by somebody, 
 is the primary fact that Mr. Webb's statement pre- 
 supposes. Such being the case, then, the processes in- 
 volved in the production of it will have consisted of a 
 number of operations, such as the getting together of 
 certain given materials flour, suet, sugar, spice, raisins 
 and so forth the mixing of them in given quantities, and 
 the boiling of them for a given time; which operations 
 performed by human hands might be accurately re- 
 corded in a series of photographic diagrams ; and these 
 operations, which are a type of what is meant by in- 
 dustry, would, if the pudding were to be produced at 
 all, be in themselves the same, no matter whether this 
 man or that man should eat more or less than the 
 rest. 
 
 This is what the doctrinaires of Industrial Democracy 
 forget, and the origin of their error is not far to seek. 
 Assuming as they do that a few men, under existing 
 conditions, tend to swallow up most of the national 
 income between them, they fix their attention on the 
 fact that great masses of men engaged in industrial work 
 are already able, by forming themselves into Trade 
 
DEMOCRACY IN PRODUCTION 81 
 
 Unions, to secure in the form of wages a larger share of 
 what Mill calls "the total produce" than the "pos- 
 sessors " or the employers would have conceded to them 
 had compulsion of this kind been absent. Hence, 
 to such thinkers it seems that we here have a living 
 example of industrial democracy beginning to come into 
 its own. Now such thinkers may be perfectly right in 
 claiming for the Unionist movement a democratic char- 
 acter of some sort, but the error which they commit is 
 this. They assume that because the action of Unions 
 as a means of augmenting wages is the action of men 
 who happen to be engaged in industry, it must of neces- 
 sity be in itself industrial. They might just as well 
 argue that if some important fortress had been captured 
 by the gallantry of a regiment made up wholly of post- 
 impressionist painters, the feat was a triumph of the 
 principles of a particular school of painting. Let us 
 suppose that the English dyeing industry, having suf- 
 fered for years from the scientific competition of Ger- 
 many, suddenly gets the better of its rival through the 
 discovery and perfecting of some secret and hitherto 
 undreamed-of process. The wage-earners employed in 
 an industry thus resuscitated might conceivably manage 
 by strikes or other concerted action to raise their collec- 
 tive wages from (let us say) half the total gains of the 
 business to two-thirds, three-quarters, four-fifths or 
 even a larger fraction. But such action on their part 
 would not have the least effect on any one of those novel 
 actions, elaborately prescribed and timed, which their 
 hands would have to execute in order to render that 
 total gain possible out of which their wages, whether 
 large or small, would come. What they did as members 
 of a Union would have been democratic action of some 
 sort, but it would not have been action of the sort which 
 alone is industrially productive. It would have be- 
 longed, not to the province of industrial democracy, but 
 to that wider province of democratic action which must, 
 as we shall see in greater detail hereafter, be compre- 
 hended under the term "social." We will, therefore, 
 in discussing Industrial Democracy, use the word " in- 
 dustrial " here in its sole legitimate sense the sense 
 indicated by Mill, when he says that every action which 
 
82 LIMITS OF PURE DEMOCRACY 
 
 is commonly called " industrial" or " productive" 
 resolves itself ultimately into one species of operation 
 namely the transference by human hands of material 
 substances from one position to another. Mill ought to 
 have included the action of the human intelligence in 
 determining what the substances selected for transfer- 
 ence should be, and how and in what order the various 
 rearrangements should be made ; but the fact remains 
 that no action is industrial which does not subserve or 
 culminate in the re-arrangement of material substances 
 in such a way as to convert them into material or 
 economic goods, or which does not consist of such 
 services as may be requisite for the final enjoyment of 
 them. 
 
 The scope of our present inquiry having been, then, 
 thus delimited, we may now go on to consider what, 
 according to current conceptions of it, the principle of 
 pure democracy as applied to industry means. 
 
CHAPTER II 
 
 PURE DEMOCRATIC INDUSTRY 
 
 WHAT, according to current conceptions of it, demo* 
 cracy means in the sphere of political life has been 
 shown by reference to the words of the American writer, 
 who describes it as a system of government which en- 
 sures that "every citizen shall, ' in virtue of his man- 
 hood alone,' exert an equal influence ' over the affairs 
 of the common country.' ' In the same way, when 
 extended to the sphere of industry, the idea of pure 
 democracy means that every worker, not indeed because 
 he is a man, but because, and in so far as, he is a man 
 who works industrially, shall play an equal part in the 
 technical process of production; or that production, as 
 Mr. Webb and others say in more general language, 
 "shall be controlled by the people themselves." 
 
 Now, the first point emphasised in our argument with 
 regard to political government was that the word 
 "people," as used by the doctrinaires of democracy, 
 must, if it has any distinctive meaning at all, mean the 
 units of the average mass to the exclusion of any 
 minority whose talents and energies are above the 
 average standard, and whose judgments, in so far as 
 they differed from those of the great majority, would, 
 if allowed to prevail, make the average mass subject to 
 them. The units of this minority would, under such a 
 system, not indeed be in theory disfranchised; but the 
 majority could always outvote them, and in this way 
 would necessarily render their exceptional judgments 
 nugatory. 
 
 Here, as we have seen already, is one of the most 
 obvious difficulties which besets the idea of democracy 
 as applied to political government; but in the sphere 
 of technical production it is practically much more for- 
 
 83 
 
84 LIMITS OF PURE DEMOCRACY 
 
 midable. A rudimentary example of it may be seen in 
 the Trade Union policy which forbids a bricklayer, 
 specially alert and dexterous, to lay more bricks in a 
 day than can be laid with ease by the great mass of his 
 fellows. This is a policy which experience shows to be 
 practicable, but the principle involved in it has its 
 obvious limits. Not even the extremest advocate of 
 democratic or Trade Union principles would forbid a 
 very skilful surgeon to mend a man's broken leg, on the 
 ground that most surgeons could do nothing better than 
 amputate it. Indeed, in view of modern applications 
 of abstruse science to industry, the most careless thinker 
 will experience a difficulty in contending that production 
 could have reached or could maintain its present 
 efficiency if no judgments or faculties took any part in 
 controlling it except such as are formed and exercised 
 by ninety-nine men of every hundred. And that here 
 we have a difficulty which at all events requires atten- 
 tion is shown by the fact that the doctrinaires of Indus- 
 trial Democracy have of late years spent much of their 
 ingenuity in attempts at explaining it away. The 
 nature and the value of these attempts we shall have 
 occasion to discuss presently. For the moment it is 
 enough to observe that, whatever their value may be, 
 they must, for a time at all events, have seemed satis- 
 factory to a large number of enthusiasts ; for they have 
 enabled even thinkers who claim to be taken seriously 
 to go on repeating, without any admitted qualification, 
 that Industrial Democracy is the goal of all human 
 progress, and that Industrial Democracy, according " to 
 a growing consensus of opinion," means the control or 
 the entire direction of industry by the units of the 
 "people themselves," which can only mean the units 
 of the average mass to the exclusion of all those whose 
 talents are above the average. 
 
 If we wish, then, to arrive at any conclusion as to how 
 far the conception of pure industrial democracy is in any 
 way consonant with the facts or the possibilities of life, 
 let us consider it as reduced to a strict and ostensibly 
 scientific theory by the thinker to whom, however widely 
 they may have come to differ from him in detail, the 
 industrial democrats of to-day all owe their inspiration. 
 

 MARX ON PRODUCTION 85 
 
 That thinker is Marx; and he has this merit, at all 
 events, that he provides us with a doctrine which, if we 
 can accept it as true, invests the idea of production as 
 a purely democratic process with a clear-cut and in- 
 telligible meaning, and also connects this meaning with 
 daily-experienced fact. 
 
 The primary propositions of Marx may be briefly 
 summed up thus. If we take at starting the raw gifts 
 of nature for granted, all economic wealth is the product 
 of manual labour, or the impact of hands on matter ; 
 and further, if allowance be made for cases of abnormal 
 weakness, the amount of wealth which every labourer 
 produces by working with normal diligence for a given 
 time is equal. Marx was careful to add that, when 
 labour is thus spoken of, it must not be taken to con- 
 sist of mere manual efforts as such, but includes in the 
 case of each individual labourer those mental activities 
 by which his manual efforts are directed, and which form 
 an essential part of his indivisible manhood. But this 
 careful enlargement of the meaning of the term 
 "labour" is so far from enlarging the sense of the 
 original formula that it does but accentuate what were 
 intended by Marx to be its limitations. The essence of 
 his meaning is that, though mental effort of some sort 
 must always direct manual, this mental effort in the case 
 of each labouring unit must be taken as directing the 
 movements of his own hands only, and not as dictating, 
 controlling, or exercising a mastery over the technical 
 movements of the hands of an aggregate of other men. 
 
 That such is his general meaning when he lays down 
 the proposition that the wealth-product of all labourers, 
 hour for hour, is equal, will be seen more clearly if we 
 consider his argument in detail. Labour in all civilised, 
 and even in semi-civilised countries, is, he says, so far 
 divided that different labourers devote themselves to 
 different trades. Each of them, wholly or mainly, lives 
 by producing one class of goods only, of which he himself 
 will consume little, or perhaps nothing. Hence, the 
 results of his labour, in so far as they are wealth for 
 himself, will not consist of the things which he has 
 fabricated with his own hands, but of other and various 
 things which have been fabricated by the hands of 
 
86 LIMITS OF PURE DEMOCRACY 
 
 others, and which, by parting with his own products, he 
 is able to get in exchange for them. Hence, whenever 
 an exchange is made, the first thing necessary is a 
 common standard of some kind, by which the value of 
 unlike goods may be estimated ; and, according to Marx, 
 wealth-value is determined by one thing only namely 
 the amount of manual labour which, as measured by 
 time, is commonly required for the production of what- 
 ever goods may be in question. Thus, if each of a hundred 
 labourers labouring for a hundred hours produces so 
 many finished commodities, no matter what their char- 
 acter, whether they consist of mince-pies, watches, pints 
 of blacking, delicate carvings, jewels, or flints broken 
 into fragments for the purpose of mending roads, the 
 total product l of each man will purchase as much of the 
 products of any number of the others as requires, if they 
 are taken together, a hundred hours to produce them. 
 Hence, Marx and his followers have contended that the 
 proper medium of exchange would be, not money in its 
 ordinary form, but "labour-checks," each of which 
 would be a certificate that the holder had worked with 
 his hands for so many hours or minutes, and was there- 
 fore entitled to so much of any commodities as any 
 other worker could produce in the same time. 
 
 Now, if this theory of wealth-production be at once 
 correct and complete, it not only provides a logically 
 coherent meaning for the conception of industrial demo- 
 cracy in its most unqualified form, as a multitude of 
 processes conducted by absolutely equal units, but it 
 also gives us a picture of industrial democracy in action 
 in action not only as a possibility, but as a hard con- 
 temporary fact. Indeed, to call it a theory at all, as is 
 often done, is misleading. When Marx said that manual 
 
 1 The total product of each labourer is to be understood as the value 
 which his own labour adds to the raw material on which he works. 
 Thus the value of an ounce of gold represents the labour necessary, on 
 an average for finding it, and presenting it to other labourers in a 
 workable form. According to Marx every goldsmith who spends a 
 week in fashioning an ounce of gold into a spoon adds an equal value 
 to the metal, no matter what may be the artistic quality of his Avork. 
 An artist adds no more to the value of an ounce of gold in a week than 
 a stone-breaker adds to the value of a heap of stones, or than a pastry- 
 cook adds to the value of so much flour and butter. 
 
LABOUR AS SOLE PRODUCER 87 
 
 labour is the sole human agency involved in the pro- 
 duction of wealth, he did not mean that it would be so 
 under such and such changed conditions. He meant 
 that it is so now, that it always has been and will be, 
 and that no productive agent other than the man who 
 works with his hands is possible. Similarly, when he 
 said that every manual labourer produces in a given 
 time goods of an equal value, he meant that everywhere, 
 in the actual markets of the world, goods do exchange 
 in proportion to the labour-time required for their pro- 
 duction, the kind and quality of the labour being matters 
 of complete indifference. And if anybody should ask 
 why, in the minds of Marx and his followers, industrial 
 democracy a thing already established should be 
 associated with revolutionary change, the answer is that 
 the kind of change they contemplated had nothing to 
 do with the industrial process as such. It related solely 
 to the fact that the implements which the equal labourers 
 use (such as factory plant and means of transport) have, 
 owing to political or social accidents, been nefariously 
 appropriated by men who, so far as production is con- 
 cerned, have nothing to do with the industrial process 
 at all. Marx was never weary of insisting that the 
 modern " possessors of industry " the employing or 
 capitalist classes owe their present positions to his- 
 torical accidents solely, which enable them to appro- 
 priate most of what the industrial democracy produces, 
 whilst they themselves to use a phrase frequent in 
 Marxian oratory "do but sit in their chairs watching 
 the machine go." Let these mere parasites be elimi- 
 nated either by the social pressure of Trade Unions, or 
 politically by the pressure of legislation, or if needs be 
 by armed rebellion, and industry itself so the argument 
 of Marx proceeds will not be hampered or dislocated 
 by any technical change. Remaining what it always 
 has been and must be, namely a purely democratic 
 process, it will still be as efficient as before ; but the 
 fact that it will operate under changed social conditions 
 will render that vast fraction of the product which the 
 parasites now appropriate available for distribution 
 amongst the manual labourers alone, whose hands and 
 brains have alone played any part in producing it. 
 
88 LIMITS OF PURE DEMOCRACY 
 
 Here we have the outlines of that classical doctrine of 
 production on which all the earlier conceptions of indus- 
 trial democracy based themselves, and which the indus- 
 trial democrats of to-day, whilst repudiating many of 
 its details, have endeavoured to re-establish in the form 
 of revised versions. But, before considering what these 
 revised versions come to, let us consider the doctrine in 
 the form in which Marx left it, with its two salient pro- 
 positions that wealth is produced by manual labour 
 only, and that all manual labourers as productive agents 
 are equal; and let us ask whether there is or ever has 
 been any state of society to which these propositions are 
 applicable. The answer to this question will probably 
 be a surprise, not only to critics who regard Marx with 
 contempt, but even to the more discerning of those who, 
 being in sympathy with his temper and his objects, are 
 naturally inclined to agree with him so far as they 
 reasonably can. 
 
 Without indulging in any non-historical fancies, such 
 as those which constituted the stock-in-trade of Rous- 
 seau, it is possible to look back to stages of primitive 
 life in which the process of production actually did con- 
 form, with substantial exactness, to the terms of the 
 Marxian doctrine. In those societies which preceded 
 the organisation of slavery all the little wealth that 
 existed was produced by manual labourers, each using 
 his hands under the direction of his own intelligence. 
 Further, we may assume that as producers they were 
 all of them fairly equal, and that their products, in so 
 far as there was any occasion to exchange them, ex- 
 changed in proportion to the time that was necessary 
 for the production of each. 
 
 But, however completely primitive conditions such as 
 these may have realised the Marxian conception of the 
 industrial process in some respects, there is one respect 
 in which they differ notoriously from that process as it 
 exists to-day. Relatively to the time consumed, and 
 to the number of individuals engaged in it, the volume 
 of products in which that process results to-day is in- 
 comparably greater than it was, not only in the primi- 
 tive, but even in a recent past. If, then, manual labour 
 directed solely by the minds of the labourers themselves 
 
LABOUR AND PROGRESS 89 
 
 remains always and under all conditions the sole pro- 
 ductive agency as it was when the world began, and if 
 no one labourer working for a given time produces 
 appreciably more wealth than another, the question 
 arises of how the output of labour as a whole can ever 
 be greater in one age than in another. 
 
 The pertinence of this question was recognised by 
 Marx himself, but in the sole answers which he himself 
 could suggest he merely evaded the difficulty by trans- 
 lating it into another form. Manual labour, he said, 
 has in the modern world acquired an efficiency never 
 known before, because "the implements of production 
 have been concentrated," whereas prior to the develop- 
 ment of capitalism on a large scale they were " scattered." 
 Thus, for a thousand hand-looms once scattered amongst 
 a hundred villages is now substituted the mechanism of 
 a single gigantic mill; and a thousand weavers, pre- 
 viously working in isolation, cluster round this one mill 
 for a common productive purpose. By such means, 
 says Marx, two results have been accomplished. Manual 
 labour, within the limits of each industry, has been 
 enabled to divide itself to an extent never before pos- 
 sible ; and through the employment of great unitary 
 mechanisms, each actuated by a single monstrous engine, 
 "society" has acquired "a new control over the pro- 
 ductive forces of nature." 
 
 Now, all this may be true enough, but it leaves the 
 question at issue altogether untouched. Certain changes, 
 such as those which Marx roughly indicates, have no 
 doubt occurred. So much we may take for granted. 
 But these changes must have been due, and their main- 
 tenance must be due also, to the actions of human 
 beings mental actions or manual, or mental and manual 
 combined. The question is, by whom were these actions 
 performed? Were they all planned and performed by 
 average manual labourers, directed by no knowledge 
 and no intelligence but their own ? Did no other class 
 play any part in the matter ? Does no other class play 
 any part in it to-day ? Marx himself admits he not 
 only admits, he asseverates that one of the changes 
 in question, namely "the concentration of the imple- 
 ments," was the work of " infamous persons " who never 
 
90 LIMITS OF PURE DEMOCRACY 
 
 did a stroke of manual labour in their lives, and who 
 concentrated the implements merely by getting posses- 
 sion of them, thus causing the labourers to " concentrate 
 themselves " in the same way. But since the men the 
 modern capitalists by whom the implements came to 
 be possessed, had, according to Marx, no other object 
 than that of extracting a toll from the labourers whom 
 they allowed to use them, these capitalists certainly, if 
 the argument of Marx is correct, can have done nothing 
 personally to make labour more productive. The crucial 
 questions still unanswered are these. Did the labourers, 
 their concentration being once accomplished, proceed 
 to divide their individual labour-tasks for themselves ? 
 Did they, and do they, as units of equal influence, 
 accomplish for themselves the intricate task of co- 
 ordinating them? And finally, to come to the point 
 on which everything else turns, is it solely to the equal 
 talents of average manual labourers, cogitating in their 
 spare time, that we owe that "new control over the 
 productive forces of nature " by which the modern 
 system of production is distinguished from all others? 
 
 It will be observed that, in speaking of the triumphs 
 of industrial science, Marx shrinks from the naked pro- 
 position that nobody but manual labourers played any 
 part in achieving them. He takes refuge in saying that 
 they have somehow been achieved by "society." But 
 since, according to his own reiterated statements, 
 " society " is composed of two classes only namely 
 labourers who produce everything, and idlers who pro- 
 duce nothing he cannot mean that the most important 
 additions ever made to the productive efficiency of man- 
 kind are due to the latter that the latter, the mere 
 idlers, have had anything whatever to do with them. 
 He must mean that they are due to the labourers, and 
 due to them only men no one of whom, in point of 
 productive efficiency, is, according to him, superior to 
 any other. Further, he must mean precisely the same 
 thing with regard to that other process which he notes 
 as no less peculiar to production in modern times that 
 is to say, the new subdivision of labour-tasks, and the 
 elaborate organisation of the multitudes performing 
 them in scientific concert. He must mean that this 
 
PRIMITIVE LABOUR 91 
 
 subdivision and organisation are devised, determined 
 and carried out by the manual labourers themselves, all 
 of them acting together as units of equal influence, and 
 unaided by any intelligence superior to or other than 
 their own. He must mean that industry in its most 
 elaborate, most scientific and most productive forms, is 
 a process no less purely democratic to-day than it was 
 in the days when the homes of men were caves, when 
 their clothes were skins or loin-cloths, and their imple- 
 ments were sticks and stones. He must mean, in short, 
 that in any human society the labour of the average 
 units, if we begin with taking it in its rudest and most 
 primitive stage, contains or has contained in itself the 
 potency of indefinitely great developments, solely 
 through the exercise of those mental and manual facul- 
 ties in respect of which no one unit is appreciably 
 superior to the rest. Is this the case ? Does the history 
 of mankind offer any evidence to show that mere average 
 labour, uninfluenced by any oligarchic authority, 
 becomes able to produce in one age an output of material 
 wealth appreciably larger than it previously had been 
 in another ? And the answer is that, up to a certain 
 point, a purely democratic progress of this kind is 
 indubitable, the implications of the Marxian doctrine 
 being up to that point justified. 
 
 The explanation of this progress is to be found in the 
 following historical causes, none of which, so far as the 
 technique of production is concerned, involve the exer- 
 tion of any mental or manual faculties beyond such 
 as are possessed by the vast majority of the units of 
 whatever race may be in question. These causes are 
 four in number : 
 
 Firstly, the early localisation of industries, which, as 
 Herbert Spencer points out, has been the first distinctive 
 feature of every community when emerging from the 
 primitive or sub-primitive stage; 
 
 Secondly, a gradual division of task-work within the 
 limits of each industry itself; 
 
 Thirdly, certain very simple inventions, such as the 
 plough, the hand-loom, the potter's wheel, and the small 
 boat; together with the discovery, due to common 
 experience or to chance, of the qualities of various sub- 
 
92 LIMITS OF PURE DEMOCRACY 
 
 stances (such as flints or metals), and of various very 
 simple processes : 
 
 Fourthly, a certain coercion of the labourers which, 
 though exercised over them by men other than them- 
 selves, is not necessarily connected with labour in respect 
 of its technical details, but which merely causes it to be 
 more intense and continuous. 
 
 All these causes consist either of the action of experi- 
 ence and circumstance on average minds and hands, or 
 of the average reaction of such minds and hands to 
 these. 
 
 Thus, the early localisation of industries was, as 
 Herbert Spencer explains, due to the unequal manner 
 in which the gifts of nature are distributed, cultivable 
 land, potter's clay, and fish, for example, being severally 
 most plentiful in so many different neighbourhoods, and 
 the occupants of each neighbourhood, in accordance 
 with this distribution, devoting themselves severally to 
 tillage, the making of pots, and fishing. 1 By dividing 
 their industries thus, so that each is confined to the 
 places where it can be practised to the best advantage, 
 men have increased the efficiency of their otherwise 
 unchanged labour, without the exercise of any mental 
 faculties beyond those by which all men alike are 
 distinguished from the higher animals. 
 
 The division of labour-tasks within the limits of each 
 industry itself is, up to a certain point, a spontaneous 
 process likewise. In the case of any commodity the 
 production of which requires more than one kind of 
 operation, any one labourer can discover just as easily 
 as any other that if he confines himself to a few opera- 
 tions only he acquires a quickness of hand which would 
 else be beyond his reach. A group of labourers may 
 thus become more productive without invoking the aid 
 of any faculties but their own. 
 
 The same thing may be said of those basic inventions 
 and discoveries which have become, one after another, 
 almost co-extensive with mankind. They have been the 
 results of diffused experience, or a multitude of sporadic 
 accidents, each of them speaking plainly to the average 
 
 1 Thus in Fiji the coastal inhabitants produce salt. The inhabitants 
 of an inland district, who have never seen the sea, produce sails. 
 
PROGRESS OF PURE LABOUR 93 
 
 luman brain, and telling nothing to any one man which 
 could not be grasped by all. 
 
 The fourth of the four causes here in question that 
 is to say, the institution of slavery by enabling (as 
 Mill says) a permanently leisured class to devote its 
 faculties to the accumulation of systematic knowledge, 
 gradually resulted in the application of such knowledge 
 to industry. In the great empires of antiquity the 
 genius of the scientific architect and the abstruse lore 
 of the astronomer were stamped on the labours of the 
 mason. The genius of Archimedes was operative in 
 the ship-yards of ancient Syracuse. This aspect of the 
 matter, however, does not concern us here. In the 
 present connection the sole fact to be noted is that, 
 quite apart from any technical guidance of the labour 
 of slaves by slave-owners, the coercion of the former 
 by the latter made the labour of the former more pro- 
 ductive by merely rendering more intense and continuous 
 a number of industrial actions, such as those involved 
 in agriculture, which the labourers, with less assiduity, 
 had already carried out by themselves. 
 
 We may therefore concede to Marx and the earlier 
 socialists that, not only in primitive and sub-primitive 
 times, but even under the ancient slave-systems such as 
 those of Rome and Egypt, the industrial process was, 
 to a very great extent, a process carried on by manual 
 labourers only, who were subject to orders so far as 
 results were concerned, but who, in respect of their 
 methods, operated as a true democracy. Since, then, the 
 wealth of the world in primitive times was small, and 
 since, owing to the technical actions of manual labourers 
 alone it has increased notoriously up to a certain point, 
 the question is what, as a matter of history, are the 
 utmost limits which this increase has reached, and to 
 what extent, and to the presence of what new causes, 
 has the industrial process as a whole made a further 
 advance since then ? 
 
 If we take as our standard of efficiency production as 
 it is to-day, we shall find that the progress thus exhibited 
 by the manual labourers themselves, striking as its 
 results have been, does not carry us far. The mere 
 localisation of industries, important though it is as a 
 
94 LIMITS OF PURE DEMOCRACY 
 
 starting-point, is a process, if taken by itself, the results 
 of which are soon exhausted, as is plain from the fact 
 that it is extant in many communities whose condition 
 is still one of semi-primitive poverty. Of those basic 
 inventions and discoveries, examples of which have just 
 been given, and also of the increased dexterity due to 
 divisions of task-work in its earlier and simpler forms, 
 the effects on the efficiency of the manual labourers as 
 a whole have limits which are susceptible of more accu- 
 rate measurement. That the great basic inventions such 
 as the loom and plough were the products of industrial 
 democracy when still in its earlier stages, is a fact fre- 
 quently emphasised by industrial democrats to-day ; and 
 the inference which they draw from it is that all inven- 
 tions and discoveries those of to-day no less than those 
 of yesterday are attributable to the mass of average 
 labourers likewise. They could hardly have hit on an 
 argument of a less fortunate kind. It is one which 
 proves nothing but the narrowness of its own applica- 
 tion ; for in all countries where labour is still to be found 
 operating solely or mainly under the direction of the 
 manual labourers themselves, the inventions and pro- 
 cesses in use at the present day still remain what they 
 were thousands of years ago. These primitive inven- 
 tions of democracy having once been made, democracy 
 in its pure state has subsequently made no others. 
 Mere dexterity has, as a productive agent, shown itself 
 capable of a more protracted progress; but this, too, 
 reached its limits before any of the extant civilisations 
 of the western world began. The brick-makers, the 
 masons, the carpenters, and other craftsmen of to-day, 
 if left to perform then* tasks under the guidance of their 
 own brains only, would in a given time produce nothing 
 more or nothing better than their predecessors did in 
 Rome at the dawn of the Christian era. 
 
 It remains for us to consider the extent to which the 
 product per head of a given number of labourers work- 
 ing under their own direction may be increased by mere 
 coercion. The increased continuity of effort which was 
 imposed on the labourers from without by the slave- 
 systems of the ancient world, and (we may add) by the 
 corvie system of the Middle Ages also, has had effects 
 
SLOW PROGRESS IN PAST 95 
 
 spectacularly were very much more conspicuous 
 than any which have resulted from the other causes 
 here in question. But these effects have had their 
 narrow limits likewise. Of all these four causes, indeed, 
 the mere coercion of labour from without is really the 
 one whose influence is least expansive ; for its effects are 
 determined, not by the potentialities of the average 
 man's brain, or of his hands as mere instruments of 
 skill, but by something much less elastic namely the 
 maximum of muscular effort of which, within a given 
 time, a man's organism is, as a whole, capable. Thus, 
 if so many primitive labourers, working (let us say) for 
 twelve hours a day, would have produced a product per 
 head which was expressible by the number 6, it is con- 
 ceivable that through division of task-work, simple in- 
 ventions and so forth, they might, without more physical 
 effort, have come to produce in a labour-day of the same 
 length a product per head expressible by the number 
 12. But it is obvious that their product could not, by 
 any mere prolongation of their labour-hours, be raised 
 in the proportion of 12 to 24, for no slave-owner could 
 extort from the strongest slave a regular labour-day of 
 twice twelve hours' duration. It is true that the splen- 
 dours of Rome, imperial, public and private, could never 
 have come into existence if the manual labour of multi- 
 tudes had not been intensified by pressure on the part 
 of the ruling few; but mere pressure as thus applied to 
 a mass of manual labourers, though an essential element 
 of the case, was far from being its sole peculiarity. An 
 accessory feature, in many ways more important, was 
 the fact that the slave-owning classes, besides intensify- 
 ing to the utmost the labour of the democracy which 
 worked for them, were to a degree far greater able to 
 increase its numbers. The wealthy classes of antiquity, 
 when their wealth had reached a certain point, may be 
 compared to a single individual who, starting with a 
 patrimony (let us say) of five hundred slaves, lets them 
 out to a mine-owner a case of this precise kind is 
 mentioned by Athenseus receiving for each a rent of 
 10 a year, ends with raising his income from 5,000 
 to 10,000, not by making five hundred slaves work 
 either harder or better, but simply by getting possession 
 
96 LIMITS OF PURE DEMOCRACY 
 
 of five hundred more. The income of the slave-owner 
 is doubled, but the product of each slave separately is 
 no greater than it was before. 
 
 Thus, a labouring population being given, which is in 
 a technical sense a self-directing democracy, the extent 
 to which its output can be increased by mere coercive 
 pressure, is, though considerable, nothing like so great 
 as at first sight it may seem ; and without attempting 
 to fix an exact date, we may say that it reached its 
 maximum under the earlier Roman emperors. It is 
 needless to enlarge on the fact for no one is likely to 
 dispute it that the societies of Mediaeval Europe were 
 not richer than the society for which Pompeii was a 
 third-rate watering-place, and Antioch, Alexandria and 
 Corinth, with its four-hundred-thousand slaves, were no 
 more than provincial towns. The movement called the 
 Renaissance was, in industry as in other things, an 
 attempt to recover ground which since the days of the 
 Caesars had been lost ; and it may be said with confidence 
 that, up to the end of the eighteenth century, there was 
 not a country in the world in which self-directed manual 
 labour produced, relatively to the number of persons 
 engaged in it, more than it did in the days of Nero or 
 Hadrian. 
 
 If, then, we concede to Marx and his followers as for 
 purposes of argument we may do, though with many 
 actual reservations l that even up to a time so recent 
 as the close of the eighteenth or the beginning of the 
 nineteenth century manual labour as directed by the 
 minds of the labourers themselves was the sole producer 
 of wealth no less truly than it is amongst primitive 
 savages to-day, the history of labour so far, as a pro- 
 ductive agent, will be as follows. The productivity of 
 labour having been at the beginning of things not more 
 than sufficient to provide the human animal with the 
 bare necessaries of existence, such as leaves to sleep on 
 and scraps of skin for clothing, the labourers gradually 
 in the course of untold ages, through the simple inter- 
 action of experience and common human intelligence, 
 
 1 Sombart has dealt with examples of capitalist or oligarchic enter- 
 prise in the Middle Ages, and in the 16th and 17th centuries. We are 
 dealing here not with existencies, but with predominancies. 
 
MARX ON MODERN PROGRESS 97 
 
 found themselves able to fashion an increasing number 
 of commodities such as huts adroitly thatched, lake- 
 dwellings of morticed wood-work, gracefully-shaped 
 utensils, hideous nose-rings, and patterned textile 
 fabrics. They thus raised their manner of life to the 
 lower levels of civilisation, and the personal faculties 
 acquired by them were, as Herbert Spencer explains, 
 raised to a higher power when certain warlike races, 
 cradled in barren regions, enslaved the less virile inhabit- 
 ants of regions exceptionally fertile, and compelled them 
 to exert these faculties with a new and more sustained 
 intensity. Under this stimulation the powers of manual 
 labour rose and fell in one region after another, 
 until, having reached their maximum prior to the days 
 of Diocletian, they declined or came to a standstill for 
 more than fifteen hundred years. Then in a manner so 
 rapid that history may regard it as sudden, a change 
 took place the like of which had never been seen before. 
 First in England, and subsequently throughout most of 
 the western world, the industrial process as a whole 
 acquired some new vitality ; and the volume and variety 
 of its products, relatively to the number of human beings 
 engaged in it, made a greater advance in the course of 
 a single century than it had done during all the millen- 
 niums of human life preceding it. 
 
 With this general account of the matter Marx himself 
 would have been in entire agreement. Indeed, the 
 recent unparalleled increase in the productive efficiencies 
 of mankind is a phenomenon which he and his followers 
 have inclined to caricature rather than to underestimate. 
 Further, they admit, as we have seen, that in order to 
 produce such a change in the industrial result, there 
 must have been commensurate changes in the technical 
 details of the industrial process likewise changes which, 
 as Marx says, developed themselves first in England, 
 and which, though far from sudden in the strict sense of 
 the word, became first assured and conspicuous at a 
 date which was not much earlier than that of the battle 
 of Waterloo. How the nature of these changes is 
 explained by Marx himself has just now been briefly 
 stated; but, as has been said already, the only ex- 
 planations which he suggests must have some other 
 
98 LIMITS OF PURE DEMOCRACY 
 
 explanation at the back of them, and one which his own 
 do not even so much as hint at. We will now go on 
 to consider what this ultimate explanation is. We shall 
 find that it lies in none of the facts which Marx contents 
 himself with enumerating not in the mere growth of 
 knowledge, not in the mere development of scientific ma- 
 chinery, not in the mere concentration of the labourers, 
 or in any new subdivision of their labour tasks. All 
 these causes, however real, are secondary, and require 
 themselves to be explained. The basic explanation is 
 to be found in a fact which lies deeper than any of 
 them. 
 
CHAPTER III 
 
 THE SECRET OF MODERN PROGRESS 
 
 LET us summarise once again the explanation which 
 Marx gives of the vast productive powers of industry 
 in the modern world. These novel and unparalleled 
 powers are due, he says, to three causes; 
 
 Firstly, a " concentration " of the implements of pro- 
 duction which in former times were " scattered," and 
 used more or less in isolation by the individual labourers 
 owning them; 
 
 Secondly, the new subdivision and more intelligent 
 co-ordination of labour tasks which in each business 
 becomes possible by the massing together of all the 
 labourers concerned in it; 
 
 And, thirdly, the new stores of practical scientific 
 knowledge which " Society " has acquired whilst these 
 changes were in progress, and which, embodied in new 
 mechanisms and processes, have given man a "new 
 control over the productive forces of nature." 
 
 Now, the first of these three causes namely the con- 
 centration of implements vast as have been its indus- 
 trial effects, was, according to Marx, not in itself an 
 industrial process at all. It consisted in the buying up 
 by men otherwise idle of all the little implements pre- 
 viously owned by the users of them, and the stacking 
 of these implements together in so many walled enclo- 
 sures, to which the labourers had to flock if they wished 
 to produce anything. It was simply the triumphant 
 generalisation of a practice actually rife in England in 
 the middle of the sixteenth century. This was a practice 
 inaugurated by "the great clothiers," and called "the 
 engrossing of looms " (which meant the acquisition of 
 the implements of production in the weaving trade) and 
 "the letting them out to poor artificers at a rent." Its 
 
 99 
 
100 LIMITS OF PURE DEMOCRACY 
 
 object and its result were, according to Marx, simply 
 to affect distribution by enabling the "engrossers" to 
 appropriate the larger part of the product; but it had 
 nothing to do with the details of the productive process 
 at all. These were still determined by the manual 
 labourers themselves. The causes, therefore, to which 
 modern industry owes those vastly increased efficiencies 
 which are still the wonder of the world, are, according 
 to the Marxian logic, not three, but two namely the 
 acquisition of " a new control over the productive forces 
 of nature," and a new subdivision and a more elaborate 
 co-ordination of the tasks performed directly by the 
 labourer's own hands. 
 
 Now, this explanation of the first cause namely the 
 acquisition and concentration of the implements by a 
 personally non-productive class might have at all 
 events some superficial plausibility, if applied to con- 
 ditions as they were up to the middle of the eighteenth 
 century. In Hogarth's series of pictures, "The Indus- 
 trious and the Idle Apprentice," there are two represent- 
 ing the interior of the business premises of a rich cloth- 
 weaver; and what we see is one room after another in 
 which a number of hand-looms are being worked, each 
 by a single operative. The implements are practically 
 the same as they had been in the Middle Ages. They 
 have undergone no change whatever, except for the fact 
 that they have been congregated under a single roof. 
 But between an establishment such as this, which was 
 typical of the eighteenth century, and the kind of estab- 
 lishment which was typical of the century following 
 there is one profound difference of which Marx was fully 
 aware, but of which, when he speaks of concentration, 
 he takes no account whatever. This difference consists 
 in the fact that, whereas in the middle of the eighteenth 
 century the implements of earlier periods had been 
 changed only by being concentrated, they were, from the 
 beginning of the nineteenth century onwards, not con- 
 centrated only, but reconstructed, unified and entirely 
 metamorphosed also. That metamorphosis accom- 
 panied concentration that the two processes rapidly 
 came to be inseparable was as plain to Marx as to 
 anybody, as his own language shows ; for it was only 
 
ORGANISATION AND MIND 101 
 
 the metamorphosis of hundreds of puny appliances into 
 vast unitary mechanisms actuated by huge engines that 
 gave to the human worker what he calls " a new control 
 over the productive forces of nature." But as to how 
 the metamorphosis was accomplished, the theory of 
 Marx is silent, and he hides its silence under a veil of 
 inept tautology. The metamorphosis, he says, is at- 
 tributable to the modern growth of knowledge. That, 
 no doubt, is true ; but of knowledge acquired, and know- 
 ledge applied, by whom ? What he aims at proving is 
 that, apart from the concentration of the various imple- 
 ments of production, in respect of their ownership and 
 their locality, by a purely possessive and industrially 
 idle class, the entire progress of industry was accom- 
 plished by the labourers alone. If such was the case, 
 then, the manual labourers generally must, from the 
 beginning of the nineteenth century onwards, have not 
 only reorganised for themselves the whole of the various 
 tasks performed by their own hands, readjusting and 
 re-devising them in the light of new and abstruse know- 
 ledge, but the whole of this new knowledge must have 
 been acquired by themselves also. They must them- 
 selves have translated it into that new order of mechan- 
 isms without which their new accomplishments in the 
 way of self -organisation would be nugatory. 
 
 Is there, then, any reason for supposing, or is it even 
 remotely conceivable, that the labourers, unguided by 
 any brains but their own, accomplished by democratic 
 agreement both these processes, or either of them ? The 
 knowledge involved in the metamorphosis of a collection 
 of old hand-looms into the plant of a modern cotton-mill, 
 or of a yardful of old stage-coaches into motor-cars or 
 express trains, was of a very elaborate kind. Did it 
 spring up in the brains of all the labourers sponta- 
 neously, as a sense of sin springs up at a revival meet- 
 ing ? Did it even originate in the brains of Trade Union 
 delegates, from whose speeches their constituents im- 
 bibed it, assenting to it by a show of hands ? On the . 
 contrary, in the process of acquiring the multitudinous \ 
 knowledge in question, and translating it by means of 
 machinery into "a new control over the productive 
 forces of nature," the labourers as a class have played 
 
102 LIMITS OF PURE DEMOCRACY 
 
 no part whatever except one which is purely negative 
 namely that of suspicious and occasionally of violent 
 opposition. As history shows us with minute biographi- 
 cal detail, this process has in all its main particulars 
 been the work of individuals, or small groups of indi- 
 viduals, who were distinguished from their fellows by 
 doing what the mass of their fellows did not do what 
 few of them had the enterprise to attempt, fewer still 
 the genius to accomplish, and what most of them had 
 not the capacity or even the wish to understand. It 
 must, moreover, be noted that these exceptional men, 
 though many of them had at one time been manual 
 labourers themselves, did not increase the efficiency of 
 manual work generally by any unusual skill in the 
 performance of such work on their own part, or indeed 
 by the performance of any manual tasks at all. A man 
 like Watt added to the productive forces of the world, 
 not by means of any engines which his own hands had 
 fabricated, but by the influence which, through his 
 models and instructions, he exercised over the hands 
 of others. And all inventors who by means of novel 
 mechanisms " wrought (as Herbert Spencer says they 
 are) from the very substance of the inventors' brains " 
 have given men "a new control over the productive 
 forces of nature," have done so as powerful thinkers, 
 and not as dextrous craftsmen. 
 
 The same considerations are no less pertinent as 
 applied, not to such mechanisms themselves, but to the 
 reflex action of these on the conduct of the labourers 
 using them a reflex action resulting in that new sub- 
 division and new co-ordination of labour-tasks by which, 
 Marx rightly says, the efficiency of each pair of hands, 
 as distinct from the mechanisms, has been increased. 
 The argument of Marx implies that both of these new 
 developments are due to some exercise of faculties resi- 
 dent in the labourers themselves, but previously latent 
 because there was no scope for them. Let us, however, 
 consider in detail what this new subdivision and co- 
 ordination of labour-tasks mean. 
 
 When the labour-tasks involved in the production of 
 any one finished article are divided, and different 
 labourers are set to fashion different parts of it, each 
 
GROWTH OF BRAIN-WORK 103 
 
 part must be shaped in accordance with a settled 
 pattern, so that all the parts shall ultimately fit to- 
 gether. Now, when the parts are few, when the finished 
 article is of a simple and unchanging kind, and the 
 labourers are a small group at work in the same shed, 
 the allocation of these tasks, and the precise nature of 
 each, can be settled by the labourers themselves. But 
 when the number of parts into which an article is for 
 purposes of manufacture divided rises, let us say, from 
 four or five to a hundred ; when the number of labourers 
 rises from ten or twelve to a thousand ; when the prin- 
 ciples on which the tasks are divided cease to be merely 
 empirical, and involve an elaborate knowledge of mathe- 
 matics, mechanics and chemistry; when the character 
 of the finished article itself has constantly to be im- 
 proved or modified in order to meet new demands, and 
 when the specification of each task in particular requires 
 an alert ingenuity of the highest practical order; this 
 constant re-devising and subdividing of tasks becomes, 
 from the nature of the case, a separate task in itself, 
 which cannot be included in the category of labour as 
 Marx defines it. 
 
 And the same thing is true with regard to the organisa-^/ 
 tion of the labourers, as distinct from the mere devising 
 of the various tasks prescribed to them. Organisation 
 comprises the allotment of different tasks to the most/ 
 suitable persons ; an accurate timing of their movements 
 in relation to one another, so that no labour may be lost 
 by preventable pauses on the one hand or preventable 
 overstrain on the other; and also an alert inspection of 
 the work of each individual, so that errors may be seen 
 and rectified before any appreciable dislocation of the 
 general process has been caused by them. Here, again, 
 when the labourers are few, and when their different 
 tasks are few, and when the interconnection of these 
 can be seen at a glance by all, the business in question 
 is easy, and the labourers can accomplish it by talk- 
 ing together as they hold their tools. But when the 
 labourers are numbered by thousands, and their different 
 tasks by hundreds, the business of organising the exe- 
 cution of these last changes like the business of devising 
 them, and changes for like reasons. Whoever may be 
 
104 LIMITS OF PURE DEMOCRACY 
 
 the persons by whom this business is performed, it is one 
 which engages their entire time and attention ; and it 
 cannot be performed by labourers whose efficiency in 
 manual task-work, according to the argument of Marx 
 himself, depends on the fact that each of them gives his 
 time, his attention and his hands to manual task-work, 
 and one kind of task- work only. 
 
 With regard, then, to the several arguments by which 
 Marx seeks to exhibit the unapproached efficiency of the 
 modern industrial process as due to capacities which, 
 in the course of a single century, have come to life in 
 the persons of the manual labourers themselves, and in 
 all of them to an equal extent, what we have seen thus 
 far has been this : Firstly, that " man's new control 
 over the productive forces of nature " which is embodied 
 and concentrated in mechanisms such as those of the 
 modern factory, instead of being due in any sense to the 
 manual labourers generally, is due to the activities of a 
 small minority of individuals activities which are not 
 in the nature of manual labour at all. Secondly, we 
 have seen that, though the use of each great mechanism 
 by a large number of labourers has resulted in a new 
 subdivision and a new organisation of labour which has 
 enabled the labourers personally to operate with in- 
 creased effect, the actual business of subdividing and 
 organising no more belongs to the category of labour, as 
 Marx defines it, than the solitary ferments of knowledge 
 and constructive imagination which take place only in 
 the brain of the practical genius, and to which the world 
 owes the steam-engine, the telephone and the electric 
 light. In other words, whatever increased efficiency 
 may in modern times have been acquired by the hands 
 of the labourers themselves through new organisations 
 of their hand-work, is primarily due to men who may 
 never have touched a tool. 
 
 And here we are brought at last to the heart of our 
 present question. Human beings, as they come into 
 the world to-day, are very much the same as they were 
 in any previous century; and, whatever the activities 
 may be to which the increased industrial efficiency of 
 the modern world is due, they were always in a potential 
 form, as plentiful as they are now. How, then, is it that 
 
FISSION OF EFFORT 105 
 
 >m the close of the eighteenth century onwards they 
 have produced, and are still producing, effects on in- 
 dustry which they never produced before ? What new 
 condition of things is everywhere at the bottom of this 
 unexampled change ? 
 
 This is the crucial question ; and Marx himself, though 
 he completely misses the answer, and could indeed not 
 have admitted it without destroying the whole fabric 
 of his economic doctrines, approaches it very nearly. 
 He takes every step necessary to reach it except the 
 last. 
 
 Having assumed that, through the possession of new 
 mechanisms of production, labour has gained a new 
 control over the productive forces of nature, the one 
 other cardinal fact, on which he insists as explaining the 
 increased efficiency of ordinary or average hand- work, is, 
 as we have seen, a new subdivision of labour-tasks into 
 ever simpler parts, so that the work of each man's hands 
 becomes more rapid and easier. Now, in order to under- 
 stand what his full meaning is we must remember his 
 emphatic assertion that actual labour, as performed by 
 a living man, is in itself a process not single, but dual. 
 Even the simplest manual operation, such as that of 
 sorting nails according to their different sizes, involves 
 the activity, not of a man's hands only, but also of his 
 mind by which the action of his hands is directed. 
 Hence, in pointing to a subdivision of labour-tasks as a 
 cause of increased productivity on the part of the indi- 
 vidual labourer, Marx means that when a labourer 
 devotes himself to one kind of task alone, not his hands 
 only, but his directing intelligence also, acquires a 
 quickness and certitude not otherwise possible. 
 
 But here the argument of Marx, so far as it relates to 
 the division of task-work, stops. It stops short just 
 where it ought to begin. He is right in asserting that 
 the efficiency of the modern system of production is 
 closely associated with the principle of division some- 
 how; but the kinds of division with which alone he 
 concerns himself are secondary phenomena only. They 
 are the consequences of another division which is very 
 much more profound. This, which, in respect of the 
 extent to which it has been carried out, is the root- 
 
106 LIMITS OF PURE DEMOCRACY 
 
 peculiarity of the modern system of production, is not 
 
 a subdivision of one manual task into several or a large 
 
 number; it is a division of that composite activity 
 
 which the execution of all manual tasks involves into 
 
 its two component parts the manual part and the 
 
 mental so that these are no longer performed by the 
 
 same persons. A limited control over the operations 
 
 \ of his own hands is, of course, necessarily left to the 
 
 manual labourer himself ; but all intellectual direction of 
 
 i the higher and more comprehensive kinds is transferred 
 
 \to a new, a separate and a numerically small class, whose 
 
 ysole connection with labour consists in the business of 
 
 Directing it. 
 
 ; This fission of industrial effort into the manual and 
 the purely mental, like the fission of a single cell, first 
 shows itself in a very rudimentary form. Whenever 
 more than a score of manual labourers are gathered 
 together in a shed, or (as Adam Smith calls it) a single 
 "workhouse," for the purpose of making and putting 
 together four or five separate parts of any simple product 
 such as a pin, some record has to be kept of the output 
 of each group, so that the multiplication of no one part 
 shall be more rapid or less rapid than the multiplication 
 of the others. When the total output is small, these 
 simple arithmetical records can be made by the labourers 
 themselves; but as soon as the business expands, these 
 records, though arithmetically they will be no less simple 
 than before, will be such that a man or a boy must give 
 his entire time to them. The work of the manual 
 labourers must be supplemented by that of the clerk. 
 Here at once we have a fission of industrial work into 
 manual work and mental ; but it is a fission which is 
 embryonic only, and gives no hint of the effects which 
 are peculiar to it when it is carried farther. The work 
 of the clerk who counts what the labourers do is no more 
 difficult than theirs. All we can say is that the two 
 kinds of work are different, and are naturally assigned to 
 two classes of men. The effects of this fission, which are 
 peculiar to it as a cause of increased production, do not 
 begin to be apparent till the action of the mental workers 
 no longer merely records the various operations of the 
 manual, but begins at the same time to alter and dictate 
 
INDIVIDUAL BRAIN-WORK 107 
 
 their details, and whilst rendering these last individually 
 more simple, becomes in itself more complex. 
 
 This fact may be illustrated by an example which has 
 already been used as illustrating by way of analogy the 
 problem involved in complex political government. All 
 the higher applications of mental activity to manual 
 may be typified by one which, as Herbert Spencer says, 
 is actually amongst the most important of them. That 
 is to say, the application to industry, not of a simple 
 arithmetic which counts the pieces of matter affected by 
 the labourers' hands, but of the higher mathematics, 
 by which application the movements of the labourers' 
 hands in dealing with matter are modified. In propor- 
 tion, then, as the mathematical knowledge is abstruse 
 on which the joint efficiency of any group of labourers 
 depends, the number of persons diminishes by whom 
 the requisite knowledge is possessed, or who have even 
 the capacity for acquiring it. High mathematical 
 genius, as everybody knows, is rare. The union of it 
 with practical genius is notoriously rarer still. And of 
 all the other purely mental activities by which industrial 
 production is affected the same thing holds good. In 
 proportion to the extent of their influence in augmenting 
 the output of industry generally, the number of persons 
 in whom they are to be found is small. 
 
 Let us suppose, then, that some particular industry 
 is prosecuted, as it might have been in the days of 
 Adam Smith, in a hundred "workhouses " by a hundred 
 groups of labourers, each group consisting of twenty men ; 
 and let us suppose, further, that in one of these separate 
 groups one labourer out of the twenty happens to 
 develop a genius like that of a Watt or an Edison, and 
 quadruples the output of this particular group by ceasing 
 to operate with his own hands himself, and merely 
 showing each of the nineteen others how his hands from 
 moment to moment may be used to the best advantage. 
 In that case the rest of the labour-groups will find them- 
 selves in a condition, not of absolute, but of relative 
 helplessness, and their natural tendency will be to unite 
 with the group in which a man of genius is present, so 
 that the benefit of his guidance may be extended to all 
 alike. 
 
108 LIMITS OF PURE DEMOCRACY 
 
 Here we have the true underlying cause of the modern 
 clustering of the manual labourers in large groups 
 instead of remaining in small ones, or instead of working 
 singly. The centres round which they cluster are not 
 what Marx or the ordinary socialist supposes. These 
 primarily are not great mechanisms, but the mental 
 efficiencies of exceptionally able individuals, to which 
 the mechanisms themselves are due, and to which are 
 due also the new organisation of the labourers, and the 
 new subdivisions of their tasks. By means of such a 
 clustering, exceptional individuals such as these are 
 enabled to do the thinking for thousands and tens of 
 thousands of average men, so that each of these last 
 even the most incapable of them is in turn enabled to 
 execute his own special piece of hand-work precisely as 
 it would have been executed had he been himself one of 
 the master intellects of the world. 
 
 Never has this fact been more dramatically illustrated 
 than it has been during the course of the great European 
 war. In every belligerent country the objects at which 
 industry aims have been largely changed from commodi- 
 ties for private use and enjoyment into commodities 
 or goods essential to the preservation of national life, 
 such as aeroplanes and anti-aircraft guns; and -in order 
 that such weapons might be produced, the first step 
 necessary has been this to place the labour required 
 for their construction under the control of those picked 
 intellects who are able to devise the best. In industry 
 for normal, just as much as for military purposes, this 
 fission of productive effort into its two component 
 parts, so that the highest intellects may control the 
 largest number of hands, has been the primary cause 
 of all that increased efficiency by which the modern 
 system of production is so sharply distinguished from 
 all that have gone before it. It alone has rendered 
 possible that application of intellect to industrial effort 
 generally which has gained for man, and which still 
 continues to gain for man, "a new control over the 
 productive forces of nature." In other words, the 
 increased efficiency of industry in the modern world is 
 due primarily (though, as we shall see hereafter, not 
 

 SOCIALISTS ON OLIGARCHY 109 
 
 exclusively) to a development, not of the democratic 
 principle, but of the oligarchic. 
 
 Let us now go on to consider what kind of reply will 
 be made to this statement of the case by thinkers who 
 have, since the days of Marx, endeavoured to maintain 
 that industry, as a technical process, can conserve, and 
 indeed increase its present productive powers, and yet 
 remain or become what it was in earlier times a process 
 which is exclusively, or even preponderantly democratic. 
 
CHAPTER IV 
 
 THE PRODUCTIVITY OF THE FEW 
 
 IF the foregoing argument be correct, one thing is at 
 once evident namely that the essence of industrial 
 efficiency is the rule of the Many by the Few, or that 
 the modern system of production is more efficient than 
 its predecessors precisely because it has lost the char- 
 acteristics of a pure democracy. And, curiously enough, 
 in the writings of Marx himself there are passages which 
 show that even he, in moments of transitory insight, 
 perceived that this conclusion had some elements of 
 truth in it. Thus, on one occasion he compares the 
 labourers of the modern world to a company of instru- 
 mentalists performing some great oratorio, and adds 
 that no performance of this kind would be possible unless 
 some great composer had dictated to each performer 
 the notes which he had to play. In his case, however, 
 admissions of this kind are merely like isolated boulders, 
 brought down by an intellectual glacier from some 
 distant region of thought, and deposited here and there 
 on a plain with which otherwise they have no connection. 
 
 But what Marx recognised only by fits and starts, 
 later industrial democrats have come to perceive more 
 clearly. Thus, Vorwdrts the leading organ of the 
 industrial democrats of Germany has described the 
 Marxian doctrine that all wealth is produced by manual 
 labourers as comparable to the doctrine of Thales that 
 the universe is nothing but different forms of water. 
 The intellectual socialists of America repudiate the 
 vulgar idea that the industrial functions of the purely 
 mental worker are less apparent to them than to any 
 other sane men. The need of the oligarch in the tech- 
 nical conduct of industry has been clearly recognised 
 by labour-leaders in Italy; but of all comprehensive 
 
 no 
 
 
MONOPOLISTS OF ABILITY 111 
 
 statements sufficiently brief for quotation, that which 
 illustrates this change of attitude best has been provided 
 by Mr. Sidney Webb. Now, Mr. Webb, as we have 
 seen already, identifies industrial democracy with the 
 "control" of industry by what he calls "the people 
 themselves " ; and this control they will, according to 
 him, acquire by appropriating those implements of pro- 
 duction which are at present owned by capitalists, and 
 which indeed constitute the bulk of the industrial capital 
 of to-day. But, so he proceeds, democrats must remem- 
 ber one thing namely, that if, in their capacity of mere 
 possessors, the private monopolists of capital were all 
 dispossessed to-morrow, yet, though one monopoly would 
 be gone, another would still remain, and one of a kind 
 which, so far as we can see, is ineradicable. This, says 
 Mr. Webb, is " a natural monopoly of industrial or busi- 
 ness ability" or "a natural energy with which some 
 men are born," and with which the masses of mankind 
 are not born; "and to dream," he says, "of a compli- 
 cated industrial state " from which the influence of such 
 men is eliminated, and "in which the workman is free 
 to work just as he likes, without strict subordination, 
 and without obedience to orders, is to dream, not of 
 socialism, but of anarchism." Hence, according to him, 
 the business of those thinkers who would, under modern 
 conditions, place the theory of industrial democracy on 
 a practically defensible basis, is not to ignore these facts, 
 but to show that their real significance is quite other 
 than what it seems to be, and that the principle of in- 
 dustrial democracy in spite of them remains intact. 
 And that Mr. Webb is merely describing a view which 
 he shares with his brother intellectuals in this and in 
 other countries is shown by the fact that socialists all 
 over the world have, since the days of Marx, employed 
 much of their speculative ingenuity in endeavours to get 
 over the difficulties which Mr. Webb's language indi- 
 cates, and which none of them any longer ignore. 
 
 We will now briefly consider the nature and the value 
 of the arguments by which the accomplishment of this 
 feat has been attempted. These arguments, though 
 expressed in a great variety of forms, are in substance 
 reducible to five, each of which can be summarised in 
 
112 LIMITS OF PURE DEMOCRACY 
 
 a few words. Two of them only are deserving of any 
 serious consideration. The other three, though when 
 stated on a platform they may have some popular effect, 
 will be found when considered soberly to be no better 
 than claptrap. We will first dispose of these. 
 
 One of these arguments is as follows. However com- 
 pletely we may admit that the efficiency of modern 
 production depends on a submission by the great mass 
 of the workers to the intellect and technical guidance 
 of the specially gifted Few, yet if this submission is an 
 act of free consent, the Many in the very surrender of 
 their own judgments are exercising them, and the system 
 which requires the surrender thus expresses the will of 
 an industrial democracy after all. Of this argument 
 it is enough here to observe that it does but emphasise 
 what nobody in his senses will deny namely the action 
 of the democratic principle as one element of the situa- 
 tion; but it does not disprove on the contrary, it 
 implicitly admits the active operation of the principle 
 of oligarchy as its counterpart. The harmonious work- 
 ing of any system, whether democratic or otherwise, 
 requires the willing consent of all parties engaged in it ; 
 but the fact that the Many consent to be guided by the 
 Few would no more prove that oligarchy was pure demo- 
 cracy in disguise than the fact that a patient chooses his 
 own doctor proves that the patient is the author of his 
 own prescriptions. If the two things were the same 
 thing, all doctors would be superfluous. 
 
 A second argument, which may be dismissed with 
 equal brevity, is this. However important the fact that 
 in modern production a few persons must direct the 
 technical operations of the many, this does not mean 
 that the few, considered as human beings, are in any 
 way more capable than the great mass of their fellows. 
 It merely means that they have, by some chance or 
 other, been chosen to exercise what are necessarily 
 exceptional functions. The great directors of labour, 
 whatever the talents may be which appear to distinguish 
 them from the mass, resemble a watcher on a hill, who 
 signals to an army on one side of it the movements of 
 an army on the other. The signals of this one man may 
 influence the actions of thousands ; but any unit of these 
 
SOCIALIST APOLOGETICS 113 
 
 thousands, if placed in that man's position, could signal 
 with equal effect, and be no less influential than he. 
 In other words, in the school of industrial life men are 
 not at the bottom of the class because they have no 
 conspicuous abilities, but they exercise no conspicuous 
 abilities because they are at the bottom of the class. 
 This argument does indeed deserve to be noticed, for 
 it forms one of the modern flavourings of the lowest 
 popular oratory; but no serious thinker, whatever his 
 democratic zeal, either affects to believe it himself, or 
 addresses it to a thoughtful audience. 
 
 A third argument is this. It is idle to pretend that 
 the great directors of industry are not what they seem 
 to be namely men who in point of talent are indefinitely 
 superior to the mass. Indeed, the influence of men like 
 these is, in a certain sense, the motive-power of all 
 modern progress. This influence, however, operates 
 only as the initiator of new departures, in the way of 
 inventions and methods, and the industrial application 
 of new knowledge generally. As soon as each new move- 
 ment has been started, its special connection with its 
 author or initiator ceases. All knowledge, when once 
 it has been achieved and applied to industrial purposes, 
 becomes thenceforth common property. Any one can 
 apply it who pleases, and in practice become equal to 
 the initiator; and if it were not for patents and other 
 legal devices, which secure for the initiators some 
 interest in the results of their own inventions, whatever 
 these men contribute to the fund of human efficiency 
 would at once diffuse itself through the whole industrial 
 mass, no trace being left of its origin in any special 
 nucleus. Now, to a very limited extent this argument 
 is true, but to a limited extent only. It is true in pro- 
 portion as the knowledge and its industrial applications 
 are simple, and the latter are on a small scale. What 
 is commonly called knowledge namely, knowledge of 
 general principles is mainly perpetuated and mainly 
 diffused by books; but it only becomes common to all 
 men in proportion as they are able to assimilate it. Any 
 child can assimilate the contents of a child's book of 
 arithmetic ; but a hundred men might live with the 
 works of Newton before them, and only one man out of 
 i 
 
114 LIMITS OF PURE DEMOCRACY 
 
 the hundred be able to grasp their meaning. Any 
 schoolboy to-day, after reading a page of instructions, 
 can make a pound of gunpowder which is better than 
 Roger Bacon's, or a model steam-engine which in prin- 
 ciple is more perfect than the engines of Newcomen. 
 But when from the world of pastime we pass to that of 
 practical modern life, in which the object of industry is 
 to multiply as well as to make commodities, in which 
 steam-engines are as big as houses, and steamships are 
 as long as streets, problems arise which in the world 
 of pastime are absent ; and these demand for their solu- 
 tion, not only a knowledge which few can completely 
 master, though books may contain it which any dunce 
 can buy. They demand a knowledge of a different kind 
 also, which is not transmissible by books, or even by 
 living example, and which those who possess it owe to 
 the favour of nature only. This is the knowledge of 
 how to manage men, and this, in the world of industry, 
 no more becomes common property because certain 
 individuals have already possessed and exhibited it, than 
 the powers of a great general transmit themselves to any 
 nervous book- worm who puzzles himself over Caesar's 
 Commentaries. The argument, then, that the powers of 
 an industrial oligarchy are, as fast as they are success- 
 fully exercised, converted into the powers of a demo- 
 cracy, is, in so far as it is true, so limited in its range 
 of application that the question here at issue is not even 
 appreciably affected by it. 
 
 Contrasted with these three arguments, and altogether 
 rejecting them, are two others, of quite different kinds, 
 each of which in a sense is true, and would, were it 
 only relevant, be doubtless of great importance. 
 
 The first of these is an argument which, though 
 specially applied to industry by the doctrinaires of in- 
 dustrial democracy, is applied by others to human action 
 of all kinds. It begins with admitting that if men are 
 in reality what to vulgar observation they seem to be 
 namely, so many separate units whose faculties are self- 
 existent what seems to be industrial oligarchy is pre- 
 cisely the thing it seems, and the idea of industrial 
 democracy must be given up as a delusion. If, how- 
 ever, under the searchlight of sociological science we 
 
INDUSTRIAL MONISM 115 
 
 look below the surface of things and see them as they 
 really are, we shall see that the individuals who present 
 themselves as the Few and the Many are not self-existent 
 or independent entities at all. In any given society the 
 great men and the average men alike are what they are, 
 and are able to do what they do, only because, like 
 variously-tempered puppies who have come into the 
 world together, they are all products of a common cor- 
 porate past. Hence, if a certain minority of them 
 happen to have derived from their ancestors a larger 
 share of industrial ability than the rest, this share is the 
 result of an age-long social struggle, to which the strong 
 and the weak were both necessary parties. It does not 
 belong properly to the present possessors of it them- 
 selves, but is merely a temporary deposit drawn from a 
 common store. So far as the possessors are concerned, 
 it is, says Mr. Sidney Webb, " nothing more than a 
 species of unearned increment," and, herein resembling 
 "the unearned increment of rent," it belongs not to 
 them, but to society, or the community as a democratic 
 whole. 
 
 Now, of this argument it is sufficient to say here that 
 it is merely an application to industry of a wider philo- 
 sophic conception which is as old as human thought 
 namely, the conception of the All or the One as the 
 reality which is behind the Many. According to this 
 conception of things, which appears in various forms as 
 Pantheism, Determinism, and mental or material Mon- 
 ism, the existence of the separate personality is alto- 
 gether a delusion. There is no question of whether one 
 individual does or produces more or less than another. 
 The indivisible Whole, whether God or the Universe, or 
 (as Herbert Spencer called it) the Unknowable, does 
 and produces everything. The individual, as a separate 
 entity, does or produces nothing. Now, as a matter of 
 speculative logic, this doctrine may be impregnable ; 
 but as Kant, Hume, St. Augustine, and (we may add) 
 common sense point out, the moment we attempt to 
 apply it to practical life philosophers and ordinary men 
 reject it alike as nonsense. If Socrates quarrels with 
 his wife he is quarrelling with Xantippe; he is not 
 quarrelling with the Universe. If a murder has been 
 
116 LIMITS OF PURE DEMOCRACY 
 
 committed we look for the individual murderer, on the 
 ground that he is the criminal and other people are 
 innocent. If we want a great picture painted we look 
 for an individual artist, on the ground that he can paint 
 it and most individuals cannot. That is to say, we 
 assume, for all practical purposes, that individuals 
 really do what they seem to do ; and unless we assumed 
 this there would be no dealing with anybody. The 
 application of these criticisms to the industrial process 
 is obvious. The "monopolists of business ability," as 
 a matter of practical experience, are as radically different 
 from the average units directed by them as a man who 
 murders his mother in order to steal her savings is dif- 
 ferent from a mother next door who is teaching her child 
 its prayers. They are able to do things, and they do 
 things, which are not done and which cannot be done 
 by others ; and unless these differences were recognised, 
 no complex business of any kind would be possible. The 
 philosophy of industrial Monism, by which these differ- 
 ences are obscured, may amuse the philosopher in his 
 study; but if preached in a factory or a shipyard it 
 would be the maundering of a strayed lunatic. 
 
 The last of the arguments which are urged with the 
 object of showing that industrial democracy combined 
 with unambiguous oligarchy is nothing but a mode of 
 pure democracy after all, still remains to be considered. 
 It is in many respects a great improvement on the pre- 
 ceding. Moreover, the credit is due to it of having, for 
 the benefit of the practical agitator, replaced the doc- 
 trine of Marx that all wealth is the product of manual 
 labour only, by another, equally popular in its sugges- 
 tions, but less open to criticism on the part of common 
 intelligence. This is the argument that wealth is the 
 product, not of labour, but of society. It is an argu- 
 ment which in certain ways is a great improvement on 
 the preceding, because instead of being an exercise in 
 the logic of remote speculation, it addresses itself frankly 
 to the world of concrete fact. It admits that men must 
 be treated as separate entities varying greatly in the 
 scope of their industrial powers, some men directing 
 and others submitting to direction ; and yet aims at 
 establishing the industrial equality of all, not by eluding 
 
MILL ON EQUAL NECESSITY 117 
 
 or transcending these facts, but by facing them. It is, 
 therefore, as a weapon of popular agitation, very much 
 more in vogue than any of the four others. It may be 
 summed up thus. However unequal may be tKe efforts 
 of individual producers otherwise, such as those of the 
 genius and those of the average labourer, they are prac- 
 tically equal in the fact that they are all equally neces- 
 sary. Necessity has no laws ; it also has no degrees. 
 
 The contention that all industrial factors in produc- 
 tion are in a practical sense equal if they are equally 
 necessary for the production of a given result, was first 
 formulated by Mill, in connection with the business of 
 agriculture. Some thinkers, he observes, referring to 
 the French physiocrats, have debated whether, of a 
 given agricultural product such, for example, as twenty 
 bushels of corn land or labour produces the larger part. 
 All such questions as this, however, he declares to be 
 void of meaning; and he explains this statement by 
 laying down the following principle. Whenever two 
 causes, however different otherwise, are both so neces- 
 sary to the production of what he calls "the effect" 
 that this (which in the present case is agricultural 
 produce) could, if either were wanting, not be produced 
 at all, it is idle to say that most of it is produced by one 
 or the other, for the absence of either would make the 
 difference between the production of a given effect or 
 none. Thus, he adds by way of illustration, it is idle 
 to ask whether, if 2 be multiplied by 10, the 2 or the 10 
 does most in producing the number 20 ; for if either the 
 10 or the 2 no matter which were altered, the pro- 
 duction of the 20 would be equally out of the question. 
 This argument which Mill applies to land and labour is 
 that which is now applied by the theorists of industrial 
 democracy to average manual labourers and "the mono- 
 polists of ability " who direct them. 
 
 Now, if we make certain suppositions, the argument 
 of Mill is correct. One of these is that land is a constant 
 quantity, the other is that "the effect" is a constant 
 quantity also. Thus, if there were only one acre of land 
 in the world, and if the effect were always twenty bushels 
 of corn or nothing, it would doubtless be impossible to 
 say that the land produced more bushels than the 
 
118 LIMITS OF PURE DEMOCRACY 
 
 labourer or the labourer more bushels than the land. 
 But in the actual world of agriculture there is not one 
 acre only; there are many which acres vary greatly in 
 quality. Further, the joint produce of an acre of land 
 and a labourer is not a given number of bushels or 
 nothing. The whole question of produce is a question 
 of less or more ; and if the same labourer were trans- 
 ferred from a bad acre to a better one, and if thereupon 
 "the effect" rose from twenty bushels to thirty, we 
 should at once be able to say that, in a very practical 
 sense, the extra ten bushels were the product, not of the 
 labourer, but of the land. Indeed, Mill elsewhere insists 
 on this very fact himself ; for in one of his own chapters 
 he explains with great lucidity that an extra product of 
 this kind is distinguishable as economic rent, and goes 
 to the recipient solely because the land is his. On the 
 same principle, the matter may be put conversely. If 
 the same acre of land is tilled successively by two dif- 
 ferent labourers, and if when it is tilled by the one there 
 is a product of twenty bushels, and when it is tilled by 
 the other there is a product of thirty, we are able to say 
 that, in a strictly practical sense, the extra product is 
 produced by the superior efficiency of the second. 
 
 And the same argument applies to the industrial pro- 
 cess generally in respect of the parts now played by the 
 manual workers on the one hand and the mental direc- 
 torate on the other. If the producers of any commodity 
 let us say, for example, boots were always one small 
 group of nineteen manual labourers, whilst a twentieth 
 man directed them; and if "the effect" of their joint 
 efforts were always the same likewise say, forty pairs 
 of boots in a week; and if, moreover, unless the tale of 
 forty pairs of boots were completed, the whole output 
 would be worthless or would vanish into thin air; it 
 would then be impossible to say that the director pro- 
 duces more boots than any one of his workers or fewer. 
 But if the director absented himself for a year, and his 
 place was taken by a labourer no better and no worse 
 than the rest, and if thereupon the weekly product fell 
 from forty pairs of boots, not to none, but to twenty 
 pairs ; and if, when the director returned and resumed 
 his duties, the product forthwith rose from twenty pairs 
 
PRACTICAL CAUSATION 119 
 
 of boots to forty ; we should then be able to say that, in 
 a very practical sense, that twenty pairs of boots were 
 the product of the director alone. In other words, any 
 mental director of a group of co-operating workers pro- 
 duces so much of the joint output as would cease to be 
 produced if his mental functions were suspended, and 
 would be produced again when the exercise of these 
 functions was renewed. 
 
 Those, however, whose object is to evade this conclu- 
 sion will endeavour to do so by the method of a reductio 
 ad absurdum thus. If it is true, they will say, that the 
 mental director of labour produces so much of a product 
 as the labourers whom he directs could not have pro- 
 duced without him let us say one-half of it it must 
 be equally true that the labourers produce the whole, 
 because in the absence of the labourers the director 
 could have produced nothing. This argument, though 
 absolutely worthless, is interesting and demands atten- 
 tion; for its worthlessness is due to a fact which is not 
 superficially apparent. Its worthlessness lies in the fact 
 that it is false to the essential principle on which all 
 reasoning of a practical kind rests. All reasoning which 
 precedes and determines action is in its very nature 
 hypothetical, and reduces itself to the following formula : 
 " If I do this or that particular thing it will be the cause 
 of this or that result." Thus a man, if he puts a match 
 to shavings, reasons that if he does so he will cause them 
 to catch fire. When a man, seeing a fire, throws a 
 bucket of water over it, he reasons that if he does so he 
 will cause the fire to cease. But there is another kind 
 of reasoning namely, that of the thinker whose province 
 is not action, but speculation; and for him neither tjie 
 match nor the water will have been the cause of the 
 results in question. They will each of them have been 
 but one cause out of countless causes all equally neces- 
 sary, such as those which have caused water and trees to 
 exist, the action of gravity, and the existence and com- 
 position of the atmosphere. But with causes such as 
 these the practical reason has no concern whatever. 
 The man who applies the match and the man who 
 applies the water do not ask what would happen if the 
 law of gravitation were suspended, or if water, wood, 
 
120 LIMITS OF PURE DEMOCRACY 
 
 and air became things other than they are. Out of a 
 countless number of hypotheses they concern themselves 
 with two only. On what principle, then, is this selection 
 made ? The answer is that the hypotheses with which 
 practical reason concerns itself relate to such acts alone 
 as on any given occasion may either be performed or 
 not be performed, according as the practical reason of 
 human beings determines. 
 
 Let us now apply this principle to the two special 
 hypotheses with which we are here concerned namely, 
 those relating to labour and a purely mental directorate. 
 We shall see that, in computing the product of any 
 director of labour as so much of the total as would not 
 be produced on the hypothesis that he ceased to direct, 
 we are arguing in accordance with the laws of practical 
 reason; but if we argue on the counter-hypothesis, that 
 the labourers ceased to labour, we are indulging in a 
 speculation which practically has no meaning at all ; for 
 the first hypothesis represents a practical possibility, 
 the second does not. The labourers as a whole can 
 never cease to labour, except for very brief periods, for 
 if they ceased to labour they would die, and nothing 
 would be left to reason about ; but the direction of labour 
 by the Mind of a non-labouring class is in its present 
 form a purely modern phenomena. Mankind existed 
 for thousands of years without it, and if it disappeared 
 to-morrow mankind would exist still. 
 
 Hence, to say that all wealth is produced by Society 
 that is, by the labour and the mental director jointly 
 is no doubt true enough; but, except for one special 
 purpose, with which we will deal presently, it is a truth 
 that tells us nothing. What we want to know is, not 
 how much these agents produce jointly, but how much 
 the second adds to the product of the first. To say that 
 all wealth is a social product is like saying that malaria 
 is a local product. Malaria prevails in some countries, 
 it does not prevail in others. All countries are, in many 
 respects, alike. All must possess, for example, soil, air, 
 and sunshine. Were any of these absent malaria would 
 be absent also; therefore, all these things in a sense are 
 its joint causes. But since malaria prevails in certain 
 localities only, some cause must be present there which 
 
CAUSALITY OF THE FEW 121 
 
 is not present elsewhere ; and if malaria is an evil which 
 men desire to extirpate, they must concern themselves 
 with the identification of this exceptional cause alone. 
 That cause, it has now been discovered, is a fly. If the 
 fly is extirpated, malaria disappears along with it. If 
 the fly returns, malaria reappears also. Thus the prac- 
 tical reason concerns itself with this cause alone, for it 
 is the only cause in respect of which human beings can 
 take action. They can get rid of the fly, but they 
 cannot get rid of earth, air, and sunshine. If we substi- 
 tute for malaria, as a product which we desire to abolish, 
 an increased output of wealth, as a product which we 
 desire to retain, the case is just the same. We may 
 compare the directors of labour to so many malarial 
 flies. Wherever one settles the industrial output is 
 increased ; and just as the fly is practically the one cause 
 of malaria, so is the director practically the one cause of 
 the increment not of the total product, but of just so 
 much of the total as may happen to appear and to 
 disappear along with him. 
 
 The application of this argument is, however, as was 
 just now observed, limited by one exception. When it 
 is said that all wealth is produced by society, the word 
 " society," if it stands for more than a mere abstraction, 
 must be used to designate some society or societies in 
 particular, such, for example, as the English, French, 
 or German. Now if, as happens in war time, one society 
 has, either as an ally or an enemy, to consider the 
 efficiency of another from the standpoint of an outside 
 observer, then to say that the latter society, as a whole, 
 produces so much is a really informative statement. It 
 is so for this reason that the great practical question 
 for such an observer is, not how this total is produced, 
 but the mere fact of its production. But for each 
 society, in respect of its own internal forces and in 
 times of war this is specially obvious the practical 
 question is what are the agents of production when these 
 are considered separately, and what, when so considered, 
 is the nature of their interaction; for it is only when 
 matters are considered in this way that the conditions 
 which will result in a maximum product are discoverable. 
 
 For those, then, who desire to understand what, 
 
122 LIMITS OF PURE DEMOCRACY 
 
 within any given society, different men, different classes 
 of men, or different kinds of productive effort, contribute 
 severally to the product of the society as a whole, to 
 answer that the product as a whole is produced by 
 society as a whole, is not to throw any light on the work- 
 ings of these different parts, but simply to hide them 
 from observation under the tarpaulin of a barren 
 platitude. 
 
 The proposition that the wealth of a society is pro- 
 duced by that society itself comes, if not absolutely 
 barren, to no more than this that modern production 
 requires co-operation of some kind, or that wealth as the 
 world now knows it cannot be produced by a solitary. 
 Here we have a principle which is applicable, not to 
 industry alone, but to nine-tenths of all possible human 
 conduct. If a man lives absolutely alone, he cannot 
 commit murder, for no one exists into whom he can 
 stick a knife. It is equally obvious that he cannot 
 commit perjury, for nobody exists to whom he can tell 
 a lie. He cannot exhibit the virtue of unselfishness, for 
 the only person in whose interests he can act is himself. 
 Such being the case, it is obviously true, in a sense, that 
 murder is a social product, that perjury is a social 
 product, and that heroic self-sacrifice is a social product 
 likewise. But would this mean that if, out of so many 
 thousand men, three excite horror by murder or false 
 swearing, or public admiration by acts of unusual 
 heroism, all are equally criminals and equally moral 
 heroes ? If this were true, a murdered man should be 
 hanged along with his murderer, for the latter could not 
 have killed him if he had not been there to kill. A 
 government which made such an assumption would be 
 a government fit for Bedlam. 
 
 And what is true of moral action is equally true (,f 
 industrial. In the estimation of industrial forces, as 
 in the administration of legal justice, that which has 
 to be dealt with is the voluntary actions, and the results 
 of the actions, of individuals. If a society of workers 
 in which one man directs the many produces more than 
 a society in which the many direct themselves, it is idle 
 to say that society is as truly the producer of the larger 
 product as of the less. The sole question is, what pro- 
 
CALCULUS OF PRODUCTION 123 
 
 duces the excess of the one product over the other ? 
 And here we are brought to the answer already given. 
 The excess is produced by one man namely, the direc- 
 tor, the presence or the absence of whose activities is the 
 only element which differentiates one society from the 
 other. The extra output is produced by that one man 
 as truly as malaria is produced by the presence of the 
 malarial fly. 
 
 This method of reasoning is no mere exercise in the 
 logic of remote speculation, like that of the Industrial 
 Monists. It is the instinctive and inevitable reasoning 
 of all practical men. This fact has been brought into 
 prominence by the great European war, as though it 
 were lit up by successive flashes of lightning. War, to 
 an extent never before paralleled, has become a war of 
 intellectual industries as well as a war of armies. In 
 every belligerent country it has made ceaseless demands 
 on industrial intellect in both of its two main forms 
 the intellect which shows itself in scientific invention, 
 and the intellect which shows itself in the scientific 
 organisation of men ; and the demand for each, wherever 
 it has found utterance, has always couched itself in the 
 same inevitable terms. The cry of all parties alike has 
 not been a cry addressing itself to "society," to "the 
 people themselves," or to the mass of average men. 
 It has been a cry for individuals who stand out from 
 the mass, and are able to do what the average man 
 cannot do. With regard to the mechanisms of war, such 
 as (to quote an example which has here been used 
 already) an anti-aircraft gun, what England has cried 
 out for has been, in the common-sense words of a 
 prominent London journal, "a new inventive brain, 
 capable of large generalisations, and capable of applying 
 them in detail." With regard to the organisation of the 
 mass of average workers, these being already in exist- 
 ence, and equipped with their normal faculties, the 
 demand has been for exceptional brains likewise, which 
 shall organise these men anew in accordance with new 
 requirements. When the food-problem in Germany first 
 threatened to become urgent, this demand found clearer 
 and more instant expression nowhere than it did in the 
 leading journal of the Social Democrats themselves. 
 
124 LIMITS OF PURE DEMOCRACY 
 
 " What Germany wants," said Vorwarts, " in the present 
 internal crisis is one man of large knowledge and 
 supreme business ability." And what do such demands 
 mean demands which the stress of circumstance has 
 purged of fantastic theory, and restored to that common 
 sense by which all men are naturally guided whether 
 they recognise the fact or no ? Such demands mean, 
 when translated into terms of their implications, that, 
 if Society is to act efficiently, the mass of average 
 workers, of which society is mainly composed, must 
 group themselves for industrial purposes, not primarily 
 Jas Marx said) round this or round that great mechan- 
 ism, but round certain centres of control which are the 
 intellects and localised influence of exceptionally able 
 men. 
 
 Let us suppose, then, that some exceptional man 
 devises a mechanism or weapon of such power and pre- 
 cision that the course of a war is altered in favour of 
 the country using it. Would any one say that the part 
 played by a man like this was not distinguishable and 
 not greater than that which was played by others who 
 could merely cry out for his appearance, or who helped 
 to construct this weapen in accordance with the in- 
 ventor's orders? The refutation of such an opinion is 
 embedded in the very language in which ordinary 
 thought expresses itself. Everybody would instinctively 
 say, with regard to the fortunes of war, that the appear- 
 ance of a man like this "had made all the difference." 
 If the case were one, not of a change in the fortunes of 
 war, but of an addition to the national output of 
 common comforts and luxuries, everybody would say 
 precisely the same thing, with the alteration of one word 
 only. Everybody would say that this man had not 
 "made" all the difference, but had "produced" it 
 the difference being the difference between a larger 
 output and a less. 
 
 Such being the case, then, it must always be borne 
 in mind that in every industrial system which yields 
 a return sufficient to keep the workers alive, the demo- 
 cratic principle, as embodied in the hands of the self- 
 directed workers themselves, and producing a certain 
 minimum, must always be assumed as a starting-point, 
 
GENIUS EQUALS OLIGARCHY 125 
 
 and is necessarily always present. The sole point here 
 insisted on is, that all modern additions to this 
 minimum, which itself is approximately constant, are 
 contingent on the direction of the labourers by a purely 
 intellectual class, or (as Mr. Webb calls them) "the 
 natural monopolists of the best business ability." In 
 other words, Industrial Democracy is not an impossible 
 system of production, but it is an inefficient system. It 
 is the system of the world in its babyhood. Industry, 
 after a certain early stage of progress has been reached, 
 grows in efficiency in proportion as it ceases to be purely 
 democratic, and becomes a system in which two distin- 
 guishable principles the democratic and the oligarchic 
 the average intelligences of mankind, and the excep- 
 tional intelligences interact. It is true that, even if 
 the labourers worked solely under their own direction, 
 none of them issuing any orders to others, a certain 
 minority of them would be appreciably more productive 
 than the rest. But the larger products of individuals 
 such as these would be merely like so many molehills 
 which, though lifting themselves here and there, did 
 nothing to alter the general level of a field. " Society," 
 or "the people themselves," may, in their capacity of 
 producers, be compared to a regiment of soldiers ordered 
 to move across country to a given spot by night, and 
 possessing in its ranks one man who can see by night 
 as well as he can by day. If such a man directs his 
 own movements only, he may reach the spot in question 
 with the utmost ease and promptitude ; but unless he is 
 able by his orders to direct the movements of the rest, 
 the mass will be left helpless to flounder or drown in 
 ditches. The same is the case in industry. If a thou- 
 sand men of average vision are to derive any benefit 
 whatever from the presence amongst them of one man 
 of exceptional vision, one man must issue orders to a 
 thousand, and the thousand must obey one man; and 
 if this is not oligarchy as definitely distinct from demo- 
 cracy, there is not, and never has been, such a thing 
 as oligarchy in the world. 
 
 That such" are really the essential facts of the situation 
 is now being admitted, as Professor Michels shows, by 
 various revolutionary writers without any attempt to 
 
126 LIMITS OF PURE DEMOCRACY 
 
 disguise the matter. The Italian syndicalist, Labriola, 
 insists, as we have seen already, that political progress 
 can never be the work of the multitude, but can be 
 accomplished only by "an dlite who alone can judge of 
 the interaction of social cause and effect"; and what 
 this writer says with regard to political government, 
 other revolutionary writers are now saying with regard 
 to industry. Thus Kautsky, who in some respects is a 
 professed follower of Marx, dismisses as impossible the 
 application of the democratic principle to commerce. 
 Commerce, or commercial distribution (which is pro- 
 duction in its final stage) is, he says, "outside the 
 competence of the rank and file." We may talk, he 
 proceeds, of this or that commercial business as " co- 
 operative "; but in the cases to which this name is 
 applied, the conduct of affairs is really in the hands of 
 a few managers, unless, indeed, "the customer can be 
 said to co-operate with the shopman " whenever a bit 
 of ribbon changes hands over the counter. Another 
 socialist critic, speaking of a business at Ghent, which 
 claims to be a great example of successful co-operation 
 or democracy, declares that " it bears in every detail 
 the imprint of the strong will that has created it. The 
 one man who is its master issues his orders in the 
 brusque and imperious tone of a bourgeois captain of 
 industry; and this is what he practically is." It has, 
 says Professor Michels, been claimed that in societies 
 for co-operative manufacture, true co-operation is theo- 
 retically far more practicable than in commerce. He 
 goes on, however, to observe herein agreeing absolutely 
 with the argument of the present work that this claim 
 is valid for groups of workers only, whose numbers are 
 small, and whose methods are of the simplest kind- 
 such, for example, as ten or twelve village cobblers 
 cutting and stitching leather at the back of a small 
 shop. But as soon as such an industry increases, and 
 endeavours by the aid of science to secure a larger out- 
 put per head of the workers engaged in it, the case 
 entirely changes. Technical subordination begins, and 
 equal co-operation ends. Thus, he says, one of the 
 foremost leaders of the labour movement in Italy has 
 expressed himself to the following effect : " We have 
 
SOCIALIST EVASIONS 127 
 
 learned by prolonged experience that those businesses 
 only can survive which are headed by a good organiser. 
 Categories of the most various trades, found in the most 
 diverse environments, have been unable to secure organ- 
 isation and to live through crises, except in so far as 
 they have been able to find first-class men to manage 
 their affairs." 
 
 Now, all this is substantially what is said by Mr. 
 Webb himself. "In any complex system of industry " 
 such as that which prevails to-day, the efficiency of the 
 workers as a whole is the average efficiencies of the Many 
 multiplied by the efficiencies of the Few the Few whom 
 he describes as "the natural monopolists" of ability, 
 and whose function is to issue orders, whilst that of the 
 Many is to execute them with "strict obedience." 
 
 Why, then, do he and other democratic reformers 
 endeavour to hide this fact by declaring that, " accord- 
 ing to a growing consensus of opinion," the inevitable 
 outcome of democracy " is the " control " of production \J 
 by "Society," or "the people themselves"? If "the 
 people themselves " include the directing few, produc- 
 tion is controlled by the people themselves already. If 
 the people themselves are the masses, as distinct from 
 the few and excluding them, then, according to Mr. 
 Webb's own opinion, and a growing consensus of revolu- 
 tionary opinion generally, no efficient production by 
 "the people themselves" is possible. For what con- 
 ceivable reason, then, can men not deficient in intelli- 
 gence, who have seen with very fair clearness what the 
 nature of the situation is, have betaken themselves to 
 reasonings and formulae such as those which we have 
 just examined, and which are practically useless except 
 for the purpose of obscuring it ? The answer to this 
 question will be indicated in the following chapter, and 
 it will carry us on directly to inquiries of a new order. 
 
BOOK III 
 
 DEMOCRATIC DISTRIBUTION AS RELATED TO THE 
 FACTS OF PRODUCTION 
 
 CHAPTER I 
 
 DISTRIBUTION IN ENGLAND 
 
 THE explanation of the curious fact that the demo- 
 cratic doctrinaires of to-day, having come to admit that 
 an efficient system of production involves at all events 
 a large element of oligarchy, should endeavour to obscure 
 this truth under a veil of pseudo-philosophic or wholly 
 irrelevant platitudes, is not to be found in any mental 
 defect on their part which renders them liable to 
 oscillate between sound reasoning and unsound. It is 
 to be found in the ultimate object which they practically 
 have in view. Their object is not to establish any theory 
 of production, however true, for its own sake. Their 
 object is to provide, as an instrument of popular agita- 
 tion, some basis in principle for a certain popular 
 demand a demand which relates, not to the process 
 of production, but to the manner in which the products 
 are, and the manner in which they ought to be, 
 distributed. 
 
 The content of this demand, which in all countries 
 is the same, is plainly expressed in the latter of the two 
 clauses which make up Mr. Webb's account of "the 
 inevitable outcome of democracy." Having said that 
 the immediate outcome is the control of production by 
 what he calls "the people themselves," he goes on to 
 explain that the ultimate end in view is the "recovery 
 by the people themselves " of a certain share of the 
 product which is, under the existing system, appropriated 
 by mere "possessors." 
 
 128 
 
INCOME FROM POSSESSION 129 
 
 The demand thus indicated will, as has been said 
 already, be found to derive all its significance from 
 certain propositions as to fact which are contained in 
 it by way of implication. These implied propositions 
 are as follows : 
 
 (1) In all the civilised countries of the modern world, 
 a few men, commonly called "the rich," over and above 
 any income which they may produce by their own 
 abilities and enterprise, appropriate a secondary income, 
 in the production of which they have played no part 
 whatever. 
 
 (2) The whole of this secondary income is produced 
 by "the people themselves "by the efforts present or 
 past of the units of the average mass; and as soon as 
 the people come to own the means of production they 
 will "recover "it. 
 
 (3) This secondary income, regarded as a " share of the 
 total produce," is so " enormous " that the " recovery " 
 of it by "the people " is, "according to a growing 
 consensus of opinion," the sole objective of Democracy 
 throughout the modern world, and will, when accom- 
 plished, metamorphose the whole character of social life. 
 
 The core of these propositions is obviously contained 
 in the last, which asserts the immense magnitude of the 
 "share" awaiting recovery, and the extent to which 
 the people must have hitherto been underpaid. Every- 
 body knows that in all civilised countries some share 
 of the national produce goes to persons who are mere 
 "possessors," for otherwise nothing in the nature of a 
 leisured class could exist. The practical question is the 
 quantitative question of " What share ? " Neither Mill, 
 nor Mr. Webb, nor any of the thinkers who agree with 
 them, assert, as Marx did, that the Many produce every- 
 thing and the exceptional Few nothing, or that any man 
 who is rich must be ipso facto a thief. On the contrary, 
 they admit that "the Rich," or at all events the active 
 section of them, produce or earn a "share" which, 
 relatively to their numbers, is considerable a share 
 which Mill describes as "the wages of the employers' 
 superintendence," which Mr. Webb and others describe 
 as "the rent of their ability," and which American 
 statisticians and economists describe as "gains from 
 
130 LIMITS OF PURE DEMOCRACY 
 
 the effort of the entrepreneur." The essence of the 
 democratic contention is that, whatever the amount of 
 this earned share may be, the few Rich in any case get 
 a great deal more than their earnings, and the People 
 get a great deal less; and the practical object of the 
 exponents of the democratic idea is to persuade the 
 People that the "share" of which they are thus de- 
 frauded is something so vast that it is well worth their 
 while to do and to dare everything in order to gain 
 possession of it. Since, however, as we have seen, it 
 is no longer possible to deny in serious argument the 
 exceptional productivity of the Few, and their conse- 
 quent rights to an exceptional " share " of some sort, 
 the doctrinaires of Democracy have betaken themselves 
 to every possible device by which the exceptional pro- 
 ductivity of the Few, though it cannot be denied, may 
 be obscured, as being a fact which, if too clearly recog- 
 nised, would lower the temperature of the passions to 
 which the doctrinaires make appeal. 
 
 Here, then, we have the origin of those ludicrous or 
 platitudinous theories which aim at representing the 
 productivity of unequal men as equal on the ground 
 that all of them are creatures of a common biological 
 process, or are all alike parts of some national aggregate. 
 These are theories which, as applied to practical life, 
 are so absolutely insane and futile, except for the one 
 purpose of fomenting popular passion, that not even the 
 most rabid of democrats would dream of applying them 
 for a day to his dealings with his own household, in 
 respect even of such trivial matters as the choice of a 
 wife or cook, or the bringing up of his children. Indeed, 
 as we shall see presently, such methods of argument are 
 now being rapidly abandoned by the doctrinaires of 
 democracy themselves for others which, though similar 
 in their practical purport, are deduced intellectually and 
 morally from a wholly different principle. Meanwhile 
 there is one proposition to which, in some form or other, 
 they adhere with unabated tenacity. This is the pro- 
 position, relating not to principle but to fact, that of 
 " the total produce " or income of every modern country 
 the share appropriated by the "Rich," over and above 
 what certain of them may earn by their own ability, 
 
ENGLISH UNEARNED INCOME 131 
 
 is of such a magnitude that no revolution would be too 
 hazardous which promised the mass of the workers even 
 a remote prospect of "recovering it." 
 
 Now this proposition, whatever be its exact sense, 
 may quite imaginably be true. It is impossible to say 
 a priori that the great mass of the producers in any one 
 country or in all are not defrauded of some share of their 
 products, or whether, if they are so defrauded, this share 
 deserves the name "enormous " or no. We can reach 
 a conclusion only by an examination of concrete facts; 
 and if we find that, under such conditions as are now 
 prevalent, the products are, as a fact, systematically 
 and not merely by accident, mal-distributed in the way 
 described, we shall have to consider by what principles 
 the systematic mal-distribution is determined, and in 
 what way and how far democratic action can alter them. 
 But the broad facts of the case are what we must deal 
 with first, and we can deal with them only as embodied 
 in some typical instance or instances. The best instance 
 to begin with will be naturally that of the country in 
 which the modern industrial system has been on trial 
 for the longest time, and of which, moreover, the statis- 
 tical records are sufficiently comprehensive and precise. 
 It has been commonly admitted by socialists of all 
 nations that no country could be chosen which fulfils 
 these conditions more signally than the United Kingdom. 
 Let us take, then, the case of the United Kingdom as 
 (to speak roughly) it was about the year 1907, this year 
 being the central year of a quinquennium with regard 
 to which statistics are available of an exceptionally 
 ample kind. 
 
 Two methods of investigation, each independent of i 
 the other, 1 united to show that the net income of the * 
 
 1 Prior to the year 1907 the national income was computed, firstly 
 on the hasis of wage-rates recorded as current amongst various classes 
 of workers, and the number of workers comprehended in each class ; 
 and secondly on the basis of the records relating to income-tax, which 
 deal mainly, though not entirely, with incomes exceeding 160 a year. 
 About the year 1905 statisticians had come to the conclusion that the 
 then income of the United Kingdom was somewhat in excess of 2000 
 million pounds. In the year 1907 a novel inquiry was instituted that 
 is to say, a f{ Census of Production " which took no cognisance of 
 individual incomes at all, but dealt only with the net selling value of 
 
132 LIMITS OF PURE DEMOCRACY 
 
 United Kingdom in the year 1907 amounted approxi- 
 mately to 2100 million pounds, of which it is ascertain- 
 able from the records relating to income-tax that 790 
 (or, let us say 800) million was made up of net incomes 
 in excess of 160, whilst 1300 million was the sum of 
 incomes below that figure. 
 
 Now all the individual receipts which made up this 
 grand total were derived by the recipients either from 
 the mere possession of property, or from personal effort 
 of some kind, or in part from one of these sources, and 
 in part, also, from the other. Let us deal with the total 
 derived from personal effort or, as it is commonly 
 called, "earned income " first. 
 
 The kinds of effort by which, in a modern society, 
 incomes are earned may be broadly reduced to five. 
 
 Firstly, the effort of manual workers, most of whom 
 work for wages. 1 
 
 Secondly, the effort of mental workers, such as school- 
 teachers, government functionaries, and business clerks 
 or managers, who work for wages commonly called 
 salaries. 
 
 Thirdly, the effort of independent professional men 
 who, as to the details of their work, are practically their 
 own masters. 
 
 Fourthly, the effort of the very small employers who 
 not only direct their employees (very few in number), 
 but also share their work. 
 
 Fifthly, the effort of the larger employers, who alone 
 are typical of the modern industrial system, and whose 
 sole connection with their employees consists in the 
 task, purely mental, of directing them. 
 
 Let us begin with the income derived from ordinary 
 manual and from salaried mental effort. This may be 
 
 the products of each of the industries and gainful services of the 
 country, and arrived at the total income by putting all these values 
 together. These values yielded about 2100 million pounds as the 
 net national income ; thus confirming the result of those independent 
 methods according to which the total, a few years before, had been 
 between 2000 and 2100 million pounds. 
 
 1 In this class are comprised certain independent workers, such as 
 the village blacksmith, and small farmers who rarely use hired labour, 
 but normally cultivate their holdings witli the aid of their own families. 
 The class comprises domestic servants also. 
 
ENGLISH EARNED INCOME 133 
 
 taken as comprising the aggregate namely, 1300 
 million pounds of incomes not exceeding 160 a year, 
 to which must be added about 150 million, ear-marked 
 and analysed by the Commissioners of Inland Revenue, 
 as the salaries of those mental workers whose total 
 incomes range from 160 upwards. Thus wages, in the 
 wider sense of the word, amounted in all to about 1450 
 million pounds, or 70 per cent, of the entire produce of 
 the nation. To this sum must be added the earnings 
 of professional men, and those of the smaller employers. 
 The aggregate of professional earnings was, according 
 to a common estimate, something like 60 million, and 
 the net gains of the partners in the smaller business 
 firms gains which averaged less than 300 per partner 
 were in the aggregate something like 50 million. It is 
 impossible to distinguish between these two categories 
 with exactitude, but together they made up a total of 
 about 110 million; and if this sum be added to wages 
 and salaries, we have an income identifiable as earned 
 which did not amount to less than 1560 million, 1 or 
 75 per cent, of what is described by Mill as "the total 
 produce " of the nation. 
 
 To this sum must be added the profits of the larger 
 businesses, in so far as these are the result of the active 
 ability of the principal and controlling partners, and are 
 not mere interest on capital as held by the outside 
 public. Such businesses are here taken as including all 
 whose gross profits exceeded 1000. Nearly all of them 
 were constituted in the form of firms or companies. 
 
 1 Those who desire to work out these figures for themselves should 
 consult the analytical reports of the Commissioners of Inland Revenue 
 for the years 1905-10, especially the Synopses of Incomes, Schedules D 
 and E. It should be noted that what are called ' ' the gross amounts 
 reviewed " include about 200 million pounds which form no part of 
 net incomes exceeding 160, but are made up of outgoings and 
 small incomes not subject to tax. In the case of business incomes 
 (Schedule D) these deductions must be carefully distributed, as some of 
 them (e. g. allowances for wear and tear of machinery) are applicable 
 only to businesses of a certain kind. The 60 million pounds, given in 
 the text as the estimated earnings of some 200,000 professional men, 
 are taken as being included in incomes classified as being earned by 
 "Persons," the purely business profits being mainly, though not 
 wholly, comprised in profits recorded as those of " Private Firms " 
 and "Companies." 
 
134 LIMITS OF PURE DEMOCRACY 
 
 Their aggregate profits at the period here in question 
 amounted, in round figures, to 300 million pounds; and 
 of this sum, as will be shown in detail presently, about 
 half was interest on capital, and the other half, or 150 
 million, was the product directly resulting from the 
 ability of the controlling partners. Thus, to the income 
 already specified as earned, this further sum of 150 
 million must be added, the total earned by direct and 
 daily renewed effort being thereby raised to 1710, or 
 (in round figures) to 1700 million pounds out of an entire 
 national income of 2100 million. 
 
 Of the remaining 400 million * (so we may roughly 
 call it, although in reality it was less) which was proxi- 
 mately derived by its recipients from the mere possession 
 of property, about 240 million consisted of the rents of 
 buildings, building sites, agricultural land with its im- 
 provements, and interest on certain stocks, mainly 
 foreign, which was paid by governments, or agents 
 acting on their behalf, whilst the residue about 150 
 million, as has just now been said represented the 
 interest on shares held by the general public in the larger 
 businesses of the kingdom. 
 
 The nature, the composition and the magnitude of this 
 proximately unearned income have, however, been the 
 subject of so many popular misconceptions that the 
 figures here given, and their significance, must be 
 examined in greater detail. 
 
 Of these misconceptions the most obvious and familiar 
 is the following, which largely accounts for the over- 
 estimates often made of the magnitude of the unearned 
 total. It relates to the notorious fact that business 
 enterprises for the most part are, under modern con- 
 ditions, organised in the form of companies, and largely 
 worked with capital provided by mere investors. Now, 
 the doctrine which is popular on democratic platforms 
 to-day is that, when businesses were mostly small, and 
 the capital was owned by the person, or two or three 
 
 1 The above total of nearly 400 million of income from possession 
 is exclusive of about 50 million ear-marked in the official returns as 
 
 foing to persons whose total incomes do not exceed 160. This sum 
 eing distributed already amongst " the workers/' it cannot form part 
 of any sum which democracy can aim at " recovering " from them. 
 
EARNED INCOME OF COMPANIES 135 
 
 persons who administered it, the profits might be fairly 
 attributed to the efforts of such persons themselves ; but 
 that ever since the rise of the modern company system 
 the whole situation has in this respect been changed. In 
 the case of any large company so the argument runs 
 the employer who controls the business in his capacity 
 of predominant partner is altogether eliminated; his 
 services are relegated to a manager whose salary figures 
 in the wage-bill, and the total profits are interest pure 
 and simple, going to a body of shareholders who know 
 nothing about the business whatsoever, except in so 
 far as it yields them a larger or smaller dividend. Should 
 this argument be correct, the proximately unearned total 
 would be raised from 400 million to 550. Now, as 
 applied to certain companies, of which railways are the 
 chief example, it is doubtless correct enough; but if 
 applied to companies generally it is nothing better than 
 nonsense. Can any one suppose that all the novel in- 
 ventions and conveniences which have been placed at 
 the disposal of mankind by the enterprise of modern 
 companies have been simply due to the entrusting by 
 idle and inexpert persons of so much money to the hands 
 of wage-paid managers, who forthwith proceed to use 
 it in any manner they please ? If things stood really 
 thus, the growth of wealth would be a charmingly simple 
 process. Any section of the investing public, having 
 deposited its sovereigns in a bank, would merely have 
 to issue an advertisement to some such effect as this : 
 "A Company having been formed with a capital of a 
 million pounds for the production of something new, 
 useful and marvellous, a Manager is wanted to settle 
 what this something shall be, and to supervise its pro- 
 duction. Salary 5000 a year. As the shareholders 
 know nothing about any kind of business themselves, 
 and are quite incapable of judging between man and 
 man, the first applicant will be accepted." 
 
 Such an idea is ludicrous. Nevertheless, the fact 
 remains that the growth of the company system has 
 given rise to a question which is really of extreme im- 
 portance, and is practically novel on account of its novel 
 magnitude. This is the question of what, in the profits 
 of the larger companies, is the average proportion borne 
 
136 LIMITS OF PURE DEMOCRACY 
 
 by interest on mere investment to the earning or pro- 
 ducts of the ability of the active and controlling partners. 
 An answer to this question was attempted by the German 
 economist Wagon, which was based on the business 
 records of a number of selected companies, so far as 
 these records were accessible to the inquiry of a private 
 person. He found, as might be expected, that the ratio 
 of the product of the activity of the controlling partners 
 to what he described as " company gain," or interest, 
 varied greatly in different cases, and he does not appear 
 to have arrived at any general average. Evidence, 
 however, of a very much ampler kind namely, that 
 provided by the official statistics of America was 
 tabulated in the year 1914 by Dr. W. S. King, Professor 
 of Statistics in the University of Wisconsin. In Dr. 
 King's tables the gains of all businesses are divided 
 into three portions, described respectively as Rent, or 
 "the value-product attributable to sites and buildings " ; 
 " Interest, or the value-product attributable to plant or 
 mechanical equipment"; and "Profits," which term 
 is defined as " the value-product attributable to the 
 efforts of entrepreneurs." Thus, "Rent" and "In- 
 terest " together correspond to what Wagon calls " Com- 
 pany gains," or income from mere possession; whilst 
 "Profits " are the product of the ability of the active 
 and controlling employers, or (to use Mill's language) 
 "the wages of the employers' superintendence." Such 
 being the case, the total gains of all the industrial and 
 commercial undertakings in the United States, in the 
 year 1910, were, according to these fables, about 1900 
 million pounds, of which 850 million consisted of rent 
 and interest, and 1050 million consisted of the product 
 of " the efforts of the entrepreneurs." In the year 1900, 
 though the figures were much lower, the proportion was 
 substantially the same. It would thus seem, from the 
 results of a scientific analysis of the greatest mass of 
 contemporary data in the world, that of the total gains 
 of businesses, industrial and commercial of to-day, the 
 collective product 1 of the efforts of the active employers 
 
 1 How greatly the proportions which yield this general average vary 
 in particular cases may be seen from the following examples. The pro- 
 portion of the total gain attributable to the "efforts of the entrepre- 
 
MEANING OF EARNED INCOME 137 
 
 is about 55 per cent., and those of the investing public 
 45 per cent. 
 
 We shall, therefore, probably be under the mark rather 
 than over it if we assume, as we have done here, that, 
 in the United Kingdom at the period here in question, 
 of the total net gains of the larger firms and companies 
 that is to say, 300 million pounds as much as half was 
 the product of the efforts of the employers, and that not 
 more than a half went as interest to the mere investor. 
 
 But it is not only in respect of the profits of Companies 
 that popular thought as to unearned income errs. 
 Another error is prevalent which relates to the con- 
 ception of unearned income generally. It is no doubt 
 true, as popular thought assumes, that all income not 
 earned or produced by direct effort is necessarily income 
 from possession; but all income from possession is not 
 necessarily unearned. There are many kinds of effort, 
 such as efforts devoted to the perfecting of some great 
 invention, which, until they are ended, produce prac- 
 tically nothing. Not till an invention is so complete 
 in design that it is fit to be multiplied by manufacture 
 and put into general use does it come into being as a 
 something which adds to the world's wealth, or can 
 bring to the inventor any reward whatever. When it is 
 completed, he sells the right of producing it, we may 
 so suppose, to a company, which pays him in shares to 
 the value (let us say) of 30,000, and he thenceforth 
 enjoys an income of 1500 a year without the necessity 
 on his part for any further effort of any kind. Such 
 income would take the form of income from mere pos- 
 session ; but anybody who maintained that it was not 
 truly earned could do so only by committing himself to 
 the impossible principle that no effort, however long and 
 laborious, which results in the production of any per- 
 manent utility, can possibly produce, or possibly earn, 
 anything. 
 
 neur " was, in the case of Railways, 10 per cent. ; of Mines, 12 per cent. ; 
 of Electric Power and Light, 33 per cent. ; of Manufactures, 54 per 
 cent. ; of Commerce, 66 per cent. ; and of Transportation by Water, 69 
 per cent. The small percentage representing " rent and interest" in 
 this last case would appear to be due to the fact that 110 rent is payable 
 for the permanent way namely the sea. 
 
138 LIMITS OF PURE DEMOCRACY 
 
 The same argument applies to the rent of buildings. 
 Brown and Jones are, let us say, two clerks, each of them 
 earning a salary of 400 a year, out of which, by living 
 with care, each of them could save 300. Brown, how- 
 ever, spends his surplus in getting men and women to 
 dance, sing and dress up for his pleasure at music-halls. 
 Jones pays it to builders who year by year in return for 
 it build him a model dwelling fit for a workman's family. 
 At the end of ten years a row of such dwellings is owned 
 by him, for which he receives a rental of 150. His total 
 income is now 550, whereas that of Brown is still 400 
 only. The extra income of the house-owner would be 
 commonly called unearned, its immediate origin being 
 possession, and not, like that of his salary, the perform- 
 ance of daily duties. But, as any one can see, who 
 takes the trouble to think, it is just as truly earned as 
 truly the result of work as the annual salary itself out 
 of which the houses were created. If the salary is the 
 equivalent of effort, the houses are the equivalent of the 
 saved portion of his salary. They are so much salary 
 converted into a permanent instead of a perishable 
 form, and endowed with a lasting utility which recoins 
 itself in an annual rent. This rent, indeed, is not only 
 earned but is super-earned; for the salary out of which 
 the houses were created represented the product of 
 technical efforts only, but the rent is the product of these 
 efforts with foresight and will added to them. If, how- 
 ever, Jones when dying should bequeath his houses to 
 his companion, the rental, as received by Brown, would 
 immediately change its character. Instead of being 
 earned, it would be unearned, for its new recipient would 
 have played no part in creating it. 
 
 Here we see what the really essential difference be- 
 tween earned income and unearned income is. Earned 
 income is income which, whether its proximate source 
 be the possession of property or no, has its ultimate 
 origin in efforts made by the recipient himself at some 
 time of his life, be that time what it may. 1 Unearned 
 
 1 The practical bearings of this fact is illustrated by an article on 
 "Income-tax Hardship" in a popular London Journal (Sept. 1914). 
 ' ' The hardship/' it says, ' ' of the present system is illustrated by the 
 case of a retired professional man, who for the forty years of his work- 
 
MEANING OF EARNED INCOME 189 
 
 income is income which, coming as it always must do 
 from permanent property of some kind, comes from 
 property created by the efforts of persons other than the 
 present recipients themselves. That is to say, apart 
 from gifts of property inter vivos or of property acquired 
 by marriage or some form of gambling, all income from 
 property is earned which comes from property produced 
 by the efforts of the living. The only kind of income 
 which can properly be called unearned is income from 
 such property as has been created by the efforts of the 
 dead. In other words, again, at any given period in the 
 case of any given country, all income from property is 
 earned which is due to the efforts of the generation at 
 that time alive. 
 
 Hence, the active lifetime of a generation being not 
 less than thirty years, the earned income with which we 
 are here concerned will be income from such property 
 as had been created in the United Kingdom during the 
 thirty years preceding the year 1907. Now, this new 
 property, consisting for the most part of houses and 
 shares in companies, amounted in the year 1907 to at 
 least one-half of the total which we are able to identify 
 as yielding rent or interest. If, then, the total income 
 originating proximately in " possession " was at that 
 time, as we have seen, nearly 400 million, nearly 200 
 million will have been earned by the efforts of the 
 persons at that time receiving it, and nearly 200 million 
 will have been unearned, or inherited by the living from 
 the dead. 
 
 The income of the United Kingdom, in short, at the 
 beginning of the twentieth century, in respect of its 
 sources as they actually were on the one hand, and were 
 popularly supposed to be on the other, is comparable 
 to the income of a doctor, which was known by all his 
 neighbours to be slightly in excess of 2000 a year ; the 
 prevalent opinion being that he barely made 400 by 
 his practice, and that 1700 was from property left to 
 
 ing life denied himself every luxury on principle, in order to provide 
 for his children and the old age of his wife and himself. Yet the 
 interest on the savings of these laborious years is treated as unearned. 
 Attention should be paid to the difference between income inherited 
 and that derived from savings." 
 
140 LIMITS OF PURE DEMOCRACY 
 
 him by his father, whereas in reality 1700 was from his 
 practice, about 200 from property left to him by his 
 father in the year 1877, and another 200 from property 
 saved and created out of his own fees in the course of 
 some thirty years of active professional life. In other 
 words, the " enormous " unearned " share," which has 
 haunted the imagination of men like Mr. Webb and Mill, 
 was not in reality so much as one-tenth of the total, 
 being equal at the time in question to threepence a day 
 per inhabitant of the United Kingdom. 
 
 In the foregoing illustration, however, one point is 
 ignored, and still remains to be considered, with regard 
 to which an error prevails, even more absurd than those 
 which have just been noted. By most agitators it is 
 assumed that unearned income, whatever its amount 
 may be, is distributed wholly amongst persons who earn 
 or produce nothing. Thus a Socialist Society, of which 
 Mr. Webb is a leading member, issued in the year 1905 
 a pamphlet, the writer of which having established to 
 his own satisfaction that the unearned income of the 
 United Kingdom amounted to no less than 700 million 
 pounds, immediately proceeded to observe that here we 
 have obviously the income of the body called " the Idle 
 Rich," which body consisted, according to him, of some 
 700,000 adult males, " not one of whom had ever even 
 professed to have so much as the shadow of an occupa- 
 tion in the whole course of his life." If this were true 
 some singular results would follow. Nobody who had 
 inherited a couple of hundreds a year could ever in his 
 life have done so much as a stroke of useful work. 
 Nobody who had ever done a stroke of useful work could 
 possibly be the son of a parent who had not by the time 
 of his death spent everything he had ever possessed. 
 The fact is, as everybody in his senses knows, countless 
 men are in receipt of inherited incomes which are nothing 
 more than additions to incomes earned by work. How 
 these additions are distributed there is no statistical 
 evidence of a direct kind to show. But, though we 
 cannot say how, in detail, the inherited " share " was 
 distributed, there are, with regard to the effects of its 
 distribution on total incomes, evidences, some of them 
 direct, some of them indirect, but generally accepted as 
 
INCOMES ABOVE 3000 141 
 
 valid, which indicate the facts of the matter clearly 
 enough in outline. We have indirect evidence as to 
 certain total incomes in the number of houses of certain 
 rental values. We have other evidences of a kind more 
 or less direct as to total incomes up to 500 a year. In 
 particular we have evidences, absolutely direct and 
 unambiguous, as to incomes ranging from 3000 up- 
 wards. 1 These taken by themselves would be quite 
 sufficient to show how wildly absurd is the doctrine of 
 " the enormous unearned share " withheld from the 
 masses by a fabulously rich minority, or, as a radical 
 sentimentalist has described them, by " the super- 
 wealthy with their piled-up aggregations." The income 
 of any typical modern country England or the United 
 Kingdom being taken as the classical example has been 
 depicted by socialists and others, from the days of 
 Marx onwards, as an image with a head of gold, which 
 head, representing the unearned " share," is swollen to 
 such vast proportions that the atrophied limbs and body 
 can scarcely sustain its weight. Thus, a member of the 
 English Labour Party, addressing the House of Com- 
 mons, declared that nearly all the wealth which had 
 been created in England since the beginning of the nine- 
 teenth century had gone to a few persons who were 
 " enormously rich already." The founders of an English 
 labour-league had issued a Manifesto about twenty years 
 before, according to the figures given in which, if the 
 unearned income of the rich had at that time weighed 
 a pound, the income of the rest of the nation would 
 hardly have weighed more than three and a half 
 ounces. As a matter of fact, in the year 1907, if 
 everybody is taken as one of the fabulously rich 
 whose income amounts to as much as 5000, the 
 income of the rich was to that of the rest of the nation, 
 not in the proportion of a pound to three and a half 
 ounces, but was barely as much as one ounce to a 
 pound. 
 
 But before we attempt to draw any further moral from 
 
 1 These figures as to incomes exceeding 3000 a year were not avail- 
 able for the year 1907 ; but their then amount can be approximately 
 reached by reference to the general increases of income which have 
 taken place since then. 
 
142 LIMITS OF PURE DEMOCRACY 
 
 this particular fact, or from the others which have just 
 been indicated, the whole of the figures just given with 
 regard to England or the United Kingdom shall be con- 
 sidered in connection with others, which, besides helping 
 to confirm them, will invest them with a fresh 
 significance. 
 
CHAPTER H 
 
 COMPARATIVE DISTRIBUTION 
 
 IF the figures just given were figures standing by them- 
 selves, they might be open to two criticisms which 
 would, if true, detract indefinitely from their import- 
 ance. In the first place, since they are partly based on 
 methods of indirect computation which cannot claim to 
 be exact, they cannot, it might be said, be taken as the 
 basis of any definite argument. In the second place it 
 might be said that, relating, as they do, to the affairs 
 of one country only, the facts which they indicate, even 
 if indicated correctly, are largely local and accidental, 
 and are for that reason deficient in any general meaning. 
 If these figures stood by themselves, such criticism would 
 be plausible. The actual state of the case is, however, 
 widely different. 
 
 The general ideas with regard to the modern distribu- 
 tion of income which underlie the arguments of most 
 social revolutionaries have been mainly derived from 
 theorists who either neglected, as Henry George did, 
 statistical methods altogether, or who flourished when 
 these methods were at a stage much less advanced than 
 that which they have reached since the time of Henry 
 George's death. It is true that, so far as the distribution 
 of incomes is concerned, much remains to be done in the 
 way of collecting information a kind of work which 
 must mainly be performed by governments ; but this 
 work has in many countries been now advanced suf- 
 ficiently to render the employment possible of the 
 method of international comparison. Such is the case 
 especially with regard to the four great countries in 
 which wealth-production has increased to the most con- 
 spicuous extent namely, the United Kingdom, France, 
 Prussia and America. In each of these countries statis- 
 
 143 
 
144 LIMITS OF PURE DEMOCRACY 
 
 ticians, using independent methods, have been en- 
 deavouring to ascertain with as much correctness as 
 possible what the distribution of incomes in that par- 
 ticular country is. In each case large use has been made 
 of the method of estimates, yet when the general results 
 of these various computations are compared, the mam 
 features of distribution in any one of these countries are 
 found to be almost identical with its features in all the 
 rest. If each of these several results is expressed by a 
 curved line, and the four lines are exhibited in a single 
 diagram, the tendency of each is to approach and often 
 to overlap the others. 
 
 The most elaborate example of this kind of coincidence 
 is that provided by a comparison between the United 
 Kingdom and America, for which a mass of material 
 will be found in a volume by Dr. W. I. King, already 
 referred to, on The Wealth and Income of the People 
 of the United States. It was published in the year 1913, 
 and relates to the year 1910. Let us begin then with 
 re-examining the case of the United Kingdom in the 
 light of the evidences already used or mentioned 
 namely, the known total income of the country about 
 the year 1907, as shown by the Census of Production, 
 the Income-tax Returns for the same period, and the 
 numbers of houses of various rental values ; and let us 
 summarise the results as either directly shown by, or 
 inferable from, them, not with regard to the various 
 sources of income, but with regard to the distribution 
 of incomes taken as so many wholes. And let us first, 
 for purposes of a rough and preliminary comparison, 
 divide these incomes into the five following groups, show- 
 ing what percentage of the total is formed by the 
 inferable or the known aggregate of each. 
 
 The First Group shall consist of incomes of 5000 and 
 upwards. 
 
 The Second, of incomes ranging from 3000 to 5000. 
 
 The Third, of incomes ranging from 1000 to 3000. 
 
 The Fourth, of incomes ranging from 500 to 1000. 
 
 The Fifth, of incomes not exceeding 500. 
 
 The total income of the United Kingdom having been 
 at the time 2100 million, it appears from the various 
 evidences which have just now been mentioned that the 
 
ENGLAND AND AMERICA 145 
 
 incomes comprised in the First Group formed 6 per cent, 
 of the total ; those in the Second, 2 per cent. ; 1 those in 
 the Third, 8 per cent. ; those in the Fourth, 10 per cent. ; 
 and those in the Fifth, 75 per cent. 
 
 Let us now turn to Dr. King's Tables for America, 
 in which, with extraordinary elaboration, American 
 incomes are grouped in a like way, the aggregate in each 
 case being reduced to a fraction of the entire income of 
 the country. Decimals being omitted, Dr. King's figures 
 for America, as against those just given for the United 
 Kingdom, are as follows. 
 
 The aggregate of incomes comprised in the First Group 
 namely, those exceeding 5000 a year is given by 
 Dr. King as 8 per cent., the corresponding figure of the 
 United Kingdom being 6. 
 
 The aggregate of incomes in the Second Group 
 namely, those lying between 3000 and 5000 is given 
 by him as 2 per cent., the corresponding figure for the 
 United Kingdom being the same. 
 
 The aggregate of incomes in the Third Group namely, 
 those lying between 1000 and 3000 is given by him 
 as 6 per cent., the corresponding figure for the United 
 Kingdom being 8. 
 
 The aggregate of incomes in the Fourth Group- 
 namely, those lying between 500 and 1000 is given 
 by him as 9 per cent., the corresponding figure for the 
 United Kingdom being 10. 
 
 The aggregate of incomes in the Fifth Group namely, 
 all those that do not exceed 500 is given by him as 
 75 per cent., the corresponding figure for the United 
 Kingdom being 74. 
 
 If we take the first two groups together namely, 
 those comprising all incomes in excess of 3000 and 
 examine them more minutely, we shall, with the excep- 
 tion of one notable detail, discover other parallelisms no 
 less remarkable than these. The exception relates to 
 the largest incomes of all. If we take the hundred and 
 fifty richest men in America, and compare them with 
 the seventy-five richest men in the United Kingdom (the 
 
 1 The percentages for Groups 1 and 2 are based on the super-tax 
 returns, made subsequently to the year 1907, and giving the actual 
 numbers and total increase of the persons concerned. 
 L 
 
146 LIMITS OF PURE DEMOCRACY 
 
 two numbers being the same relatively to the different 
 populations), it appears that this group in America had 
 an aggregate income of 75 million pounds, or an average 
 income of half a million per person, whilst its counter- 
 part in the United Kingdom had an aggregate income 
 of 13 million only, the average income per person being 
 roughly 170 thousand. Otherwise, the grouping of in- 
 comes in excess of 3000 exhibits in the two cases what 
 is not so much a likeness as an identity. 
 
 Thus, if, to vary our method of classification, we 
 take, not the total amount, but the total number of 
 incomes exceeding 3000, the number of those ranging 
 from 3000 to 5000 will in both countries be nearly half 
 of the whole ; the number of those ranging from 5000 
 to 10,000 will in both countries be nearly one-third ; 
 the number of those ranging from 10,000 to 20,000 
 will in both countries be a little more or a little less 
 than a seventh; and the number of those exceeding 
 20,000 will in both cases be one-hundredth. 
 
 The close similarity between the two countries which 
 is shown by figures such as these figures worked out 
 by absolutely independent inquirers, dealing with abso- 
 lutely different and differently presented data forms a 
 strong confirmation of the substantial, though it would 
 be rash to say of the exact, accuracy of each. It may, 
 at any rate, be taken as refuting, beyond the possibility 
 of doubt, the fundamental assumption of all socialist 
 reformers that some " enormous share " of the wealth 
 of the modern world passes, in virtue of the accident of 
 mere " possession " or otherwise, into the hands of the 
 conspicuously rich. It may be taken as showing that 
 even the rich and the moderately rich between them 
 manage to secure no more than a relatively small fraction 
 of it. 
 
 But the significance of this similarity does not end 
 here. The fact that out of the productive activity of 
 each of these two populations a scheme of distribution 
 arises which is in its main features nearly, if not abso- 
 lutely, the same, shows that these results must be deter- 
 mined, not by any local accidents, or by moral conduct 
 peculiar to particular groups of individuals, but by 
 general principles of some kind to which certain human 
 
WAGES AND LABOUR VALUES 147 
 
 activities, whenever they come into operation, tend 
 naturally and inevitably to conform. The practical 
 meaning, however, of a broad conclusion like this will 
 be very imperfectly represented if we give our minute 
 attention to the larger incomes only, which have their 
 origin in more or less exceptional enterprise. We must 
 examine with the same minuteness the lower incomes 
 also, which mainly, though not wholly, consist of the 
 earnings of wage-paid labour. We must not content 
 ourselves with ascertaining that, if all these be taken in 
 the mass, an overwhelming portion, and a portion the 
 same everywhere, of the total income of any modern 
 country is absorbed by them. We will, therefore, still 
 using Dr. King's figures for America, presently pursue 
 our comparison between that country and the United 
 Kingdom farther. Let us first, however, realise the 
 nature of the main question with which such a com- 
 parison will concern itself. 
 
 This is a question relating to the universal conditions 
 under which, in any modern country, the incomes, which 
 are mainly the wages, of the masses of the population 
 are received by them, and relating more especially to a 
 conception of the nature of these conditions, which still 
 forms the basis of the revolutionary logic of to-day. 
 The import of this conception, when put into plain 
 words, expresses itself in the theory of wages which 
 Marx, though he did not invent it, was the first thinker 
 to invest with what claimed to be a scientific form. It 
 has the merit of being extremely simple, and may be 
 summarised in a few words. According to this theory, 
 society under modern conditions is divided into two 
 classes a small employing minority who own all the 
 implements of labour, and a vast majority who own 
 nothing but the labour-power resident in themselves. 
 Such being the case, then, labour is a mere commodity 
 which the labourer sells to the employer; the price paid 
 for it is wages, and is in each case the subject of a 
 bargain. If the two parties met on an equal footing, the 
 price might bear some relation to the value of the labour 
 sold. But the footing on which as an actual fact they 
 do meet is, said Marx, in its very essence unequal. The 
 labourer must sell his labour from week to week, or he 
 
148 LIMITS OF PURE DEMOCRACY 
 
 will starve. The employer can afford to wait. The 
 labourer, therefore, unless he is prepared to die, is forced 
 to accept a price which bears no relation whatever to the 
 value of what his labour produces, but is measured by 
 the cost of keeping a man just above the level of starva- 
 tion. This result is, according to Marx, inevitable, not 
 so much because the employer is wicked, wicked though 
 he generally is, as because, from the very nature of a 
 bargain, nobody will give more for anything than the 
 lowest price which the vendor can be induced to take 
 for it. Hence, said Marx, under the existing economic 
 system, wages are everywhere by a kind of universal 
 fatality forced down to a common, and to the lowest 
 possible, level. And this theory, in spite of some 
 modifications, continues to dominate socialist thought 
 to-day. It is, indeed, now admitted by socialist thinkers 
 themselves that the wage-earners since the days of Marx 
 have managed to extract from the employers something 
 in excess of the bare means of subsistence; but wages, 
 they say, still resemble a table-land, the level of which, 
 although it may have risen somewhat, is everywhere 
 raised but slightly above the uniform cost of keeping a 
 human being alive; and this rise, such as it is, tjiey 
 attribute to collective bargaining through unions, which 
 has proved to be of greater efficiency than Marx was 
 able to anticipate. 
 
 Now, there is nothing in this account of the matter 
 which is a priori impossible. On the contrary, if we 
 take it as a mere description of facts, it is roughly 
 applicable to England at the beginning of the nineteenth 
 century, when the modern industrial system had but 
 partly displaced the old. Only some 5 per cent, of the 
 adult male labourers of the country received at that 
 time as much as 23s. a week. About 8 per cent, received 
 from 18s. to 19s. The average for 87 per cent, was not 
 more than 10s. 6d. Even socialists cannot deny that 
 wages have increased since then; but when they seek 
 to explain this rise by attributing it to democratic action 
 in the form of collective bargaining, they ignore another 
 change more important, as a symptom, than the actual 
 rise itself. Collective bargaining may account for the 
 fact that wages have risen as a whole, but it will not 
 
GRADUATION OF WAGES 149 
 
 account for the fact that wages have risen unequally. 
 Still less will it account for a certain peculiar change in 
 the manner in which wages of unequal amounts are dis- 
 tributed. In these two latter respects what has actually 
 happened is as follows. 
 
 In the first place, an admitted increase in the minimum 
 wage-rate being allowed for, wages as a whole at the be- 
 ginning of the twentieth century had come to differ from 
 wages at the beginning of the nineteenth in the fact that 
 their range and the minuteness of their graduation from 
 a given minimum upwards were very much greater at 
 the later period than they had been at the earlier. 
 Whereas a diagram of their graduation as they were at 
 the earlier date would have had the contour of a slight 
 and hardly perceptible slope, a diagram of their gradua- 
 tion as they were a century later would have had 
 throughout the contour of an ascending staircase. 
 
 In the second place, with regard to the number of 
 persons amongst whom wages of various amounts were 
 distributed, the distribution at the beginning of the 
 nineteenth century was what is called " pyramidal." A 
 century later it had, up to a certain point, come to 
 assume the form of a pyramid upside down. This means 
 that, at the earlier of the two dates the most numerous 
 class of recipients was the class whose wages were lowest, 
 and that as the wages increased the number of the 
 recipients declined; whereas a century later those who j ^L 
 received the minimum, which was then (we may say) 
 40, were very much less numerous than those who 
 received 50, that these again were less numerous than 
 those who received 70, and these yet again less numer- 
 ous than those who received 90; but that after some 
 such point the pyramidal order reasserted itself, those 
 who received 90 outnumbering those who received as 
 much as 100; whilst as to the salaried class, those 
 who earned more than 1000 were, in respect of their 
 numbers, a mere vanishing quantity. 
 
 This, roughly stated, is what has happened in the 
 United Kingdom after a century of bargaining between 
 the employing classes and the employed ; but it has not 
 happened in the United Kingdom only. A situation 
 essentially similar has developed itself in America also, 
 
150 LIMITS OF PURE DEMOCRACY 
 
 and during a much shorter period. Thus, in a table 
 devoted to the earnings of married men, Dr. King divides 
 these into twelve graduated amounts, ranging from a 
 minimum of 50 up to nearly 300 ; and his figures show 
 that for every 50 men earning no more than 50, there 
 were 300 earning 70, 600 earning 80, 1000 earning 
 100, and 2700 earning 150. That point having been 
 reached, the same change occurred which occurred in 
 the United Kingdom lower down in the scale. Thus, the 
 number of those whose earnings averaged 170 was only 
 2100 ; the earnings of only 1600 reached or approached 
 200 ; and the earnings of only 600 reached or approached 
 300. 
 
 To many readers these details may doubtless seem dry 
 enough, but their dryness will vanish when we realise 
 their general import ; for the remarkable parallelism 
 which they have here been cited to illustrate between the 
 results of bargaining for wages in these two widely 
 separated countries is virtually a refutation, so far as 
 this question is concerned, of the theory which has been 
 the basis of all revolutionary agitation from the middle 
 of the nineteenth century down to the present time. 
 
 This theory has, as we have seen already, its root in 
 the idea of a bargaining process which, since one of the 
 parties to it is in a position to bide his time, whilst the 
 very life of the other depends on his selling his wares 
 namely, his personal efforts immediately, enables the 
 former to beat down the price of these wares, no matter 
 what their value, to the minimum which will enable the 
 latter to keep body and soul together. Now, such a 
 situation, let it be said again, is conceivable. The 
 question is, does it, as a general fact, exist ? Is it the 
 typical situation which capitalism, after a century of 
 trial, has produced ? A mere glance at indubitable facts 
 is enough to show that it is not. No minute insistence 
 on the accuracy of detailed figures is necessary to show 
 that such a situation, if it prevails at all, prevails in 
 relation to a minority of the wage-earners only a 
 minority the proportions of which we shall very greatly 
 exaggerate if we say that, in the leading capitalist 
 countries of the world it amounts to, or even approaches, 
 one-fifth of the whole. Let us suppose, then, that the 
 
ASCENDING WAGES 151 
 
 wages of as many as one-fifth of the wage-earners are 
 determined, as Marx argues, not by the value of their 
 products, but merely by the naked cost of the minimum 
 of food required by them. The typical question as to 
 wages still remains unanswered. The fact that the 
 employer pays this irreducible minimum to a fifth of his 
 men, but to a fifth of his men only, does but bring into 
 prominence the fact that, in dealing with the vast 
 majority of them, the price which he actually pays is 
 not this minimum at all; it is this minimum plus some 
 amount added to it, which in each case must, according 
 to the psychology of Marx, cost the employing Shylock 
 a twinge of acute pain. 
 
 Thus, the question as to wages generally which really 
 requires explanation is not why they tend as a whole in 
 the direction of a common minimum, but why they tend 
 to move, in various degrees, away from it. To say that 
 this result has been due to the pressure of collective 
 bargaining is no answer at all. So far as collective bar- 
 gaining is concerned, there is an upward pressure all 
 along the line ; but in the case of each section of wage- 
 earners the result of this pressure differs. All along the 
 line there is a downward pressure on the part of the 
 employers also. In each case they give way up to a 
 certain point, but they do not give way beyond it. 
 What, then, are the final limits between which, as 
 extremes, the conscious process of bargaining can do no 
 more than reach some mean ? These extreme limits are 
 in all cases the same. The lower limit is the smallest 
 possible sum on which a wage-earner can be kept alive. 
 The upper limit is determined no less rigidly by the total 
 product of the business in which the wage-earners play 
 a part. 1 But, these limits being present in all cases alike, 
 how is it that, as the result of individual transactions, 
 the intermediate sums finally agreed on vary, so that out 
 of 1000 men working for the same employer some will 
 get 40 or 50, others 60 or 70, others 80 or a 100, 
 others 150, others 200, and a few very much more ? 
 
 1 This is true of the self-directed lahourer also. His income must be 
 something between the maximum he could produce if he strained his 
 muscles to the utmost, and the minimum which, produced with more 
 desultory work, would just save him from death. 
 
152 LIMITS OF PURE DEMOCRACY 
 
 In the light of the facts and figures which we have just 
 been considering, one thing is evident. However the 
 results of each individual transaction may be affected 
 by the personal temper of those directly concerned in 
 it, they are affected by it to a small extent only. They 
 are mainly determined by certain facts or forces which 
 are altogether external to any cupidity, generosity, any 
 strength or weakness of will, which is peculiar to any 
 one employer or any one body of workmen; and that 
 such is the case is evident for the two following reasons. 
 One of these is the fact that, throughout any one country, 
 the graduations of wages which result from countless 
 individual transactions tend in all like industries to be 
 uniform. The other is the fact that, if two great coun- 
 tries are compared, the details of this graduation are 
 relatively the same in each, even in respect of their most 
 unlikely particulars. 
 
 To what, then, is this elaborate graduation, as a fact 
 in itself, and to what is its world-wide but unintended 
 uniformity, due ? Here is a question to which there is 
 only one answer. The graduation is due to the fact that 
 industry, as intellectualised by the modern scientific 
 oligarchy, is a process the product of which, to a degree 
 far greater than was the case under simpler systems, 
 depends on the efforts of men who differ widely from one 
 another in their several degrees of efficiency, some of 
 them adding more to the total, some of them adding less, 
 and wages being determined by the particular efficiency 
 of each ; whilst the graduation is similar in different and 
 distant countries for the simple reason that Nature, in 
 dealing with different populations, distributes unequal 
 efficiencies in very much the same way. 
 
 Even, however, if all this be granted, those who cling 
 to the idea that the wage-earners nevertheless are robbed 
 of some enormous share of the value of their products 
 somehow, may yet as a matter of theory urge the fol- 
 lowing argument. Wages, it is open to them to say, 
 may be adjusted with perfect accuracy to the value of 
 every wage-earner's personal product in this sense, that, 
 if the work of A is worth double the work of B, B is 
 certain to get for it twice the price that A gets ; but that 
 A and B, to a like fractional amount, may each be 
 
POSSIBLE UNDERPAYMENT 153 
 
 defrauded of wages really due to him. A's work may 
 be worth 200, and B's work may be worth 100; but 
 if B, instead of 100 gets 75 only, and if A, instead of 
 200, gets only 150, the difference between the larger 
 of these two sums and the less will be strictly propor- 
 tionate to the difference between the two values pro- 
 duced, yet each man will be the victim of a similarly 
 proportionate theft, his receipts falling short of his 
 product to the extent of one quarter. The facts of 
 graduation may no doubt be inconsistent with an indis- 
 criminate robbery of the kind imagined by Marx, but 
 they are perfectly compatible with the supposition that 
 wages are everywhere curtailed by a system of embezzle- 
 ments which, though not indiscriminate, are monstrous. 
 
 Now, in this argument, just as in the argument of 
 Marx that all wages tend downwards to one irreducible 
 minimum, there is nothing which, as a matter of mere 
 theory, might not or may not be true. Here, again, the 
 question is, Does the theory coincide with actual facts ? 
 And certain facts are ascertainable which will enable us 
 to reach an answer, not indeed absolutely precise, but 
 sufficiently so to enable us to establish a broad con- 
 clusion. For if the wage-earning classes as a whole are, 
 to some enormous extent, really the victims of a theft- 
 system of the kind described, the stolen portion of their 
 products is bound to be discoverable somewhere in the 
 incomes unduly swollen of other people of some sort. 
 The question is, then, Who can these other people be ? 
 Before we can go further, it is necessary to understand 
 this. 
 
 If to any socialist meeting in Chicago or New York 
 this question were put as follows, " Who are the great 
 embezzlers of income produced by, and therefore due 
 to, the masses of the American people ? " there can be 
 no doubt as to what the instant answer would be. It 
 would be, "The factory kings, -the railroad kings, the 
 oil kings, the kings of finance and speculation "men 
 whose type would be indicated by shouts of " Vander- 
 bilt," " Harriman," " Carnegie," " Rockefeller," "Mor- 
 gan." If a similar question were put to a socialist 
 meeting in London, the answer would be substantially 
 the same, though the names of typical plunderers might 
 
154 LIMITS OF PURE DEMOCRACY 
 
 be less easy to find. On either occasion orators would 
 spring from their seats and descant on the outward signs 
 by which such men may be known their palaces in 
 Grosvenor Square, or Fifth Avenue, the tiaras of their 
 wives, their moors in Scotland, their salmon rivers in 
 Norway, and the luxury of their monstrous yachts. In 
 America and Europe alike the typical embezzler, the 
 typical cause of poverty, who robs the labourer's home 
 of the necessaries, and the middle-class home of the 
 modest embellishments of life, figures in socialist art as 
 a species of bloated ogre, clutching so many sacks, each 
 of them labelled " A million " or " Ten million dollars." 
 That is to say, according to current ideas of him, the 
 typical embezzler, be his country what it may, obviously 
 belongs to that small cluster of persons whose wealth 
 is sufficiently great to be matter of international, or at 
 least national, knowledge, and especially so great as to 
 be worthy of celebration by newspapers. 
 
 Now, if ideas of this kind have any justification any- 
 where, they have it in the recent growth of enormous 
 incomes in America ; and it may be reasonably con- 
 tended that incomes such as these, which transcend all 
 sane possibilities of the amplest private expenditure, are 
 liable to convert themselves into implements of public 
 and political corruption. But to suppose that they 
 represent any appreciable abstraction from what would 
 be otherwise the income of the nation generally, will, 
 when facts are examined, reveal itself as a pure delusion. 
 The number and aggregate income of the super- 
 millionaires of America, and the number and aggregate 
 income of the class which in the United Kingdom most 
 nearly approaches them, have been given here already. 
 The result of what Mr. Webb would call a " recovery 
 by the people " of the entire income of this class in 
 America would mean, in the language of school-boys, 
 a weekly "tip " of a threepenny-bit for everybody; and 
 a similar " recovery " by the people of the United King- 
 dom would mean for everybody a weekly " tip " of three 
 halfpence. 
 
 Let us, however, suppose that the robbery of the 
 poorer classes by the richer is imputed, not to a little 
 cluster of super-millionaires only, but to the semi- 
 
THE RECOVERABLE MAXIMUM 155 
 
 millionaires as well that is to say, everybody whose 
 income was as much as 20,000. The number of this 
 class in America was approximately 3000. It was in the 
 United Kingdom approximately 1500. If we suppose 
 that every one of such persons stole the whole of his 
 income, and the people " recovered " what would vul- 
 garly be called " the lot," the results would be doubtless 
 superior to those we have just considered. The weekly 
 " tip " would in America be raised to tenpence-half- 
 penny, and in the United Kingdom to fourpence. Or, 
 again, if we find it amusing, we may carry our supposi- 
 tions further. We may first consider what would happen 
 if the people of the two countries " recovered " all 
 incomes in excess of 5000, and then what would happen 
 if they " recovered " all tha* exceeded 3000. We 
 should find that the " recovery " meant for the American 
 workman a rise in wage-rates of a penny-farthing in 
 every shilling, and for the British a rise of a penny. 
 But if we wish to deal with the matter seriously, we 
 may pass on at once to a supposition probably wider 
 than the widest to which any temperate socialist in cold 
 blood would commit himself. This is the supposition 
 that every man who receives an income of more than 
 1000 a year steals as much of it from " the people " 
 as happens to exceed that sum. The supposition is, 
 of course, absurd, but it will nevertheless be interesting 
 to see how it works out. The total of incomes in excess 
 of 1000 formed in both countries 17 per cent, or 18 
 of the total ; but if we suppose that the recipients 
 are severally taken to have come by as much as 1000 
 honestly, the portion assumed to be stolen will have 
 been in America 11 per cent., and in the United 
 Kingdom it will not have been more than 8. Thus, 
 a "recovery by the people" at the beginning of the 
 twentieth century of all incomes which exceed 1000 
 per head would have meant for the American workman 
 a rise in wages at the rate of a penny-halfpenny in the 
 shilling, and would have meant for his British comrade 
 a rise of about one farthing less. 
 
 It is not necessary to insist on either of these figures 
 as exact. The broad fact which alone concerns us here 
 is this, that even if we estimate the possibilities of 
 
156 LIMITS OF PURE DEMOCRACY 
 
 " recovery " at a maximum, the object in view being 
 a more complete adjustment of wages or other payments 
 to the actual product of workers varying in their degrees 
 of efficiency, such a " recovery " would result in no 
 greater change than that which is constantly due to 
 a good business year or a bad one. It would effect no 
 change more noticeable in the existing scheme of dis- 
 tribution than that which would be effected hi the con- 
 figuration of a human being if his measurement round 
 the waist rose from thirty-five inches to thirty-eight or 
 forty. In other words, within a maximum fraction, 
 whether of one-ninth or one-twelfth of the total amount 
 involved, the various producing units under the modern 
 industrial oligarchy tend to receive, in all their various 
 degrees, what their personal work i?i_ worth, this fact 
 being shown by the identity~of the complex features of 
 the general scheme of distribution which comes into 
 being wherever that system operates. 
 
 The facts, however, as thus far stated, are in the main 
 empirical. They are facts which experience and observa- 
 tion show to be the results, natural and unintended, of 
 that principle of industrial oligarchy (commonly de- 
 scribed as " capitalism on the great scale ") which, 
 having established itself first in England, became there 
 widely prevalent about the beginning of the nineteenth 
 century, in America about fifty years later, and in Ger- 
 many after the conclusion of the Franco-Prussian war. 
 Such results being peculiar to the novel system in ques- 
 tion, they must obviously have been due to the develop- 
 ment of the oligarchic principle somehow; but if we 
 wish to render them intelligible if we wish to see why 
 these results have shaped themselves as they have done 
 everywhere, and have not shaped themselves otherwise, 
 it is necessary to connect them with the working of the 
 oligarchic principle in detail ; and this task can be ac- 
 complished in one way only. It can be accomplished 
 only by a comparison more or less precise, not between 
 the affairs of one country and the contemporary affairs 
 of others, but between the affairs of some one typical 
 country as they actually are to-day, and the affairs of 
 that country itself as they were when the new system was 
 beginning to displace the old; but the old, though its 
 
COMPARISON WITH THE PAST 157 
 
 days were numbered, was the dominant system still. 
 There is one country, and one country only, in which 
 evidence sufficiently definite for such a comparison can 
 be found. That country is England. Not only are the 
 statistics of production and distribution in England or 
 the United Kingdom voluminous with regard to con- 
 ditions that prevail to-day, but similar records are 
 extant, curiously minute and comprehensive, of the 
 corresponding conditions as they were more than a 
 hundred years ago. The principal changes which such 
 a comparison reveals, together with their inner signifi- 
 cance, shall be reviewed in the following chapter. 
 
CHAPTER III 
 
 A CENTURY OF CHANGING DISTRIBUTION 
 
 THE income of England in the year 1801 was, accord- 
 ing to a number of concurrent evidences, 1 about 180 
 million pounds, or 20 per head of a population of 
 9 million. The income of the United Kingdom about 
 the year 1907 was, as we have seen already, about 2100 
 million, or 47 per head of population of 45 million. 
 Now, if the process of production had itself undergone 
 no change except such as resulted from an increase in 
 the number of persons engaged in it, the simplest 
 arithmetic will show us that, in the year 1907, the income 
 of the United Kingdom would not have been more than 
 900 million, whereas it actually was 900 million with 
 1200 million added to it. About an eighth of this incre- 
 ment, however, was derived from British enterprise 
 abroad; and, since no home labour was involved in it, 
 it cannot be attributable to any novel forces acting on 
 the population of the British Islands themselves. The 
 home-produced increment, which here alone concerns 
 us, will have been accordingly about 1050 million. If, 
 then, it be true that the modern increase of wealth is 
 due primarily to the Mind of a novel oligarchy of em- 
 
 1 In the year 1801 an income-tax was imposed on all incomes exceed- 
 ing 60 a year, or 23*. a week These incomes were classified in the 
 returns according to their total amounts, the sources not being specified, 
 and were divided seriatim into 34 groups. There is also a large mass of 
 evidence relating to agricultural and other earnings below 23*'. a week. 
 Mulhall, in summing up the records relating to Poor-relief in England 
 at various periods, gives the income of England (including Wales) 
 in 1801-5 as 180,000,000. His computation was independent of those 
 on which the same sum, as given in the text, are founded. It is neces- 
 sary in dealing with that period to take England alone, England being 
 the part of the United Kingdom which was first ' ' industrialised," and no 
 sufficient records with regard to Ireland having been then in existence. 
 
 158 
 
THE CRUCIAL CHANGE 159 
 
 plovers, as a force directing the labour by which matter i 
 is moved and manipulated, it will follow that, at the 
 present time, more than half of the income of the United 
 Kingdom is produced in a primary sense by a body of 
 persons which, numerically, is so small as to be hardly 
 visible. 
 
 The actual meaning, however, of this proposition is 
 not so paradoxical as it seems. What it comes to is that, 
 at the beginning of the twentieth century there was on 
 an average one directing mind, whether that of an indi- 
 vidual or two or more partners, for every 500 or 600 
 labourers, whereas in any comparable undertakings a 
 hundred years before the labourers directed by one Mind 
 would have been, we may say roughly, a couple of 
 hundred only. 1 But the difference between the two 
 periods may be further explained thus. At the begin- 
 ning of the nineteenth century, about one-third of the 
 productive business of the country was carried on by 
 independent workers or small family groups, and another 
 third by employers on a very small scale still a numer- 
 ous class, such as jobbing builders, plumbers, makers 
 of carts, and so forth who worked as labourers them- 
 selves along with their own subordinates. Not more 
 than one-third of the productive business of England 
 had so far passed into the hands of industrial oligarchs, 
 or employers whose individual profits reached or ex- 
 ceeded 1000 a year. In other words, businesses of the 
 modern oligarchic kind and even these were small as 
 compared with their successors of to-day produced at 
 the beginning of the nineteenth century 33 per cent, only 
 of the industrial output of England, and the smaller 
 businesses, which were absolutely or relatively demo-; 
 cratic, produced, to speak roughly, 67 per cent. A^J** ^v*" 
 hundred years later the oligarchic businesses were pro- 1* ^ ^ 
 ducing 86 per cent. The democratic businesses produced 
 no more than 14 per cenC The latter persisted, and 
 they persist, in various familiar forms such as those 
 
 1 The figures given as to industries at the beginning of the nineteenth 
 century are based on the income-tax assessments for the year 1812, pub- 
 lished in the year 1815. The income-tax tables for the year 1801 
 classify incomes according to their total amounts only, without indicat- 
 ing their source. 
 
160 LIMITS OF PURE DEMOCRACY 
 
 which have just been mentioned. Their absolute 
 number, apparently, has not increased or diminished; 
 but, relatively to the increased population, it had by 
 the end of the nineteenth century dwindled to a fifth 
 of what it had been at the beginning of it. Their profits, 
 ranging from 80 a year to 1000, representing an 
 average of something less than 300, appear to be much 
 what they were a hundred years ago. The oligarchic 
 businesses, on the other hand namely, those producing 
 profits of 1000 a year and upwards have, concurrently 
 with the relative decline of the others, increased in two 
 ways. Each of the employing units has brought within 
 the circle of his influence a larger number of labourers, 
 and the average product per employee has been raised 
 on an average in the ratio of 4 to 10. Of this fact it will 
 be sufficient to give two illustrations. If the oligarchic 
 businesses of England had remained what they were at 
 the beginning of the nineteenth century, except for the 
 fact that they had increased in the same ratio as the 
 population, their total profits at the beginning of the 
 twentieth century would not have exceeded 50 million 
 pounds, the average profit per business being 2500. 
 Their actual profits, as we have seen, were at that time 
 300 million, the average profit per business being 10,000. 
 In the year 1812 there were in England only 1000 busi- 
 nesses which severally produced a profit of more than 
 8000. The total profits of all of them were barely 
 above 6 million, 6000 being the average profit of each. 
 Ninety years later, of the thousand largest businesses 
 the profit of the smallest did not fall short of 50,000 ; 
 the aggregate profits of all were 180 million, and the 
 average profit of each was 180,000. 
 
 It is, therefore, in the development of these larger 
 businesses since the beginning of the nineteenth century 
 in the application of single units of brain-power to the 
 direction of a larger and larger number of labourers 
 that we must look for the action of oligarchy as the 
 cause of increasing wealth. The case is summed up by 
 Goethe in the second part of Faust, where the secret 
 of material progress is said to consist in this : 
 
 "One Mind suffices for a thousand hands/' 
 
SIZE OF BUSINESSES 161 
 
 and in the progress of England since the beginning of the , 
 nineteenth century this fact is presented to us in a 
 definitely measurable form. At the beginning of the 
 nineteenth century, each of the larger employers, such 
 as they then were, directed on an average about 250 
 labourers, the total product per employee being about 
 40. A century later each of the larger employers 
 directed on an average the labour of twice or three times 
 as many, the average product per employee being raised 
 from 40 to 100. As a natural consequence of the 
 increased productive power which industry acquired as 
 the principle of oligarchy developed itself, it has come 
 about in the course of a few generations that about five- 
 sevenths of the business output of England is produced 
 under the direction of the minds of a few men ; and here, 
 when roughly translated into terms of statistical and 
 historical fact, we have the import of thejthesis thatv 
 at the beginning of the twentieth centuryl the Mind of 
 the larger employers was the primary producer of an 
 income of some 1050 million pounds^ added to an income 
 which would otherwise have been 900 million only. 
 
 And now we reach the question to which all these 
 observations have been tending. If the total reward 
 which, in the shape of profits profits being taken as 
 including all interest on industrial capital went to 
 Mind as embodied in the persons of the industrial oli- 
 garchy and their associates, was, as we have seen, about 
 300 million pounds, and, if, as we have seen also, these 
 profits would have amounted to no more than 50 million 
 had industrial methods remained what they had been 
 a century before, and had all the subsequent conquests 
 of directing Mind been absent, the question which con- 
 fronts us is this. Why, if Mind is the producer of a 
 total increment of 1050 million, do the representatives 
 of Mind get only 250 million, or less than a quarter of 
 it, for themselves ? What becomes of the remainder ? 
 The more we reflect on the detailed facts of the situation, 
 the more evident will the pertinence of this question 
 become. For these men, the heads of the larger busi- 
 nesses, are, as socialists put it, "the great national pay- 
 masters." The wages and salaries, which are the in- 
 comes of the vast majority of the population, must in 
 
 ^ 
 
162 LIMITS OF PURE DEMOCRACY 
 
 the first instance have passed into these men's custody. 
 Why, then, did they pay away, and to whom did they 
 pay away, four-fifths of a certain increment, if their 
 own minds had really produced the whole of it ? 
 
 To this question there are two principal answers, each 
 of which goes to the roots of the modern industrial 
 system, and without invalidating the thesis that the 
 modern increase of wealth is primarily due to the Mind 
 of the modern industrial oligarchy, modifies its practical 
 import by showing what, in actual life, the operation of 
 such an oligarchy implies. 
 
 The first of these answers may be given by means of 
 a simple illustration. Let us suppose that the introduc- 
 tion of the modern locomotive engine was due entirely 
 to the genius of one exceptional man, in the sense that 
 a dozen mechanics by blindly following his directions 
 \ypresented a specimen engine, complete in every detail 
 of its mechanism, to a world which would never have 
 dreamed, if left to its own wisdom, of any means of 
 traction other than a horse or a donkey. But one such 
 specimen engine, however perfect and powerful, would, 
 if it stood alone, be nothing more than a toy, or a wonder 
 for the world to gape at. In order that the world should 
 derive from it any practical benefit, huge works would 
 be necessary at which replicas of this specimen could be 
 turned out by the thousand. Let us, then, suppose 
 further that this same man, the inventor, establishes 
 such works himself, he being his own capitalist, and 
 secures the services, not of twelve but of twelve thousand 
 manual workers, all of whom he engages for the specific 
 purpose of so moving particles of matter from one posi- 
 tion to another that finally, like pieces of a puzzle, they 
 shall coalesce into engines devised by his own brain. The 
 operations of Mind, as embodied in the persons of the 
 great employers, could not be exemplified in a more 
 complete form than it would be in the person of an 
 industrial genius such as this. 
 
 Now, it might seem that here we should have two 
 factors only namely, the labour of some thousands of 
 men moving particles of matter on the one hand, and 
 a single mind dictating how and when they should be 
 moved on the other. In actual life, however, the situa- 
 
SALARIED MENTAL WORKERS 163 
 
 tion would be widely different. Between these two 
 factors there would necessarily be a third connecting 
 them. The most absolute monarch who ever flattered 
 himself by saying " L'etat c'est Moi " could not govern 
 even the paltriest province unless he were surrounded 
 by ministers, each of whom had an army of lesser officials 
 under him ; and the same thing holds good in the case 
 of the intellectualised industry of to-day. If Mind, other 
 than the minds of the manual labourers themselves, were 
 represented solely by that of the supreme employer, and 
 if the labourers in executing their thousands of daily 
 tasks had to get their orders direct from him or from 
 nobody, he would not find minutes in the longest of 
 working days for issuing orders to one labourer out of 
 a hundred. For him, the first thing necessary before he 
 could set his business going would be to secure the 
 services of certain principal managers men who were 
 capable of grasping his main ideas, and were masters of 
 the technical knowledge required for putting them into 
 execution. His next step would be to get together a 
 mixed array of sub-managers, draughtsmen, calculators, 
 clerks and* foremen, from the top to the bottom of a 
 long descending scale, until at last the men were reached, 
 who would, under this system of elaborate mental direc- 
 tion, deal with particles of matter by the use of their 
 hands and muscles. 1 
 
 Now, all these officials, no less than the employer 
 
 1 As a type of the difference between oligarchic businesses as they 
 had come to be at the beginning of the nineteenth century and as they 
 were a hundred years later, we may say with approximate accuracy that 
 for every five or six hundred manual labourers at the earlier period 
 there would have been five employers, each directing a separate business 
 his own, and employing a staff of 100 or 120 labourers and 3 or 4 
 ntal workers. At the later period, there would have been on an 
 srage 1 employer of a higher order, who, superseding the original 5, 
 employed 600 manual labourers and 45 mental subordinates, or 1 mental 
 worker to every 12 manual. The proportions borne to-day by the sub- 
 "inate mental workers to the manual vary greatly in different busi- 
 s, according to the degree and quality of intellectualisation from 
 e. Thus in the construction of ships (i. e. hulls) there was, accord- 
 to the Census of Production (1907) 1 mental subordinate to 29 
 nual workers. In the construction of marine engines there was 1 to 
 every 9. In the following businesses the proportions were these : 
 Gas, 1 to 10 ; Chemicals and Bicycles, 1 to 8 ; Clocks and watches 1 to 3. 
 
 I 
 
164 LIMITS OF PURE DEMOCRACY 
 
 himself, represent not manual effort, but mental. 
 Hence, when the Mind of a class whose functions are 
 mental only, and involve no formative contact with 
 material substances whatsoever, is spoken of as directing 
 the operation of human hands which, unless they are in 
 contact with such substances, produce nothing at all, 
 this cannot be the Mind of the employing class alone. 
 It must, in practice, include another class as well, whose 
 function it is to see that material substances are handled 
 in accordance with a purpose which the brain of the 
 employer specifies. Hence, if the primary peculiarity 
 of the modern industrial system is the extent to which, 
 under it, the handling of matter is intellectualised by 
 submission to the control of a small employing class, a 
 secondary peculiarity will be the development of this 
 class of mental subordinates. It will, moreover, be 
 natural to expect that, in proportion as the control of 
 the employers increases in range, and grows more and 
 more scientific, these mental subordinates, in respect 
 not alone of their number, but also of their earnings, 
 as an index of their productive value, will increase 
 likewise, and increase to such an extent that even the 
 roughest statistics will exhibit an unambiguous record 
 of it. 
 
 And such we shall find to be the case. According to 
 Colquhoun, whose investigations relate to the year 1812, 
 the number of business employees in England, Scotland 
 and Ireland, other than manual labourers, did not 
 amount at that time to more than 70,000, their average 
 earnings being 70 per head. This would mean that 
 in England some ten or twelve years earlier the number 
 of such employees could not have exceeded 60,000,* their 
 aggregate earnings being just over 4 million pounds. 
 Had the industrial system undergone no other changes 
 than those resulting from a mere increase of the popula- 
 tion, the number of such persons employed in the United 
 Kingdom rather more than a century later would have 
 been 300,000, and their aggregate earnings but just over 
 20 million pounds. As a matter of fact their number 
 
 1 This would allow on the average about three mental workers, 
 besides the employer or the employees, to every business in England 
 which made a profit exceeding 310 a year. 
 
SALARIED MENTAL WORKERS 165 
 
 had by that time reached one million ; l their average 
 earnings had risen from 70 per head to 200, and their 
 aggregate income had risen from 20 to 200 million. 
 This means that out of the total increment ascribable 
 primarily to the Mind of the supreme employers, the 
 employers had to part with 180 million in payment for 
 the services of a new class of mental coadjutors. If this 
 be added to the increment retained by the employers 
 and their financial associates for themselves, the share 
 of the new wealth taken by these two groups of mental 
 workers together will have amounted to 430 million out 
 of a total increment of 1050 million. 
 
 Who, then, appropriated the residue ? 
 
 This residue of the income more than 600 million 
 went as an addition to the wages of manual labour. 
 Had manual labour throughout the United Kingdom 
 been paid in the year 1907 at the rates prevailing in 
 England at the beginning of the nineteenth century 
 and this is precisely what would have been the case had 
 the doctrine of Marx been true the aggregate income of 
 the labourers at the latter of these two dates would 
 have barely been as much as 400 million pounds. As 
 a matter of fact, the labourers' share of the increment 
 raised this total by 160 per cent. 
 
 Now, in one sense the most remarkable feature in this 
 division of the spoils of progress is the share secured by 
 the subordinate mental workers; for, in respect of the 
 increases alike in their number and their earnings, these 
 persons are practically a new class. 2 When, however, the 
 functions of mere Mind as an agent of production are 
 realised, and the great differences in efficiency between 
 some minds and others, the rise of this class and the 
 wide range of its salaries are at once sufficiently intelli- 
 
 1 About half this number were subject to income-tax, their average 
 earnings being about 300 a year. The earnings of the other half 
 were below the income-tax level, and averaged 100. 
 
 2 As the result of the investigations of a committee of distinguished 
 economists, it was shown in a paper presented to the British Association 
 at Sheffield that out of a non-assessed income of 1300 million, about 
 250 million represented (about the year 1907) the earnings of a Lower 
 Middle Class, in which the lower ranks of the Salaried Mental Workers 
 were included. 
 
166 LIMITS OF PURE DEMOCRACY 
 
 gible excepting in one particular. If the productive 
 faculties which the members of this class exercise are 
 such as to command payments, notably in most, and 
 in some cases enormously, exceeding those of the highest 
 manual labour, why were they not in operation a 
 hundred years ago, and securing, if not the same, yet 
 proportionately the same rewards ? Are we to suppose 
 that in the course of a hundred years the percentage of 
 persons born with such capacities has trebled itself ? 
 A supposition like this would be absurd. The percentage 
 of persons in whom capacities such as these were con- 
 genital was, presumably, no greater at the beginning of 
 the twentieth century than it had been a century before ; 
 but what had increased in number and become novel in 
 kind were the means or opportunities of applying such 
 faculties to productive purposes. Thus the construction 
 of a ship like a modern Dreadnought demands and gives 
 scope for the exercise of high mathematical talents, by 
 the studious development of which a number of picked 
 workers earn large rewards to-day ; but talents of this 
 order would have been useless in the days of Nelson, 
 and many of the men who helped to construct the 
 Victory may have had in them the makings of mathe- 
 matical experts, and yet, hardly conscious themselves 
 of endowments then so sterile, been obliged to earn their 
 living by the use of the axe and hammer. In other 
 words, the intellectualisation of industry, which primarily 
 has its origin in the Mind of the supreme directorate, 
 increases the supply of subordinate mental talent in 
 action by creating opportunities for the use of faculties 
 which would else be dormant. 
 
 The presence, then, of the subordinate mental workers 
 as a factor in modern industry carries its explanation on 
 the face of it, and though it considerably modifies the 
 practical import of the thesis that the modern increase 
 of wealth is due to the supreme employers, it does not 
 conflict with that thesis in any fundamental way. But 
 when we turn from mental effort to manual , and consider 
 the fact that these same manual labourers have secured 
 far more of the increment than the two other classes 
 together, it may seem at first sight that the case is 
 totally different. It may seem either that the thesis 
 
NOVEL OPPORTUNITIES 167 
 
 in question is in itself erroneous, and that the hands and 
 muscles of the self-directed average man do increase in 
 efficiency, which that thesis denies, or else that the 
 employers, according to a scheme of minutely graduated 
 generosity, paid twice as much to each labourer as his 
 labour could possibly produce. 
 
 Of the difficulty thus suggested the solution is dis- 
 coverable in two sets of facts, both of which are of the 
 first importance, but which are in current controversy 
 altogether neglected. One of them is purely economic, 
 the other is moral, political, or, in a general sense, social. 
 The latter will be discussed hereafter. We will here 
 confine ourselves to the former namely, facts which are 
 purely economic. 
 
 In the case of mental capacities, such as an innate 
 talent for mathematics, which a workman is incapable 
 of using if there is no opportunity for their use, but 
 which, if a use is devised for them by the genius of a 
 scientific employer, he at once does his utmost to culti- 
 vate, and finds that their industrial value embodies itself 
 in an ample salary in the case of capacities such as 
 these, two things are equally evident. One is that, 
 apart from the genius of the scientific employer, the 
 potential talents of the employee would be, for practical 
 purposes, as though they did not exist. The other is 
 that, in the same practical sense, such potential talents 
 would be equally non-existent unless the employee 
 developed them by certain extra efforts of his own. If 
 the employer represents the oligarchic principle in in- 
 dustry, and the employee the democratic, the case is 
 similar to that which exists, as we have seen already, in 
 the sphere of political government. Action from above 
 being given, there is not only submission from below, 
 but a positive reaction also. The worker who develops 
 high mathematical powers in response to the demands 
 of an employer who provides him with the opportunity 
 of using them is, when they are actually used by him, 
 and his earnings are thereby increased, a co-creator 
 of the increment out of which his increased earnings 
 come. 
 
 And what is true of subordinate mental effort is, with 
 certain qualifications, true of manual effort also. The 
 
168 LIMITS OF PURE DEMOCRACY 
 
 manual labourers of to-day or, in other words, the 
 mass of average men would produce no more than they 
 did a hundred years ago if they were left to the direction 
 of no minds other than their own ; for they would have 
 no opportunity of doing, in the way of productive work, 
 anything different from what they did a hundred years 
 ago. But the technical control of their labour by a 
 scientific oligarchy being given, there has not been on 
 the part of masses of the labourers the mere passive 
 response of conformity, or a doing under the guidance 
 of others the same order of work which they had pre- 
 viously been doing under their own. In many respects 
 there have been changes in the character of the work 
 itself, and the labourers have, in accordance with their 
 several natural endowments, been called on to exert 
 themselves in the development of various faculties which 
 were previously unused for the reason that they were 
 not usable. 
 
 Of this fact a rudimentary but a very striking illustra- 
 tion is to be found in the first modern event which awoke 
 in the legislators of England a consciousness of industrial 
 change. This, which became notorious very early in the 
 nineteenth century, was the growing employment of 
 children of tender years in factories. A little child at 
 the beginning of the nineteenth century was a creature 
 no stronger or cleverer than its predecessors had been at 
 the time of the Norman Conquest ; but certain master 
 minds, by concentrating themselves on the industrial 
 process, had so far simplified a number of manual opera- 
 tions, and had so far substituted non-human force for 
 human, that the feeble hands and the limited intelligence 
 of infants were able to produce daily the value of a loaf 
 of bread, whereas previously they produced, and could 
 have produced, nothing. The infants had played no 
 part in devising the scientific apparatus on which the 
 possible exercise of their productive powers depended. 
 Were the apparatus withdrawn, their small productive 
 powers would at once have been withdrawn also. But 
 the point to be noted is that, the existence of the 
 apparatus being given, the infants in using it were not 
 doing to order something which, like playing a game, 
 they would have done somehow in any case, but were 
 
NOVEL GRADES OF LABOUR 169 
 
 making some extra (and to them arduous) effort, the like 
 of which they never had made before. 
 
 And of manual labour generally under the modern 
 industrial system, the same thing holds good, not in all 
 its forms, but in most of them. It is true that, unlike 
 infants, the majority of human adults must in any state 
 of society perform manual labour of some kinds, these 
 kinds being such as are necessary for the bare support 
 of life. These are still essential to production, no matter 
 how elaborate, as may be seen when some piece of super- 
 scientific machinery is transported by a carter in a van 
 to the premises of the final user. The carter who, acting 
 under orders, does this kind of work to-day, does nothing 
 which he could not have done, and would not have had 
 to do on his own account, had he been a mediaeval 
 peasant carting his own barley. He differs from his 
 predecessor as a child who reproduces on tracing-paper 
 certain lines which a drawing-master has drawn on a 
 slate beneath it, differs from a child who, with a pencil 
 equally firm, describes on a blank slate figures of its own 
 devising. The sole factor present in the first case and 
 not present in the second is no new positive effort either 
 of mind or body, but a passive act of absolutely easy 
 obedience. The labourers who still perform work of this 
 simple kind to-day cannot be said in any accurate sense 
 to produce more to-day by any faculties resident in 
 themselves than their predecessors did a hundred or even 
 two thousand years ago ; and the fact that these men, 
 whose earnings represent the minimum, are twice as well 
 paid as their grandfathers for work precisely similar, is 
 due to causes of a moral or social kind, the discussion 
 of which must be reserved for a later stage of our 
 argument. 
 
 The labourers, however, whose work is still of this 
 primitive kind, and who still receive the minimum, what- 
 ever that may be, have sunk under the modern system 
 to a relatively small minority: and the minimum sum 
 secured by these men being given, the fact that the 
 majority in varying degrees earn more is of purely eco- 
 nomic origin; and, although it may have a social side 
 also, we are here concerned with it as an economic fact 
 alone. We have seen, then, that the wages generally, a 
 
170 LIMITS OF PURE DEMOCRACY 
 
 minimum sum being given, owe all their upward gradua- 
 tions, in so far as these occur, to a corresponding gradua- 
 tion in the efficiencies of the workers earning them. 
 This holds good under all systems of which wages form 
 a part. What concerns us here is the fact that, in pro- 
 portion as, under the modern system of oligarchy, in- 
 dustry has been intellectualised from above, the gradua- 
 / tion of the wages, not only of mental, but of manual 
 work also, has acquired a wider range, and become more 
 minute in character, than it was when this system of 
 oligarchy was still in its earliest stages ; and if we com- 
 pare industrial oligarchy as it is to-day with what it was 
 in England a hundred years ago, the difference between 
 the two may be briefly expressed thus. Any employer 
 demanding work from his labourers is like a schoolmaster 
 setting sums to his class. The sums set by the typical 
 employers of yesterday were all so simple that most of 
 the class could do them. The cleverest boys in doing 
 them used and revealed no more talent than the dullest. 
 The sums set by the typical employer of to-day, though 
 certain of them are simple still, are for the most part 
 in varying degrees difficult. They require for their solu- 
 tion talents which are not only greater than those pos- 
 sessed by all, but which also, before they are usable for 
 any particular purpose, must be cultivated by deliberate 
 effort on the part of the possessors themselves, the details 
 of such effort depending on what the purpose is. This 
 is what socialists forget when they reason about labour 
 as a commodity which is bought and sold. They think 
 of it as a commodity which is always of one grade only, 
 and if all labour were still of those simplest kinds of 
 which all human beings must be capable who are capable 
 of keeping themselves alive, this conception would corre- 
 spond with fact. It did, we may roughly say, correspond 
 with fact in England at the beginning of the nineteenth 
 century in some such sense as this : that, if labour at 
 that time had been bought by the larger employers, not 
 from the labourers directly, but through some salesman 
 representing them at a central office, and if at that time 
 an employer had asked to be supplied with labour-power 
 to the extent of a hundred units, most of the units 
 wanted by him would have been of a low, and a more 
 
GRADES AND PRICES 
 
 171 
 
 or less uniform, efficiency ; and that the salesman might 
 have taken so much for granted unless the intending 
 customer had made some statement to the contrary. 
 But to ask him in the same fashion for a hundred units 
 to-day would be like asking a wine-merchant for a 
 hundred bottles of wine. An order given in these general 
 terms would be meaningless. The salesman of to-day, 
 were it necessary to explain the situation, would say to 
 the employer, " What qualities of labour do you want ? 
 In former times we supplied three qualities only. Our 
 chief trade was in the lowest, but we kept them all in 
 stock. To-day we supply the article, not in three 
 qualities, but in sixteen. The lowest quality, for which 
 the demand to-day is small, we keep in stock as we 
 always did, but the higher qualities have to be made 
 to order. You must specify in each case what you want 
 the labourer to do ; the labourer, so far as he can, must 
 make himself capable of doing it, and the extra effort 
 involved in his self-preparation must, according to 
 circumstances, be secured by some extra payment." 
 
 What the new accomplishments on the part of the 
 manual labourers are which the modern oligarchy 
 demands, and for the use of which it creates opportuni- 
 ties, need not, and cannot, be discussed in detail here. 
 It will here be sufficient to indicate their general char- 
 acter. By largely substituting for mere muscular effort 
 the powers of steam and electricity, and thus liberating 
 the labourer from duties exhausting to mind and body, 
 the industrial oligarchy has demanded from the labourers 
 generally, and has thus enabled them to develop, a self- 
 concentration on tasks in which energy, mainly mental, 
 plays a part considerably larger than it did in the tasks 
 which previously were alone open to them. These novel 
 tasks remain still essentially manual in the sense that 
 they involve, and are in each case bounded by, a manual 
 contact on the labourer's part with so much or so many 
 of certain prescribed substances as can be brought within 
 the reach of one pair of human arms ; but these tasks 
 have become matters of habituated and alert attention 
 rather than of mere muscular endurance on the one 
 hand, or of mere tricks of dexterity, themselves difficult, 
 on the other. In any case the main fact which concerns 
 
172 LIMITS OF PURE DEMOCRACY 
 
 us here is this : that, whatever the new tasks now de- 
 manded of the manual labourers may be, they involve 
 on the whole more self-preparation, and a greater 
 graduation of efficiencies from an inevitable minimum 
 upwards, than did the tasks demanded by the employers 
 a hundred years ago. 1 Since, then, each of these new 
 efficiencies needs a voluntary effort on the labourers' 
 part to develop it, and since, in its own degree, each 
 adds its something to the success of the employer's 
 projects, the employer is bound to elicit them in the 
 only way that is practicable namely, by paying a price 
 for each proportionate to the excess of its value over 
 that of the crude effort which is all that the labourer 
 would have troubled himself to put on the market 
 otherwise. Such, then, is the primary, though it is not 
 the entire, explanation of that increase which has, under 
 the modern industrial oligarchy, taken place in the 
 earnings of mere manual labour. The primary cause 
 of this increase has not been the generosity of the 
 employers, nor the pressure of collective bargaining. 
 Its primary cause has been the fact that, the action of 
 the oligarchy being first assumed as an essential, various 
 new efficiencies we may call them kinds of super-labour 
 in response to the demands of the oligarchy have been 
 developed by the labourers themselves. 
 
 Here, then, in these three productive classes the 
 
 | oligarchy of employers whose business is mental direc- 
 tion, the great subordinate staff whose business is mental 
 
 ; direction in obedience to the employers' orders, and the 
 manual workers through whom Mind is brought into 
 
 1 Many persons deny this. Those who do so have mainly in view 
 kinds of manual work which are of the nature of artistry. And it is 
 true that the role of the artist, as a direct fashioner of goods that come 
 into the market, has, under the modern system of production, become 
 relatively less important than it once was. It is, however, not extinct. 
 It flourishes under limitations of a very obvious kind, with which senti- 
 mental democrats least of all people should quarrel. In proportion 
 as goods are fashioned by the direct labour of artists, each of whom 
 possesses some special genius, the supply of such goods is necessarily 
 slow and small. They can, therefore, be acquired by the few only, 
 and these few are the exceptionally rich ; but unless artists work under 
 scientific employers who can use their designs as patterns, wealth,, as 
 represented by art-products, can never diffuse itself outside a narrow 
 circle. 
 
THREE PRODUCTIVE CLASSES 173 
 
 contact with matter, we have the three main agencies, 
 to the interaction of which, not only the increase of 
 wealth is due, but the general features of its distribution 
 also. We have these classes and their respective func- 
 tions before us, not as mere abstract quantities, but as 
 localised and concrete facts, the development of which, 
 in the case of one country at all events, is historically 
 and statistically measurable with some rough but suf- 
 ficient accuracy ; and with the aid of such concrete facts 
 we can more or less definitely see how the scheme of 
 distribution, which to-day is substantially the same 
 everywhere, substantially reflects and coincides with the 
 actual dynamics of production. 
 
 In the following chapter we will consider these facts 
 again, with reference to the more recent attempts of 
 socialist or democratic thinkers to exhibit some vast 
 change in the present distribution of wealth and circum- 
 stance as possible through a fuller operation of the forces 
 of pure democracy. 
 
I 
 
 CHAPTER IV 
 
 DISTRIBUTION AS IT IS 
 
 LET us sum up briefly the argument of the foregoing 
 chapter with regard to modern production and the 
 process of distribution as contingent on it, in a country 
 which is the classical type of the progressive countries 
 of the world. 
 
 In the course of little more than a century the modern 
 industrial system has not only provided occupation and 
 the means of livelihood for a population five times as 
 great as that which could otherwise have maintained 
 itself within the limits of the British Islands, but it also 
 has more than doubled the average product per in- 
 habitant. This result is primarily due to the fact that 
 intellects of a superior order have concentrated their 
 powers on the business of directing manual labour ; and, 
 since manual labour was, at the beginning of the 
 twentieth century, not superior, either in muscular force 
 or skill, to what it had been at the beginning of the 
 nineteenth, or indeed to what it had been in ancient 
 Rome or Egypt, the whole of the increment which is 
 new since the beginning of the nineteenth century must, 
 in a primary sense, be the product of Mind alone, as 
 embodied in the persons of those by whom labour is now 
 directed. Such, then, in a primary sense, being the 
 principle of production to which the modern increment 
 is due, it was pointed out that this principle, when 
 translated into actual practice, has resulted in a scheme 
 of distribution which, within something like a tenth of 
 the total, tends so far to accord with the minutiae of the 
 productive process that what a man or a class receives 
 is a roughly accurate index of what he or it produces. 
 We have seen, however, that, if this measure of indi- 
 vidual production be adopted, the practical result differs 
 
 174 
 
OLIGARCHY IN ACTION 175 
 
 to a vast degree from anything which our general theory, 
 if taken without qualifications, might reasonably lead 
 us to expect. We have seen that out of an increment 
 of 1050 million pounds the representatives of controlling 
 Mind received as an actual fact something less than a 
 quarter. Hence, if it is true in any sense that Mind | 
 produced the whole, it must be true in some other sense 
 that its product was a quarter only, whilst Subordinate 
 Mind and Labour between them produced the rest. If, 
 therefore, our discussion is to have any practical mean- 
 ing, we must consider more closely how, in any sense 
 that is practical, these two propositions are related to 
 one another, or whether the former, which credits the 
 Mind of the oligarchy with having produced the whole, 
 has in actual life any meaning whatever. 
 
 In order to understand this question it is necessary 
 to revert to a discussion which occupied us in a previous 
 chapter, with regard to the nature of practical reasoning 
 generally. It was there pointed out that all practical 
 reasoning is in its nature hypothetical, resolving itself 
 into a statement that, if such and such a particular thing 
 be done, such and such a result will be thereby caused 
 or produced. It was pointed out further that, if such 
 reasoning is to have any immediate import, the action 
 which is the subject of the hypothesis must be of a kind 
 which it is likely or reasonably possible that an indi- 
 vidual or a class may, under existing circumstances, 
 elect to perform, having not performed it previously, or, 
 having performed it previously, may elect to perform no 
 longer. Thus, if manual labour, by availing itself of the 
 new opportunities which, as we have seen, have been 
 created for it by the Mind of an industrial oligarchy, can 
 be said to produce more to-day than it did at the begin- 
 ning of the nineteenth century, or indeed to play any 
 part in the production of the increment whatsoever 
 especially if it can be said in any serious sense to produce 
 more of the increment than is produced by the Mind 
 of the oligarchy or as much one condition must first 
 be taken for granted. This condition is that the existing 
 system of production, with an industrial oligarchy at the 
 head of it, is established as a going concern, and that no 
 question of what would happen if the action of the 
 
176 LIMITS OF PURE DEMOCRACY 
 
 oligarchy were suspended presents itself as relating to 
 possibilities which are near enough to be worth con- 
 sidering ; whereas if this condition disappears, the whole 
 situation changes. 
 
 Thus, for example, when the Jesuits were a power in 
 Paraguay, they selected certain of the more intelligent 
 natives, and succeeded in teaching them the delicate art 
 of watch-making. By these natives, though experts in 
 arts immemorially their own, such a use of the human 
 hand had never before been dreamed of. In response to 
 the demands, and under the supervision of their in- 
 structors, they nevertheless acquired it. Under such 
 conditions the industry so far prospered that the Jesuits 
 are said to have made a considerable profit from the 
 products of it, these being sold in Europe for the benefit 
 of their own Order ; and whilst this situation lasted, the 
 craftsmen, who profited also, may be said to have done 
 as much in producing the total output as the men who 
 merely set them their lessons and told them what to do. 
 But when, as subsequently happened, the Jesuits were 
 driven from the country, the native watch-makers, de- 
 prived of their guides, were helpless. There was no 
 longer a question of which did most in the making of 
 this new merchandise the Mind of the directors or the 
 labour of the men directed. There was for the labourers, 
 as soon as they were left to themselves, no merchandise 
 of this new kind at all; and the proposition that the 
 directors had produced the whole of it a proposition 
 which would otherwise have been true in an abstract, a 
 remote, and a speculative sense only would then have 
 represented for the natives a highly important and 
 directly experienced fact. 
 
 This illustration is taken from a chapter of history 
 very unusual in kind, but it turns on an event the sub- 
 stantial reproduction of which on an incomparably 
 wider scale is not only not impossible if we take it as a 
 practical hypothesis, but is actually the precise event 
 which the theory of pure democracy indicates as the 
 object of all popular endeavour, 1 and which the earlier 
 
 1 A most remarkable illustration of the vital pertinence of the above 
 passage has been provided by the course of the Russian revolution an 
 event which did not begin, and which was indeed anticipated by 
 
HIGH WAGES^AND OLIGARCHY 177 
 
 leaders of democratic opinion were urging year by year 
 all labouring men to work for by strategical strikes, by 
 violence, or the capture of governmental power. The 
 event which was to be thus worked for is simply the 
 entire cessation of any kind of influence which is exer- 
 cised over industrial effort by the knowledge, the in- 
 tellect or the energy of any purely directive class, and 
 the " emancipation ''such is the agitator's favourite 
 term of the masses of the workers from all mental 
 guidance other than that which originates in their own 
 minds only. So long as such an event continues to be 
 aimed at by any large section of the workers, or to haunt 
 their minds as an object of ideal endeavour, the proposi- 
 tion that the oligarchy, which such persons have often 
 attempted and may again attempt to destroy, really 
 produces the whole of the new wealth of the world, in 
 the sense that if the oligarchy were paralysed this new 
 
 nobody, till more than a year after the words in the text were written. 
 The following facts, recorded by the socialist correspondent of an 
 English newspaper at Petrograd (July 1917), speak for themselves. 
 M. Skoboleff, a revolutionary leader himself, declared that the great 
 danger of the revolution was caused by the masses, whose one object 
 was " to terrorise and compel the dismissal of all controlling persons of 
 any kind," and manage industry (as Owen and Lane attempted to 
 manage it) by purely democratic committees, which had no power 
 except in so far as they reflected the intelligence and the immediate 
 inclinations of the wage-earners. These committees (as Owen found, 
 and as Lane found) proved absolutely incompetent. In one factory 
 the helplessness of the committee being apparent to all, the experi- 
 ment was attempted of turning the foremen into so many petty 
 dictators. The foremen proved as helpless as the committee. The 
 workers were accordingly driven to come for guidance to the old 
 management. In a dyeing business in Petrograd the wage-earners had 
 demanded wages so far beyond the value of the total product that there 
 was no revenue out of which to pay them. There was, however, oil the 
 premises a large store of chemicals. The wage-earners insisted that 
 these should be sold, and wages paid out of the sum thus obtained. 
 These chemicals were essentials of the industry. Nothing could be 
 done without them. The works accordingly had to close down. The 
 more intelligent revolutionists, like M. Skoboleff, may denounce such 
 insane proceedings ' ' as a direct menace to the gains achieved by the 
 revolution," but they are simply the logical results of the principles of 
 pure democracy which principles necessarily mean, if they mean any- 
 thing, "the dismissal of all controlling persons," or, in other words, 
 any oligarchic person who imposes his own will, or the results of his 
 own knowledge, on others. 
 
178 LIMITS OF PURE DEMOCRACY 
 
 wealth would presently exist no longer, is not a proposi- 
 tion which is true as a piece of mere abstract theory. 
 It is one which is fraught with a meaning as momentous 
 and as strictly practical as any social politician, or any 
 sane man, can imagine. 
 
 Nevertheless, let it be said again, in so far as we take, 
 and have reason to take, the operation of the oligarchy 
 for granted, the practical truth will be that what the 
 oligarchy produces by the process of intellectual direc- 
 tion is by no means the whole of the increment, but 
 merely a small fraction, the larger part being the pro- 
 duct of those democratic reactions reactions both 
 manual and mental which the action of the oligarchy 
 evokes, and alone makes possible, but without which 
 the oligarchy itself would in all industries be crippled, 
 and in many reduced to impotence. 
 
 Here, then, in the operations of these three great 
 agencies in Supreme or Controlling Mind, Subordinate 
 Mind, and Labour, the interaction of which is the essence 
 of the modern productive system, we see the reason why, 
 in all progressive countries, the resulting scheme of dis- 
 tribution, elaborate as its graduations are, is almost 
 indistinguishably the same, and why Controlling Mind 
 should, in spite of its primacy, get out of the total pro- 
 duct such a relatively small reward. The reason lies 
 firstly in the fact that the modern productive process 
 depends on the interaction of units who differ greatly in 
 respect of their unitary productive powers ; secondly, in 
 the fact that the distribution of the product everywhere 
 tends to adjust itself to what each unit produces; and, 
 thirdly, in the fact that these various powers them- 
 selves are everywhere distributed by nature in very much 
 the same proportions. The international similarities of 
 distribution are explicable in no other way. There is, 
 indeed, in all highly civilised countries, such as the United 
 Kingdom and America, about a tenth part of the total 
 annual product which, like a kind of precipitate, goes to 
 its recipients as income from inherited capital ; and, 
 even if this fact is ignored, it cannot be pretended, as to 
 the rest, that the adjustment is as yet in individual cases 
 complete. It is enough to say that the adjustments 
 resemble those of coats to individual human figures. 
 
CURRENT REWARDS OF EFFORT 179 
 
 The coats adjust themselves generally to the dimensions 
 of their respective wearers, though in many cases the fit 
 may not be perfect. 
 
 Now, if such allowances be made for maladjustments 
 of this kind, the general adjustment of income to the 
 product of individual effort is gradually being admitted 
 by socialist thinkers themselves. It is being admitted 
 by them partly in the way of revised theory, partly in 
 the way of a series of revised statistics. Thus, the 
 " enormous share " stolen from the products of the 
 workers by an absolutely non-productive class was, 
 according to Marx and his immediate followers, some- 
 thing between 80 and 75 per cent, of the total. Twenty 
 or thirty years later, the strike-leaders of Australia had 
 reduced this estimate of the stolen share to 66 per cent. 
 Ten years later, again, the more educated of the English 
 socialists had reduced it to 33, and others, later still, 
 have reduced it to 25. 
 
 These changes are reflections, not only of an improved 
 arithmetic, but also of an advance in thought from the 
 crude puerilities of Marx, by which the earlier socialists 
 were dominated, to something more closely resembling 
 the complexities of actual fact. The Marxian ideas of 
 listribution in the modern world were perfectly logical 
 related to the Marxian theory of production; but, 
 ;spite the talent displayed by Marx in his exposition 
 it, his theory of production is, as applied to the 
 lodern world, one for which the word " puerile " is the 
 >nly correct epithet. Modern economic society is, ac- 
 >rding to that theory, divided into two, and no more 
 lan two classes a mass of employers on the one hand, 
 rhose sole activity is theft, and who hardly know the 
 iture of the industries of which, as Mill said, " they are 
 ie possessors," and a mass of labourers, exclusively 
 lanual, on the other, who are all of the same grade, 
 rho all receive or tend to receive the same starvation 
 rages, and who, unaided by any intellect or any ima- 
 lation but their own, produce all the wealth of the 
 todern world between them. 
 
 If such a picture were correct, the Marxian estimate 
 the stolen or unearned share would doubtless be 
 >rrect also. It stands or falls, however, with two 
 
180 LIMITS OF PURE DEMOCRACY 
 
 definite assumptions : firstly, that the labourers are all 
 of the same grade, and all receive the same minimum 
 wage ; and, secondly, that neither the employers nor any 
 intermediate class have anything to do with the opera- 
 tions of labour whatever, whether as masters of science, 
 as men of enterprise, or as organisers, or in any other 
 way. Each of these assumptions has come to be recog- 
 nised by the later socialists as absurd. They recognise, 
 on the one hand, that wages do not all tend to a 
 minimum, but rise for the most part in varying degrees 
 above it, the aggregate share of the wage-earners in the 
 national product being thus indefinitely larger than the 
 fifth part or the quarter which the logic of Marx 
 assigned to them. They recognise, on the other hand, 
 that the modern employers, as distinct from the mere 
 investors, are, instead of mere idle " expropriators," the 
 most active agents in production that have ever been 
 known to history. One modern socialist writer, who has 
 already been quoted here, admits that they owe their 
 positions to the fact that they are born with certain 
 peculiar energies of which they are the practical mono- 
 polists; that their function consists in the issuing of 
 technical orders to which the mass must conform in a 
 spirit of " strict subordination and discipline " ; that 
 these men are producers as truly as the labourers them- 
 selves; that a large share of the income of " a complex 
 industrial state " is produced by them, and that this 
 share must be regarded as the rent of their special 
 ability. Other representative socialists, English, Belgian, 
 German, Italian and American, have come to admit in 
 almost the same words that the special abilities of men 
 who were classed by Marx as idlers " make all the 
 difference to a business between success and ruin." 
 
 In proportion, then, as socialists have come to per- 
 ceive on the one hand that wages are greater in the 
 aggregate than according to Marx they could be, and 
 on the other that employers produce a large part of the 
 income which according to Marx they steal, it is obvious 
 that the socialist estimate of the stolen total has, as 
 compared with the Marxian, been necessarily reduced 
 to very modest proportions. The latest socialist esti- 
 mates have, as was just now mentioned, reduced it from 
 
TRUSTS AND WAGES 181 
 
 80 per cent, of the entire product to 25 ; and, if we allow 
 for the fact that at any given time about half of the 
 income directly coming from property is from property 
 created by the actual recipients themselves, the income 
 really unearned, according to this computation, will, 
 though somewhat excessive, be not far from the truth. 
 
 Nor does this more reasonable view of the actualities 
 of the existing situation lead to a revised conception of 
 unearned income alone. It leads to a revised conception 
 of the causes which mainly determine the distribution 
 of incomes generally. In proportion as socialists have 
 now come to perceive that if, in respect of incomes 
 derived from inherited property (which alone are really 
 unearned), allowance be made to the extent of a tenth 
 or even a twelfth of the total income of a typical modern 
 nation, the entire remainder is the product of the efforts 
 of living men in proportion as they have come to per- 
 ceive further that these efforts, instead of being, as Marx 
 assumed, equal, rise from the bottom to the top in a 
 minutely graduated scale ; that distribution is graduated 
 in a manner no less elaborate, and that in different and 
 distant countries this distributive graduation exhibits 
 the same contour or pattern one thing has, generally 
 if not in exact detail, become as plain to socialists as it 
 must be to other men. It has become plain to them 
 that this uniform graduation of incomes cannot be 
 accounted for on the supposition that millions of 
 workers, all of them equal in efficiency, are robbed of 
 their equal products to systematically unequal degrees, 
 but that primarily and mainly their shares of the total 
 product must, with substantial accuracy, be adjusted 
 to the unequal amounts which their efforts severally 
 reduce. 
 
 This profound change, however, in the trend of socialist 
 thought has not been due to a development of thought 
 alone. It has been due largely to two kinds of experi- 
 ence. One of these has been the growth since the days 
 of Marx of State-owned or Municipal undertakings, such 
 as railways, gas-works, electric lighting and telephones. 
 The other has been the growth of the great Trusts of 
 America. 
 
 According to the implications of earlier socialist argu- 
 
182 LIMITS OF PURE DEMOCRACY 
 
 ment, and according to the dream of all the earlier 
 socialists, as soon as any industry had passed into the 
 hands of the State, "the people" that is, the em- 
 ployees would enjoy, somehow or other, a vague some- 
 thing called "economic freedom"; that they would 
 divide in equal shares the entire proceeds amongst them- 
 selves; that they would settle for themselves, without 
 any dictation from above, what their several tasks 
 should be ; and the State, as holder of the capital, would 
 be no more than their banker. Since the days of Marx 
 every one of these expectations has been falsified. It 
 has been found that in State-owned industries the 
 general conditions of employment are in no essential 
 feature different from those that prevail under private 
 companies. The same discipline from above, as a 
 matter, not of choice, but of necessity, reappears in yet 
 stricter forms. Wages are graduated in substantially 
 the same way, being adjusted to the value of work with 
 the same fatal precision. Equality of income and free- 
 dom are as far off as ever. All this is admitted by the 
 serious socialists of to-day. Experience has shown, says 
 one of them, who once was an ardent Marxian, that a 
 State-owned industry, such as the Post-Ofnce (which 
 Marx adduces as a specimen of ideal socialism in action), 
 is merely private capitalism rehabilitated under a new 
 name. 
 
 Since the days of Marx the world-famous Trusts of 
 America have, by the facts of experience, been teaching 
 socialists precisely the same lesson. The growth of these 
 huge corporations from the closing decade of the nine- 
 teenth century onwards, each of which is a combination 
 of countless businesses into one, has affected the socialist 
 imagination, and, through it, socialist theory, in a 
 manner yet more remarkable. It Has done so in two 
 ways. On the one hand, to a degree much greater than 
 any of the industries which have thus far been owned 
 and monopolised by the State, these corporations have 
 shown how efficient as instruments of production groups 
 of industries may be rendered by uniting them under 
 one control, and have thus provided socialists with the 
 spectacle of a feat accomplished which, if only carried 
 to its full logical consequences, would realise their idea 
 
TRUSTS AND OLIGARCHY 183 
 
 of what socialism, as a productive scheme, would be. 
 On the other hand, nowhere else has the principle of 
 industrial oligarchy been developed to so extreme an 
 extent. Nowhere else are the graded efficiencies of the 
 mass so conspicuously signalised by a scale of unequal 
 wages. Nowhere else is the contrast greater and more 
 obtrusive between the fortunes of the directed many and 
 those of the directing few on whose constant vigilance 
 the vitality of these mammoth enterprises depends. 
 
 This latter aspect of the question modern socialists 
 recognise no less clearly than the former. State-owned 
 industries and Trusts, more especially the latter, repre- 
 sent the productive system which socialism necessarily 
 demands ; and yet these very persons, who lead and 
 reflect the movement of socialist thought to-day, admit 
 that both such systems are, if taken by themselves, 
 utterly subversive of the object at which any kind of 
 socialism aims. " Let us," they say in effect, " organise 
 men in whatever way we please, so long as it will render 
 their corporate industry effective ; let us pay them as 
 nearly as possible the full value of their individual work ; 
 and the very features against which the idea of socialism 
 is a protest will reappear as they are under the system 
 existing here and now." 
 
 An admission of this kind by the leaders of socialist 
 thought might at first sight seem to be nothing less than 
 a relinquishment of every idea by which socialism has 
 thus far been actuated. Such, however, is not the case. 
 So far as socialism has for its ultimate object a general 
 equality of material conditions or incomes, the admis- 
 sion in question is merely a prelude to the revival of the 
 old promise in a yet more alluring form. What the 
 change in theory is which has made this revival possible 
 may be gathered from the number of new tentative 
 formulae which have, to speak roughly, since the close 
 of the nineteenth century, crept into the language of 
 socialist thinkers generally. They differ as much in 
 their implications from the theories of a productive 
 monism, which aimed at merging the industrial oli- 
 garchy in the mass, and which have already been 
 examined here, as they do from the theory of Marx, in 
 which there is no recognition of the functions of oli- 
 
184 LIMITS OF PURE DEMOCRACY 
 
 garchy at all. These new formulae have now become 
 so familiar that the following examples of the ways in 
 which they are worded will suffice. "It is a mistake 
 to suppose," says one writer, " that socialism is 
 identified with any one theory of economic production. 
 It relates to something wider than the act of produc- 
 tion, and beyond it." "A system of production," says 
 another, "is socialist or non-socialist, not according to 
 the manner in which wealth is produced, but according 
 to the social uses to which it is put afterwards." 
 " Socialism," says another, " does not necessarily mean, 
 and as a matter of fact it cannot mean, that everything 
 is to be done by the people. Its sole essential meaning 
 is that everything is to be done for the people." Con- 
 densed statements such as these, from the nature of the 
 case, are informative in the way of implication only. 
 What, then, when stated in fuller and more precise 
 terms, does the implication mean which emanates like 
 a scent from all of them ? What new principle do they 
 indicate, by the practical application of which all the 
 inequalities incident to an oligarchic system of pro- 
 duction shall have for their final issue a paradise of 
 democratic equality ? 
 
 This question was asked with incisive candour, and 
 the modern socialist answer to it was indicted no less 
 clearly, in a sort of manifesto published in the year 1907 
 by a clerical exponent of socialist thought in America. 
 There are traces in his language of a temper peculiar 
 to churchmen only, but his main argument was wholly 
 independent of religion. It was merely a logical ex- 
 pression of the ruling idea now common to intellectual 
 socialists generally. The democrats of the eighteenth 
 century, and the Marxian socialists of the nineteenth, 
 both, said this writer, made an error, and the same 
 error, at starting; not, indeed, as to the object of the 
 democratic movement, but as to the means required 
 for its accomplishment ; and nowhere, so he proceeded, 
 is this fact more clearly shown than in the great Charter 
 of Democracy on which the American Constitution rests. 
 The ideal State was there declared to be one in which 
 each man would be free to do his best for himself by the 
 use of his own faculties, so far as this course was com- 
 
SENTIMENTAL DISTRIBUTION 185 
 
 itible with a like freedom for others. Now, a State 
 
 nis constituted would work, he said, well enough if it 
 rere not for one fact, and this fact the fathers of the 
 icrican Constitution overlooked. They assumed that 
 
 le faculties of all men were, not perhaps precisely, but 
 at all events very fairly, equal. This, however, he went 
 on to observe, is just what men's faculties are not ; and, 
 in respect of no faculties, the use of which is generally 
 necessary, do men differ more conspicuously than in the 
 intellect and energy necessary for the production of 
 wealth. Hence a government which aims merely at 
 providing them with equal opportunities of producing 
 as much as they can, and keeping as much as they 
 produce, is a hotbed of those ultimate inequalities which 
 democracy aims at minimising. The few who are 
 endowed with faculties of one special order faculties 
 ethically void and often allied with baseness are left 
 untrammelled to accumulate wealth and power, whilst 
 the many are left unaided in absolute or comparative 
 poverty. Hence the earlier democrats, and more par- 
 ticularly the earlier socialists, though right in their 
 estimate of the evils by which society is at present 
 afflicted, were radically wrong as to their cause. The 
 cause of existing inequalities does not lie in the fact that 
 most men, under the existing system, do not get all that 
 they produce. It lies in the fact that on the whole this 
 is precisely what they do get. They get what is due to 
 them as producers. What justice demands, what demo- 
 cracy demands, what socialism demands, is that they 
 shall get what is due to them, not as producers, but as 
 men. 
 
 In other words, according to this argument, a just 
 distribution of material goods and circumstances has 
 nothing to do with what happens within the precincts 
 of production itself. Within those precincts the prin- 
 ciple of oligarchy may preponderate. Some men may 
 cast much into the treasury, others relatively little. 
 Justice relates to what happens outside the factory 
 gates, and demands that when the treasury is opened 
 the last shall be as the first, the first no greater than 
 the last. Thus, with one of those touches of nature 
 which make the whole world kin, the writer illustrates 
 
186 LIMITS OF PURE DEMOCRACY 
 
 his meaning from what probably was his own experi- 
 ence. He complains of the shameful fact that, under 
 the existing system, a minister of Christ, if he wants to 
 build a church, may have to come hat in hand to some 
 coarse-grained individual whose one and only superiority 
 is a wholly non-moral, a wholly non-Christian power of 
 producing the dollars which the Christian desires to 
 spend. Under a system of socialist or truly democratic 
 justice, what the Christian now begs as a favour here 
 is the writer's conclusion he would be entitled to 
 demand as a right. 
 
 In this train of reasoning, apart from its clerical 
 applications, we see what the theory of wealth and dis- 
 tribution is to which socialist and democratic thinkers 
 are now generally approximating. In this theory they 
 find what, ever since they detected the fallacy of the 
 Marxian doctrine that the value of the product of every 
 worker is equal, they have all been looking for in one 
 place after another. They find a means by which two 
 things, seemingly incompatible, may be harmonised, 
 both of which are essential to socialism in virtually the 
 same degree ; one of them being a system of production 
 from which oligarchy, subordination and all kinds of 
 inequality are inseparable ; the other being a system of 
 distribution which shall nevertheless be equal. Nor is 
 this the only advantage which the new conception of 
 the socialist principle brings them. By its means their 
 estimate of " the enormous share recoverable by the 
 people themselves " is restored to its old proportions, 
 if not, indeed, swollen beyond them ; for what the masses 
 are promised by a polity which ignores the facts of pro- 
 duction is not merely that limited sum which at present 
 certain persons enjoy in excess of their actual products. 
 Everybody who produces, and can only produce, a little, 
 is promised nearly all the products of those who possess 
 more. 
 
 How such a scheme of socialism would work out in 
 practice is a question which shall be dealt with when we 
 have seen in greater detail what its operation would be 
 as anticipated by socialists themselves. Meanwhile, it 
 will be enough to observe that if the essence of socialism 
 is to be found in the process of democratic distribution, 
 
SENTIMENTAL DEMOCRACY 187 
 
 and if this is not to be determined by the facts of indi- 
 vidual production at all, the entire conception of social- 
 ism or a socialist polity, in so far as such a polity is 
 novel, belongs to a domain of life which is not industrial 
 but social; and social democracy, not industrial, is the 
 democratic element which is involved in it. 
 
 In order to realise this fact more clearly we will 
 presently consider the modern socialist programme as 
 set forth and expounded by one of the few socialist 
 writers who has won international distinction as a critic 
 of life generally. 
 
BOOK IV 
 
 DISTRIBUTION BY DEMOCRATIC SENTIMENT 
 CHAPTER I 
 
 THE SENTIMENTAL PROGRAMME 
 
 WHAT is meant or suggested by the term Social 
 Democracy, as distinct from " Political " and " Indus- 
 trial," is the application of the principle of " one man 
 one unit of influence " to every province of life which 
 is distinguishable from that of technical industry on the 
 one hand, and that of the making and administration 
 of governmental laws on the other. The exclusion of 
 these latter activities will not, indeed, be complete ; for 
 if principles purely moral are, as modern socialists con- 
 tend, to determine amongst other things the distribution 
 of material products, such principles, as we shall see 
 presently, will require laws to enforce them; but a 
 development of these principles into an active and com- 
 pelling power must, as the writer about to be quoted 
 insists, both precede such laws if they are to be made, 
 and accompany them if they are ever to be effective ; 
 and the nature of these principles themselves, as moral 
 or social phenomena, is the matter with which we are 
 first concerned. 
 
 The writer in question is Mr. G. B. Shaw, whose 
 peculiar talents, joined with his socialist sympathies, 
 have been made known by his dramas to a wide and 
 international public. These dramas, whatever may be 
 their merits otherwise, display an alertness of thought 
 and logic, a keen observation of character, and an insight 
 into social relationships and the current ideas involved 
 in them, which qualify the author in a very signal degree, 
 
 188 
 

 THE SOUL OF SOCIALISM 189 
 
 not to lead, but to reflect contemporary socialist thought, 
 and to express its essential content in the most coherent, 
 the most logical, and generally in the most favourable 
 form of which it is, from the nature of things, susceptible ; 
 and nowhere can a better or more representative exposi- 
 tion of socialism as a scheme of social, to the exclusion 
 of industrial, democracy be found than in an exposition 
 of it which was given by Mr. Shaw as a challenge to 
 adverse criticism, on an occasion designed to secure for 
 it an attention as wide as possible. In order, then, to 
 understand clearly what a socialist polity would be, as 
 advocated, defended and understood by the serious 
 socialists of to-day, Mr. Shaw's exposition of the matter, 
 as given by him on that occasion, shall in substance be 
 reproduced here. 1 
 
 MX*,. Shaw begins by saying that the one essential 
 characteristic by which a socialist State, as properly 
 understood, is distinguished from all others has been 
 obscured in the minds of its opponents because they 
 mistake for its essence what is merely one of its inci- 
 dents. They identify it, he says, with a mere unification 
 of industries, which ought always to be distinguished 
 from socialism by the name of " Industrial Collectiv- 
 ism." If the essence of socialism be, what it really is 
 namely, an equal distribution of incomes or material 
 circumstance collectivism, says Mr. Shaw, emphasising 
 the precise illustration which has just now been men- 
 tioned, would in itself no more tend to produce this than 
 the great Trusts of America. But socialism begins 
 where industrial collectivism ends. Instead of leaving/ 
 distribution to be determined by the facts of production J 
 it appears on the stage precisely at the critical moment, 
 
 I 
 
 1 Mr. Shaw's views, as here given, were expounded by him at great 
 length in a controversy carried on by himself and Mr. Harold Cox in 
 the Morning Post The nature of the occasion led to great diffuse- 
 ness of statement on his part, and to much dislocation of the logical 
 order of his arguments. Their true logical order is, however, per- 
 fectly clear to an attentive reader, ana is carefully represented in 
 the text. Some socialists would probably say that Mr. Shaw presses 
 the demand for an absolute equality of incomes too far. But this is a 
 mere matter of detail, and does not affect the representative character 
 of his reasoning ; for a virtual or effective equality is demanded by them 
 all alike. 
 
190 LIMITS OF PURE DEMOCRACY 
 
 and imparts to collectivism a totally new character by 
 subjecting the distribution of its products to a force 
 which has no relation to industrial facts whatever. This 
 force, he says, which is the soul of socialism, may be 
 best described as a sentiment, of which the nature and 
 the genesis are as follows. The sentiment, he says, is 
 one which will, when fully developed, render the very 
 idea of unequal incomes intolerable; and although at 
 present it is doubtless far from general, to suppose that 
 it will soon become so is no mere idle dream. It has its 
 roots in ordinary human nature. A sentiment prevails 
 already amongst all civilised men which demands that 
 the beggar shall be covered with clothes of some kind, 
 no less than the plutocrat. Socialism, then, regarded 
 as a practical project, does not require for its basis 
 the creation of any sentiment that is new. It merely 
 requires a development and this is in rapid progress 
 of one which is familiar to all of us, as operative here 
 and now, and which will, when developed only a little 
 further, make the spectacle of a poor man as intolerable 
 as the spectacle of a naked man. Hence, it will no 
 longer content itself with demanding a coat for every- 
 body. It will insist on filling the pockets of all coats 
 alike with what Mr. Shaw, in language of almost needless 
 precision, calls a the quotient of the national income 
 divided by the number of the population." In short, 
 the socialist State, as expressing the sentiment in ques- 
 tion, will, Mr. Shaw proceeds, say to every one of its 
 citizens, " We guarantee you a standard income from 
 the day of your birth to the day of your death, and 
 whatever else we allow you to do, we will not allow you 
 to be poor." 
 
 We must, however, remember, Mr. Shaw hastens on 
 to observe, that if a socialist State is to prosper, the 
 national income out of which all these incomes are to 
 come must, relatively to the population, be certainly 
 not less than the incomes of the richer countries of to- 
 day; and that collectivism, though it may be capable 
 of producing an ideally adequate maximum, depends 
 after all for its success on the efforts of individual 
 workers. Hence, income-producing work must be some- 
 how exacted from everybody ; and socialism, if the State 
 
INDUSTRIAL COERCION 191 
 
 is to save itself from " national bankruptcy," " may not 
 dare to tolerate a single idle person." 
 
 How, then, he asks, is the requisite work to be 
 secured ? Under the existing system, he says, the 
 problem is self-solving; for, " except in the case of the 
 few who are men of property," a man who will not work 
 is necessarily condemning himself to starve. But if 
 socialism guarantees to him that, whether he work or 
 no, he shall live in equal luxury so long as there is breath 
 in his body, the old stimulus will be gone, and socialism 
 must supply a substitute. And this, says Mr. Shaw, is 
 very easily found. The status of the socialist citizens 
 as income-producing workers must be assimilated to 
 that of soldiers in the Prussian army. They must all 
 be subjected to a quasi-military discipline. The 
 sluggish, the insubordinate and even the truants will, 
 "up to the day of their death," suffer no diminution 
 of income ; but the slothful will have a touch of the cane, 
 the insubordinate will have a touch of the dog- whip, and 
 the truants will be treated like military deserters and 
 shot. 
 
 Now here, says Mr. Shaw, anticipating an obvious 
 criticism, we have a system of society which at first 
 sight might seem to be one of slavery a system 
 which recalls the condition of the Children of Israel in 
 Egypt, with the melons and the flesh-pots in front of 
 them and the lash of the taskmaster behind. Of all 
 the apparent difficulties which socialism has to en- 
 counter, this, he says, is the most important. It is, 
 however, apparent only. It is based, he says, on two 
 misconceptions, which vanish under the touch of 
 analysis. 
 
 The first of these relates to industrial work generally. 
 In order to ensure a diligent and universal performance 
 of it, the socialist State would require certain punitive 
 and coercive powers. Let this be at once granted. But 
 all States so Mr. Shaw argues are bound to equip 
 themselves with powers of a like kind, as precautions 
 against theft and murder. This, however, does not 
 mean that the mass of average men are only restrained 
 from larceny, fraud or murder by dread of the police- 
 man's bludgeon, of the cell, or of the hangman's rope. 
 
192 LIMITS OF PURE DEMOCRACY 
 
 They obey the law spontaneously, not because they are 
 slaves but because they are free. The State as a 
 punitive, the State as an enslaving power, is felt, in 
 practice, by none but a perverse minority. In the 
 socialist State the case would be just the same. As soon 
 as industrial work was transformed into a legal duty, 
 the majority would perform it freely and as a matter 
 of course, just as they now obey the laws which prohibit 
 murder. 
 
 So much for the first of the misconceptions in ques- 
 tion. The second, according to Mr. Shaw, is grosser 
 and more unpardonable. It relates, not so much to the 
 amount as to the quality of the work required, and those 
 who give voice to it express themselves in effect thus : 
 " Industrial work is of various kinds and grades, and 
 the vice or absurdity of the socialist system is this : it 
 would pay for all qualities at exactly the same rate." 
 To this objection, says Mr. Shaw, which can only be 
 urged by the " base " or the blindly foolish, the obvious 
 answer is as follows. This objection assumes that work 
 is invariably performed for payment. No fallacy could 
 be more absurd than this. Work in general is usually, 
 and the higher kinds of work are always, performed 
 without thought of a reward which affects to represent 
 their value in terms of money or its equivalents. Indeed, 
 says Mr. Shaw, not only " is the man base who asks to 
 be paid for doing his best for his country, but the man 
 who thinks that such services can be measured in coin 
 is a fool." " The talents which are precious to humanity 
 and build up great States have (so far as coin goes) 
 mostly a minus value. Indeed, those who exercise them 
 are fortunate if they are not persecuted as well as un- 
 paid." Mr. Shaw illustrates his meaning by reference 
 to men like Socrates, Paul, Spinoza, Leibnitz, Newton 
 and others, and he very justly contends that the life- 
 work of such men as these owes all its value to the fact 
 that it was performed spontaneously, and not for the 
 sake of any income or " coin " commensurate with it. 
 Who can doubt, then, he asks, that, in a great socialist 
 polity, which starts with assuring an equal and ample 
 income to everybody, most of the industrial workers, 
 and especially the ablest section of them, will eagerly 
 
COMPULSION AND EQUALITY 193 
 
 do their utmost in contributing to the total stock, 
 without any other motive than the desire of " being 
 precious to humanity," and without adjusting their 
 services to the likelihoods of any private gain ? In 
 socialism, then, as a scheme of equalised incomes, despite 
 the draconian powers which the State would have in 
 reserve for the purpose of extorting work from a certain 
 debased minority, there is nothing which conflicts with 
 the freedom of any reasonable and decent man. 
 
 Mr. Shaw's picture, however, is not yet complete. A 
 brilliant finishing touch still remains to be added to it. 
 Industry, says Mr. Shaw, when organised under one 
 directorate, will run with such perfect smoothness and 
 so slight a waste of effort that the hours of daily work 
 requisite for the production of an adequate national 
 income will probably sink to five, and at all events to 
 not more than six. Thus the socialist State will be a 
 paradise, not only of general affluence, and of the happy 
 freedom which comes when work, in any case necessary, 
 is performed with a willingness which anticipates and 
 outruns compulsion ; but it will, as Mr. Shaw depicts it, 
 be a paradise of leisure also. In such a State Humanity 
 will at last come into its own. 
 
 Now, the whole of this argument in a certain sense 
 hangs together, and may be taken as representing, in a 
 signally favourable way, the amount of cohesion that 
 exists in socialist thought generally. Moreover, up to 
 a certain point it is not only consistent with itself, but 
 is also in sober relation to fairly definite facts. In the 
 first place it is quite conceivable that, though industrial 
 collectivism in itself would have no tendency to result 
 in an equal distribution of incomes, a sentiment so 
 strongly in favour of such a distribution might develop 
 itself that the forces of law would be utilised with some 
 success to secure it. It is also conceivable that, as 
 happened in the days of Sesostris, arduous labour might 
 be extorted from multitudes by mere compulsion, though 
 all direct connection between work and income were 
 eliminated. Nobody will quarrel with Mr. Shaw's argu- 
 ment thus far. Everybody will agree with him when 
 he admits that, if industry in a socialist State would 
 wholly, or even mainly, have mere compulsion as its 
 
194 LIMITS OF PURE DEMOCRACY 
 
 basis, socialism would be rightly repudiated as a 
 resuscitation of slavery. 
 
 But the whole of his argument thus far is simply of 
 the nature of a preamble. His argument proper, as he 
 himself insists, hangs on the thesis that, as a matter of 
 fact, the entire work demanded by the socialist State 
 of the citizens would be, by the vast majority of them, 
 performed of their own free will, coercion for them 
 having practically no existence; and as soon as he 
 crosses the Rubicon, and comes to this crucial point, his 
 reasoning acquires a totally different character. Com- 
 parative clearness gives place to a confusion which is 
 doubly grotesque because he does not himself perceive 
 it. It is a confusion arising not so much from an error 
 in his logic as from a confused conception of the things 
 to which his logic is applied. It is a confusion which 
 reflects itself in his use of the ordinary word " work." 
 
 " Work " is a word which is, in different connections, 
 used to denote effort of very different kinds; and what 
 is true of one kind may be quite untrue of another. 
 Now, Mr. Shaw's main argument deals with work of one 
 special kind only, which he, with the utmost precision, 
 defines in terms of the object at which it aims that 
 object being the production of the national income. All 
 men must work, he says, to produce a national income 
 which is adequate, for if they do not the socialist State 
 will be bankrupt. But when he seeks to prove that a 
 work of this particular kind would by most men be per- 
 formed so freely, and indeed with so much ardour, that 
 not even a threat of external compulsion would be 
 necessary, and appeals to facts as showing that the best 
 and most effective work is and always has been per- 
 formed for its own sake only, it is evident from his own 
 description of them that the kinds of work which he selects 
 to prove his proposition are totally different from that 
 with which, and with which alone, his main argument 
 has any sort of connection. The kinds of work to which 
 he is here referring are, to take a few of his instances, 
 the kinds of work accomplished by men such as Socrates, 
 Paul and Spinoza; and on these kinds of work he 
 expatiates in the following way. It is evident, he says, 
 that they cannot be due to coercion, for coercion is 
 
WORK AND PERSONAL GAIN 195 
 
 generally applied, not to stimulate, but to suppress 
 them. It is equally evident that they cannot be per- 
 formed for the sake of any equivalent in the way of 
 " coin or income "; for they do not produce, and have 
 no relation to, any of the things of which income ulti- 
 mately consists. Indeed, if financially they have any 
 result at all, this result is, he says, " mostly a minus 
 quantity," and the men who perform them " are for- 
 tunate if they are not persecuted as well as unpaid." 
 
 If such be the case, then, one thing at least is clear, 
 that however " precious to humanity " these kinds of 
 work may be, they are not work of the kind which 
 produces a national income. They are not the work 
 which, according to Mr. Shaw's definition of it, the 
 socialist State would be bound to exact from everybody 
 unless all the citizens are to die of national bankruptcy ; 
 and not only is the man very far from being a fool who 
 thinks that work of this kind can be measured in terms 
 of " coin " or its equivalents, but the man must be a 
 fool who imagines that it can be measured in any other 
 way. Men produce potatoes in order that they may eat 
 potatoes; and the only ground on which the socialist 
 State would have to insist, " under pain of death if need 
 be," that every man for so many hours should do as 
 much of this work as he can, is that there would not 
 otherwise be enough potatoes to eat. Since, then, every 
 average citizen would know that, whether he himself 
 produced much income, or little, or none at all, or even 
 a minus quantity, the total product would be affected 
 to a barely appreciable degree, and that, whatever he 
 did or did not do, his own reward would be the same, 
 is it likely that he would burn with desire to do more 
 work or better than such as would just save him from 
 the lash of the watchful taskmaster ? 
 
 The absurdity of supposing that he would, sufficiently 
 obvious on the face of it, is emphasised further by the 
 two following facts. The first of these facts we shall 
 have hereafter to deal with it at greater length is this : 
 that when socialists argue about incomes, they think of 
 incomes in the abstract, or as though, like water, they 
 were so many homogeneous quantities, which differed 
 only in magnitude as measured in terms of money. 
 
196 LIMITS OF PURE DEMOCRACY 
 
 Now, when incomes are so small that they only suffice 
 to purchase a little more or less of the simplest neces- 
 saries of existence, this way of thinking is accurate and 
 clear enough; for the necessaries of life are few, and in 
 most cases much the same. But these are precisely the 
 incomes which socialism ajms at abolishing. These 
 incomes of equal primary poverty it aims at expanding 
 into incomes of equal affluence. In other words, to a 
 minimum of bare necessaries it aims at adding a multi- 
 tude of superfluous and alternative luxuries. Let us 
 suppose, for example, that all the material commodities, 
 the enjoyment of which distinguishes affluence from 
 poverty, are books, and that the actual substance of 
 each man's affluence is his library. There may be a 
 thousand libraries representing the same expenditure, 
 and yet no actual book ranged on the shelves of one 
 might be a duplicate of any actual book discoverable on 
 the shelves of another. The shelves of one might be 
 packed with nothing but Protestant sermons, those of 
 another with tomes of Jesuit casuistry, those of a third 
 with novels, or amatory verse, or histories of stage 
 dancing. Thus no individual citizen, as a worker in the 
 socialist State, would be asked to be " precious to 
 humanity " by printing and producing books. Each 
 would be asked to display an impassioned diligence in 
 multiplying copies of this or that book in particular. 
 But any worker might say that, though literature, taken 
 in the abstract, was wealth in its most precious form, 
 the particular book in the production of which he was 
 thus invited to strain himself was not precious but 
 injurious, or at best utterly futile, and that he would 
 be much more precious to humanity by idling as much 
 as he dared, and so diminishing the supply, than he 
 would be by working his hardest, and so raising it to a] 
 maximum. If a Catholic were asked to multiply books 
 by Baptists, if a puritan were asked to colour engraved^ 
 pictures of ballet-girls, the task imposed on each would! 
 be certain to excite in him, not ardour, but antipathy;' 
 or if the task, as it might be, were to multiply a senti- 
 mental novel, it might well excite in any serious man; 
 contempt. Such conscientious objectors might, it isi 
 quite conceivable, do as the State told them, thus bowing 
 
WORK AND PERSONAL GAIN 197 
 
 themselves in the House of Rimmon; but, since the 
 socialist State would, ex hypothesi, pay them an equally 
 ample sum whether they obeyed orders or no, they cer- 
 tainly would not obey them for any conceivable reason 
 other than a wish to save themselves from the whip of 
 the State slave-driver. 
 
 But, quite apart from this fact, there is another which 
 is embedded by socialists themselves in their own pros- 
 pectus of promises, and which leads to the same conclu- 
 sion. Foremost amongst the promises which they dangle 
 before the impassioned average worker is the promise 
 that income-producing work will, under socialism, be 
 reduced to something like a vanishing quantity, most 
 of his life being thus left to him as a playground for 
 perfectly free activities whether of mind or body. But 
 if income-producing work really is, as they say, equiva- 
 lent to " being precious to Humanity," and if a sense of 
 being precious to Humanity is the choicest of all human 
 pleasures, why do the prophets of socialism advertise as 
 a prospective blessing the reduction of these hours of 
 supreme bliss to a minimum ? In acting thus they are, 
 on their own principles, like the keeper of a restaurant 
 who, having informed the public that the price of his 
 set dinner included a supply of the finest wine in the 
 world, should add, as a further advantage, that he gave 
 to each of his guests no more than a drop of it. What 
 socialists really feel when they promise a reduction of 
 income-producing work to a minimum is what most men 
 would feel likewise, and what Henry George said bluntly 
 is felt by all men that if, in the case of the individual, 
 work is rendered unnecessary for securing the means, 
 and the amplest means, of pleasure, it must, for the 
 sake of others, be extorted from each, like the slave's 
 work, as a means of avoiding pain ; and the kind of pain 
 to be avoided, as Mr. Shaw himself indicates, could be 
 nothing but that of the whip, either threatened or 
 actually applied. 
 
 The uses of the whip, however, under a regime of 
 equalised incomes are by no means yet exhausted. They 
 would not be confined to the workshops of State col- 
 lectivism. The whip would be needed for purposes 
 which, quick though his mind is, Mr. Shaw has appar- 
 
198 LIMITS OF PURE DEMOCRACY 
 
 ently never so much as contemplated. If the hours of 
 slave-labour necessary for producing the statutory 
 national income were, as Mr. Shaw suggests, reduced 
 approximately to five, and if seven should be allowed 
 for sleep, the leisure time of the citizens, during which 
 they might do as they liked, would amount substantially 
 to seven-tenths of their waking life. How, then, do 
 socialists suppose that this life of freedom would be 
 occupied ? The question is not an idle one ; for here, if 
 anywhere, would be found that spontaneous self-expres- 
 sion of character for which assured and equal incomes 
 can alone provide a basis. According to Mr. Shaw, the 
 State would say to the citizens, " I may rob you of your 
 democratic freedom for five hours a day for the necessary 
 purpose of ensuring that the incomes which you are to 
 enjoy may be produced ; but, when once those hours are 
 over, I order and I forbid nothing." But the matter 
 would by no means end here, if a polity of the kind 
 which Mr. Shaw imagines were realised. There are two 
 things, at all events, which, if equalised incomes are 
 really its special and essential feature, a socialist State 
 would have to forbid absolutely. It would, in the first 
 place, have to forbid saving. For if any of the citizens 
 took as they very easily might do to saving four- 
 fifths of their own ample allowances, equality of circum- 
 stance would not endure for a twelvemonth. The State, 
 therefore, besides seeing that an ample and equal income 
 was punctually got by everybody, would have year by 
 year to see that everybody spent the whole of it. But 
 this is not all. It would have to forbid likewise another 
 thing more important than simple saving. It would 
 have to forbid any citizen in his long hours of leisure 
 to supplement the work performed by him in the State 
 workshops by any further productive work on his own 
 account. Unless this were forbidden, the more practical 
 and energetic of the citizens, when their State work was 
 over, might, instead of being precious to humanity by 
 philosophising after the manner of Spinoza, start busi- 
 nesses for themselves, in which the full fruits of diligent 
 labour or genius would go to individuals as the reward 
 of their own efficiency, and not be frittered away as 
 virtual presents to others who had not the skill or the 
 
COMPULSORY IDLENESS 199 
 
 will to produce such things for themselves. In this 
 way an additional income would arise an income not 
 common to all, but confined to a special class, all of 
 whose members would be richer, some incomparably 
 richer, than the rest. A socialist State could never 
 tolerate this. All supplementary enterprise would have 
 to be put down at any cost. A situation would accord- 
 ingly arise for which Mr. Shaw's logic makes no sort of 
 provision ; but if incomes were to remain equal, it would 
 have to be met somehow. The whip which, on his own 
 admission, would have to be kept somewhere for use in 
 the collectivist workshops would accordingly have to 
 perform, not one function only, but three. Besides 
 lashing the obstinate or the idle into industry, it would 
 have to be lashing the conspicuously industrious into 
 idleness; and when not terrifying the citizens into pro- 
 ducing incomes on the one hand, or abstention from 
 producing them on the other, it would have to be 
 terrifying these unfortunate persons into spending them. 
 
 Such, then, according to Mr. Shaw's account of it, 
 would the socialist polity be, as intellectual democrats 
 have now come to conceive it. But whatever absurdities 
 this account may involve, they are, let it be said again, 
 not peculiar to himself. His account is a vivid and 
 signally representative exposition of the idea which is 
 maturing in the minds of the more thoughtful socialists 
 of to-day the idea, that is, of socialism as a scheme of 
 moral or social democracy superimposed on a scheme of 
 industry the oligarchic character of which, though it 
 cannot be denied or altered, is for practical purposes 
 metamorphosed by the final scheme of distribution to 
 which it will be made subservient. 
 
 The value of Mr. Shaw's account of a polity thus con- 
 stituted lies firstly in the fact that his critical powers have 
 enabled him to signalise clearly the defects of the old 
 socialist ideal, and, secondly, in the fact that these same 
 critical powers have not only enabled but compelled 
 him, without perceiving it, to exhibit the defects of the 
 new, which, though different from those of the old, 
 belong to an order of thought no less remote from the 
 region of actual life. The Marxian socialists, indeed, 
 were in one respect much more reasonable than their 
 
200 LIMITS OF PURE DEMOCRACY 
 
 successors. They assumed that the natural sentiment 
 of each man as a worker was what it really is namely, 
 a sentiment which demanded the full value of his own 
 work for himself; and the demand of the Marxian 
 socialists that all incomes should be equal was merely 
 an incidental result of the theory that no one man in 
 the same number of hours produces more or less wealth 
 than another. This crudely absurd theory the modern 
 socialists have abandoned ; but in order to preserve the 
 doctrine that rewards should nevertheless be equal, they 
 have been obliged to replace the original theory by 
 another which is no less absurdly at variance with the 
 character of the average man than the theory of Marx 
 was at variance with the actualities of scientific industry. 
 The Marxian conception of labour as the sole agent in 
 production is not more illusory, as the basis of a socialist 
 system, than the general sentiment in favour of equal 
 distribution by which socialist thought now seeks to 
 replace it. Such, at least, is the conclusion to which 
 logical analysis leads us. We will now turn from logical 
 analysis to fact, and see, with the aid of certain concrete 
 examples, how far a sentiment in favour of equal dis- 
 tribution has proved to be really operative when put 
 to the test of experiment. 
 
CHAPTER H 
 
 SOCIALIST EXPERIMENTS 
 
 IF a detached spectator a tourist from some other 
 planet were to visit the earth to-day, and give his at- 
 tention to the socialist or social democratic movement, 
 what would probably strike him as its strangest feature 
 is this, that those who take part in it are willing, on 
 behalf of their principles, to do everything in the way 
 of activity except to show that they are practicable by 
 putting them into experimental practice. He would 
 have heard orators at a thousand Trade Union meetings 
 who proclaimed that all the difficulties of the modern 
 world would be solved if only the labourers were masters 
 of their own capital, and secured for their own class the 
 entire product of their exertions. He might have heard 
 them declaring that " the employers have never done 
 anything for labour which we, the labourers, could not 
 any day do for ourselves." But although to take, for 
 example, the case of the United Kingdom the wage- 
 earning classes at the beginning of the twentieth century 
 owned a collective capital of a thousand million pounds, 
 our tourist might have failed to discover that any 
 serious attempts were being made by them to employ 
 this capital themselves under their own corporate direc- 
 tion. If of this capital they would venture but one 
 hundredth part, ten socialist businesses, each with a 
 capital of a million, might, as modest experiments, be 
 set going to-morrow; and if socialism is correct in 
 principle, the success of these could not fail to be such 
 that others would soon follow, till the employers of 
 to-day were eliminated, not by violence but by competi- 
 tion, and all who now work for wages would presently 
 be the employers of themselves. Why, then, our tourist 
 might ask, does nothing of this kind happen ? The 
 
 201 
 
202 LIMITS OF PURE DEMOCRACY 
 
 socialists, he might say, were like the prisoner who, 
 according to the story told by an American humourist, 
 had been locked up for ten years in a cell, " when one 
 day a thought struck him. He opened the window and 
 got out." 
 
 But to this fear on their part of testing their prin- 
 ciples by experiment there have been many memorable 
 exceptions. Experiments have been made of the precise 
 kind in question, which, curiously few as they are in 
 comparison with what might reasonably have been 
 expected, are quite sufficiently numerous, sufficiently 
 different in some respects, and sufficiently like in others, 
 to constitute a body of evidence astonishingly coherent 
 and illuminating. 
 
 Many of them, in respect of their origin, have been 
 British or European ; the latest and largest was Austra- 
 lian; but the actual scene of most of them has been 
 naturally in the New World, where land is acquired more 
 easily than in the Old, and where life is less encumbered 
 by old habits and traditions. Records of some eighty 
 have been collected by Macdonald, Noyes and Nordhoff, 
 the Australian experiment being the subject of a volume 
 devoted to itself. They cover a period of a hundred 
 and thirty years, and are separable into two groups 
 namely, those which were animated by a sentiment 
 having its basis in religion, and those from which the 
 religious motive has been practically, if not formally, 
 excluded. Socialism or social democracy as a scheme 
 founded on a sentiment which demands equality in 
 distribution represents socialist thought, not only in its 
 latest, but in its earliest forms also. As an object of 
 possible endeavour, and also as a subject of ridicule, it 
 was perfectly familiar to the citizens of ancient Athens ; 
 and the first and most successful attempt to realise it 
 in the modern world was initiated nearly forty years 
 before the word " socialism " was known. 
 
 This experiment, which was the formation of the sect 
 or community of the Shakers, began in the year 1774, 
 and thirty years later another experiment followed it 
 that is to say, the formation of the sect or community 
 of the Rappites. The animating principle of both these 
 was religion. The foundress of the Shakers was an 
 
RELIGIOUS SOCIALISMS 203 
 
 English woman, Ann Lee, of humble birth but of very 
 remarkable character, who believed herself to be the 
 recipient of a number of divine revelations, and who, 
 acting under this belief, emigrated from England to 
 America, where she hoped to establish a polity consonant 
 with the mind of Christ. George Rapp, the founder of 
 the Rappites, was a native of Southern Germany, the 
 son of a small farmer. He, like Ann Lee, had from his 
 youth upwards divine revelations of his own ; and in the 
 year 1805, accompanied by three hundred disciples, he, 
 like her, set sail for America, with the object of founding 
 a Kingdom of Christ on earth. 
 
 But though both these leaders were visionaries, both 
 of them, like St. Theresa, united to religious enthusiasm 
 a singular aptitude for affairs; and their respective 
 schemes, as expressed by them in business terms, may 
 be said to have resulted in almost the same prospectus. 
 The principle of the Shakers was, as Ann Lee put it, 
 " that all the members should have a united interest in 
 all things"; that the Society should be primarily the 
 owner of whatever was produced by individuals, and 
 should then dispense to the individuals whatever each 
 might need ; each according to his abilities, whether these 
 were great or small, performing in return such work as 
 the Elders might see proper to assign to him. The 
 principles of the Rappites were embodied in a series of 
 Articles of Association, to which every member had to 
 affix his signature. The first of these Articles consti- 
 tuted a deed of gift on the member's part " of all 
 property whatever possessed by him or her to George 
 Rapp and his heirs or assigns for ever, to be held and 
 administered on behalf of the members generally; and 
 the said George Rapp covenanted on behalf of himself 
 and his successors that they would supply the members 
 severally with all necessaries of life, whether in youth 
 or age, whether in sickness or health, together with such 
 care and consolation as their situations might reasonably 
 demand." 
 
 During the next seventy years these two pioneer ex- 
 periments were followed, in the United States, by nearly 
 eighty others, whilst the great Australian venture, of 
 which mention has just been made, came twenty-five 
 
204 LIMITS OF PURE DEMOCRACY 
 
 years later, its actual scene being in Paraguay. Some 
 of these were religious, most of them essentially secular. 
 Otherwise, the object proposed was in all cases the same. 
 It was precisely the object described, as we have seen, 
 by Mr. Shaw namely, the production by the community 
 of an adequate total income, and the distribution of this 
 amongst the members, not in accordance with what each 
 produced (which would vary), but in accordance with 
 a sentiment relating to their equal needs, and now com- 
 monly expressed in the formula " Each for all." Be- 
 tween all these experiments there was another point of 
 likeness also, which exhibits the projectors as men who, 
 up to a certain point, gauged human nature accurately 
 in the light of sound common sense. They all of them 
 proposed to secure the triumph of socialism by means 
 similar to those which had secured the triumph of the 
 modern private capitalist. Modern capitalism has 
 developed itself and spread itself throughout the world, 
 because wherever it has been tried it has generally been 
 found to work to be industrially more efficient than any 
 other system which had preceded it. Its general success 
 has consisted in a multiplication of successful units. 
 The practical socialists, with whom we are now dealing, 
 proposed to establish socialism through units of success 
 likewise, but through units of a different kind. Instead 
 of establishing single successful businesses, what they 
 aimed at establishing was equally successful communi- 
 ties ; and the difference between a business and a com- 
 munity was understood by them to be this : In an 
 ordinary business the employer and the employed alike 
 work severally for the benefit of themselves and their 
 own families. In a socialist community all families 
 would be one. As matters stand, they argued, within 
 the limits of the family circle economic advantages are 
 not divided, but shared. Each home, in short, is a 
 miniature socialism in itself. In order, therefore, that 
 socialism might develop into a working system, the first 
 thing to be done was, according to them, so to extend 
 the socialism of the family circle that a considerable 
 number of men, women and children might be welded 
 together into a family of a larger kind, not by blood 
 relationship, but by a sentiment of human brotherhood, 
 
RELIGIOUS SOCIALISMS 205 
 
 and by a consequently " united interest " in the fruits 
 of their collective industry. The idea of all the pro- 
 jectors was to begin with an extended family, comprising 
 from two or three hundred up to fifteen hundred 
 persons; and if one such group were successful, others 
 would be bound to follow. At all events they realised 
 that if an effective socialist sentiment could not extend 
 itself throughout a community of a few hundreds of 
 persons, it would be idle to look for its extension through 
 the world, or even an entire nation. 
 
 Let us now consider how these experiments worked, 
 beginning with the religious, which deserve special atten- 
 tion, and of which the two just mentioned are curiously 
 contrasted, but equally instructive types. Of these two, 
 when Nordhoff published his accounts of them, one 
 namely, the Shakers had lasted for more than a 
 century; the other namely, the Rappites had lasted 
 for seventy years. Both had been constantly pros- 
 perous ; the Rappites had achieved great riches ; and yet 
 each body had, according to its own lights, been faithful 
 to the doctrine of a " united interest in all things." 
 Both may be regarded as triumphs of that precise senti- 
 ment which, as Mr. Shaw describes it, " renders the 
 very idea of unequal incomes intolerable." As applied, 
 however, to the details of practical life, they understood 
 this sentiment in very different ways. 
 
 The Rappites, though unswerving socialists in respect 
 of their own fraternity, made no pretence of socialism 
 in their dealings with the outside world. Possessing, as 
 they did, considerable funds to start with, they used 
 these in the following ways. In the first place, all rough 
 work within the borders of their own settlement they 
 committed to hired labourers, many of whom were 
 Chinamen, and of whom it was caustically said that 
 " they did as much work in a day as the brethren would 
 do in six." In the second place, they became investors, 
 on an ever-increasing scale, in outside enterprises such 
 as mines, oil-wells and railroads, and were ultimately 
 found to be the principal sleeping partners in a cutlery 
 business, then the largest in the whole of the United 
 States. Their success, in short, was the success of a 
 species of exclusive club, their socialism being a pious 
 
206 LIMITS OF PURE DEMOCRACY 
 
 eccentricity uniting the members, but uniting the mem- 
 bers only, and related to socialism in the wider sense 
 of the word, not as an example, but as a negation of it. 
 Very different in this respect have been the principles 
 and practice of the Shakers. Continuously successful as 
 they have been in producing an income adequate to their 
 modest wants, they have depended on no labour but 
 their own; and their tasks, assigned to them by the 
 Elders, have been faithfully performed by each in obe- 
 dience to a sentiment which, identifying each with all, 
 and eliminating every thought of gain for self as sinful, 
 makes the labour of each a sacrifice owed, through all, 
 to God. If a polity like that of the Rappites is com- 
 parable to a religious club, a polity like that of the 
 Shakers is comparable to a Franciscan monastery. That 
 such a polity may prosper and be self-supporting, the 
 experiment of the Shakers, like that of the Franciscans, 
 shows ; and if this were the whole of the matter, it would 
 show in a very striking way that the principles of modern 
 socialism, as expounded by Mr. Shaw, are practicable. 
 As a matter of fact, however, it shows something else 
 also. The Shakers being rigid celibates, it is obvious 
 that a socialism like theirs, though self-supporting, 
 cannot be self-renewing. Denying marriage to its mem- 
 bers, it postulates a world outside in which marriage is 
 prevalent. This fact might conceivably be no more 
 than an accident ; but it actually was a consequence and 
 an illustration of a fact much deeper than itself. The 
 Shakers enjoined celibacy, not as an isolated merit, but 
 as one detail of a sacrifice co-extensive with the socialist 
 life, another detail of which, and one of prior import- 
 ance, was the sacrifice of all desire for private or unequal 
 gain ; and the fact that these members were not members 
 by birth, but had to be chosen from postulants reared 
 in the outside world, was a means of demonstrating, as 
 the Shakers themselves attested, how rare those persons 
 are from whom, in their inmost hearts, a true renuncia- 
 tion of the hope of unequal gain is possible. No member 
 was accepted till after a year's novitiate, and before a 
 year was over most of the postulants would depart. 
 Thus a socialism like that of the Shakers is, in its very 
 essence, no less exclusive than a socialism like that of 
 
RELIGIOUS SOCIALISMS 207 
 
 the Rappites, although for a different reason. Just as 
 in the latter case, the magic circle of socialism does not 
 include the average manual labourer, so it does not 
 include in the former the typical or average man. 
 Neither of such schemes is comprehensive in any general 
 sense, or contains in it any promise for the masses of 
 the human race. 
 
 The only socialist experiments which can yield a direct 
 moral of any general import are those which appeal to 
 the motives of average men and women, and no more 
 confine their promises to persons of exceptional character 
 than they do to persons of exceptional business intellect. 
 We will, therefore, now turn our attention to the secular 
 experiments comprised in the list just mentioned, and 
 see how their fortunes compare with the signal, if 
 limited, success attainable by those of the religious or 
 quasi-conventual type. Of these secular experiments, 
 something like seventy in number, it would be not 
 only impossible to deal with all, but useless. Most of 
 them came to an end in their third year, or earlier. 
 We will, therefore, confine ourselves to the few which 
 outlived or reached their fifth. Of such experiments 
 there are five namely, that of the Owenites, or, to give 
 it its full name, The New Harmony Community of 
 Equality; three other communities, extended families, 
 or (as they preferred to call themselves) Phalanxes 
 namely, the Brook Farm, the Wisconsin, and the North 
 American ; and, lastly, most ambitious of all, the experi- 
 ment called New Australia. 
 
 The earliest of these, the New Harmony Community 
 of Equality, was financed and founded in the year 1825 
 by a prosperous British mill-owner, the celebrated 
 Robert Owen. He was fortunate in finding a site 
 equipped already for his purpose. The Rappites, then 
 in the twentieth year of their existence, had acquired 
 amongst other properties an estate of 30,000 acres, and 
 had built on it a model village which they had christened 
 by the name of Harmony. This estate, having ceased 
 to satisfy their ambitions, was offered for sale as it 
 stood, and Owen became the purchaser, taking posses- 
 sion of it with nearly nine hundred followers. To them, 
 at a meeting held in the old town-hall of the Rappites, 
 
208 LIMITS OF PURE DEMOCRACY 
 
 he formally recapitulated the principles of the venture 
 on which they were now embarking. In language almost 
 identical with that in which Ann Lee had expressed the 
 aims of the Shakers, their own aim, he said, was to 
 extinguish all inequalities " by doing away with divided 
 money transactions," and " thus uniting all separate 
 interests into one." All would have to labour, for such 
 is the lot of man. Each would naturally labour accord- 
 ing to his best abilities, but the products of all alike 
 would be congregated in a common store ; and each, for 
 no other payment than the labour already performed 
 by him, would have an equal right to select from the 
 total stock whatever particular articles he or his might 
 need. Since, however, some time must elapse before 
 their own labours could fructify, Owen stocked the 
 communal store himself with all such things as in his 
 opinion were necessary, from clothes and flour down to 
 tea, pickles and pills. Such measures were those of a 
 mere dictator. They were wholly opposed to the prin- 
 ciple which he set out to establish, and as soon as they 
 were in his opinion complete he refused to exert his per- 
 sonal powers further. He transferred the management 
 of affairs to the hands of a Preliminary Committee, and 
 took himself off for nearly a year to England, hoping 
 to find on his return that the mustard-seed of his social- 
 ism was already a thriving tree. What he did find was 
 something signally different. The Preliminary Com- 
 mittee had indeed given general satisfaction by lavishing 
 his money on bands and on nightly dances; but their 
 sole capacities otherwise had proved to be those of 
 talkers, not of industrial managers. The goods in the 
 store were dwindling. Industry, in a state of chaos, 
 gave little promise of replacing them. The Preliminary 
 Committee was dissolved in feverish haste, and a new 
 body formed instead of it, called an Executive Council. 
 This, however, in spite of its grander name, proved no 
 more competent than its predecessor, and the whole 
 undertaking would have come to an ignominious end if 
 the flock of members had not, by their universal request, 
 compelled their shepherd who had led them into the 
 wilderness to become once more dictator, and do what 
 he could to save them. As soon as he resumed his 
 
OWEN'S EXPERIMENT 209 
 
 authority, matters began to mend. The community 
 bore some resemblance to an orderly private business, 
 the head of which, though the profits might not be large, 
 was known to allot the whole of them in equal shares 
 to his workpeople ; and the novel prospects which it thus 
 offered to labour became soon so widely known, and 
 proved to be so attractive, that new applications for 
 admission to its ranks multiplied, which, as matters 
 were then arranged, it was not possible to entertain. 
 In order, therefore, to provide for the new influx, the 
 original group was supplemented by three others. The 
 single community thus reappeared as four, each of which, 
 devoting itself to industries of a more or less specialised 
 kind, was, as occasion required, to exchange its own 
 products with those of the other three, in quantities to 
 be measured by paper money, or labour-checks. Owen, 
 who seems not to have perceived, or not to have been 
 disturbed by the fact that the serpent of " divided 
 money transactions " was thus re-entering Eden, was 
 fully convinced that socialism would now become self- 
 acting; and the role of dictator was again, and for the 
 third time, renounced by him. The method of manage- 
 ment by Executive Councils was resuscitated, and each 
 of the four groups had a separate Council to itself. 
 Hereupon there arose a confusion worse confounded. 
 The question of production was entangled with the ques- 
 tion of commerce. The four Councils could manage 
 matters no better than one ; and at last a day came 
 when a great general meeting urged on Owen that 
 dictatorship must be forthwith revived. Owen, who 
 refused to accept the supreme office, agreed, by way of 
 compromise, that the Councils should be abolished, each 
 group being managed by a dictator of its own; and 
 of four co-equal dictators he consented to act as one. 
 Things being so settled, there were some signs of im- 
 provement, but they were not of long duration. The 
 groups quarrelled with their dictators, the dictators 
 quarrelled with one another, and industry, thus dis- 
 organised, was again coming to a standstill. One social- 
 ist principle alone retained its vitality. This was the 
 sentiment in favour of equal distribution a sentiment 
 which expressed itself in getting from the communal 
 
210 LIMITS OF PURE DEMOCRACY 
 
 stores a great many more commodities than the members 
 of the community produced. This sentiment was one 
 day found to have been so active that there were two 
 commodities only of which the popular consumption did 
 not thus exceed supply. One of the commodities was 
 glue. Terrible to relate, the other commodity was soap. 
 Owen could endure a great deal, but all endurance has 
 limits. Anxious as he had been to divest himself of any 
 dictatorial power in the business of communal manage- 
 ment, he was still the legal owner of the whole communal 
 property, and he was now driven to an expedient the 
 success of which was complete. He began to allocate 
 buildings and portions of land to individuals in whom 
 he detected some spirit of enterprise. The effect was 
 as startling as that of an electric shock. Facing the 
 communal hall, there was soon a glitter of goods in the 
 windows of a private grocery. Sign-boards began to 
 show themselves on one building after another, an- 
 nouncing the establishment of various private manu- 
 factures. Such being the trend of events, Owen accepted 
 the inevitable. After a struggle of twelve years, during 
 which the constitution of his polity had been six times 
 changed, those of his followers who deserved this he 
 converted into private owners, allowing them to lapse 
 into a cluster of variously prosperous families, each pur- 
 suing its own " divided interest," and indistinguishable 
 from the families of the commonplace world around them. 
 
 The Brook Farm, the Wisconsin and the North 
 American Phalanxes, and, lastly, New Australia, all ran 
 a course which, in substance though not in detail, 
 resembled that of the Owenites. All began with the 
 same high hopes. All encountered and succumbed to 
 the same fundamental difficulties ; and out of the ashes 
 of each, in greater or less vigour, there re-arose the spirit 
 of private enterprise. 
 
 The Brook Farm Phalanx, established in the year 
 1842, when the failure of the Owenites was a tragedy 
 still recent, would, if for no other reason, be memorable 
 on account of the character of its chief projectors. They 
 were mostly persons of education and culture, the philo- 
 sophic Emerson being a prominent figure amongst them. 
 Their immediate aim was to found, as they themselves 
 
BROOK FARM 211 
 
 put it, a sort of secluded college which, whatever might 
 be its own peculiarities, would show how, on socialist 
 principles, life might be transformed for all. The first 
 thing needful for such^a pattern community of equally 
 lived lives was, they said, that it should be self-support- 
 ing. It must, therefore, have its basis in agriculture, 
 and " the perfume of clover must linger over it, though 
 it aims beyond the highest star." But work in the 
 fields, if cordially shared by all, would, they said, soon 
 require but a fraction of the members' time. All desir- 
 able manufactures would almost at once be added to it, 
 and would " provide the elegancies as well as the com- 
 forts of life, together with all means of study, and all 
 means of beautiful amusement," without an expenditure 
 of more industrial toil than was just sufficient for impart- 
 ing a healthy zest to leisure. The members had a capital 
 large enough for all their initial purposes till their labour 
 should begin to replace it ; and in two years' time they 
 were able to announce publicly that " every step has 
 strengthened the faith in which we set out, and the time 
 has passed when even initiative movements ought to be 
 prosecuted in silence." Their lands, they said, had 
 yielded abundant harvests; weavers and other artificers 
 were installed in a great workshop ; and one great wing 
 of their communal college was finished a building with 
 a frontage of a hundred and forty feet. A little more 
 capital might, they said, be acceptable, and in all in- 
 vestments, theoretically, there is doubtless a risk of loss ; 
 " but we," they went on, " have now reached a point 
 where such risk hardly exists. We have before us a 
 solemn and glorious work to prepare for the time when 
 the nations, like one man, shall reorganise their town- 
 ships on the basis of perfect justice such as ours." Three 
 years later the college home was in ruins, the college 
 lands had been sold, and the lately sanguine members 
 men, wives and children were seeking to resume their 
 places in the world which they had left behind them. 
 
 The Wisconsin Phalanx, established but two years 
 later, was better equipped than the Brook Farm Phalanx 
 in one way. Most of its members were men more 
 habituated to manual work, and it lasted a year -longer; 
 but its earlier history, otherwise, was very nearly the 
 
212 LIMITS OF PURE DEMOCRACY 
 
 same. At the end of its second year it, too, published 
 an account, equally sanguine, of what had been accom- 
 plished so far. " We have had," said the writers, " two 
 excellent harvests. To a large steam saw-mill, which 
 we bought along with the property, we have added a 
 flour-mill, a smithy, a bootmaker's shop, a laundry and 
 a general store. We have, moreover, completed a com- 
 munal residence, with a facade twice as long as that of 
 the Brook Farm College." It was further announced 
 that their capital in the form of agricultural improve- 
 ments, buildings and implements of production was 
 increasing at an annual rate of 4 or 5 per member. 
 Three more years went by, and no check was admitted. 
 Indeed, by the end of the fifth year accounts had become 
 so glowing as to raise a curiosity in many minds that 
 was not very far from scepticism, and inquiries made 
 on the spot by an emissary of the New York Tribune 
 brought to light certain details by which popular doubts 
 were justified. The official accounts were, he found, so 
 far accurate that the money capital with which they 
 began their enterprise had, by conversion into buildings, 
 goods and improvements, not only not been diminished, 
 but actually did, as was claimed for it, show an un- 
 doubted increase. It appeared, however, that the 
 increase had been largely over-computed, and other 
 revelations were added of a much more important kind. 
 Despite the length of the great communal residence, the 
 individual lodgings, he said, were of such a kind that 
 " few labourers in the Eastern States would tolerate 
 them." Still more was the writer astounded by the 
 wretched and filthy condition in which the rooms were 
 kept, and also by the manner in which this fact was 
 explained to him. The occupants, whose lot had been 
 painted as one of growing prosperity, told him that " the 
 struggle for necessaries was such that it left them no 
 time to be tidy " ; and they further confessed that many 
 of them were driven to supplement the little namely, 
 the equal pittance which the Phalanx was able to allow 
 them by wage-paid labour for employers on the ordinary 
 farms around them. Such being the actualities of their: 
 situation, which underlay the publicly issued accounts 
 of it, it will not be thought surprising that before another 
 
NORTH AMERICAN PHALANX 213 
 
 year was over the Wisconsin Phalanx was dissolved. 
 The communal property was broken up into lots, some 
 of the members acquiring their own freeholds, and what 
 was left of the Phalanx reappeared as a common village. 
 We now come to the North American Phalanx, which 
 Noyes describes as "the great test experiment on 
 which practical socialism in America was prepared to 
 stake its all." The projectors fully admitted the com- 
 plete failure of experiments like Brook Farm and Wis- 
 consin, and claimed to have discovered the cause to 
 which this failure was due. The projectors of these, 
 they said, made the initial blunder of so pooling their 
 capital that no account was taken of the amounts of the 
 individual subscriptions. No one subscriber could claim 
 or identify so much of the total as his own. To arrange 
 matters thus, they continued, " is simply to substitute 
 for the individual employer the corporate employer ; and 
 the corporate employer is still more irresistible, for the 
 individual worker can have no rights as against him. 
 We," they said, "on the contrary, have stricken the 
 relation of employer and employed from the categories 
 of existence altogether " by arranging that each member 
 shall be the owner of whatever may be the amount 
 subscribed by him; and in virtue of his particular 
 holding he will be able to claim from the communal 
 management as a right, "that work shall be found 
 for him suitable to his own endowment." He will thus 
 be employed, they said, not by the community, but by 
 himself. As a member of the community he will receive 
 in the way of wages an equal share of what the labour 
 of the community produces ; but the capital used by the 
 community produces an income also, and this income 
 from capital will, as a supplement to wages, be divided 
 amongst the members, not in equal shares, but in strict 
 proportion to the capital held by each. If the members 
 desire, by saving, to increase their capitals they can do 
 so. The better it will be for them, and the better for the 
 community also. Though this recognition of saving 
 may lead to some inequalities, these will not be serious, 
 since life will be lived in common; and that spur will 
 be provided by it to individual diligence, the want of 
 which has been the secret of all previous failures. 
 
214 LIMITS OF PURE DEMOCRACY 
 
 Such, in outline, were the principles of the North 
 American Phalanx, and it so far justified the high hopes 
 entertained of it that of all the secular socialisms at- 
 tempted in the United States, this community, which 
 lasted for twelve years, was for something like nine years 
 apparently the most successful. The standard wage 
 allotted to current labour seems, indeed, never to have 
 exceeded sixteen shillings a week, but the officials of this 
 community claimed, at the close of its eighth year, that 
 the average capital holding per family of five persons 
 had risen from three hundred and fifty to as much as 
 seven hundred pounds. A better test, however, of its 
 prosperity, as compared with the squalors of Wisconsin, 
 is to be found hi the picturesque descriptions given by 
 successive visitors of the manner in which the members 
 lived. 
 
 The earliest of these relate to it at the close of its 
 second year; and not till the beginning of the ninth do 
 any of the later descriptions appreciably differ from the 
 first. The communal dwelling, with its hall and its 
 endless rows of bedrooms, was surprising, said all these 
 witnesses, in respect not alone of its size, but of its 
 planning and equipment also. The fittings were severely 
 simple, the floors were without carpets, but cleanliness 
 reigned everywhere. The meals, well served at long 
 tables, were plentiful. The lighting at night was bril- 
 liant. The members, in summer at all events, would 
 go to their outdoor work as though it were some healthy 
 game. In the hay-fields they often sang. After supper 
 the younger members danced, the girls in summer 
 wreathing their hair with flowers. 
 
 Such, till the community was entering on the ninth 
 year of its existence, were its principal features as viewed 
 by the eyes of strangers. In that year, however, a 
 fresh inquirer arrived who, though met by all outward 
 signs of unabated prosperity, could not get rid of the 
 impression that something was wrong somewhere. 
 When, not content with appearances, he tried to dis- 
 cover on what precise principles the business of the 
 community was managed, and how all this prosperity 
 was maintained, the official to whom he addressed him- 
 self would give him no plain answers, but wandered 
 
NORTH AMERICAN PHALANX 215 
 
 away into discussions as to why, when tested by ex- 
 periment, socialism always failed. Another member, a 
 woman, descanted to him on the same subject. But, 
 whatever the cause of these ominous symptoms, the 
 same inquirer, returning a year afterwards, was led to 
 conclude that it could not have been more than tem- 
 porary. Several things had happened, and the air was 
 alive with optimism. A new member had arrived, 
 bringing with him a large capital. The direct wages 
 of labour had been raised from fifteen to sixteen shillings 
 a week; the new member had insisted on building a 
 house for himself, on having his meals alone, and on 
 living in his own way. It appeared, moreover, that the 
 new member's exclusiveness was so far from unpopular 
 that it merely represented a sentiment which in secret 
 had long been general, and which had now expressed 
 itself in action. The original system of communal meals 
 had been abolished, and the great hall now was a 
 restaurant, where friends or solitary persons could eat 
 by themselves, and choose what dishes they pleased. 
 An interesting light on the sentiment which had thus 
 revealed itself is thrown by another inquirer about a 
 year afterwards. Many members, he found, were be- 
 ginning to admit plainly that, though communal life 
 was not without its advantages, they could any day 
 make a very much better living by working directly for 
 themselves or under a good employer than they could 
 under a socialist system of so-called self-employment. 
 A little later these further facts were recorded. Although 
 the officials of the community had not very long ago 
 claimed for the members a capital which, through their 
 various savings, had come to represent an average of 
 700 per family, the truth had leaked out at last. Few 
 of them had in reality managed to save anything, and 
 those who had saved something had been, for some time 
 past, investing their money, not in the stock of the 
 community, but in various outside ventures which 
 promised securer dividends. The wisdom of these 
 persons was presently justified by the event. It ap- 
 peared that from the very beginning that part of the 
 members' incomes which had been paid to them in 
 addition to their earnings as interest on their own 
 
216 LIMITS OF PURE DEMOCRACY 
 
 capital, had not really been interest, but had come out 
 of the capital itself ; and that, though the new subscriber 
 might have eased the situation somewhat, the cash of 
 the Phalanx presently would have dwindled to the last 
 dollar. That such was indeed the case became soon 
 painfully evident. Provisions began to fail. The com- 
 munal hall remained, with its apparatus of tables, but 
 the tables at supper-time would very often be empty ; 
 and the socialist edifice was sensibly tottering to its fall 
 when the final crash was precipitated by a purely extra- 
 neous accident. A large communal outhouse was one 
 day destroyed by fire. The damage amounted to barely 
 2000, or less than what, according to the sanguine 
 officials, had been the capital holding of any three 
 average families ; and Horace Greely offered to restore 
 the building himself. But the general opinion of the 
 members was that affairs were hopeless. The end was 
 not long in coming. The North American Phalanx, 
 having lived out its twelfth year, was, in the language of 
 its projectors, " stricken out of the categories of exist- 
 ence," and its lands, like those of its predecessors, were 
 once again submerged by the tides of individual 
 ownership. 1 
 
 Experiments such as these, if each of them stood alone, 
 might be looked on as too narrow in their scope, too 
 much at the mercy of chance causes or accident, to afford 
 a basis for any general conclusions. But the causes 
 which proved fatal to all before twelve years were over 
 were, in all these experiments, the same. 
 
 To speak broadly, they may be reduced to two, one 
 of them inhering in the nature of all collective industry, 
 the other inhering in the nature of human beings, with 
 the sole exception of small and essentially select minori- 
 ties. The first of these causes was a want of ability in 
 
 1 As an example of the relative efficiencies of the socialist and capital- 
 ist systems, it may be mentioned that one of the religious communities 
 of America, not included in the accounts of Macdonald, Noyes or 
 Nordhoff, came to an end about the year 1906. The members numbered 
 about 200, the annual value of their property, as they themselves utilised 
 it, having been about 40 per member. The short newspaper paragraph 
 in which the incident was recorded wound up with the bald statement 
 that the property had been acquired by a neighbouring millowner, who 
 was erecting on it model dwellings for'three thousand workpeople. 
 
LANE'S EXPERIMENT 217 
 
 industrial direction. The second was a want of any 
 general sentiment sufficiently strong and persistent to 
 ensure that directions, if given, should be accepted with 
 submission on the one hand, and carried out with a 
 diligence punctual and sustained on the other, under a 
 social system the essential object of which was to render 
 the conditions of the worst worker equal to the con- 
 ditions of the best. But before we discuss this question 
 in any greater detail, there is another experiment which 
 awaits our examination still the experiment of " New 
 Australia," projected by William Lane. 
 
 Lane, by birth an Englishman, had early in life been 
 frenzied by the doctrines of Karl Marx, and had sought 
 a career in Canada as an apostle of the universal strike. 
 The effects of his oratory there, however, being not 
 equal to his expectations, he betook himself to Australia, 
 about the year 1890, in quest of human material more 
 quickly inflammable. What he hoped for he found. 
 Australia was at that time being agitated by a series of 
 strikes so savage, so obstinate, and concerted with such 
 deliberate care, that business was largely paralysed, 
 banks were suspending payment, and the whole industrial 
 structure seemed on the verge of ruin. Lane at last 
 found himself in a thoroughly congenial atmosphere. To 
 the native apostles of the strike-movement he added 
 himself like a second Paul; but even here the trend of 
 events, when he had watched it longer, disappointed 
 him. The employers were, in appearance, being 
 brought rapidly to their knees ; but the strikers more 
 rapidly still were reducing themselves to a state of 
 destitution; and the movement threatened to collapse, 
 having only effected this that wages, which had been 
 rising for the previous forty years, would have sunk 
 back to the level of the year 1850. With a flash of 
 genuine insight Lane adapted himself to the situation. 
 The popular logic of democracy was, he realised, vitiated 
 by one great defect. Labour was accustomed to tell 
 itself that labour was all-powerful, for if the labourers 
 ceased to labour, the employers would have nobody 
 to employ; but a general cessation of labour was, so 
 he saw, impossible, since, before the employers were 
 ruined, the labourers would, if they still stood idle, be 
 
218 LIMITS OF PURE DEMOCRACY 
 
 dead. He accordingly began to address the Australian 
 wage-earners thus : " As a method of getting rid of the 
 employers I have," he said in effect, " hitherto preached 
 the strike to you. I was wrong. I am here to show 
 you a more excellent way. Instead of withdrawing our 
 labour in the sense of ceasing to exercise it, the proper 
 course for you and me to pursue is to withdraw our 
 bodily persons, and our active labour along with us, and 
 find some place of our own where we can labour for 
 ourselves only. The employers, with no one to steal 
 from, and nothing left to steal, will die like flies, as they 
 should do ; but as for us, who produce all wealth already, 
 whatever we produce we shall keep, instead of getting 
 in wages not more than a third of it." 
 
 Lane, who was gifted with remarkable powers of per- 
 suasion, was soon the head of a large throng of disciples 
 men who, drawn from the upper ranks of labour, had 
 been earning, before the strikes, an average annual wage 
 of some 170, and who, if they worked in concert under 
 no other master than themselves would, according to his 
 prospectus, all have uniform incomes of something above 
 500. In a time incredibly short he had, for the purpose 
 of carrying his ideas into action, founded a Company, 
 the subscriptions to which were beyond his extremest 
 hopes. He was not, however, betrayed into any undue 
 precipitancy. He began with paying certain men of 
 experience to visit the likeliest countries, and discover 
 what available territory would be fittest for the impend- 
 ing enterprise. Such a territory was at last discovered 
 in Paraguay. It was eminently ricfi in pasture, in cul- 
 tivable lands, and forests, these last comprising some 
 of the finest timber in the world ; it was half as large as 
 an average English county; and, so long as the settlers 
 did their best to develop it, the Paraguayan Government 
 would concede it to them as virtually their own for 
 nothing. This offer was accepted, and so ample were 
 the Company's funds that Lane purchased a vessel 
 which, packed to its utmost capacity, conveyed to the 
 land of promise a first contingent of shareholders, and 
 which would, it was so hoped, be making in the near 
 future constant similar journeys. 
 
 The voyage was marked by but two embarrassing 
 
NEW AUSTRALIA 219 
 
 incidents. Some of the immigrants were so affected by 
 the air of equality that they wished to have their say 
 as to how the ship should be navigated. It appears 
 that they were somewhat surprised when ordered to 
 hold their tongues. But greater friction was caused by 
 certain of the younger members, not of the same sex, 
 who developed a propensity to haunt the decks at night, 
 two by two in joint contemplation of the moon. Lane 
 may not have regarded romance as the tainted child of 
 capitalism, nor capitalism as unmasked romance, but, 
 he being a rigid puritan as well as a professed atheist, 
 the one shocked him just as much as the other. He 
 issued an edict that these proceedings must cease, and 
 battened the young ladies down at the first approach 
 of twilight. The would-be lovers, however, were more 
 restive than the would-be navigators, and disputed the 
 right of an equal to order his equals thus. Lane's 
 answer was, " This ship is owned by a Company. Com- 
 panies are governed by the shareholders, and share- 
 holders have votes in proportion to the shares held by 
 them. I have in my pocket a proxy for every share- 
 holder we have left behind us, and my votes alone will 
 outweigh those of the lot of you." To this anti-capitalist 
 logic the lovers had no answer, and all disagreements 
 were forgotten in the joys of a safe arrival. The pur- 
 chase of cattle and implements, and the erection of 
 temporary dwellings, had all the excitements of a picnic. 
 These dwellings, constructed of rough woodwork and 
 mud, were, as the builders observed, less fitted for men 
 than animals ; but everything must have a beginning, 
 and these were well enough as a makeshift. Meanwhile, 
 money was so plentiful that one of their early transac- 
 tions (as happened in the case of the Owenites) was the 
 purchase of instruments for a band ; and as soon as 
 matters were sufficiently far advanced, the incipient 
 township was visited by officials of the Paraguayan 
 Government : there were trumpetings, speeches, a great 
 unfurling of flags, and the settlement was formally 
 recognised under the title of " New Australia." 
 
 The way to universal wealth, to universal equality, 
 to true social democracy, to the brotherhood of emanci- 
 pated man, now seemed to be clear. As the settlers 
 
220 LIMITS OF PURE DEMOCRACY 
 
 looked round them at their great herds of cattle, at the 
 prairies green with pasture, at their forests waiting for 
 the axe, at the soils promising plenty at the first touch 
 of the spade, at all their accumulated implements of 
 cultivation and woodcraft, and even at their simple 
 shelters which soon would be solid mansions, their 
 emotions were similar to those of the members of the 
 Brook Farm Phalanx. They foresaw themselves setting 
 an example which, at no very distant time, " the workers 
 of the world " would follow, but first and foremost the 
 wage-slaves of old Australia, who would presently come 
 in their thousands, leaving that land of bondage, to 
 enjoy the freedom and plenty of the New Australian 
 paradise. In twelve years' time New Australia was a 
 thing of the past. Most of the members were starving. 
 Many of them were begging the officials of capitalist 
 governments to pay their passages back to the home 
 they had so rashly left. Lane himself disappeared as a 
 ragged fugitive, and the only members of his company 
 left in the socialist paradise were a few vigorous men 
 who acquired lands of their own, and, growing into 
 capitalists on their own account, became all of them 
 substantial, and some of them very opulent, farmers. 
 
 The precise events which led up to this catastrophe 
 were partly due to the character of Lane himself, partly 
 to that of his followers. In him, as in most demagogues, 
 were united two tempers, and two sets of convictions. 
 He was no doubt a believer in the natural equality of 
 men, and in the equal and astonishing affluence which 
 the masses would secure for themselves, the moment 
 they escaped from the depredations of a small, dominant 
 class. At the same time, as not only his conduct but 
 also his own statements show, the conviction lay deep 
 in his mind that these, his natural equals, could only 
 achieve equality by submitting their wills to that of 
 some one exceptional man " some better Napoleon," 
 it was thus that Lane described him, " with the brain 
 of a Jay Gould and the heart of Christ." In drawing 
 this picture, he was undoubtedly drawing what he took 
 to be a portrait of himself ; and, so far as the conception 
 of his enterprise and its earlier stages are concerned, it 
 is obvious that, apart from him, there would have been 
 
LANE AS A DESPOT 221 
 
 no such enterprise at all. Indeed, it may be said that 
 on his part some measure of autocracy was inevitable 
 up to the time when the settlers took final possession 
 of their territory, and certain divisions of labour had at 
 once to be made by somebody, for the purposes of 
 running up dwellings, driving their cattle to pasture, 
 and beginning some sort of cultivation. But though the 
 spirit of the autocrat never deserted him to the last, 
 a time came when he was compelled by his avowed 
 principles, and also by a formal agreement of which he 
 was himself the author, to place the control of industry 
 on a purely democratic basis by handing it over to 
 directors chosen by the workers themselves. This step 
 came none too soon; for the spirit of pure democracy, 
 which had twice asserted itself on the ship, had been 
 subsequently exasperated by Lane on two still graver 
 occasions. Lane was a strict teetotaler. He did not 
 believe in God, but he believed that alcohol was the 
 devil. Whilst the mass of his company were making 
 their way to the settlement, he discovered that some 
 of the mothers had brought with them jars of treacle, 
 not for themselves, but for their children, to whom it 
 was extremely soothing. Lane, who declared that treacle 
 had the venom of alcohol lurking in it, gave instant 
 orders that the jars should be snatched from them and 
 thrown away. But the consternation which this act 
 produced was mild in comparison with that produced by 
 another. As soon as the settlement had assumed some 
 semblance of order, Lane issued a formal and general 
 edict forbidding the consumption by anybody of intoxi- 
 cating liquor of any kind. But, although men's lips 
 might obey him, he could not command their cravings, 
 and at last it came to his knowledge that certain obsti- 
 nate rebels had been drinking native whisky in taverns 
 beyond the border. Faced by so gross an outrage on 
 the part of his dear equals, Lane at once invoked the 
 aid of the Paraguayan army, and those who had dared 
 to disobey him were expelled from the socialist Eden by 
 the bayonets of alien capital. It is not surprising to 
 learn that a sentiment which had long been smouldering 
 began now to express itself in the observation that 
 Lane was " a changed man." But the spirit of pure 
 
222 LIMITS OF PURE DEMOCRACY 
 
 democracy had its own triumphs before it. On one 
 occasion, indeed, it had shown its mettle already, when 
 Lane, by a happy accident, was too far off to interfere 
 with it. Before the mass of the immigrants transferred 
 themselves to their new kingdom, a party was dis- 
 patched in advance to make some preparation for their 
 arrival. The journey took two days, the pioneers of 
 democracy had to sleep on the way, and accordingly, 
 when night drew on, the question arose as to where they 
 should pitch their tents. No action could be taken till 
 the general will had expressed itself. Hereupon there 
 ensued a general chatter. One man was in favour of 
 one spot, another was in favour of another, and whilst 
 they were still disputing they were startled by drops 
 of rain. These drove them at once to the only decision 
 possible, which was to set up their tents on the nearest 
 ground accessible into which they could drive a tent- 
 peg. Of all the spots they might have chosen it hap- 
 pened to be the most exposed. The rain turned to a 
 deluge, the wind was rising rapidly ; their tents were 
 blown down as fast as they set them up; the lamps in 
 their stoves were blown out as fast as they put a match 
 to them ; they could not cheer themselves with so much 
 as a cup of tea ; and they at last exhibited to the sunrise, 
 after a night under the naked sky, the first practical 
 triumph of the principles of pure democracy. 
 
 This event may seem trivial enough in itself, but it 
 is not trivial as a type of what was about to follow 
 during the twelve years that were ahead of them. At 
 a very early stage of the drama, when Lane still acted 
 as autocrat, the different groups of workers, whatever 
 might be the tasks assigned to them, began to complain 
 that their own work was the hardest, the rest being 
 unduly favoured ; and when Lane's initial autocracy 
 gave place, as agreed, to a system of industry controlled 
 by " the people themselves," they were fully determined 
 that these wrongs should cease. The workers under the 
 new constitution were directed or superintended by 
 officials of their own choosing ; and so complete was the 
 concession made to the principles of pure democracy 
 that if any group of workers was dissatisfied with the 
 man chosen to direct them, a bell might be rung, a 
 
DEMOCRATIC IMPOTENCE 223 
 
 popular meeting called, the obnoxious official deposed, 
 and another chosen instead of him. The general result 
 was that, in every group, whenever a director tried to 
 secure from his men work which seemed to them either 
 too hard or too orderly, instant revolt ensued. The 
 tocsin of democracy was sounded, and the director super- 
 seded by another, certain sooner or later to suffer the 
 same fate. The only work, indeed, to which they took 
 with spontaneous vigour was that of ringing the bell 
 a species of exercise in which the boys delighted. But 
 this was not all. Except when united for revolt, the 
 workers respected one another no more than they re- 
 spected their officials. One of their industries was the 
 cultivation of melons ; and so completely was the spirit 
 of " each for all " absent, that they would trample down 
 the fruit raised by the labour of their fellows if they 
 could, by so doing, take a short cut home to their 
 dinners. When they left their work they would con- 
 stantly lose their tools, as things which, belonging to 
 everybody, anybody might be left to find. They allowed 
 their cattle to deteriorate for want of sufficient attention. 
 Though they did a little dilatory wood-cutting for their 
 own immediate purposes, one man only, whose example 
 was not followed, endeavoured to show what wealth 
 was lying idle in their enormous forests. Even in the 
 matter of their dwellings, the settlers proved so helpless 
 that many of them, when the enterprise ended, were 
 occupying the huts which, when first hastily constructed, 
 had been said by themselves to be fit only for animals. 
 
 Nevertheless, these stalwart men, in possession of a 
 most fruitful soil, and a very considerable live-stock, 
 would hardly have been human if, however disorderly 
 their work, they had not for a time provided themselves 
 with the bare necessaries of life. It is true that, under 
 their new conditions, their way of living at its best was 
 poverty as compared with what it had been in the days 
 of what they called their slavery; but for many years 
 they were far removed from want, and even when it 
 approached they were not at first conscious of it. But, 
 meanwhile, the industrial millennium was as far off as 
 ever; and at last, as they waited in vain for it, their 
 efforts, such as they were, began gradually to decline. A 
 
224 LIMITS OF PURE DEMOCRACY 
 
 certain number seceded, demanding from Lane repayment 
 of a portion of their own capital, and new arrivals from 
 Australia did but in part replace them; but their first 
 general awakening to the actual facts of the situation 
 was due to Lane himself, who one day informed them 
 of the interesting fact that, as matters then stood, the 
 average value of the total product of each of them was 
 less than the actual wages of an English agricultural 
 labourer, and that ruin was directly ahead of them if 
 they did not at once bestir themselves and do better 
 than this. So desperate, indeed, did the situation 
 prove to be that another remedy was needed of more 
 immediate kind. This was the raising of capital by the 
 sale of all their cattle, now miserable beasts, to some 
 capitalist speculator, who gave for them little more 
 than the bare value of their hides. The community 
 breathed again, and Lane informed his followers that 
 all would yet be well if they, who had once been earning 
 70s. a week, would only do work of the value of as much 
 as 7 a year. His appeal would, however, have been 
 fruitless if it had not, from some quarter or another, 
 called forth a proposal which was accepted as a new 
 revelation. " Our cattle," it was said, " may have 
 gone, but our forests still remain. Let us use our capital 
 as wages, and turn our forests into gold by employ- 
 ing cheap native labour." Whatever Lane may have 
 thought of this proposal himself, he gave it his sanction 
 as the sole immediate means of securing the triumph 
 of pure social democracy; and John Lane, his brother, 
 was forthwith dispatched to Melbourne with the new 
 programme in his pocket, to canvass for fresh members, 
 and also for fresh subscriptions. He succeeded in 
 obtaining neither. His failure, he explained on his 
 return, had been due to two causes. One was what he 
 described as " a slump in Australian socialism"; the 
 other was the fact that they, whose avowed object was 
 to escape from the tyranny of employers, were about 
 to re-establish on their own account the accursed thing 
 themselves. He had urged on the objectors that the 
 principles of pure social democracy, and the doctrine 
 that all men are equal simply because they are men, 
 were applicable to white men only, and did not apply 
 
LANE'S LAST ATTEMPT 225 
 
 to their dealings with men who were black or yellow; 
 but the long and the short of it was that his arguments 
 and his mission had been in vain. 
 
 Convinced at last that his enterprise as it now stood 
 was hopeless, William Lane turned round on his fol- 
 lowers, and informed them, like a Hebrew prophet, that 
 their ruin was on their own heads; that the life-blood 
 of socialism was a living and sustained enthusiasm an 
 enthusiasm of each for all, and that this in them was 
 wanting. " As for me," he said, " I can work with 
 enthusiasts only; and amongst you," he proceeded, 
 "though most have been found wanting, there are yet 
 a chosen few who are men after my own heart." These 
 he would take away with him, and he and they together, 
 the majority being abandoned to their fate, would pre- 
 sently build up elsewhere a Kingdom of Heaven for 
 themselves. Of the abandoned majority, most, as has 
 been said already, were shipped back to Australia by 
 the charity of the heartless rich, whilst some remained 
 behind and blossomed into substantial farmers on parts 
 of New Australia which were granted to them as their 
 own property. But the story of Lane and his remnant 
 still remains to be told. It forms the climax of a drama 
 which combined the incidents of an Aristophanic farce 
 with the fatalities of a Sophoclean tragedy. 
 
 It was alleged by many that Lane had retreated to 
 a portion of the original settlement which he had long 
 been coveting as the choicest for his own exclusive use. 
 This was wholly untrue. He obtained from the Para- 
 guayan government the concession of a new tract, com- 
 paratively small, called Cosme, and there in the wilder- 
 ness he and his chosen band began, with unquenched 
 hopes, their work of construction over again. They 
 erected a preliminary hamlet a cluster of forlorn 
 shanties, adding to these, as the heart of their distribu- 
 tive system, the inevitable common store, stocking it 
 with such simple goods as their funds enabled them to 
 purchase, and leaving each as a part of the " all " to 
 draw from it whatever particular articles were for him 
 or for her necessary. The faith of these persons in the 
 principle of " each for all " was plainly a living force 
 in them up to a certain point. Whilst waiting for the 
 
226 LIMITS OF PURE DEMOCRACY 
 
 dazzling wealth which they still believed to be imminent, 
 it enabled them to bear with patience conditions of the 
 nudest poverty food of the scantiest, dwellings that 
 would barely shelter them, clothes that were little better 
 than carefully mended tatters. But even in these elect 
 Lane had occasion to observe that the spirit of private 
 gain was by no means wholly wanting. For example, 
 by the women constant efforts were made to secure from 
 the one poor store better clothing or more of it than 
 could possibly be supplied to all. He was, however, still 
 so satisfied that the true socialist spirit would completely 
 triumph in the end that he presently set out for England, 
 prophesying a quick return with a new contingent of 
 members crushed victims of capitalism, who were burn- 
 ing to exchange slavery for freedom and impending 
 opulence. Within limits he was as good as his word. 
 He duly returned himself, and there came, visibly 
 enough, some new converts along with him. These, 
 indeed, might have been much more numerous had he 
 only consented to add free love to his programme; but 
 they could not, however numerous, have created on their 
 arrival a greater sensation than they did. The old 
 members were as wretched and as ragged as ever, but 
 the new victims of capital had an air of such signal pros- 
 perity that those who were enjoying economic freedom 
 already could at first sight hardly believe them real. 
 The feminine victims, in particular, were such figures 
 of frills and fashion that Lane was soon the spectator 
 of even more enthusiasm than he wanted. Every woman 
 amongst his old adherents was glaring at her new sisters, 
 and was eager, we need not suppose to tear them limb 
 from limb, but at all events to appropriate the best of 
 their boots and blouses. From that moment there was 
 new discord in Eden, and Lane, who had thus far sur- 
 vived discords so grave and many, was unable to com- 
 pose this. Having admitted that socialism, or pure 
 social democracy, had difficulties to contend with which 
 he had not at first realised, but predicting that, never- 
 theless, its future triumph was inevitable, he took himself 
 back to a land where capitalism still was rampant, and 
 sought for a private livelihood in the offices of a Mel- 
 bourne newspaper. 
 
THE MISSING STIMULUS 227 
 
 Of all the secularist experiments in socialism, as at- 
 tempted in the United States, it has already been said 
 briefly, after a survey of the most important of them, 
 that their failure was due to two and the same two causes, 
 both of them inherent in, and peculiar to, the socialist 
 scheme as such. The proximate cause, it was said, was 
 the want of efficient industrial direction ; but the primary 
 cause was the absence of any industrial motive which 
 could, when the motive of preferential gain was elimi- 
 nated, compel any regular response to industrial orders 
 of any kind. These experiments show that, if we 
 exclude the whip of the taskmaster, such work as is 
 requisite for the success of a socialist polity can, under 
 a system of equal rewards for all, be elicited only by a 
 passion in each of the workers for some object which is 
 external to all of them in the sense that the work of 
 each affects his individual welfare, whether for better or 
 worse, to a degree so small as to be barely appreciable 
 by himself. This is precisely the conclusion on which 
 Mr. Shaw insists, and from which, having insisted on it, 
 he attempts in vain to escape; and this is precisely the 
 conclusion of which, amongst the ruin of his own 
 projects, Lane had at last a vision which was clearer 
 even than Mr. Shaw's. Mr. Shaw calls the requisite 
 passion " a sentiment." Lane gave it a much more 
 adequate name when he described it as a passion which 
 must not fall short of an " enthusiasm." 
 
 Let us now, with the experiment of Lane before us, 
 take the five together, and see how they all unite in 
 teaching the same lesson. 
 
 
CHAPTER III 
 
 THE DETAILED LESSONS OF EXPERIMENT 
 
 WITH regard to these five entirely independent experi- 
 ments, the most obvious fact to note is that the plot 
 or story of all, as though they were Synoptic Gospels, 
 is in Substance, if not in every detail, the same. In each 
 case we have a group of human beings, nearly all of 
 whom, with the exception of the Brook Farm venturers, 
 were drawn from the upper ranks of wage-paid manual 
 workers. In each case they were led to believe that the 
 average man produces from three to four times as much 
 as the modern employing class, in the way of wages, 
 allots him. In each case they were led to believe that, 
 when once the employer " had been stricken from the 
 categories of existence," and the labourers had access 
 in common to land and capital of their own, their lot 
 would be one of equal and almost fabulous affluence. 
 In each case they left the employer behind them. In 
 each case they were provided with land carefully chosen, 
 and a capital sufficient for starting those basic industries 
 which, having such was their hope supplied them at 
 once with comfort, would soon be followed by others 
 productive of universal wealth. And yet, in each case, 
 so far as their socialist lives were concerned, these 
 dreamers of golden dreams ended in helpless beggary. 
 That this could not have been the result, as some persons 
 pretended, of a mere series of errors made in the choice 
 of lands is shown by the fact that in each case, when the 
 socialist community was dissolved, a certain number of 
 the ex-members those who had any grit in them 
 restored once more to the world of private motive and 
 property, began on those selfsame lands to make an 
 ordinary peasant's livelihood some, indeed, to lay the 
 foundations of considerable and enduring fortunes. O?he 
 
 228 \. 
 
PARALYSED MOTIVE 229 
 
 industrial paralysis of which, so long as they submitted 
 to a socialist rule, they were the victims, and from 
 which, when that rule was ended, they forthwith re- 
 covered, was the visible result of a paralysis of industrial 
 motive, and this it is the avowed object of a socialist 
 polity to produce. It consists of a temporary severing 
 of those nerves or muscles by which the prospect of 
 unequal gain is normally connected with the exercise of 
 unequal effort, and a replacing of such prospective gain 
 by the prospective gratification of a vague and diffused 
 sentiment which, though not wholly fictitious, has no 
 permanent tendency to stimulate those prosaic activities 
 on which a continuous supply of even the necessaries of 
 life depends. 
 
 Every chapter in the history of all these experiments 
 shows this. Thus, for example, the Owenites, so far as 
 their lives depended on their own produce, would have 
 died of want except during those periods for which 
 Owen himself consented to wield the powers of an auto- 
 crat, which were only his because the undertaking 
 belonged to him, and he could, had he not been obeyed, 
 have done at any moment what at last he did, and 
 brought the entire scheme of equal distribution and 
 " undivided interests " to an end. Whenever he trans- 
 ferred the control of affairs to Councils, obedience to 
 which was a matter of mere socialist sentiment, there 
 was no obedience at all. Industry lapsed into indo- 
 lence. Consumption outran production, and want once 
 more began. 
 
 Of the cultured idealists, who projected the Brook 
 Farm experiment, one, looking back on it, said with 
 regretful candour that its failure was inevitable from the 
 first. Its success, he said, was contingent on the abso- 
 lute supremacy of a sentiment which has, as a motive 
 to work, no actual existence. In the mere fact of the 
 family, he added, " we have an element so subversive 
 of enthusiasm for general association that, for practical 
 purposes, the two cannot co-exist." 
 
 In the case of the Wisconsin Phalanx, socialist senti- 
 ment was for a time more operative, but was finally 
 extinguished by the wretchedness of its own results. 
 Indeed, its more active members were in their heart of 
 
230 LIMITS OF PURE DEMOCRACY 
 
 hearts so little enamoured of equality, as an end in 
 itself, that they sought to increase their incomes by 
 wage- work in the world outside. The North American 
 Phalanx owed its greater longevity and such, it ap- 
 pears, was the explanation of its own projectors not 
 to the driving force of a greater desire for equality, but 
 rather to its careful concessions to the spirit of private 
 gain. Moreover, quite apart from the question of the 
 desire for equality as a motive, many of the members, 
 long before its end was imminent, had begun to express 
 their weariness of equality as an experienced thing ; and 
 one of their number, with reference both to that body 
 and others, subsequently made public, as the results of 
 close observation, his own diagnosis of equalitarian 
 sentiment generally. What he said may be briefly 
 summarised thus. 
 
 The sentiment in favour of equality, if taken in the 
 socialist sense, owes much of its vogue, as the basis of 
 a practical polity, to a certain class of propagandists, 
 to whose temper, as though by instinct, that of the mass 
 is always ready to adjust itself. These men are drawn, 
 he said, from a class which is quite peculiar, " and is 
 always to be found floating on the surface of any com- 
 plex society a body of discontented, jealous, indolent 
 spirits, disgusted with our present social system, not 
 because it enchains the masses, but because they cannot 
 render it subservient to their own private ends. This 
 class," he said, " as experience shows, stands ready to 
 mount any new movement that promises ease, abun- 
 dance and individual freedom ; it has entered as an 
 active element into all these socialist ventures ; and 
 then, as soon as it becomes evident that the enterprise 
 cannot continue to support men, unless everybody works 
 his hardest, and in strict subservience to orders embody- 
 ing general principles, these persons raise at once the 
 old cry of tyranny and oppression. Anarchy ensues, and 
 the enterprise goes to pieces." 
 
 These words, which were used with reference to the 
 American experiments generally, and to one experiment 
 in particular, would have been still more poignantly 
 applicable had they been used a generation later with 
 reference to the experiment of Lane. What Lane learnt 
 
TRUTH UNDERLYING ERROR 231 
 
 from experience what the conduct of his followers 
 taught him was this, that the equalitarian sentiment 
 on which he, taking it at its face value, relied as the 
 driving force of an industry by which all, irrespective of 
 their various individual efficiencies, should be made the 
 possessors of equal and almost fabulous wealth, was, in 
 so far as it existed, a sentiment very different from that 
 which he himself imagined. This sentiment was found 
 by him, when viewed through the prism of experience, 
 to resolve itself into three, all equally incompatible with 
 the achievement of their professed object, one being a 
 secret impatience of the burden of any industry what- 
 ever ; another being an open impatience of anything like 
 industrial discipline ; and the third being a jealous fear 
 on the part of most lest some should, through superior 
 energy, rise to any position which would overshadow 
 their own. Sentiments such as these are not only in- 
 sufficient to stimulate the production of any such wealth 
 as it is the primary promise of socialism to distribute 
 equally amongst all, but as Lane, like his predecessors, 
 found out to his cost, they render the maintenance of 
 even a tolerable poverty impossible. 
 
 And yet, if we take a wider view of the matter if we 
 take the sentiment which, identifying each with all, will 
 tolerate nothing for self unless all alike share it and if 
 we consider this sentiment as applied, not to any planned 
 experiments, but to those vicissitudes of life which are 
 intended or planned by nobody, we shall find that it is 
 far from being altogether a dream. We shall find that, 
 on certain occasions, it exerts a force so great as to be 
 clearly measurable by the dynamometer of precise 
 results; and, thus seeing what it can do, we shall be 
 better able to sober ourselves by a definite understanding 
 of what it cannot. 
 
 That this sentiment may be practically operative in 
 certain religious sects which are in their nature excep- 
 tional, and which aim in a material sense at nothing 
 more than the competence which is necessary for a peni- 
 tential peace, has been pointed out already. But it still 
 remains for us to note that on certain exceptional occa- 
 sions it is actually operative likewise amongst ordinary 
 men and women, and turns them for a time into socialists 
 
232 LIMITS OF PURE DEMOCRACY 
 
 without either their will or knowledge. Of this fact we 
 have a trenchant example in the conduct of crews, either 
 rowing to save themselves in the boats of a sinking ship, 
 or struggling, in the hope of rescue, for food on a barren 
 island. The objects and ambitions of all are here reduced 
 to one that is to say, a bare escape from death. Even 
 in situations such as these, a preferential care for self 
 sometimes comes to the surface in singularly brutal 
 forms; but when the persons concerned are sufficiently 
 few in number to constitute an undivided flock, all 
 hedged in by circumstances from which there is no 
 escape, and each member being a witness of the struggles 
 and sufferings of the rest, a sympathy of each with all 
 becomes constantly so acute that each will work for the 
 others as though their lives were his own, the strongest 
 in particular being stimulated to supreme exertions by 
 the spectacle of those who can do little or nothing for 
 themselves. 
 
 But desperate situations of this kind are not only in 
 fact exceptional. They are the precise conditions which 
 socialism aims at abolishing; and even though socialist 
 experiments, with the exception of one detail, have 
 resulted in conditions which were certainly no less des- 
 perate, these have, in case of such experiments them- 
 selves, entirely failed to produce that self-identification 
 of each with the equal welfare of all which in other 
 emergencies is, as a rule, conspicuous. The reason is 
 that, when socialism has been attempted in practice, 
 there has been no hedge of circumstance, as there is on 
 barren islands, which excludes the persons concerned 
 from any choice but the choice between selfless enthu- 
 siasm and death. The socialist experimenters have had 
 always a third alternative namely, that of walking 
 away, and pursuing their own interest under circum- 
 stances of a different kind ; and this was the very alterna- 
 tive which they all in the end adopted. 
 
 The actual extent and the limits of a selfless enthu- 
 siasm for others may be further illustrated by other 
 examples, which, though less extreme, are of wider range 
 than these. In no countries is a generally democratic 
 sentiment supposed to be more active than it is in 
 America and Australia ; and this sentiment includes, we 
 
PROVED LIMITS OF ALTRUISM 233 
 
 may safely say, a sympathy with human suffering and 
 a practical desire to alleviate it on the part of multitudes 
 who are not sufferers themselves. Thus, if Japan were 
 visited by an appalling famine, appeals on behalf of its 
 victims would at once be made to Australian and 
 American sympathies, and to no class of appeal would 
 popular response be larger than it certainly would be to 
 this. Nevertheless, when in normal times the Japanese 
 have evinced a desire, by working for themselves in 
 either of these two countries, to reach a higher standard 
 of life than they found to be possible at home, American 
 and Australian sentiment, the sentiment of Labour more 
 particularly, has not only failed to welcome them, but 
 has actually insisted on driving them back to con- 
 ditions which, as measured by American and Australian 
 standards, are poverty. 
 
 Such diffused exhibitions of the actual extent and 
 limits of average human sympathy are merely pheno- 
 mena which, from the Middle Ages onwards, have been 
 recognised by Catholic moralists as part of the order of 
 nature. The sympathy which, in respect of the distribu- 
 tion of material things, is possible for the average man, 
 and the Christian religion demands of him, is, according 
 to them, divisible into three grades, these being deter- 
 mined by the circumstances of the person or persons by 
 whom the " all," as objects of sympathy, happen to be 
 represented. Let the " all " be represented by a single 
 person A, and the generalised " each " by a single person 
 B. If A be moderately prosperous, B, though much 
 richer than he, will owe him nothing but a sentiment of 
 general amity. If A be in difficulties but not in extreme 
 distress, it will be meritorious on B's part, though not 
 obligatory, to use his wealth in giving him judicious aid. 
 If A's situation would be desperate unless aid were forth- 
 coming, it will then be obligatory on B to give him what 
 aid he can. 
 
 To suppose that a sentiment proper to the last of these 
 three cases could be or ought to be raised to the same 
 pitch by the others is, unless we resort to a supposition 
 more ridiculous still, to contemplate a change in human 
 nature which would render peace or happiness impossible 
 for any human being. For if all men should ever grow 
 
234 LIMITS OF PURE DEMOCRACY 
 
 sensitive to such an extreme degree that each man 
 bewailed the lot of all other men as miserable whose 
 incomes, though sufficient for life, fell short of his own, 
 even the poorest classes in any rich country like England 
 would be constantly tortured by the thought of countries 
 like Russia and China, the total incomes of which, if 
 divided equally amongst all, would still leave everybody 
 poorer than the least skilled English labourer. 
 
 But the matter does not end here. If human sym- 
 pathy grew so acute as this, it would not concern itself 
 with matters of income only. Other ills would remain 
 independent of wealth or poverty, from the pangs of 
 toothache to those of despised or bereaved love ; and these, 
 diffused amongst all by a sympathetic contagion, would 
 make everybody unable to smile whilst a single human 
 being was weeping. Every bride and bridegroom would 
 have to wear black at the altar for those who at the 
 same hour would inevitably be burying their dead, and 
 the news of one old woman with a toothache in Pekin 
 would cast the gloom of midnight over every home in 
 Europe. This oecumenical misery would be curable on 
 one supposition only, which is merely the logical sequel 
 of the root-supposition of the socialists. This is the sup- 
 position that, if sympathy were really so super-sensitive 
 that the wants and sorrows of others produced affliction 
 in each man as though they were really his own, the 
 happiness of others would conversely have a like effect 
 on the miserable. In that case, not only would every 
 bride feel her happiness blighted by the thought of con- 
 temporary widows, but every widow would be consoled 
 for the loss of her husband if on her way to his funeral 
 she encountered a wedding-party. Not only would Mrs. 
 Smith be robbed of all satisfaction in the silk of her 
 Sunday gown by the thought that Mrs. Jones, her neigh- 
 bour, went to church in alpaca, but Mrs. Jones, as her 
 eyes strayed from her hymn-book, would be filled with 
 satisfaction by the spectacle of Mrs. Smith in silk. This 
 last supposition is one in which not even socialists would 
 indulge Lane, as we have seen, discovered its fallacy 
 for himself but it is in reality not more absurd than 
 their own. 
 
 The truth is that a certain thickness of skin, or a 
 
COMMON-SENSE ALTRUISM 235 
 
 certain sluggishness of the sympathetic imagination, is 
 necessary for the mass of mankind in order to make life 
 tolerable, just as a certain degree of obtuseness in the 
 matter of hearing is necessary to protect them from 
 sounds that would otherwise drive them mad ; and that 
 kind of super-sensitive sympathy which will not be 
 satisfied till all men are not only removed from want, but 
 are equal in wealth also, may indeed haunt men's minds 
 as a sort of ideal protest against certain forms of in- 
 equality, but it does not provoke, or even tend to pro- 
 voke, most men to any attempts at realising an ideal 
 equality which they in their hearts view with repugnance, 
 or at best with complete apathy. 
 
 To suppose, however, that a sympathy of each with 
 the lot of all is a sentiment which, except on occasions 
 of rare and extreme danger, has no power whatever over 
 the social lives of men, would be graver error even than 
 that of the socialists, who make its power ridiculous by 
 supposing it to be greater than it is. Without some 
 such sympathy, some quasi-socialist sentiment, demand- 
 ing and securing equality of conditions in some respects, 
 there could be no such thing as civilisation, or even as 
 a coherent tribe. In every society there is an element 
 of socialism and socialist sentiment. If men have neg- 
 lected this fact hitherto, they have merely neglected it 
 because they took it for granted. One of the earliest 
 examples of a socialist institution is a street. One of the 
 principal modern examples of a socialist institution is 
 the Post Office. On the other hand, the ultimate process 
 to which both institutions minister is the growth and 
 vitality, not of socialist life but of private. A socialist 
 street exists to give access to private houses. The 
 socialist Post Office performs, in transmitting letters, a 
 like service for all ; but the letters themselves are private, 
 indeed most of them are secret products, and minister, 
 with few exceptions, to essentially private interests. 
 That is to say, in each of these two typical cases there 
 are two factors, two principles, two sentiments involved, 
 and the error of all socialists is that, confining their 
 attention to one of these, they imagine that it can 
 operate alone. They reason like builders who proposed 
 to complete a bridge by pulling down one half of its arch, 
 
\j 
 
 236 LIMITS OF PURE DEMOCRACY 
 
 and using the bricks to beautify and extend the other. 
 If they would but realise that the socialist principle in 
 itself, which they take to be something new, is no new 
 principle at all, but is one which (as ministering to, 
 and assuming the action of, another) must always exist 
 in any complex society, and that the sentiment at the 
 back of it, in so far as it corresponds with anything 
 actual, is normally a form of instinctive common sense, 
 they might well be justified by existing social conditions 
 in their attempts to rouse this sentiment into a more 
 alert and more self-conscious activity. For, as has been 
 here observed with reference to political government, 
 though the principles of oligarchy and democracy are 
 both equally necessary, their powers need not be always 
 in precisely the same proportions. As the circumstances 
 of any nation change, it will sometimes happen that for 
 their solution a greater exercise of oligarchic power is 
 necessary, sometimes a greater exercise of democratic, 
 though in no complex society will either be operative 
 alone. Hence, then, if, without regard to their details, 
 the principles and projects of socialism are taken as 
 representing an attempt to secure for the democratic 
 principle a greater influence in some respects than, at 
 present, it actually exerts, there is one strong reason, at 
 all events, for supposing that this attempt indicates the 
 actual existence of social mal-adjustments of some kind, 
 in the cure of which the democratic principle will be a 
 signally active element. The reason which makes this 
 supposition antecedently probable is a fact analogous to 
 one which was cited by Cardinal Newman as a proof in 
 itself of the divine vitality of the Church. This fact was 
 the scandalous character of Popes such as Leo X, in spite 
 of which the Catholic Church survived. The same argu- 
 ment is applicable to the principles and projects of 
 socialism. Whenever these have been reduced to any 
 definite form, they have shown themselves, in one way 
 or another, so inconsistent either with the technical facts 
 of industry or with the actual character of the great 
 masses of mankind they have, moreover, when tested 
 by experiment, always ended in such farcical failures 
 that the unabated though vague response which they 
 still continue to excite amongst masses of men every- 
 

 THE: VITAL QUESTION 237 
 
 where cannot be otherwise than a proof that actual evils 
 exist, against which these principles and projects are a 
 protest and a call for help. 
 
 To discover in these principles and projects what the 
 residuum of actual truth may be, and how it may be 
 developed into some practicable scheme calculated to 
 allay the discontent of which socialism is the misleading 
 symptom, is one of the most important tasks to which 
 the practical statesman or the thinker at the present 
 time can address himself. In the following chapters 
 the principle of " each for all," as meaning that, without 
 regard to the facts of individual production, all shall 
 receive equal shares of the produce the principle sum- 
 marised by Mr. Shaw as the essence of scientific social- 
 ism, and as put by Lane and his predecessors to the test 
 of direct experiment shall be reviewed with reference 
 to the bald actualities of life ; and, absurd as it is when 
 taken in the form with which socialists themselves invest 
 it, we shall find that a something emerges from it which 
 is, not only what Americans would describe as a "plain, 
 practical proposition," but which also accords more 
 closely with the actual sentiments of those who at 
 present, for want of better, take the doctrinaires of 
 socialism as their guides. 
 
BOOK V 
 
 THE PHILOSOPHY OF SANE REFORM 
 CHAPTER I 
 
 THE IDEAL MINIMUM WAGE 
 
 IN order to extract the truth underlying or latent in 
 the socialist conception of a sentiment which, without 
 regard to the facts of individual production, shall 
 demand and secure equality in the distribution of the 
 total product, it is necessary to realise that in such a 
 conception as this, an absurdity is involved even greater 
 and more radical than any of those to which attention 
 has been called already. 
 
 One thing at once is evident, and even socialists 
 admit this, that in very simple communities, consisting 
 mainly of peasants cultivating their own plots, the con- 
 ception of distribution by sentiment would have no 
 practical meaning. In such a community the differences 
 of wealth are slight. Each man and his household, 
 either by direct consumption or exchange (the latter 
 process being hardly less simple than the former), visibly 
 get the whole of their own product between them; and 
 so long as this is the case distributive justice, as under- 
 stood by all, will be satisfied. The idea of determining 
 distribution, not by the facts of production, but by moral 
 or social sentiment, acquires an intelligible meaning only 
 when the mass of the workers, ceasing to work in isola- 
 tion, co-operate in large bands, each of which is directed 
 by the mind of a non-labouring master ; and when, owing 
 to the development of mind as a productive agent, the 
 members of the master class, together with their mental 
 subordinates, actually come to produce, quite apart from 
 
 238 
 
A CONFLICT OF SENTIMENTS 239 
 
 what they may steal, incomparably more per head of 
 their small number than what is or could possibly be 
 produced by any unit of the average mass. The idea 
 of determining distribution by the dictates of a general 
 sentiment which, filling the hearts of all, will demand 
 and secure equality, necessarily presupposes inequalities 
 of some conspicuous kind in production, for otherwise 
 there would be little or nothing for such a general senti- 
 ment, as an equalising agent, to do. How remote from 
 reality is the supposition that any such sentiment exists 
 in force sufficient to accomplish the task assigned to it, 
 we have seen already by reference to a series of test 
 experiments ; but it remains to be pointed out that it is 
 not only inconsistent with facts, but that the very con- 
 ception of it is also inconsistent with itself. 
 
 If sentiment in any community is to have sufficient 
 force to render the distribution of unequal products 
 equal, what is really required, and what socialists un- 
 consciously postulate, is not one sentiment animating 
 all alike, but two sentiments sharply opposed in kind, 
 though conducing to the same end, one of which will 
 animate some of the citizens, whilst the other animates 
 the rest. For unless the productive efficiency of all the 
 citizens is equal, they will from the nature of things be 
 divisible into two main classes the men who produce 
 more than the average, and the men who produce less. 
 Hence, if by the action of sentiment the distribution of 
 the products is to be equalised, the sentiment which must 
 animate the former will be one which impels them to 
 transfer nearly the whole of their own products to other 
 people ; and the sentiment which must animate the latter 
 will be one impelling them to the very different, and 
 perhaps less arduous, task of being " precious to human- 
 ity " by demanding this transference as their due. 
 Socialism, in short, as a scheme for equalising incomes 
 by the action of two opposite sentiments severally opera- 
 tive in two contrasted classes, would be a topsy-turvy 
 reproduction of the iniquity which, according to Marx, 
 is the essence of the existing system. Under that system, 
 said Marx, the few live on the efforts of the many. 
 Under a regime of sentimental socialism, the many would 
 live mainly on the efforts of the few. Or, if socialists 
 
240 LIMITS OF PURE DEMOCRACY 
 
 should think this statement too crude in its candour, 
 they might express their promises more delicately by 
 describing a socialist polity as one which would secure 
 for the great mass of its citizens indefinitely more than 
 these citizens themselves produce. 
 
 It may well be thought by sober and sensible people 
 that the force of folly can go no farther than this. And 
 yet in this very promise, and even in the detailed sup- 
 position that some sort of sentiment exists which will 
 in some near future bring about its accomplishment, 
 there lurk certain elements of actuality a sane recognition 
 of which may well lead to far-reaching modifications of 
 the temper and actions of men under the conditions 
 which exist to-day. 
 
 In order to see how this is, let us begin by translating 
 the general term " income " into the particular term 
 " wages " ; for when socialists talk about equalising, and 
 so raising, incomes, the incomes which they have in view 
 are, as we have just seen, the incomes of the great 
 majority ; and under the existing system, in all civilised 
 countries, wages form the incomes and represent the 
 material circumstances of at least four-fifths l of the 
 population. Whenever the distribution of material 
 things is discussed whether in a Papal Encyclical or 
 on the platform of a social congress the question of 
 wages is that towards which discussion gravitates. 
 Further, though the question of wages may be looked 
 at from many points of view, it is always, by all parties 
 alike, discussed as a question which is primarily a 
 question of quantity, and which, being so, is referable 
 to some idea or, we may say, to some sentiment of 
 justice. Socialists may say, if they like, that the wage- 
 earner ought in justice to get, not only the full value of 
 his own product, but more; but they, like everybody 
 else, will maintain that the typical wage-earner should 
 at all events get as much. 
 
 Here, then, at all events, is one point of agreement; 
 and this brings us back to the question of how, when a 
 
 1 This proportion does not hold good in Russia, Serbia, Bulgaria and 
 certain other countries, in which the modern industrial system is but 
 partially developed, and which are the poorest countries in the Western 
 world. 
 
THE PERSONAL PRODUCT 241 
 
 multitude of wage-earners work, as is the case to-day, 
 in co-operation with one another and also with a common 
 master, we can measure what the individual wage-earner 
 produces in his own person, as distinct from his fellows 
 on the one hand, and from the common master on the 
 other. Now, although, when men work collectively andT 
 the product is collective likewise, we cannot do what we 
 can when they work singly, and identify the product of 
 each by the method of direct observation, it has been 
 shown in an earlier chapter that it is measurable, in 
 principle at all events, by a method no less valid. What 
 each man virtually produces is so much of the collective 
 product as would cease to be produced if his own efforts 
 were withdrawn, or so much as is added to it if his efforts, 
 previously absent, are added to those of some given 
 number of other men. This method of measurement 
 has been constantly used in war-time by employers when 
 they have claimed for this or that member of their 
 staffs exemption from military service, on the ground 
 that his withdrawal would cripple the employer's busi- 
 ness to this or to that precisely specified extent. This 
 method is similarly applicable to a measurement of the 
 respective products of different co-operating classes, such 
 as the wage-earners and the employers of a country, 
 each class being taken as a whole. It has thus been 
 used here in a former chapter, when, in order to estimate 
 roughly the actual product of the modern employers of 
 England, a comparison was made between the product 
 per head of the entire working population as it is at the 
 present time, with what it was when scientific employ- 
 ment had barely outgrown its infancy. In the case, 
 however, of a class, such as the wage-earners as a whole, 
 it is not generally practicable, as it is in the case of any 
 employee taken singly, to remove them from the influence 
 of the scientific employer altogether, and leave them to 
 show their mettle by producing what they can for them- 
 selves. Such being the case, then, the socialist experi- 
 ments reviewed in the last chapter have here a peculiar 
 interest quite apart from their consequences. They 
 show that those who devised them recognised the funda- 
 mental validity of this method of measurement them- 
 selves, and their experiments were deliberate applications 
 
242 LIMITS OF PURE DEMOCRACY 
 
 of it in its most difficult and comprehensive form. 
 " Our aim," said the founders of the North American 
 Phalanx, " is, by eliminating the employers altogether, 
 to provide an index of what the masses, as such, produce, 
 and to show that, without aid or guidance from any 
 class external to themselves, they may produce co- 
 operatively all the means of life, and even increase the 
 present rate of production." Lane said the same thing 
 at greater length, and, so far as it went, in a really 
 scientific way. The result of these experiments, as we 
 have seen, was the very opposite of what the projectors 
 anticipated. It showed that when the average worker 
 deprives himself of the aid of a specially able directorate, 
 the total product, instead of being maintained or in- 
 creased, shrinks to a fraction of what it was when the 
 ability of the directorate, was operative, this fraction 
 alone being his true personal product. We need not, 
 however, dwell on the details of these experiments longer. 
 What immediately concerns us here is not that they 
 yielded this or that precise result, but that they consti- 
 tute emphatic admissions on the part of socialists them- 
 selves, that out of the collective product of a mass of 
 inter-acting workers it is perfectly possible to identify 
 certain portions or values as the personal product of 
 particular men or classes, and that thus, when we speak 
 of the fraction which, whatever its precise amount, the 
 wage-earner himself produces, we are not speaking of 
 any fanciful quantity, but of one which in actual life 
 is potentially measurable with quite sufficient exactitude. 
 
 Let us take, for example, some industrial group con- 
 sisting of 500 wage-earners together with one director, 
 and suppose that the total product is expressible as 
 x plus 40, x being what the wage-earners produce by 
 their own personal faculties, and 40 being the product 
 of the employer, or " the rent of his directive ability," 
 in the sense that it is an increment which comes into 
 being when he directs, and when he ceases to direct 
 disappears. Thus the average product of each wage- 
 earner individually will be x divided by 500, and the 
 individual product of the director will be 40 divided by 
 1 that is to say, 40. 
 
 Now, it is obvious that the system of oligarchy which 
 
WAGES OF EQUIVALENCE 243 
 
 the authority of the director represents would never have 
 been developed at all unless some such increment had 
 resulted from it, which went as a gain to somebody. 
 Let us suppose, then, that the whole of it went to the 
 employer himself. In so far as justice demands that 
 each man shall enjoy the whole of whatever product is 
 contingent on his own exertions, the employer in securing 
 the whole of it will be acting with perfect justice. On 
 the other hand, it is equally evident that if, by abusing 
 his position, he appropriates anything more, his action 
 will be grossly unjust ; for the " more," which must come 
 from somewhere, can be nothing else than an abstraction 
 from the personal product of the wage-earner. The 
 wage-earner would, in that case, by submitting his 
 technical efforts to the control of another person, how- 
 ever superior to himself, get less for his own consumption 
 than he once got, or might get, by working as his own 
 master. No employer, not even the most grasping, if 
 the matter were plainly put to him, would deny that 
 by such an arrangement every sentiment of justice was 
 outraged. 
 
 Here, then, we have at once a standard below which, \ 
 without injustice, no wages can fall. This standard is \ 
 the amount which a man now working as a wage-earner 
 could produce for himself, either by working in complete 
 independence, or else as a member of some group of 
 equals, no one of whom exercised any greater authority 
 than the rest. If by working for wages under an em- 
 ployer he gets less than this he is robbed. Let us sup- 
 pose, however, that the typical wage-earner does not get 
 less than this. Let us suppose that what he gets as a 
 wage-earner is fully equal to anything which he could 
 by his personal powers get for himself otherwise. How 
 would the case stand then ? If justice relates to indus- 
 trial facts only, all pretence that the man was robbed 
 would be gone. His own personal powers, whether exer- 
 cised under a master or otherwise, would yield him the 
 ; same return namely, the whole of what they were 
 capable of producing. Pure industrial justice would 
 have nothing more to say. 
 
 This is, however, not the whole of the story. In the 
 first place, even if, in a strictly material sense, the inde- 
 
244 LIMITS OF PURE DEMOCRACY 
 
 pendent worker, by being converted into a wage-earner, 
 lost nothing, he at all events, in a material sense, gains 
 nothing; and in the second place he would lose some- 
 thing which, though not material, is appreciable none 
 the less. What he would lose is his independence ; and 
 this is a something which, other things being equal, he 
 would, to say the least of it, rather have than not. He 
 would, therefore, through the wage-system, if he found 
 himself compelled to submit to it, be obviously a net 
 loser to a very appreciable degree; and the extent of 
 his loss would be magnified in his own eyes when he saw 
 that, by this same system, other men were conspicuous 
 gainers. Without overestimating the moral sympathies 
 of mankind, we may safely say that the situation of the 
 wage-earners generally, as represented by a man thus 
 circumstanced, would be recognised as contrary to 
 justice, not by those only who suffered from the existing 
 system, but by those also who personally did nothing 
 but profit by it; and that, even amongst the latter, a 
 socialist sentiment would develop itself which demanded 
 that an injustice of so plain a kind should be rectified. 
 
 What, then, if stated definitely, would such a demand 
 mean ? If it were not a demand that the existing system 
 should be abolished, it could only be a demand that 
 those persons or classes who, though neither gaining nor 
 losing otherwise, had through it lost an independence 
 which they might still conceivably enjoy, should not 
 merely receive as wages the entire value of their own 
 personal products which is what they presumably would 
 do if they worked as their own masters but that they 
 should, when working as wage-earners, receive something 
 more as well; this extra wage, which would necessarily 
 come out of the increment produced by the employers 
 themselves, being of such an amount that the wage- 
 earners' loss of their independence might be reasonably 
 taken as counterbalanced by it. 
 
 But however evident the justice of such a demand 
 might be, it is doubtful whether its power would suffice 
 for the accomplishment of its own object, if abstract or 
 ideal justice, and nothing more, were at stake. The 
 truth is that all men have naturally a sentimental inclina- 
 tion towards the Just; but in most men it tends to 
 

 WAGES OF COMPENSATION 245 
 
 remain an inclination and nothing more, if justice, as 
 related to any concrete question, is difficult to define 
 precisely, if the means of achieving it are disputable, 
 or if it appears to threaten any loss to themselves, or is 
 anyhow not closely connected with their own immediate 
 interests. If, however, it be made apparent to them 
 that their own self-interest and the sentiment for justice 
 coincide, the latter, thus liberated from all impending 
 influences, will acquire that practical force which, as 
 Lane found out from experience, pure socialist sentiment 
 when put to the test lacks. 
 
 This is signally true of ideal justice to wage-earners 
 in its relation to those persons namely, the employing 
 classes and their allies with whose self-interest it may 
 at first sight seem most likely to conflict. To such 
 persons, at all events, whatever it may be to others, the 
 existing industrial system is essentially a source of gain. 
 Their whole fortunes are bound up with it; and, if 
 having paid the wage-earners the full and fair value of 
 what the wage-earners themselves produce, they are 
 invited on sentimental grounds to pay them something 
 more as well, their natural impulses would be, whilst 
 admitting that the invitation had force in it as a counsel 
 of ideal perfection, to set it aside as a counsel too perfect 
 to be practicable. But, if such persons will consider 
 their situation further, they will see that their own 
 interest in the existing industrial system is by no means 
 limited to their gains from it at this or that given 
 moment. They will realise that their interests are no 
 less closely identified with a reasonable assurance that 
 this system shall be secure ; and no system can be secure 
 if the majority of those whose activities are essential to 
 its operation, and who in this case are the wage-earners, 
 have something to gain, and nothing to lose, by over- 
 throwing it. 
 
 Now, if wages were less, and were known by the wage- 
 earners to be so, than what they could produce inde- 
 pendently by their own unaided powers, the system 
 which entailed this loss on them would, it is needless to 
 say, be the object of their unmixed antagonism. The 
 tasks which it imposed on them they would execute with 
 a sluggish reluctance, in the hope that by thus crippling 
 
246 LIMITS OF PURE DEMOCRACY 
 
 it they would bring it altogether to an end ; and even if 
 their wages were fully equal to the value of anything 
 they could produce independently, the sense of their lost 
 independence would suffice to engender a temper in 
 them, perhaps of a less violent but of a no less hostile 
 kind. What director of labour, if his men were in a 
 temper like this, could feel secure from one year to 
 another that his own directive ability would continue 
 to produce anything ? His business, even if it did not 
 collapse, would be structurally insecure, and would be 
 always in danger of collapsing. If, then, with this 
 situation confronting him, he compensates his men for 
 their sense of lost independence by paying them an extra 
 wage a wage which is over and above the industrial 
 value of their products, and thus removes from their 
 minds all positive grounds of enmity he will not only 
 be doing what his sentiments have already, so we assume, 
 suggested to him as an act of justice, but he will, as a 
 business man, have taken a step essential to the security 
 of his own fortunes, and will enjoy the comfortable sense 
 of being a just man also. 
 
 But although this extra wage this compensation for 
 lost independence might eliminate from the temper of 
 his employees the element of inevitable enmity, and 
 indeed do all that abstract justice requires, it would still 
 be insufficient in the long run for his own practical pur- 
 pose. It is true that the employees, this extra wage 
 being granted, would now have no ground for feeling 
 that the employer and the system represented by him 
 did them any positive injury, but they would have just 
 as little ground for feeling that it brought them any 
 positive good. They might cease for a time to have any 
 interest in its overthrow, but they would be just as far as 
 ever from being interested in its permanent maintenance. 
 Such being the case, in the employer's own private 
 interest a second supplement would be needed over and 
 above the value of what the wage-earners themselves 
 produced ; and the reason why it would be needed is 
 this that a system whose efficiency and undisturbed 
 continuance have no better basis than complete indiffer- 
 ence on the part of the majority of those concerned in 
 it, hardly possesses more structural strength than one 
 

 THE WAGES OF STABILITY 24T 
 
 whose popular basis is a sentiment of unmixed antago^ 
 nism. A system which rests on the indifference of the 
 majority of those concerned in it is, indeed, in equi- 
 librium, but the equilibrium is not stable ; and the second 
 extra wage will be necessary in order to render the con- 
 dition of the wage-earners, not only equal to the best 
 which they possibly could compass for themselves, but 
 so definitely and indubitably superior to it that any 
 crippling of the system through which such advantages 
 were secured to them would be recognised and dreaded 
 by all of them as fraught with calamity for themselves. 
 
 Thus of these two wage-sums, each of which is some- 
 thing in excess of the full value of the wage-earner's 
 personal product of the product which, apart from the 
 employer, he would be able to produce by himself we 
 may call the first the Wages of Industrial Equilibrium, 
 and we may call the second the Wages of Industrial 
 Stability. The latter would constitute for the wage- 
 earners, taken collectively, a stake in the existing system 
 analogous to a stake in the country a stake which, 
 though smaller in the case of each wage-earner as an 
 individual, is no less real than that of the great employer, 
 and which is, if taken collectively, beyond all com- 
 parison greater. 
 
 Regarded, then, as a general concept, the ideal or 
 typical wage which mere self-interest would agree with 
 the sentiment of justice in prescribing would not consist 
 in practice of three separate portions, but would be 
 found, when analysed, to be a compound of three ele- 
 ments. 1 The primary element we may call the Wages 
 of Economic Equivalence, this being prescribed not only 
 by industrial justice, but also by the self-interest of the 
 
 1 An Australian correspondent, writing to a London paper in July 
 191 7 with regard to wages, mentions that Australian wage-courts deal 
 with the just wage as a composite quantity, in a manner not unlike 
 that indicated in the text. " The basic wage," he says, " is laid down 
 as a wage which will enable the average employee to renew his strength 
 and maintain his home from day to day. The secondary wage is re- 
 muneration for gifts and qualifications requisite for the performance of 
 skilled functions." No reference is made, however, to the principle 
 insisted on in the text, that some ultimate reference must be always 
 implied to what the wage-earner could produce for himself, if he worked 
 as his own master. 
 
248 LIMITS OF PURE DEMOCRACY 
 
 wage-earners and the employers alike. The second, 
 which is compensation to the wage-earners for their lost 
 sense of independence, is prescribed by the self-interest 
 of both the two parties likewise, and coincides with the 
 demands of sympathetic or human justice. The third, 
 which, when added to the others, converts the whole 
 into a wage sufficient to ensure stability, not only coin- 
 cides with the suggestions of political or social justice, 
 but is demanded by the ultimate self-interest of the 
 employer who pays it, no less than by the immediate 
 self-interest of the wage-earners to whom it is paid. 
 
 Thus from the most fatuous of the doctrines or implica- 
 tions of socialism there emerge, when these are submitted 
 to dispassionate but sympathetic analysis, ideas and 
 principles which in many ways closely resemble them 
 even in their most unlikely particulars, and impart to 
 them a vital meaning by reducing them to a reasonable 
 form, just as a scientific inventor might reduce Swift's 
 dream of a flying island to an aeroplane. 
 
 This will become yet more evident when our analysis 
 of wages is concluded. Meanwhile, with regard to mere 
 sentiment as a social or economic force, our analysis as 
 thus far carried will suggest the following question. If 
 the demands of justice in relation to wages coincide with 
 those of self-interest to the extent which has just been 
 indicated, does justice, as a moral or socialist sentiment, 
 practically demand anything which diffused self-interest 
 would not demand without it ? And to this question it 
 may be answered that, if it did nothing else, justice, by 
 merely repeating what self-interest dictated, would 
 repeat it in a tone or language which would carry to 
 many minds much deeper conviction ; but, if our analysis 
 of wages as a quantitative question were complete, it 
 could hardly be said that, if taken as an independent 
 force, the sentiment of justice plays a larger part than 
 this. Our analysis, however, is as yet so far from com- 
 plete that it has, if taken as it stands, no definite relation 
 to concrete facts whatever; and when we come to con- 
 sider it as susceptible of application to these, the inde- 
 pendent functions of justice or we may say if we like 
 of mere socialist sentiment will be found to exceed 
 anything which our argument has as yet suggested. 
 
FACTS AND CONCEPTS 249 
 
 The ideal wage, whether as the just wage or the wage 
 of industrial stability, we have thus far treated as a 
 general concept only ; but, when we come to translate it 
 into terms of actual life, it will not be a general concept, 
 but some particular thing, which, as we shall see, varies 
 according to particular circumstances, and to which the 
 relation of justice of moral or socialist justice as distinct 
 from mere self-interest will be found to vary also. 
 
CHAPTER II 
 
 MORALS, WAGES AND SECURITY 
 
 No general principle relating to a matter like wages 
 will have any practical value unless we are able in any 
 concrete cases to express its demands in terms of some 
 definite pecuniary amount. Now, in any concrete case 
 that is to say, in the case of any actual country the 
 amount of any wage, whether this be just or unjust, 
 which could possibly be made universal, must lie some- 
 where between two definite limits. The lower limit is 
 a wage-quantity sufficient to keep the wage-earner in 
 bare bodily health, and we may call this Wages of 
 Necessity. The upper limit is, in the case of any given 
 country, the average product per head of the occupied 
 population as a whole. Now this latter fact, though no 
 less obvious than the former, makes one thing clear 
 which sentimentalists often forget. The average product 
 per head of different populations differs. It was com- 
 puted, for example, by statisticians towards the close 
 of the nineteenth century that, if the National incomes 
 of Spain, Austria, Portugal, Italy and Russia had been 
 divided in equal shares amongst their adult populations 
 generally, the income of no individual, whether a wage- 
 earner or anybody else, could in Spain have exceeded 
 eleven shillings a week, in Austria, Portugal and Italy 
 nine shillings or ten, and that it could in Russia not have 
 exceeded seven, whilst in France, England and America 
 the corresponding average would have ranged from 
 twenty-eight to forty. Hence, if a just wage bears any 
 relation whatever to the maximum theoretically possible 
 for all, it cannot be any absolute sum which is due in 
 justice to all workers alike, on the ground that they all 
 of them are workers and human beings. It must be a 
 sum which, in each particular case, is due to them on 
 
 250 
 
MINIMUM WAGE AND MANHOOD 251 
 
 the ground that they are citizens of some particular 
 country, and it will in some countries be twice, three 
 times, four times, or even five times as great as in others. 
 But this is not all. The just wage, whatever its amount 
 may be, will not be different in different countries only. 
 It will in the same country be different for different men. 
 For the purpose of momentary illustration the assump- 
 tion has just been made that, in any given country, all 
 the wage-earners are, as productive agents, equal. As 
 a matter of fact, however, their respective products 
 vary, and the barest industrial justice will, as we have 
 seen already, demand that their wages shall vary in like 
 proportions. By no one is this latter proposition en- 
 dorsed with greater emphasis than it is by the spokesmen 
 of specially skilled labour, who are often more anxious 
 to maintain the graduation of wages than they are for 
 the moment to secure an immediate increase. Thus, 
 whatever, as expressed in terms of some general average, 
 the ideally just wage may in any given country be, 
 justice will mean for some men a larger wage than for 
 others, and for certain of these others it will necessarily 
 mean some minimum; and, as will appear when the 
 matter is considered further, it is with the ideal minimum 
 that moral or sentimental justice, as diverging from or 
 transcending self-interest, is mainly, if not exclusively, 
 
 concerned. 
 
 With regard to the minimum wage, no less than to any 
 other, mere self-interest will demand that it constitutes 
 a wage of stability that besides representing the value 
 of the personal product of the wage-earner, it carries 
 with it certain extra advantages, sufficient to ensure his 
 attachment to the system under which he receives them. 
 But so far as the employer is actuated by self-interest 
 only, these extra advantages might, it is quite conceiv- 
 able, be provided by him in kind, just as well as in 
 money. They might take the form of so many kegs 
 of whisky, added every Saturday night to so many 
 weekly shillings; and so long as the whisky kept the 
 wage-earner in a good temper, deprived him of any wish 
 to strike, and did not make him incapable of doing his 
 work on Monday, the mere self-interest of both parties 
 would be satisfied. But moral justice, though it might 
 
252 LIMITS OF PURE DEMOCRACY 
 
 not demand of the employer any greater expenditure, 
 would arrive at the sum in question, not indeed by 
 wholly, but by largely different methods. Admitting 
 that the ideal minimum must be partly measured by 
 reference to the stability of the industrial system, it 
 would view it in relation to something else as well a 
 something quite incompatible with a wage which, how- 
 ever ample, was half made up of intoxicants. This 
 something is the life of a human being as a moral end 
 in itself; and it will, as thus considered, include all 
 those faculties and impulses, together with the develop- 
 ment and satisfaction of them, by which all men not 
 subnormal are generically distinguished from even the 
 highest of the subhuman animals. It includes man's 
 spiritual or ideally moral impulses, whether these are 
 associated with any definite religion or no. It includes 
 his capacity for the great primary affections, for some 
 acquisition of knowledge, for the exchange of thought, 
 for something at all events in the way of artistic taste, 
 and for ordinary social intercourse. In the eyes, then, 
 of moral justice the minimum wage of stability will 
 represent, not merely the net advantage of one industrial 
 system over another. It will represent the material 
 means by which even the least efficient of men the men 
 who have no talents but such as are virtually universal- 
 may secure, if they use these reasonably, a life which, 
 as an end in itself, is worthy of human beings. 
 
 That such is the case is shown clearly enough when 
 the logic of the problem is expressed in terms of a 
 religious creed, as it has, for example, been expressed 
 by various Catholic thinkers in dealing with the relation 
 of the Church to the industrial conditions of to-day. 
 Thus the two Papal Encyclicals known as " Rerum 
 novarum " and " Graves de Communi " lay it down that 
 in the fixing of wages, though regard must always be had 
 to the industrial possibilities of the time, and an element 
 must always be present of pure business contract, " there 
 must nevertheless always underlie the contract an ele- 
 ment of natural justice, anterior to the will of the two 
 parties and superior to it "; and it is further laid down 
 that the object of such " anterior justice " is " to secure 
 that the wages of the worker, even when these are no 
 
LIMITS OF MINIMUM 253 
 
 more than the minimum, shall be such that he will feel 
 himself to be not a mere economic implement, but a 
 man who (in living a life of human relationships) is free 
 to devote himself to the attainment of the final and 
 spiritual good for which we all came into the world." 
 
 Here we are again brought back into the regions of 
 prosaic business. The bald question confronts us of how 
 a minimum wage ideally sufficient for these moral and 
 spiritual purposes, and also sufficient for the stability 
 of the industrial system by which it must be itself pro- 
 vided, can be expressed in precise terms of pounds, 
 shillings and pence. What, in other words, is the 
 minimum on which a man can afford to be a man ? 
 
 Now, for the simple reason which has been pointed 
 out already, that the range of possible wages differs in 
 different countries, the question admits of no general 
 answer. It has, however, been rendered much more 
 difficult than it need be by a class of perverse senti- 
 mentalists who, by exaggerating the claims of justice, 
 tend to divest them of all practical meaning. To this 
 error many thinkers are liable whose knowledge and 
 judgment otherwise entitle them to sincere respect; for 
 if we allow ourselves to be guided by mere moral ima- 
 ginations of what might be, our conceptions of an 
 adequate minimum will have no limits at all. Thus two 
 English economists, writing shortly before or after the 
 close of the nineteenth century, have gravely committed 
 themselves to the assertion that if the whole of the then 
 income of England, including taxes and savings, were 
 equally divided amongst all for the purpose of annual 
 spending, each man's income would provide him with 
 but a meagre instalment of what, for its full develop- 
 ment, the nature of man demands. Now what do such 
 statements mean ? The only sane meaning which can 
 possibly be read into them is a vague suggestion that 
 the productive powers of the people of England generally 
 should, to an indefinite degree, be somehow or other 
 increased ; and if the persons by whom such statements 
 are made were armed with some practical scheme by the 
 adoption of which a result such as this might be accom- 
 plished, they might be justified in fomenting discontent 
 with the utmost possibilities of the present as a means 
 
254 LIMITS OF PURE DEMOCRACY 
 
 of exciting the masses to some definite action through 
 which some ampler lot might be possible for them in an 
 immediate future. But so long as the persons in ques- 
 tion have no such schemes in their pockets, and are quite 
 unable to indicate anybody else who has one, these 
 inflated estimates of the minimum to which every man, 
 as a man, is entitled, can do nothing but manufacture 
 a general mood or temper which will of necessity, for 
 nine men out of ten, make any kind of content with 
 human life impossible. 1 
 
 Such a mood, though many examples of it might be 
 cited, and though it is sufficiently common to be mis- 
 chievous, is no doubt, in its more extreme forms, excep- 
 tional ; but it is not for that reason any the less instruc- 
 tive. 2 It is neither more nor less than the moral and 
 logical consequence of that sentimentality, mainly of 
 middle-class origin, which suggests impossible estimates 
 of what justice demands for all men estimates which 
 tend to render, in the judgment of those affected by 
 them, a maximum wage hardly less inadequate than 
 a minimum. 
 
 The homely truth and this men naturally realise when 
 
 1 Of this mood or temper a very interesting example was provided in 
 the year 1917, by the language of certain men who figured as the 
 leaders of strikes amongst the munition workers of Sheffield. Of these 
 men, who were mostly young engineers, there was one who expressed 
 the sentiments of himself and his fellows thus : " We are asked/' he 
 said, " to fight for our homes. Our answer is, that we have no homrs 
 to fight for. The best homes of the English workers to-day are in oue 
 opinion no better than dog-kennels," whilst another developed the 
 sentiments of his colleague thus : " We don't," he said, " want to fight, 
 and we don't want to work either. The only men 1 can see as has got 
 any money don't work at all." These young men were all of them 
 earning wages far in excess of anything which an equal division of 
 the entire income of the country could have possibly rendered general 
 only forty years before ; and yet, despite this fact, they were more 
 discontented than their fathers, and were discontented in a far more 
 irrational way. 
 
 2 This very mood, since the words in the text were written, has 
 spread like a conflagration in Russia, and has been the despair (for the 
 time at all events) of the more rational of the revolutionary leaders. 
 The Russian correspondent of a London paper reported an impassioned 
 appeal of M. Kerensky to the masses, urging them not "to waste their 
 time in thinking of the best things they could imagine, but to strain 
 every nerve in securing the bet things which it was possible to get." 
 
THE NORMAL LOT 255 
 
 no germs of artificial suggestion disorder their common 
 sense is that, if they are ever to be contented with 
 their material circumstances at all, they must adjust 
 their estimates of satisfactory circumstances to facts. 
 Hence, unless the average workers, who naturally earn 
 less than those whose skill is exceptional, are doomed 
 by the nature of things to a life of subhuman misery, 
 there must, in any given country and at any given time, 
 be a certain minimum wage which will lie somewhere 
 between certain definite limits, and which average men, 
 or the workers of least efficiency, will recognise and 
 accept as just, because it is (the largest practically 
 possible. 
 
 If we suppose, then, that in any given country such 
 a minimum wage has been fixed which at once repre- 
 sents for the recipients a better lot than would be theirs 
 were they left to their own devices, and is also sufficient 
 for the needs of a reasonably human life, the fact of its 
 being so recognised will not mean merely a recognition 
 of it as the largest minimum possible. It will mean that 
 the lot represented by it is, and for the time must be, the 
 normal human lot, with which every man ought to be 
 content, unless by exceptional talent of one sort or 
 another he is able, as an exception, to provide himself 
 with some addition to it. The only question, in short, 
 which the lot of those receiving such a wage will suggest 
 will be, not why these men get so little, but why anybody 
 else gets more. 
 
 The minimum lot, however, though the minimum wage 
 is the foundation of it, is, as we shall see presently, not 
 necessarily determinable by the minimum wage alone. 
 Justice and self-interest alike will prescribe certain 
 additions to it which, though closely connected with 
 wages, belong to different categories. Of these we shall 
 speak presently. But, so far as mere wages are con- 
 cerned, moral or sentimental, as distinct from merely 
 legal, justice, when the minimum has once been fixed, 
 need have nothing more to say. For when we turn from 
 the workers who earn the minimum to those of greater 
 efficiency who, in varying degrees, earn more, there is 
 no necessity here for any renewed insistence on the fact 
 that a certain minimum is due to all workers alike on 
 
256 LIMITS OF PURE DEMOCRACY 
 
 the ground that they all are human. The wages here 
 in question will in any case be more than this, and the 
 larger sum will include the less. A larger sum will be 
 claimed by this worker and that, not on the ground that 
 he is a man, but on the ground that he is a man whose 
 special productive faculties are, as measured by their 
 results, definitely greater than the faculties possessed by 
 others. What this excess amounts to must be settled 
 by technical evidence relating exclusively to this or to 
 that case ; and all that justice can do which it has not 
 done already will be to pronounce as to some particular 
 man that, whatever the excess may come to, the full 
 value of this shall be included in the wages due to him. 
 It will thus be seen that, when wages exceed the 
 minimum, justice divests itself of an element which was, 
 in fixing the minimum, one of the first importance. 
 When justice enjoins that the minimum shall not be less 
 than so much, there is always in any such judgment an 
 element of hypothetical compassion compassion for 
 those whose condition, if they got less, would be pitiable. 
 But when a minimum which satisfies justice has been 
 once definitely secured, the element of compassion in 
 respect of any higher wage disappears. If justice decrees 
 that the wages of some exceptional man shall be, not the 
 minimum oc, but x plus 5, or 10, or 20, as the case may 
 be, it does so, not because his condition if he got less 
 would be pitiable (for x is sufficient to remove him 
 beyond the reach of pity), but because x plus some extra 
 quantity happens to be the value of this particular man's 
 work. Compassion in his case would be, not justice, but 
 favouritism; and even when in fixing the minimum 
 justice calls compassion to its aid, it aims at expunging 
 everything which could possibly form an excuse for the 
 action of such a sentiment afterwards. To say this is 
 merely to say what a clear recognition of facts would 
 turn into a political axiom namely, that any numerous 
 class, the co-operation of which is essential to any 
 industrial system, is a constant cause of industrial 
 instability and danger if any elements provocative of 
 i reasonable compassion survive in it. 
 
 Let us suppose, then, that so far as mere wages are 
 concerned the minimum so far being the key to the 
 
ECONOMIC SECURITY 257 
 
 whole situation the demands both of moral justice and 
 industrial stability are satisfied. But even if so much 
 be granted, a satisfactory scale of payments for current 
 labour will not do more than partly cover the case. 
 Account must be taken of three other conditions, the 
 relation of one of which to the minimum wage is so 
 intimate that it ought to be here dealt with as though 
 the two were inseparable, the second and the third being 
 reserved for discussion in a separate chapter. 
 
 The nature of this first condition may be briefly ex- 
 plained thus. In order that wages under a system of 
 industrial oligarchy may satisfy the demands of justice 
 and of general stability likewise, they must, let it be 
 said again, include not only the equivalent of anything 
 that the wage-earners could produce by themselves, but 
 certain additions also, so that such wages, as the results 
 of the oligarchic system, will represent for the wage- 
 earners a balance of net advantage. ^foreover, of such 
 wages one essential element must be compensation for 
 the independence which the wage-earners under a system 
 of oligarchy lost> If, however, with regard to their 
 broad features, we contrast this oligarchic system with 
 what history exhibits as its democratic alternative, we 
 shall see that what the workers lose by exchanging the 
 latter for the former is not independence only. Let us 
 take, for example, a peasant cultivating his own plot, 
 and compare him with a mechanic working for wages in 
 a factory. The product of the peasant may be worth 
 fifteen shillings a week, the wages of the mechanic may 
 be thirty shillings; and the peasant, in becoming a 
 mechanic, might feel that a doubled income more than 
 made up to him for the privilege, which he had to sur- 
 render, of prescribing the details of his own task-work 
 to himself. He will, however, it is constantly urged, 
 have lost by the change, not his technical independence 
 only, but something else as well, for which no mere 
 wages can compensate him, and this something is 
 security. So long as he owned the materials which 
 render production possible these for the peasant being , 
 land he could always produce something, although it v 
 might not be much; whereas if he works for wages, no 
 matter how ample, he may any day be dismissed, and - 
 
258 LIMITS OF PURE DEMOCRACY 
 
 ^fo^ some indefinite time may be able to earn nothing. 
 This contrast is very often exaggerated (for the peasant 
 is not secure from the danger of bad seasons), but there 
 is hi it nevertheless an important element of truth. The 
 wage-earners, in losing their ownership of the means and 
 materials of production, have increased their incomes as 
 a whole, but the security of the individual income has 
 been very considerably diminished. The mere fluctua- 
 tions of business, apart from sickness or accident, may 
 any day, in the case of any individual, cut off his income 
 for the time being at its source an event which is for 
 the working-owner impossible. The proportion, indeed, 
 of workers affected by such calamities may, at any given 
 time, not be actually more than five out of every hun- 
 dred; but the chance of their occurrence will, in count- 
 less wage-earning households, do much to counteract 
 the contentment resulting from present plenty. It will, 
 indeed, do more. It will tend to promote amongst con- 
 siderable masses of a population the peculiar sense or 
 sentiment which socialists describe as " proletarian." 
 By this they mean the consciousness of a certain eco- 
 nomic insecurity which is not necessarily connected with 
 inadequate wages, but which results from, and is for the 
 wage-earner a constant reminder of, the fact that the 
 materials and implements of his work are not personally 
 his own, and that his access to them being thus deter- 
 mined by persons other than himself, these persons have 
 somehow dispossessed him of something which he once 
 enjoyed. This idea of dispossession, as the socialists 
 themselves suggest it, is in many respects altogether fal- 
 lacious. If in any typical country let us say, for 
 example, England we take the wage-earners as they are 
 to-day on the one hand, and the implements and ma- 
 terials of production as they are to-day on the other, it 
 is absolutely absurd to say that there ever was a time 
 when the wage-earners, or the ordinary workers, were 
 personally in possession of either. The materials of pro- 
 duction are represented mainly by Land. The wage- 
 earners of England and their families number to-day 
 nearly thirty-five million persons. In the days when 
 agriculture was the principal occupation of the country, 
 
THE RIGHT TO WORK 259 
 
 and when a statutory interest in the soil was most nearly 
 universal, the total population did not exceed four 
 millions. In what sense can some thirty additional 
 millions regard themselves as dispossessed of a limited 
 geographical area which had never been possessed by 
 a similar body at any time? What is true of the ma- 
 terials of production is true of the implements also. The 
 typical implements of to-day, which are vast scientific 
 mechanisms, not only never have been, but by no possi- 
 bility could have been, possessed by each unit of the 
 mass of labourers using them. It is true that a thousand 
 weavers might, as equal shareholders, possess the plant 
 of a great mill between them; but this fractional form 
 of possession this possession by each of a thousandth 
 part of the whole would not be the kind of possession 
 enjoyed by their great-grandfathers, each of whom, 
 through possession of his own hand-loom, could use his 
 implement of production when and how he pleased. 
 The wage-earners have not been dispossessed of the 
 main implements of production which are in use at the 
 present day, and 'on the use of which the increase in their 
 lown wages depends. They have not been dispossessed 
 of land on which, in their present numbers, the mass 
 of them could ever have maintained themselves. 
 Nevertheless, development of the very conditions which 
 make large wages possible has been accompanied, so far 
 as the individual wage-earner is concerned, by a certain 
 insecurity which was in the days of small earnings and 
 diffused ownership absent ; which socialists, though they 
 [grossly exaggerate it, are right in regarding as a very 
 serious evil, and which thoughtful persons of strong 
 conservative sympathies have come to recognise as a 
 serious evil also. 
 
 For this evil, in the opinion of all competent thinkers, > 
 the remedy must be sought in one or the other of the 
 two following forms either in some form of insurance 
 i against periods of involuntary unemployment, or else 
 in some statutory recognition of what is called the 
 Right to Work. These two schemes, though they both 
 lave the same object, involve or imply different methods 
 )f reaching it. A system of insurance would protect the 
 
 
260 LIMITS OF PURE DEMOCRACY 
 
 willing or potential worker against loss of income through 
 loss of immediate opportunity of work by guaranteeing 
 him a livelihood till suitable work was found. A recog- 
 nition of the Right to Work would involve an obligation 
 on the part of the State or some public body to provide 
 him with work at once of one sort or another, and pre- 
 sumably to pay him a wage proportionate to his highest 
 potential efficiency, whether the work actually found 
 for him were worth such a wage or no. Both these 
 schemes are beset with obvious difficulties. Any scheme 
 of insurance, if it really had the effect of rendering any 
 man who happened to be out of employment as well off 
 as he would be when doing his normal work, would 
 naturally tend to render unemployment popular, and 
 \/ thus to foment the evils the pains of which it was meant 
 JXs^to neutralise. Insurance, however, can, as experience 
 shows, be largely carried out by the persons concerned 
 / themselves; and, all of them being interested parties, 
 */ precautions can be taken by their own general vigilance 
 against any great abuses of the funds which they have 
 themselves subscribed. On the other hand, the Right 
 to Work, as recognised and guaranteed by the State, 
 though much more logical and soundly moral in theory, 
 is, by reason of its greater completeness, beset as a 
 practical scheme by difficulties much more formidable. 
 It is logically and morally sounder because, instead 
 of pensioning idleness, which might very often be 
 voluntary, it aims at providing for all the conditions 
 of continuous industry; but, for reasons already men- 
 tioned in the course of an earlier chapter dealing with 
 political government, its logical development would, 
 in most countries at all events, be hampered by limits 
 which no government could remove, or would else 
 depend on conditions which no government could ensure. 
 In countries like Australia or New Zealand, which are 
 but sparsely occupied, the State might conceivably for 
 many generations to come secure the right to work for 
 all possible applicants by grants of virgin land; but in 
 old countries such as England, every acre of whose 
 usable land is occupied and used already, no such course 
 is possible. 
 
A NATION'S RIGHT TO WORK 261 
 
 If in such countries the State is to provide re- 
 munerative work for every one of its citizens who are 
 unable to find such work for themselves, it can, as Mill 
 points out, fulfil this obligation on one condition only 
 on condition that in some way or other it is empowered 
 to limit their number. It might, as Mill suggests, con- 
 ceivably limit their number by legal restraints on 
 marriage ; it might do so by forced emigration. In any 
 case a limitation would have to be effected somehow. 
 But quite apart from any difficulties connected with 
 increasing numbers, the power of the State to guarantee 
 remunerative work for everybody is limited ultimately 
 in a way more obvious still. It is contingent, not on 
 the mere numbers of whatever may be the population 
 in question, but on the wealth of the population rela- 
 tively to its numbers also. For work provided by the 
 State would be work provided only because none other 
 was forthcoming. It would be a kind of work for which 
 there was no natural demand ; and the payments made 
 by the State for it would, in an economic sense, be merely 
 a drain on the wealth of those who were employed nor- 
 mally. If the community as a whole was prosperous, 
 especially if its wealth were increasing, the cost of State- 
 paid work might be more than counterbalanced by its 
 advantages. But if the wealth of any community were 
 as a whole declining, no system of State-paid work, no 
 system of insurance against loss by unemployment either, 
 could avert the doom which would threaten, not the 
 wage-earners only, but the heads of those enterprises 
 also out of the gains of which the wages were paid. 
 States have risen and fallen, such as Carthage, Venice, 
 Florence, and will rise and fall again. They have risen 
 through the enterprise of their rulers and the answering 
 activity of the ruled, whether in war, in industry, or in 
 trade. They have fallen through the fortunes of war, 
 through the rise of rival industries, or some gradual 
 changes in the trade routes of the world. What could 
 State-paid work, what could any system of insurance 
 against unemployment do to avert the doom which 
 would, in cases like these, threaten the wage-earners and 
 the payers of wages alike ? What could they have done 
 
 
262 LIMITS OF PURE DEMOCRACY 
 
 to maintain the vanished argosies of Venice, or to 
 recreate prosperity amongst the ruins of Carthage ? 
 
 If, however, the general conditions of industrial pros- 
 perity be given namely, an harmonious interaction of 
 oligarchy and democracy on the one hand, and a wage- 
 system having as its basis a just minimum on the other 
 either of these devices, namely, insurance against un- 
 employment or a statutory right to work, or both taken 
 together, might accomplish, or go far towards accom- 
 plishing, the result which is here in question. That 
 result is the provision for every honest and willing 
 worker, not only of a wage which is just in respect of 
 quantity, but also a permanent opportunity of earning 
 it, or else some sort of guarantee that if the opportunity 
 on this or on that occasion is not at once forthcoming, 
 the worker, meanwhile, shall not suffer in consequence. 
 The achievement of such a result, or even the partial 
 achievement of it, would be tantamount, in its effects 
 on the wage-earners, to a re-diffusion of small industrial 
 ownerships. For, in the case of the working owner the 
 hand-loom weaver, for instance his earnings being a 
 given quantity, the ownership of the implements used 
 by him is materially advantageous or even perceptible 
 to himself for this reason only, that his right to work 
 or his opportunity of working is established by it. If, 
 then, by working as a wage-earner under the direction 
 of a scientific employer, and by using the implements 
 with which the employer provides him, he not only earns 
 far more than he ever did or could do by working as his 
 own master, but also recovers under another form the 
 permanent opportunity of working which the personal 
 ownership of his loom or of any other implement gave 
 him, the balance of advantages derived by him from his 
 technical status of wage-earner, as compared with those 
 derivable from working as his own master will, in respect 
 of his mere material circumstances, be as great as either 
 moral justice or his own self-interest could demand. 
 
 But even if we assume that all these conditions are 
 fulfilled, there are, as has been said, two others, which 
 both justice and self-interest will demand for the wage- 
 earner likewise, if the conditions of industrial stability, 
 
MORAL STATUS 263 
 
 so far as he is concerned, are to be complete. One of 
 these is distinct from mere material claims altogether. 
 It relates to the moral esteem due to him, quite apart 
 from his wages, as a member of the wage-earning class. 
 The other, closely connected with moral esteem likewise, 
 relates to the individual wage-earner, not as a type of his 
 class, but as a unit of it who is, if he can, entitled to 
 rise out of it. 
 
I 
 
 CHAPTER III 
 
 THE RIGHT TO RESPECT 
 
 WE have seen that in estimating the amount of a just 
 minimum wage regard must be had, not to the wage- 
 earner's physical needs only, but also to the decency 
 of his home as distinct from its mere comfort, and to a 
 reasonable gratification of his moral and other human 
 emotions. Such being the case, then, in considering 
 these last, we have thus far had in view two quantities 
 only. One of these is the wage-earner, who is a moral 
 and emotional being as well as a mere worker. The 
 other is some aggregate of material goods or conveniences 
 such as house-room, chattels, clothing, food and drink, 
 newspapers, books, tobacco, means of amusement which 
 in the form of wages is offered to him as the reward of 
 his work, the opportunity of working being guaranteed 
 to him at the same time; and if our argument as thus 
 far stated were complete, the wage-earner would, so long 
 as these goods were delivered to him, feel that every 
 debt due to him from the employer or from society had 
 been discharged. If, however, we take men as they are, 
 experience and observation will show us that amongst 
 the wage-earner's natural desires there is one which no 
 mere wages, however just, could satisfy. This is a desire 
 on the wage-earner's part in respect of his dealings with 
 the employer, for what we may call just treatment as 
 distinguished from just payment. 
 
 The difference between these two things and the im- 
 portance of it were illustrated in an interesting way by 
 a letter from a professional agitator which was addressed 
 to, and published in The Times, towards the close of the 
 year 1916. It related to a wage dispute one of extreme 
 bitterness then in progress in the South Wales coalfield, 
 and professed, in language of a relatively temperate 
 
 264 
 
OVERBEARING CONDUCT 265 
 
 kind, to enlighten the general public as to what were its 
 main causes. The ostensible matter at issue was a 
 matter of wages only. A certain wage was, by a stand- 
 ing agreement, due to the miners under certain trade 
 conditions. The dispute turned on the question of 
 whether or no these contemplated conditions had arisen, 
 and it might in principle have been settled by an audit- 
 ing of the employers' books. But behind any facts 
 connected directly with wage-rates, there lay, said the 
 writer, one of a much more general kind. This, he said, 
 was the fact that the personal tone or attitude adopted 
 by the employers towards the men had shown for many 
 years such an absence of all " good will " that the men 
 would put no faith in the employers' books if they saw 
 them. Indeed, he continued, to make a long story short, 
 the behaviour of the employers had become so " over- 
 bearing " such was the word in which the essence of 
 their offences was condensed by him that the men were 
 resolved to put up with it no longer. 
 
 Now, whatever the rights or the wrongs of this par- 
 ticular case, the word " overbearing " gives a very 
 sufficient clue to the kind of personal treatment which 
 the wage-earners naturally resent, and it serves, by its 
 implied contrast, as a clue to the kind of treatment 
 which, whether they analyse it or not, they claim 
 naturally as their due. 
 
 ^What, then, as appHied to conduct, does the word 
 " overbearing " mean ? j It is a word in very common 
 use. It, or its equivalents, have been familiar to all 
 men in all ages, and the kind of conduct which it indi- 
 cates is no invention or monopoly of the industrial 
 employers of to-day. As soon as we begin to analyse if, 
 it will be found that its essential element is an implied 
 denial by one man of some sort of equality in another 
 which the latter believes, and obstinately feels himself 
 to possess ; and a belief or feeling that all men are equal 
 is, in some sense, and always has been, so widely dif- 
 fused that it cannot, in the case of the wage-earners, be 
 set down as a foible of individual vanity. What, then,- 
 we must ask further, is the nature of the equality the; 
 existence of which this feeling or belief asserts ? 
 
 The most logical explanation of its nature is provided 
 
266 LIMITS OF PURE DEMOCRACY 
 
 by the supernatural doctrine that every human being 
 possesses an immortal soul, each soul being in God's eyes 
 equally precious, and that all men, even if they cannot 
 explain it, carry about with them a dim consciousness 
 of this. It is logically explicable also, though with a 
 logic less complete, on the assumption that every man 
 possesses a quasi-supernatural conscience, to whose dic- 
 tates it is the supreme duty of all men equally to con- 
 form. But, quite apart from attempts to explain it by 
 religious or mystical theory, a sense of the existence in 
 all men, unless they themselves destroy it, of some moral 
 and equal dignity, is a sense which, as a matter of fact, 
 is, like the sense of self, co-extensive with the human 
 race. It is, for example, expressed in the celebrated 
 line of Terence Homo sum : humani nihil a me alienum 
 puto which, as St. Augustine says, would always rouse 
 the plaudits of heathen playgoers. It cannot be sup- 
 posed that these " vain and ignorant persons " (for so 
 St. Augustine called them) had any definite belief in 
 God, the soul, or conscience as the Christian world under- 
 stands them; but the residual equality, of which they 
 proclaimed their recognition as existing between man 
 and man, was an equality of relationship to something 
 of which conscience is virtually the equivalent, and it 
 will for practical purposes be most clearly described as 
 < ~~the equal right of every man to his own self-respect. 
 
 The kind of conduct, then, which is commonly called 
 " overbearing " is, in the last analysis, conduct on the 
 part of one man towards another which shows a want 
 of respect for the respect which the other man entertains 
 for himself ; and the correctness of this definition, and its 
 signal pertinence to the case of the modern employer 
 and the wage-earner, is curiously illustrated by the fact 
 that in ancient Athens conduct of this precise kind was 
 recognised as a legal offence, even when indulged in by 
 a master towards a slave who was in law his chattel. 
 This offence was technically known as hubris a word 
 denoting conduct which is injurious to the suffering 
 party, not because it inflicts on him any material wrong 
 (of which the modern economic equivalent would be the 
 payment of insufficient wages), but because it is a pro- 
 
DANGERS OF BAD TEMPER 267 
 
 vocative outrage on his moral estimate of himself. In 
 making such conduct even towards a slave penal, the 
 object of the Athenians was indeed their own self-interest 
 rather than moral justice. Their object was to render 
 the slaves contented, and by so doing to promote public 
 tranquillity; but in making such a provision they bore 
 witness to the fact that a due respect in a superior for 
 the self-respect of the humblest is one of the main 
 conditions on which popular contentment rests. And 
 what the Athenian recognised as true even with regard 
 to slaves, is on purely utilitarian, as distinct from all 
 moral grounds, still more vitally true with regard to the 
 wage-earners of to-day. 
 
 There are two main reasons of a purely utilitarian kind 
 why the modern employer should respect the self-respect 
 of the wage-earner. One of these, though its range is 
 no doubt limited, is that in many cases a wage-earner's 
 self-respect is one of the. chief qualities for which the 
 employer values him. No employer would assign any \ 
 position of trust to a man in whose character he knew 
 self-respect to be wanting; and any employer would be 
 blind to his own interests if he did not respect in others 
 the principal quality which rendered them of value to 
 himself. The second reason relates to all employees, 
 whether in positions of trust or no. The main general 
 conditions which every employer desiderates are, firstly, 
 a calculable peace with his workmen in the matter of 
 wages, and, secondly, their best efficiency in the doing 
 of the work prescribed to them; and unless the self- 
 respect of his workmen is respected by him in a reason- 
 able way, he will jeopardise his own chances of securing 
 or conserving either. 
 
 The general explanation of this fact may be given in 
 very homely language, and applies to all human relation- 
 ships, the domestic as well as the industrial. To outrage 
 the self-respect of man, woman, or child is the surest way 
 of putting either him or her into that condition of mind 
 known as " a bad temper." Thus the story is on record 
 of a child the daughter of a very eminent person 
 who, having one day been discovered in a state of war 
 with her brother, a year younger, she explained the 
 matter by saying, " John has broken my dignity." 
 
268 LIMITS OF PURE DEMOCRACY 
 
 Bad temper is, indeed, the cause of half the private 
 tragedies of the world ; and it is so for this reason that, 
 if it be more than a passing fit of irritation, it generally 
 takes the form of imputing to another person motives 
 and feelings grotesquely different from and invariably 
 worse than those by which, in giving offence, that per- 
 son is really actuated. If a husband, agitated by the 
 assaults of his wife's lap-dog, spills the contents of a 
 cream-jug over the silk of her new tea-gown, she, should 
 she view the act through the medium of bad temper, 
 will declare that it was done deliberately for the mere 
 sake of annoying her. If next day he slips on a mat, 
 and deluges her with the contents of the tea-pot, she 
 will say, and begin to believe, that such conduct is 
 part of a scheme for making her whole life miserable. 
 If she catches him next day in a corner confiding these 
 events to a sister-in-law better looking than herself, she 
 will soon add infidelity to her list of his other crimes, 
 and be watching for evidence on the strength of which 
 to divorce him. So long as such a temper lasted in her, 
 no reconciliation by appeal to facts would be possible, 
 for she would have lost all power of discerning what the 
 actual facts were. 
 
 And what is true of individuals is true also of classes. 
 If the wage-earners of the modern world are treated by 
 the employers generally with such a want of personal 
 consideration as to put them into a mood of chronic and 
 diffused resentment, the conduct of the employers other- 
 wise that is to say, in matters of wages and technical 
 discipline however fair it may be, will be pre-con- 
 demned by them, and construed into an imaginary' 
 offence against themselves. It should, therefore, be 
 evident to any intelligent employer that, if what he 
 wishes for is industrial peace and prosperity, he must 
 not regard the debt which he owes the wage-earners as 
 one which can be liquidated by just wages alone, but 
 that he must also, by his personal behaviour towards 
 them, pay a debt of fellow-feeling to a self-respect on 
 their part, of which no men morally honest could, if 
 they would, divest themselves. 
 
 In theory, at all events, the matter is thus far plain. 
 Here, however, in practice there arises an obvious 
 
GRADUATIONS OF RESPECT 269 
 
 difficulty. Since this self-respect of the wage-earners is 
 a sentiment a respectful recognition of which is owed 
 by the employer to all his wage-earners equally, the 
 peculiar quality in themselves by which their self-respect 
 is excited must be a quality which they all possess in 
 substantially the same degree. If any man's own respect 
 for his own particular manhood is held by him to deserve 
 respect from an employer or from anybody else, which 
 could not be accorded indiscriminately to the self-respect 
 of all, he must hold this opinion on the ground that, 
 besides possessing the quality which imparts a dignity 
 to the lives of all human beings alike, he personally pos- 
 sesses others, which exist in some men only. If, more- 
 over, his estimate of his own deserts is to be taken 
 seriously by others, the exceptional qualities which he 
 thus attributes to himself must be qualities which really 
 exist in him, and correspond to his own valuation of 
 them. If they do not if they exist in his imagination 
 only his own self-respect will be not self-respect at all, 
 but vanity, or self-consequence, or self-importance ; and 
 the conduct of those who ignore, instead of respecting 
 it, will not be " overbearing " ; on the contrary, it will 
 be severely kind, or which is still more to the point 
 it will in any case be inevitable. A bad fiddler's respect 
 for himself as a man may deserve as much respect as a 
 good fiddler's, but the bad fiddler would be absurdly 
 self-important if he thought that his fiddling deserved 
 the same attention. 
 
 The same argument applies to the moral or social debt 
 which, as from one set of human beings to another, is 
 due from the employers to the wage-earners in the way 
 of personal treatment. The kind of respect which is due 
 to them because they are men and the importance of 
 this debt can hardly be overestimated is due to them 
 for the one reason, and the one reason only, that it has 
 its basis in certain actual facts, and it is important only 
 in so far as it corresponds to thesg,. Whether as a natural 
 fact or as a supernatural factual! men, just as truly as 
 they all have a nervous system,vhave, though it is often 
 subconscious, a certain self-respect which rests on no 
 claims to any special efficiency, which is much more 
 nearly akin to modesty than it is to vanity > which 
 
270 LIMITS OF PURE DEMOCRACY 
 
 responds to fair recognition like a horse to a sympathetic 
 rider, but which is at the same time very easily wounded ; 
 and when it is wounded, either by direct affront or by 
 not being reasonably satisfied, it converts itself into a 
 spirit which will not be satisfied with anything. 
 
 If, then, any harmonious co-operation between the two 
 classes is to be possible between the employers and the 
 employed between the representatives of the oligarchic 
 principle on the one hand, and the representatives of the 
 democratic principle on the other the former must pay 
 to the latter, not one debt only, but two. They must 
 not only pay to the wage-earners a debt which expresses 
 the technical, the industrial, or the material facts of the 
 situation. They must pay a second debt also, in the 
 way of a personal behaviour which expresses a recog- 
 nition of the moral facts as well ; and it is only by thus 
 discharging the moral claims of the wage-earners in so 
 far as these rest on facts, that the danger arising from 
 claims, at once moral and material, which are out of 
 accord with facts, and which nothing could satisfy, can 
 be averted. 
 
 But as yet we have dealt with one half of the question 
 only. It remains to be noted that this moral debt must 
 be mutual. If the behaviour of the employers to the 
 wage-earners is to be based on, and to express a recog- 
 nition of actual facts, the behaviour of the wage-earners 
 to the employers must be based on, and express a recog- 
 nition of actual facts likewise; and however completely 
 the behaviour of each class to the other may express the 
 moral equality which actually exists between them, 
 certain inequalities will persist, a like recognition of 
 which will be necessary for the same reason. The tech- 
 nical function of the employer is to give orders, and the 
 function of the wage-earner is to obey them ; and this 
 inequality is not the result of accident. Any employer 
 who has built up a great business has done what thou- 
 sands attempt to do, and what only a few can do. His 
 success and the maintenance of it are due (as a socialist 
 writer already quoted admits) to the fact that he is the 
 " natural monopolist of some special business ability "; 
 and all such ability, when exercised, is in the last 
 analysis an application of talents and energies, which are 
 
CONTEMPT FOR WORK 271 
 
 conspicuous only in a few, to the task of directing and 
 co-ordinating the operations of many, in whom such 
 gifts are absent, or present only in a much smaller 
 degree. If, then, for the purpose of securing co-operative 
 harmony a personal behaviour is due from one party to 
 the other which recognises vital equalities in so far as 
 these exist, this primary element of behaviour must 
 necessarily be combined with a second, by which equally 
 real inequalities will be recognised no less plainly. If 
 men who are unequal in their relations to any practical 
 enterprise mimic a behaviour, and cultivate a mood of 
 mind which imply that they are, in these particular 
 relations equals, they are reducing life to a foolish game 
 of pretence, which will bring them into constant collision 
 with its most fundamental facts; and co-operative har- 
 mony will be farther off than ever. 
 
 But although the ideal behaviour of each of these 
 classes to the other can be indicated clearly enough as 
 a matter of general principle, it is impossible, even by 
 way of suggestion, to reduce its details to any precise 
 code. Nobody unfamiliar with what goes by the name 
 of " Society " will enable himself to pass muster as a 
 member of it by reading a book on etiquette before he 
 goes out to dinner. The one thing needful, which no 
 such book could teach him, is a certain something which 
 can only come from habit, and from a host of subcon- 
 scious associations which render his sympathies kin to 
 the sympathies of those around him. Similarly, the 
 personal behaviour accorded by the two great classes, 
 the employers and the wage-earners, to one another 
 must, if it is to answer the purpose of securing so- 
 operative harmony, have at the back of it some feeling 
 or sympathy, which alone gives it its value, which alone 
 can prescribe its details, and for which no calculated 
 conformity to any code could be a substitute. The 
 efficiency of such behaviour depends, not on its forms, 
 but on the spirit of which it is the vehicle ; and its spirit 
 will be best understood by considering, as a matter of 
 history, the most familiar manifestations of the over- 
 bearing behaviour which is its opposite. 
 
 Of overbearing behaviour towards industrial workers 
 the most familiar historical example is to be found in 
 
272 LIMITS OF PURE DEMOCRACY 
 
 pre-revolutionary France; but France, in the persons 
 of its then ruling classes, did but represent a mood 
 which, in one form on another, is as old as civilisation 
 itself. This mood was one of contempt on the part of 
 the noble, the intellectual, indeed of the cultured classes 
 generally, for all who worked in pursuit of economic 
 gain, the latter comprising, not the labourers only, but 
 with a few exceptions, the employing classes as well. 
 The employing classes of France were, indeed, the first 
 persons to be stung by this contempt into any organised 
 action, and to raise by way of retaliation the battle-cry 
 of the " Rights of Man." In France, indeed, and else- 
 where in Europe also, this contempt was more than a 
 matter of mere behaviour. It was embodied in a social 
 system which, closing the roads of ambition to all but 
 nobles and churchmen, was felt by the employers, or 
 the bourgeoisie, as a daily experienced insult. But, as 
 later revolutionists have never been weary of saying, 
 contempt for the workers, as such, was never experienced 
 in its full force by the masses till the employing classes 
 of France had climbed into the nobles' places ; and con- 
 temporary English economists, in dealing with the 
 labouring masses, had, as the philosophers of a new 
 system of industry, not only ignored their manhood, but 
 deprived them of the very name of men, by converting 
 the labouring man into so much abstract labour. Now, 
 for certain theoretical purposes this substitution of 
 labour for the man who labours is necessary. In so far 
 as we are concerned with the process of production only, 
 the labourers are labour. They are practically nothing 
 else. As Marx himself said of them, they are simply so 
 much Force. But the formula which presents them in 
 terms of this abstract quantity came, as a matter of fact, 
 to be more than a formula, or an instrument of scientific 
 investigation. It came to express a certain moral temper 
 by which, in dealing with their men, the new race of 
 great employers was permeated. When writers such as 
 Ricardo said of some given industry that a " fresh dose 
 of capital " would be needed in this case, and " a dose 
 of labour in that," or described the regions ideally fit 
 for an enterprise as those " in which labour is at once 
 cheap and abundant," they expressed a conception of 
 
RESPECT FOR MANHOOD 273 
 
 things on the part of the employing classes from which 
 the image of the labourer as a man had actually, for 
 practical purposes, disappeared. 
 
 This result may in part, at least, be explained by the 
 fact that in proportion as the number of labourers whose 
 work was directed by a single brain increased, as the 
 business of directing them became more abstruse and 
 complex, and the directions had to reach the labourers 
 through a growing number of intermediaries, the person- 
 alities of the labourers became necessarily more remote 
 from the great modern employer than they were from 
 his typical predecessor, who worked by rule of thumb, 
 who could see all his men at a glance, and could talk to 
 each individually in the course of a single morning. But 
 the moral fact remains that the increasing intellectual- 
 isation of industry has been accompanied, in the persons 
 of the employers, by a certain defect of vision, which, 
 though leaving their employees visible to them, perhaps 
 more clearly than ever, as technical mechanisms of so 
 many kinds and qualities, has rendered their manhood, 
 as such, a hardly distinguishable shadow. And this 
 general fact has a natural tendency to express itself in 
 the temper, the mood, the behaviour, not only of one 
 of the two parties concerned, but of both. In each case 
 the behaviour in question corresponds to what is meant 
 by " overbearing," in the sense that it implies a dis- 
 regard of certain essential facts. 
 
 In the case of the employers it implies a disregard of 
 that natural self-respect, a want of which would render 
 the employed contemptible. In the case of the em- 
 ployed it implies a disregard of those abilities and func- 
 tions which the employers must necessarily possess and 
 exercise if they are not to betray their own interests and 
 those of the employed also. Of these two kinds of 
 behaviour, or of these two moods as expressed by be- 
 haviour, the first provokes the second. The employers 
 ignore, or tend to ignore, the moral claims of the em- 
 ployed. The employed retort by ignoring the dynamic 
 functions of the employers. So long as this battle of 
 conflicting exaggerations lasts, nothing in the nature of 
 co-operative harmony is possible ; and of the two kinds 
 behaviour which co-operative harmony demands it 
 
274 LIMITS OF PURE DEMOCRACY 
 
 will be enough to say, if we content ourselves with speak- 
 ing broadly, that they must represent a certain revul- 
 sion from those which now prevail. 
 
 Such a statement, however, though sufficiently correct 
 and intelligible in respect of its general suggestions, 
 must, before we can press it closely, be very carefully 
 qualified. The requisite moods or behaviours must not 
 be merely revulsions from those which prevail at present. 
 Mere revulsion from one form of error may easily lead 
 to another perhaps even more unfortunate. The im- 
 portance of this consideration, and of the dangers which 
 may arise from a neglect of it, especially in relation to 
 the behaviour of the employers towards the employed, 
 are illustrated clearly enough by the suggestions of many 
 reformers who, in the interest of the employers them- 
 selves, are inclined to adopt and press, in some even 
 of their most exaggerated forms, the demands of the 
 wage-earners as their own. 
 
 It has, for example, been urged with a view to indus- 
 trial harmony, by persons of conservative temperament, 
 whose enlightened sagacity otherwise calls for sincere 
 respect, that a just personal treatment, as accorded to 
 his staff of wage-earners by the typical employer of 
 to-morrow, will ultimately involve some such arrange- 
 ments as the following, in which the practicable and the 
 impracticable are curiously mixed together : 
 
 (1) A taking of his wage-earners generally into some 
 sort of co-partnership. 
 
 (2) A frank and fraternal disclosure to them of the 
 total profits of his business, and of the principles on 
 which these are distributed. 
 
 (3) A giving to them a full control of so much of the 
 productive process as can properly be called their own. 
 
 (4) A consultation with them on fraternally equal 
 terms as to any new methods or mechanisms which he 
 has himself invented and may think it desirable to 
 introduce. 
 
 Suggestions of this kind, as coming from conservative 
 quarters, are valuable for two reasons. In the first 
 place they are witnesses to the importance of mere mood, 
 temper, or behaviour, as conditions of co-operative har- 
 mony. In the second place they show how readily, in 
 
TRAVESTIES OF RESPECT 275 
 
 the case even of thinkers whose aims are essentially 
 temperate, claims and expectations which are, within 
 limits, reasonable, may by the mere impetus of sympathy 
 be carried far beyond them. 
 
 Thus, that the wage-earners should, in a way not at 
 present general, be consulted as to matters affecting 
 their own convenience, is not only morally just, but is 
 strictly reasonable also ; for as to such matters even the 
 least intelligent wage-earner knows far more than the 
 employer. 1 Further and here is a point with which 
 presently we shall deal again it is absolutely essential 
 for the purposes of industrial peace that the wage-earners 
 should somehow be put in possession of evidence which 
 will show them beyond all doubt the normal ratio of 
 wages to the value of the total product. But to claim 
 that the employer should evince his fraternal respect for 
 them by taking them as a body into his counsels with 
 regard to methods, mechanisms, and the new conceptions 
 and new knowledge involved in them, is to claim what 
 in practice is impossible, and what even if imagined in 
 any detail would be absurd. The great industries of 
 to-day depend mostly on principles mechanical, chemical 
 and mathematical, which few minds can follow, fewer 
 still can master, and which cannot be expressed exactly 
 otherwise than in complex formulae, which to nine men 
 out of ten would be wholly devoid of meaning, and as 
 to the application of which not one man in a thousand 
 could form a judgment of any practical value whatso- 
 ever. How could a great ship or a great steel bridge 
 be constructed, how could a new chemical be brought 
 into general use, if before the construction or manufac- 
 ture began all the intricate problems involved in its 
 design or composition had to be submitted for approval 
 to every man who hammered a rivet, turned a tap, or 
 helped in moving a carboy from one shed to another? 
 How could the thought of Darwin have been ever com- 
 municated to the world if, before his works could be 
 
 1 The argument in the text was used, in a very temperate way, by 
 Mr. J. R. Clynes, M.P., a Labour Member, in an address delivered at 
 Oxford, August 2, 1917 ; in which he urged the desirability <e of perio- 
 dical meetings between employers and employed, to deal with matters 
 that affected the workmen's lives." 
 
276 LIMITS OF PURE DEMOCRACY 
 
 published, he had had to take the opinion of all and 
 each of his compositors with regard to the evolution of 
 species and the Biblical chronology of Ussher ? Ideas of 
 co-partnership which suggest an arrangement like this, 
 as the natural outcome of true industrial harmony, 
 would, if definitely formulated, be dismissed as im- 
 practicable by the common sense even of those who put 
 them forward ; and, such being the case, they here con- 
 cern us only for the two following reasons. In the first 
 place, as put forward by serious and moderate men, they 
 are let it be said again signal illustrations of how 
 readily, in connection with matters of sentiment, 
 moderate men, whose motives are beyond suspicion, may 
 be led into claiming more than they really mean. In 
 the second place they indicate the wider and more 
 important conclusion that a body like the wage-earners, 
 who are average humanity in the mass, would, were their 
 common sense not disordered by prejudice, be found to 
 mean less than their present tempers claim. The diffi- 
 culty in the case of the wage-earners, as matters stand, 
 is this : that they come to the question of what is morally 
 due to them with minds inflamed by the suspicion that 
 the employing classes as a whole, besides underesti- 
 mating them as men, underpay them as workers also ; 
 and the more extreme and impracticable claims which 
 their tempers prompt them to make in the matter of 
 personal treatment are not so much serious expressions 
 of what they take to be their moral rights as the rhetoric 
 of revenge for what they take to be a material wrong. 
 Every wrong or grievance, whether fancied or real, 
 involves the idea of inequality in one form or another, 
 and involves also the idea of equality in one form or 
 another as its remedy. The demand for equality is 
 therefore a formula which, so long as any masses of men 
 are all suffering from a sense of material wrong of some 
 kind, will, in a general way, fit and express the desires, 
 however various, of all individuals alike, and invest them 
 all with a character similarly extreme and absolute. But 
 if once by some adequate reform, or by the mere diffusion 
 of knowledge, the sense of some common material wrong 
 is removed, the idea of absolute equality as a something 
 which is morally desirable for its own sake, will lose its 
 
THE RULE OF COMMON SENSE 277 
 
 power to charm. It will, indeed, lose all practical 
 meaning. Thus, if in any country the government, in 
 collusion with the employers, tried the experiment of 
 condemning every wage-earning man to celibacy, every 
 wage-earning man would demand an absolutely equal 
 right to acquire for himself, if he pleased, a single ideal 
 something that is to say, a wife. But when once this 
 right had been conceded, the wage-earners, fortunately 
 for themselves, would not be all demanding that this 
 wife should be the same woman. They would not even 
 demand that she should in each case be the ideal wife. 
 Each man would put up with the best wife he could get, 
 and instead of telling himself that he had a right to 
 expect perfection, would make the best of her, and be 
 thankful she was no worse. In the same way if, as we 
 have been here assuming, any general sense amongst the 
 wage-earners of a purely material wrong is removed by 
 a scheme of wages based on a just minimum, accom- 
 panied by economic security, and known by the wage- 
 earners generally to represent for each the amplest 
 material lot which, regard being had to his own powers, 
 is possible, the estimates formed by them of their moral, 
 as distinct from their material, due will tend to resemble 
 their estimates of what is due to them in the matter of 
 matrimony. Equality as an idea will indeed be present 
 in all of them, but it will be an equality so tempered by, 
 and so subservient to, circumstance that its absolute 
 character will be lost in the different relativities of 
 different men and classes, or chastened by common sense 
 into modifications which will be practically negations, 
 of itself. 
 
 Such a conclusion as this with regard to the natural 
 tendencies of mankind when their sentiments are not 
 warped by any sense of material injury is far from 
 representing a mere theoretical likelihood. It is sup- 
 ported by the plainest evidences, which are partly of a 
 general, partly of a specific, kind. 
 
 The general evidences may be summarised in a few 
 words. They are comprised in the obvious fact that, if 
 any masses of men really regard equality as a thing 
 desirable in itself, there is no need to struggle for it. Of 
 all forms of happiness it is the one which may be achieved 
 
278 LIMITS OF PURE DEMOCRACY 
 
 most easily. Of all the agencies by which men may be 
 completely equalised, none are more sure and efficacious 
 than sea-sickness and famine. If, therefore, complete 
 equality is in itself a condition of happiness, twenty bad 
 sailors need only travel together, and the physical misery 
 of each will be turned into moral bliss by watching all 
 his companions being sick into basins round him. If 
 equality is desirable in itself, a whole nation in the course 
 of a week might make itself happy by doing nothing at 
 all ; for by the end of a week, if nobody did anything, 
 man, woman and child would be all in the grip of famine. 
 Since, however, none of the professed devotees of 
 equality show the least inclination to achieve it, easy 
 though the feat would be, in what are its purest forms, 
 it is obvious that equality, considered as an end in itself, 
 though thousands may be ready to shout for it, means 
 nothing for anybody. 
 
 Such, then, are the general evidences which indicate 
 that even those extremists who, as a mere expression of 
 temper, are accustomed to call for equality in its most 
 absolute and impracticable forms, would, if all material 
 grounds for ill-temper were eliminated, have little ten- 
 dency, as sober and practical men, to press their 
 demands for equality to any such fantastic degree as 
 would render them seriously out of accord with fact. 
 But amongst the evidences bearing on this question we 
 have still to consider others, which are, as has just been 
 said, of a much more definite character, and which lead 
 to conclusions much more definite likewise, as to what, 
 with regard to equality, men's natural sentiments are. 
 These evidences are closely connected with what has been 
 described already as the second of the two conditions- 
 just personal treatment being one of them which, be- 
 sides those identifiable with adequate and secure wages, 
 are demanded by the wage-earners themselves, and 
 should also be recognised by others, as essential to in- 
 dustrial content. The second condition is a recognition 
 of the Right to Rise. 
 
CHAPTER IV 
 
 THE RIGHT TO EISE 
 
 THE demand on the part of the wage-earners of the 
 modern world for a recognition of the Right to Rise, 
 though it includes by implication a demand for the 
 Right to Work, includes a demand also which is in the 
 latter absent. The idea of the Right to Work is, as 
 Louis Blanc said, merely a concrete rendering of the idea 
 of the right to live. It relates to all men equally, but 
 with special force to the wage-earners, these being the 
 vast majority, and assumes that the faculties of every 
 man, if only he is permitted to use them, are sufficient 
 to maintain him in some sort of decent comfort. The 
 distinctive assumption implied in the idea of the Right 
 to Rise is the additional assumption, made in accordance 
 with obvious fact, that some men possess faculties superior 
 to those of others ; that they would, if allowed to develop 
 them and put them to suitable use, be able to achieve 
 positions superior to those achievable by efficiencies lower 
 in kind or less in degree than theirs ; and that, whatever 
 the nature or scope of their potential superiorities may 
 be, means should be within their reach of using them to 
 the best advantage, and of thereby raising themselves 
 from some one of the lower ranks of the wage-paid 
 workers to a higher, or else to some post or position 
 outside the ranks of the wage-paid workers altogether. 
 The demand, then, for the Right to Rise is a demand 
 made mainly on behalf of those who belong by birth to 
 the masses of average or inconspicuous men, that any 
 one of them who possesses potential superiorities of any 
 kind shall be enabled, through his use of them, to achieve 
 and securely enjoy a material and social reward justly 
 proportioned to their tested and objective value. 
 
 Of all the effective demands which, as history and 
 
 279 
 
280 LIMITS OF PURE DEMOCRACY 
 
 experience show, equality really implies, when considered 
 in a concrete form as the goal of democratic action, this 
 demand for the Right to Rise throws the most searching 
 light on what certain of the workings of actual human 
 nature are, as distinct from the vague formulae which 
 are commonly employed to express, but which result 
 practically in distorting, them. The right in question 
 has here been described as the Right to Rise. This is, 
 however, not the name under which it is generally 
 known. Napoleon called it an " Open Career for Talent." 
 Equality of Opportunity is the name for it which is most 
 familiar. 
 
 The demand for Equality of Opportunity was, as a 
 watchword of democracy, formulated first in France, and 
 was originally a protest against the system there and 
 then prevailing, which, as has been said already, shut 
 out all men not of a privileged class from all the higher 
 prizes of station, place and power, and denied even to 
 considerable wealth, as amassed by ignoble persons, that 
 final recognition without which it lost for them half its 
 value. Thus, if taken as a conscious expression of a 
 certain kind of desire, the demand for equality of oppor- 
 tunity was mainly of middle-class rather than popular 
 origin. But events showed, when once a voice had been 
 found for it, that the desire itself was alive in the masses 
 also; and by a rapid and instinctive adoption of this 
 celebrated formula, they no less than the middle-class 
 came to assert the demand for equality of opportunity 
 as their own. Now the rapid growth of a demand rela- 
 tively so precise as this out of a vaguer, though more 
 direct demand for an unanalysed equality itself, is apt 
 to be taken by extremists as evidence of the vitality of 
 the sentiment which is, according to them, the dynamic 
 principle of democracy in its purest possible form, and 
 through which some entire revolution of existing con- 
 ditions will be consummated. Such a view of the matter 
 is, however, wholly erroneous. The demand for equality 
 of opportunity may, indeed, wear on the surface of it 
 certain revolutionary aspects ; but it is in reality it is 
 in its very nature a symptom of moderation, or rather 
 of an unintended conservatism, of which the masses of 
 normal men cannot, if they would, divest themselves. 
 
MEANING OF OPPORTUNITY 281 
 
 The very meaning of the word " opportunity " a word 
 saturated as it is with implications is enough in itself 
 to show this. For if the ideal demand of pure demo- 
 cracy were realised, and the social conditions of all men 
 made equal by force of law, there would be no such thing 
 as opportunity, equal or unequal, for anybody. To say 
 that opportunity could exist of achieving conditions of 
 any kind, when the conditions of all men whatever they 
 did would be the same, would be like saying of a dozen 
 murderers, condemned and on their way to the gallows, 
 that they all had an opportunity, and an equal oppor- 
 tunity, of being hanged. The desire for equality of 
 opportunity the desire for the right to rise in so far 
 as it is really experienced by the morally typical man 
 of all ages and nations, is a desire that everybody (he 
 himself, as included in " everybody," being a prominent 
 figure in his thoughts) shall have an opportunity of 
 achieving by his own talents, if he can, some position or 
 condition which is not equal, but which is, on the con- 
 trary, superior, to any position or condition which is 
 achievable by the talents of all. In other words, the 
 very conception and recognition of equality of oppor- 
 tunity as the most important kind of equality which 
 the democratic principle demands, constitute, either by 
 implication or direct assertion, a species of Magna 
 Charta, of which the main articles, clauses or declara- 
 tions are as follows 
 
 Firstly, whilst all men have as much as a certain 
 average efficiency, a number of men in varying degrees 
 have more ; 
 
 Secondly, every man shall have the opportunity of 
 developing his own potential efficiencies, whatever they 
 may be, to the utmost, and applying them to the best 
 advantage ; 
 
 Thirdly, the development and application of such 
 efficiencies being given, rewards in justice ought to be, 
 and for practical reasons must be, proportionate in each 
 case to the value of the effects resulting from them ; 
 
 Fourthly, whatever position or condition the excep- 
 tional efficiencies of any man may have gained for him, 
 this advantage or these advantages shall not be dimin- 
 ished or diluted by any preferential opportunities 
 
 I 
 
282 LIMITS OF PURE DEMOCRACY 
 
 unfairly granted to competitors of a class other than 
 his own; 
 
 Finally, the equality which in practice the democratic 
 principle demands is not an equality of reward in any 
 absolute sense as between one man and another, but an 
 equality of relation between each man and his work an 
 equality which can be realised only on the very condition 
 that, in an absolute sense, the amount of the reward 
 varies. 
 
 If any one doubts that such is the virtual content of 
 the demands for equal opportunity which are put for- 
 ward to-day as expressions of the democratic principle, 
 he need but give his attention to the way, or the several 
 ways, in which those who are foremost in invoking that 
 principle as their guide actually do reason when, for- 
 getting more general formulae, they set themselves to 
 deal with the concrete affairs of life. If we wish to study 
 the actual, as distinct from the apparent principles, of 
 what purports to be extreme democracy, we cannot do 
 better than turn to two bodies of men the Trade 
 Unionists on the one hand, and the more extreme 
 champions of popular education on the other, and see 
 how they reason about the matters with which they are 
 most immediately concerned. 
 
 There are no bodies of men by whom, in a general way, 
 the principles of democratic equality are professed with 
 greater emphasis than they are by the Trade Unionists, 
 especially by such of them as represent the kinds of skill 
 which are the highest and most highly paid. Now, 
 whatever such men may say about equality as a general 
 concept, it is obvious that, when their common sense 
 and their actual feelings, as guided by it, translate this 
 concept into terms of practical life, equality means for 
 them an equality which is not absolute, but is, as has 
 just been said, relative, being absolute only in the sense 
 in which a child's boots might be regarded as absolutely 
 equal to a man's because they fitted with equal exacti- 
 tude feet of a smaller size. That effort, in respect of its 
 absolute efficiency, varies no less that the size of feet is 
 assumed, and rightly assumed by them, as a fact not 
 open to question ; and the essence of their demand is 
 that, regarded as an absolute quantity, reward should 
 
SKILL AND INEQUALITY 283 
 
 vary likewise. The main difficulties and occasionally 
 they have threatened to prove disastrous with which 
 the British Government and the nation have, during 
 time of war, been faced in respect of war-work, have 
 been connected with anxieties on the part of the skilled 
 unionists, not so much as to the amount of their wages 
 for the time being, as to the maintenance of their proper 
 graduation, and the chance of the value of their own 
 work suffering from what they called " dilution " through 
 the allotment of work not unlike in kind to competitors 
 not belonging to their own closely guarded body. " Is 
 it just," asked one of their leaders, " can it in our own 
 interest be tolerated, that skill like ours, which is the 
 product of high capacity and an apprenticeship of five 
 long years, should be for a moment treated as though 
 it were on a level with the half-skill which any three men 
 or three women out of four are quite well able to pick 
 up in a week or two ? " Another spokesman of Labour, 
 arguing in behalf of a certain body of men men engaged 
 in urgent war-work by whom a strike for increased 
 wages was threatened at a most critical moment, did not 
 deny that their actual wages were considerable, but 
 urged that, war or no war, the men's first duty alike 
 to themselves and their families was to see that their 
 exceptional position in the ranks of labour was main- 
 tained, and to intimidate all who in the future might 
 seek to tamper with it. On another occasion certain 
 of the leaders themselves struck work as against the 
 union on whose behalf they had been conducting a 
 recent strike against the masters. "Is it just," they 
 asked, " that the salaries which the union pays us 
 salaries barely equal to the stipend of a Church of Eng- 
 land curate should be less instead of more than the 
 wages which, through our own good offices, have been 
 won from the masters for hundreds of mere manual 
 labourers ? " 
 
 1 The above statement was verified by the Report (published early in 
 August 1917), by the Commissioners for Wales, as to the causes of 
 ludustrial Unrest. Prominent among these causes, and next to the 
 "antagonism between labour and capital" constantly fomented by 
 extremists, is mentioned " the high wages paid to unskilled men and 
 boys." 
 
 
284 LIMITS OF PURE DEMOCRACY 
 
 Examples of this kind might be multiplied, but those 
 just given are sufficient. Let us now turn from equality 
 as interpreted by labourers and the leaders of labour, 
 to equality as interpreted by democrats in connection 
 with the question of education. "It is in the field 
 of popular education," says a well-known English pub- 
 licist, who is as to this matter a representative of the 
 extremest democratic school, " that the greatest work 
 of democratic statesmanship is to be accomplished " ; 
 and his words reflect the sentiments of the most extreme 
 of the intellectual champions of democratic equality 
 generally. If we want, they argue, to secure for all an 
 equality that is worth the name, we must by education 
 equip all of them equally for the business of life before 
 that business begins. Thus, according to one of them, 
 the immediate object of education is "to train all men 
 born for the best of everything that is human." Ac- 
 cording to another, it is " to equip all children equally 
 for the full perfection of manhood." " When we define 
 for ourselves," says another, " the immediate object of 
 education, nothing must lurk in our minds of the old 
 idea that ' some vessels ' are naturally ' of honour,' 
 others naturally ' of dishonour.' ' 
 
 All this is quite in the style of those who dream of 
 equality in its completest imaginable form. But let us 
 now consider how the publicist just mentioned, who has 
 made by adoption all these phrases his own, deals with 
 the question of education when he approaches it as a 
 practical man. In order that education may be an 
 instrument of true democratic equality, the first step 
 to be taken is, he says, to secure adequate teachers ; 
 and the adequate teachers being given, their work will 
 mainly consist in " selecting the best minds from among 
 the children of the common people, as though they were 
 diamonds," sifted or washed out of the gravel " of the 
 great national mine," and giving special care to the 
 development, cultural and intellectual, of these. But, 
 so the writer proceeds and his words have been echoed 
 by a chorus of democratic approbation teachers of 
 the kind required must be men of peculiar and most 
 uncommon talent ; they must, therefore, be paid accord- 
 ingly; and the great present impediment to true demo- 
 
EDUCATIONAL OLIGARCHY 285 
 
 cratic education, in England at all events, is this that 
 the salaries offered to the teachers, which are often barely 
 equal to the wages of a skilled mechanic, and never 
 equal to the profits of a very moderate business, are 
 wholly insufficient to attract to the teaching profession 
 men of such signal talents as the fit teacher requires. 
 The two things which are essential, then, to a democratic 
 system of education are a staff of highly gifted teachers, 
 secured and retained by the payment of exceedingly 
 ample salaries, and secondly a selection by these persons 
 of specially gifted children, on whom they will bestow 
 a special and preferential care. The same argument, so 
 far as the children are concerned, was emphasised by 
 an English Archbishop of strong socialist sympathies, 
 when asked on a public occasion for his own definition 
 of what socialism, in its essence, is. The question, he 
 said, might be answered by reference to the case of a 
 boy which had lately come under his observation. The 
 boy, poor and friendless, displayed an alertness of mind 
 of a kind so startling that it could not escape attention ; 
 and yet, unless some one should come to his aid by 
 accident, the probable lot in store for him was that of 
 an ordinary labourer, in which all his special gifts would 
 be lost. The message of socialism to the world might, 
 said the Archbishop, be condensed into six simple words : 
 44 Give that poor boy a chance." The Archbishop made 
 no mention of the adequate teachers through whose 
 ministrations the poor boy's chance was to be given him, 
 but we may take these as implied. 
 
 Let us now consider the practical arguments of the 
 trade unionists, of the democratic educationists, and 
 sentimental socialists such as the Archbishop, together. 
 We shall see that the assumptions, the aims and the 
 general view of human society underlying them, are in 
 all these cases the same. In each case, underlying them 
 there is the implied and instinctive recognition that the 
 capacities of men for practical purposes vary. In each 
 case there is an assertion of the fact that these capacities, 
 as developed and applied, must be rewarded in propor- 
 tion to the unequal character of their results, partly 
 because a proportional reward is demanded by natural 
 justice, and partly because the higher capacities will not 
 
286 LIMITS OF PURE DEMOCRACY 
 
 be developed and will not be applied without it. The 
 amount of the reward claimed for work of exceptional 
 value and the value of the work itself may in particular 
 instances be overestimated; but the principle on which 
 the claim is based is in strict accordance with the in- 
 stinctive common sense of man. Even the highly paid 
 artisans and miners who, in England, Wales and Scot- 
 land, scandalised public opinion by striking work in war- 
 time with a view to increasing their wages by ten or 
 fifteen per cent., were right in so far as their behaviour 
 was merely the assertion of the principle that work of 
 some special efficiency is worth a corresponding price. 
 The democratic educationists may, and probably do, 
 absurdly overestimate the amount of sleeping talents 
 which need but the magic touch of the gifted teacher to 
 awaken them; but the demand itself that such talents 
 should, in so far as they really exist, not be rendered 
 useless for want of the chance which education may give 
 of using them, is a demand which, if reasonably inter- 
 preted, all reasonable men will endorse. Of all these 
 detailed demands put forward by men who claim the 
 name of democrats the same thing may be said. They 
 are perfectly logical. They express what most men 
 actually think and feel. They may, if reasonably inter- 
 preted, be consistent with the soundest sense. But there 
 is one thing with which they are radically inconsistent, 
 and that is the vision of pure democratic equality which, 
 in moments of mere sentiment, the vague formulae of 
 democracy pure and simple evoke in the minds of those 
 accustomed to utter them. 
 
 The practical demands of the democratic educationists 
 show this, not perhaps more clearly, but with greater 
 emphasis, than those even of the trade unionists. In the 
 first place, with reference to the children before their 
 education begins, these apostles of equality start with the 
 perfectly correct assumption that this juvenile mass will 
 always contain a few whom the teacher's eye will detect 
 as congenitally superior to the rest. A natural child- 
 aristocracy a caste of intellectual Dauphins is the first 
 thing which they postulate ; and on this, according to 
 them, it will be the business of the teachers to lavish 
 
EDUCATION AND AMBITION 287 
 
 a preferential care. Secondly, they demand in the 
 persons of the teachers themselves another aristocracy 
 or oligarchy separated from the average mass, not by 
 their talents only, but as they specially insist, by a 
 something not yet approached namely, the magnitude 
 of their emoluments also. Thirdly, as to the children 
 when the process of their education is completed, what 
 do our apostles of equality hope and demand for these ? 
 The Archbishop tells us that what socialism demands for 
 them is " a chance." Yes but a chance of what? It 
 cannot be a chance of getting an average livelihood; 
 for, if socialism demands anything, it demands that an 
 average livelihood shall be, not a chance, but a certainty 
 for all who have the will to work for it. What, accord- 
 ing to the Archbishop, socialism demands for the typical 
 " poor boy " whose gifts far exceed the average, must 
 be a chance of achieving a position which exceeds the 
 average likewise, and which is for the mass of boys who 
 have no such gifts impossible. Should there be any 
 doubt as to the matter, one of the democratic educa- 
 tionists, whose language has just been quoted, puts into 
 plain terms what the Archbishop only implies. The ulti- 
 mate object of a truly democratic education is, he says, 
 in somewhat Hibernian language, to secure for each of 
 the "diamonds " discoverable in the gravel of the great 
 "national mine," "an equal chance of getting to the 
 top of the tree." 
 
 We thus see how the very men, whether skilled trade 
 unionists, socialist Archbishops, or professional doctrin- 
 aires of ideally democratic education men who, with 
 the greatest unction in moments of mere sentiment, give 
 voice to the demand for equality in its most absolute 
 and impracticable form moderate these demands, or 
 rather (we may say) forget them and instinctively invert 
 their character, when they come to adjust their reasoning 
 to the actual affairs of life, and to what in reality are 
 their own normal feelings. The democratic educa- 
 tionist who declaims in moments of mere sentiment 
 against treating any one child as "a vessel of more 
 honour than another," begins his argument, when he 
 speaks as a practical man, with laying it down that the 
 
288 LIMITS OF PURE DEMOCRACY 
 
 first task of the teacher is to pick out certain children 
 like diamonds from the national gravel, and give them 
 a polish which is possible for such things of honour 
 alone. 
 
 The skilled trade unionists, when they protest against 
 the " dilution " of their labour, do not demand the 
 highest wages for " all who are born men." They 
 demand the highest wages for work of the highest kind, 
 by which they mean the work to which they themselves 
 are trained, and of which, so far as is possible, they 
 desire to retain the monopoly. 
 
 In all such demands as these, which merely translate 
 the demand for equality pure and simple into a demand 
 for equal opportunity (or, as many trade unionists would 
 put it, opportunity restricted to themselves), the ani- 
 mating principle, or the assumed basic fact, is not 
 equality but graduation ; and below this fact lies another, 
 implicitly assumed likewise namely, the existence of 
 some average mass, whose capacities and whose wages 
 represent those normal lots, by their upward distance 
 from which those ampler lots are measured, which oppor- 
 tunity offers to talents above the average. 
 
 The idea, then, of equalised opportunity, and the 
 various concrete forms in which the demands for oppor- 
 tunity are made, contain in them a great deal more than 
 at first sight may appear. They are an epitome of what, 
 with regard to social conditions generally, and their own 
 relations to these, men of democratic sympathies actually 
 think and feel as contrasted with the thoughts and feel- 
 ings suggested to and fomented in them by the doctrines 
 of absolute equality which are the content of formal 
 socialism. These doctrines which, as they stand, are 
 plausible only so long as they remain vague, are adopted 
 by the mass of socialists or social democrats, not as a 
 programme but as a protest, or manifesto of rebellion, 
 against certain general wrongs which are, or which are 
 supposed by them to be, interwoven with the fabric of 
 the existing industrial system, the first and foremost 
 amongst these being one of a purely material kind 
 namely, a crude underpayment of wages. The suspected 
 existence of this one wrong alone is enough to breed 
 
TRUTH IN ERROR 289 
 
 resentment, and in the doctrines of formal socialism 
 resentment finds a voice a voice which is sonorous and 
 challenging by very reason of their errors and exaggera- 
 tions. That these doctrines, taken as they stand, reveal 
 themselves as more grotesquely absurd the more clearly 
 they are expressed and the more closely they are ana- 
 lysed, has been shown at length already; but something 
 else has been shown also. It has been shown that, 
 underlying, or disguised by, the absurdity of these 
 doctrines, certain demands and ideas lurk which are 
 sanctioned alike by justice, by sober reason, and by 
 the self-interest of all, equality of opportunity being one 
 of them. Such being the case, then, it has been here 
 contended that, in proportion as the conditions corre- 
 sponding to such ideas and demands are realised, and 
 any general sense of wrong is thereby allayed, the natural 
 tendency of men will be to acquiesce in the practicable, 
 whilst the impossible demands and hopes, which are the 
 sole distinctive content of formal socialism or of pure 
 social democracy, will evaporate for the simple reason 
 that they no longer even symbolise any intelligible 
 meaning. 
 
 Finally, as a proof and illustration of the correctness 
 of this contention, the most widely spread and sponta- 
 neous of all the definite demands which have been made 
 by the spirit of democracy in the progressive countries 
 of the world that is to say, the demand for equalised 
 opportunity, or otherwise for the right to rise has been 
 analysed. It has been analysed, so as to bring into 
 light all its essential implications ; and the results of this 
 analysis are, we shall find, as follows that the general 
 configuration of society which this demand takes for 
 granted, and the particular conditions on which it 
 insists as just, in a democratic sense, for particular men 
 or classes, correspond substantially with those which 
 have here been set forth in detail as representing such 
 elements of truth, moral justice, practical sagacity, and 
 the self-interest of all classes alike, as are latent in even 
 the most insane hopes, the wild disregard of facts, the 
 intellectual self-contradictions, and the inverted psycho- 
 logy of socialism. The nature of this correspondence 
 
290 LIMITS OF PURE DEMOCRACY 
 
 shall be presently reviewed in full; but we will first 
 consider more precisely where, as a matter of principle, 
 the essential difference lies between the conditions de- 
 manded by the temper and logic of socialism with a 
 view to overthrowing the existing constitution of society, 
 and those which have been here indicated as essential 
 to its undisturbed conservation. 
 
BOOK VI 
 
 THE DATA OF CONTENT 
 CHAPTER I 
 
 THE PSYCHOLOGY OF SANE REFORM 
 
 IF, beginning with its manifestations in the later years 
 of the eighteenth century and the earlier years of the 
 nineteenth, we consider socialism or social democracy 
 firstly as a sentiment having an absolute equality of 
 material conditions as its object, and secondly as a 
 reasoned scheme by which this ideal object may be 
 realised, we shall see that, as a principle and a project, 
 it has passed through three stages, which are broadly 
 distinguishable as follows. 
 
 According to the earlier socialists, such as Ann Lee 
 and Owen, the one peculiar element requisite for the 
 realisation of a socialist polity was a general sentiment 
 in favour of equal wealth for all ; and it seemed to them 
 that, such a sentiment being given, the process by which 
 wealth was produced would naturally adjust itself to an 
 object in which it was assumed that the producers were 
 all equally interested. 
 
 Except in the case of religious sects like the Shakers, 
 this expectation was completely falsified by events ; and, 
 considered as the basis of any practical system, socialist 
 thought might have died a natural death if, some forty 
 years after the collapse of Owen's experiments, it had 
 not been reconstructed by Marx on a practically new 
 basis. The change which Marx effected in socialist 
 thought was this. Whereas the earlier socialists had 
 ; regarded the equalisation of wealth as a feat to be ac- 
 complished by the magic of a peculiar sentiment to 
 which the facts of production would adjust themselves, 
 the relative importance of these two factors was by 
 Marx inverted. The equalisation of wealth required, 
 
 291 
 
 
292 LIMITS OF PURE DEMOCRACY 
 
 according to him, no sentiment of a peculiar kind at all. 
 Its basis lay in the purely economic fact that wealth is 
 produced by manual labour only, one labourer producing 
 as much wealth as another; and the only kind of senti- 
 ment for which there was any occasion was simply the 
 common desire of every man to get and to keep the 
 whole of what he individually produces. 
 
 So long as this doctrine as to manual labour prevailed, 
 everything for the socialist mind was invested with a 
 false simplicity. But, as time went on, intellectual 
 socialists themselves began to discern that this so-called 
 " scientific " doctrine was, as Bismarck said of a certain 
 British diplomatist, "nothing more than a lath painted 
 to look like iron." They began to see that in the 
 complex production of to-day the mental workers are 
 agents no less real than the manual ; that the former are 
 in many cases incomparably more productive than the 
 latter, and that if distribution is to be based on the mere 
 facts of production, a regime of equalised incomes will 
 be farther off than ever. They have, therefore, in 
 respect of the two main elements of the case, had to 
 restore these to what was their original order, sentiment 
 as the equalising element being put once more in the 
 first place, and the mere facts of production being 
 relegated to the second, as subservient to it. 
 
 This third stage of socialist thought may, in Tenny- 
 son's language, be described as "a riper first." It is 
 riper in two senses : firstly, in the sense that socialist 
 thought in this third stage includes a far more scientific 
 conception of the nature of modern production, with 
 all its complex inequalities in respect of powers and 
 functions; and, secondly, in the sense that it involves 
 a more complex conception of the task which socialist 
 sentiment must perform as an instrument of equal dis- 
 tribution a task which must comprise, not the act of 
 distribution only, but also that of providing some over- 
 whelming incentive to all those complex submissions 
 and complex inequalities of effort, without which there 
 would be nothing, or very little, to distribute. But with 
 whatever care this conception may be developed, it 
 remains a mere conception, a mere figment of the ima- 
 gination still. Indeed, its very development, whether 
 
INVERTED PSYCHOLOGY 293 
 
 implied or explicit, into fuller logical form, has but 
 rendered more plain than before how remote it is from 
 any sentiment which is actually operative amongst 
 men. 
 
 Now, one illustration of this remoteness has been 
 pointed out already namely, the fact that this ima- 
 ginary sentiment, if it is to do the work required of it, 
 must be in reality not one sentiment but two, each being 
 the opposite of the other, so that some men will be 
 animated by a passion for producing more than they get, 
 whilst some will be animated by a passion for getting 
 more than they produce. But in the whole conception 
 of a sentiment which, as a stimulus to individual work, 
 has for its object an equality of rewards for its own 
 sake, an error is involved far deeper than any which 
 comes to the surface in the form of such a paradox as 
 this. It is an error which goes to the very roots of the 
 whole psychological process by which the feelings and 
 actions of the individual are normally brought into 
 contact with the affairs of his fellow-men. It amounts, 
 indeed, to neither more nor less than a farcical turning 
 of this process upside down. 
 
 When socialists conceive as possible a sentiment which 
 shall so affect the industrial workers of a community 
 that the happiness of each is identified with a purely 
 objective fact namely, the material equality of all they 
 do not, indeed, maintain that the individual will forget 
 his own interests altogether, or regard them with com- 
 plete indifference ; but they do maintain or assume that 
 the equal conditions of all will be the primary object 
 habitually present in his mind, his own welfare being 
 a miniature image of these, which is reflected in his 
 consciousness of the fact that the "all" will include 
 himself as a thousandth or a millionth part of it. If 
 such were really the nature of the psychological process 
 by which the self-interest of the individual as a pro- 
 ductive agent is brought into relationship with the 
 material welfare of others, the process would not be 
 peculiar to this special relationship only. It would be 
 a type of the process which was normal in the case of 
 all relationships through which the interest of the indi- 
 vidual in his own affairs is associated by him with an 
 
294 LIMITS OF PURE DEMOCRACY 
 
 interest in the affairs of others, no matter what the 
 nature of these affairs may be. A man who was liable 
 to sea-sickness would, when embarking on a voyage, be 
 primarily occupied by an anxiety that none of the 
 passengers should be sea-sick a mass of vague persons 
 altogether unknown to him and would surprise himself 
 by discovering that he, as one of the crowd, hoped to 
 escape sea-sickness amongst them. A mother's love for 
 her daughter would be the result of the following psycho- 
 logical syllogism : I love all daughters. My Jemima is 
 a daughter. Therefore I love Jemima. To suppose, as 
 is supposed by the later logic of socialism, that self- 
 interest is deduced in this way from a prior interest in 
 others, is like supposing that the flame of a lamp in a 
 lighted room is a miniature condensation of the light 
 diffused over the illuminated walls, instead of the light 
 on the walls being an enlarged reflection of the flame. 
 A mother does not desire the welfare of her own daughter 
 because she first desires the welfare of daughters gener- 
 ally. She desires the welfare of daughters generally 
 because her sympathies have been previously quickened 
 by solicitude for the welfare of her own. Like the 
 ripples on the surface of a pond, which circle outwards 
 from the spot at which a stone has struck it, the inclusive 
 emotions and interests circle outwards from the centre 
 of self or family, becoming fainter and less precise in 
 proportion as they become more and more comprehen- 
 sive. If any one doubts this fact, he may very easily 
 find ocular proof of it. Let him watch the faces of a 
 crowd which, drawn together by the news of some great 
 shipwreck, is searching the lists of those who have been 
 saved or lost. What each member of the crowd will be 
 looking for, in obedience to an eternal instinct, is the 
 name of parent, wife, husband, child or lover; and if 
 the person in question is named amongst those surviving, 
 the expression of the searcher changes from one of 
 agonised tension to one of supreme relief. A shadow 
 of sadness may overcast it, as a sign of sympathy with 
 the bereaved, but this sympathy will be a secondary, 
 not a primary, fact. It will be a surviving emanation 
 from the pangs of personal anxiety which a few moments 
 ago had been undergone by self. 
 
EQUALITY AND ITS INCIDENTS 295 
 
 In the same way, with regard to material welfare or 
 income, a man's solicitude for self is not a miniature 
 deduction from an antecedent solicitude for the equal 
 welfare of all. A solicitude for the welfare of all, so far 
 as regards income, is an enlargement partly rational, 
 partly emotional also, of an antecedent solicitude for his 
 own. The enlargement is rational because in no com- 
 munity are the material conditions of any one unit iso- 
 lated. It is emotional because a certain good will towards 
 his fellow-citizens generally, a compassion for extreme 
 distress, and a preferential affection for his own chosen 
 associates are for each unit essential to those pleasures of 
 social intercourse, without which life would have few, if 
 any, pleasures at all. But an interest of this kind in the 
 affairs or incomes of others has nothing to do with any 
 quasi-religious belief for this is what the sentiment 
 which socialists postulate comes to that nobody can 
 be happy, let his income be what it may, unless every- 
 body else has an income of precisely the same amount. 
 If a man, in view of what he takes to be his own needs 
 and abilities, should judge that six hundred a year was 
 a proper income for himself, he might well wish that 
 everybody was rich enough to escape privation; but his 
 judgment as to his own income will not even tend to 
 enlarge itself into a passionate conviction that nobody 
 should earn either less or more. It would certainly not 
 stimulate him and this is the important point to 
 strain himself in producing a thousand pounds instead 
 of a bare six hundred, merely for the sake of securing 
 a certain objective symmetry by handing over four 
 hundred pounds to a neighbour who was earning a 
 substantial income of two hundred pounds already. 
 
 The simple fact is that, except in the case of persons 
 of a quasi-monastic temperament who regard equality 
 as a sort of religious discipline, equality as such, and for 
 its own sake, is a thing desired by nobody; and if we 
 ask why, as an ideal object of endeavour, equality 
 appeals so readily to the imagination of multitudes, the 
 answer is this : that it is, by those who desire it, not 
 desired for its own sake at all, but is desired because, in 
 the mind of this man or of that, it happens to be 
 associated with one or other of certain incidental results, 
 
296 LIMITS OF PURE DEMOCRACY 
 
 which are generically different from itself. Let us sup- 
 pose, for example, that ten shipwrecked men are waiting 
 for rescue which will take many days to reach them, 
 their sole provisions, meanwhile, being bread which is 
 just sufficient to keep life in their bodies until the rescue 
 comes. Such men will no doubt insist that the bread 
 shall be allotted to all in absolutely equal proportions, 
 but they will not do so because they all wish for equality. 
 They will do so because, by accident, equality is for the 
 time identified with escape from death. Apart from 
 exceptional and extreme cases like this, an equalisation 
 of incomes would, if the forces of production were not 
 generally crippled by it, have two incidental results, 
 each of which two would appeal to men of a very 
 common type. One of these results would appeal to 
 the man temperamentally idle, by ensuring that the 
 worst work was as well paid as the best. The other 
 would appeal to the man temperamentally jealous, by 
 making him feel secure that, whatever he got himself, 
 no detested superior would affront him by getting more. 
 
 As to these incidental results of artificial equality, it 
 might to many people seem enough to observe that the 
 sentiments of idleness and jealousy hardly make up 
 between, them that passion for equality as such, which 
 the logic of s6cialism postulates as the great motive to 
 labour, and which it also presents to the world as the 
 apotheosis of brotherly love; but this obvious criticism 
 does but touch the surface, not the root, of the matter. 
 The fundamental fact which requires to be noted is as 
 follows. 
 
 Though a system of equalised incomes might minister, 
 through its incidental results, to the self-interest of any 
 idle man or any jealous man individually, it would be 
 absolutely hostile to the self-interest even of the -idle or 
 the jealous as classes. It may be to the self-interest 
 of A, as a man temperamentally idle, that all incomes 
 should be equal, because such a system as this would 
 secure for him the maximum reward, though his own 
 contribution to the total were little or next to nothing, 
 as in that case it would be. But it would not be to 
 A's self-interest that a system of equality should prevail 
 which would have the same effect on the several con- 
 
THE IDLE AND THE JEALOUS 297 
 
 tributions of B, C and D ; for if work were generally 
 reduced to a minimum quantity like his own, there would 
 soon be next to nothing either for himself or for anybody 
 else. The socialist polity would, as Mr. Shaw admits, 
 die of corporate bankruptcy, which, in the case of all 
 socialist experiments, other than the quasi-monastic, is 
 precisely the thing it has done. Hence, since general 
 equality must be a general system or nothing, it is not 
 to the self-interest even of the idle that general equality 
 should exist ; and there can, even amongst the idle, be 
 no such thing as a corporate sentiment in favour of it. 
 
 The same observation applies to the equalisation of 
 incomes as a scheme whose incidental results would be 
 gratifying to the temperamentally jealous. Any jealous 
 man, taken singly, might well be pleased with a system 
 which would prevent super-competent men from getting, 
 through their exceptional talents, an income larger than 
 his own; but jealous men, as a body, would not be 
 pleased witji a system which, affecting all alike, would 
 prevent super-competent men from producing more than 
 the minimum they were likely to get; and would thus 
 reduce to a minimum the equal shares assignable to the 
 jealous men themselves. 
 
 The socialist supposition that a scheme of equalised 
 incomes, unless incomes stand for beggary, can be 
 brought about by a sentiment in favour of equality for 
 its own sake is a mere psychological mare's nest. It is 
 an absurdity of a double kind. In the first place, equality 
 for its own sake, as an object of practical endeavour, 
 is a thing of no interest to anybody. In the second 
 place, though the most obvious of the immediately 
 incidental results of it might be gratifying to each idle 
 and each jealous man individually who looked upon 
 these as embodied in himself alone, they would be fatal 
 to the expectations of each man the moment they were 
 embodied in all. In a word, to repeat what has been 
 said in a previous chapter, equality of reward irrespec- 
 tive of unequal work, whilst promising that the many, 
 no matter how little they were able to produce, or were 
 willing to produce, for themselves, should all be financed 
 into affluence out of the products of the super-competent 
 few, would deprive the few of every conceivable motive 
 
298 LIMITS OF PURE DEMOCRACY 
 
 which could prompt them to produce the fund from 
 which the affluence of the many was to be drawn. 
 
 Such, then, being the radical errors which, due to an 
 inverted psychology, render all the social conditions 
 promised and projected by formal socialism absurd, let 
 us now go back to those conditions which have here 
 been set forth at length as conditions which, demanded 
 alike by common sense and justice, the absurdities of 
 socialism indicate even in the very act of obscuring 
 them. 
 
 Of such conditions the first and it is for practical 
 purposes the basis of all the others is one which relates 
 to wages, these being considered in respect, not of their 
 absolute amount which will differ in different cases, but 
 of the elements of which, in every case, the ideal wage 
 is composed. The essential feature of the ideal wage 
 the wage demanded alike by common sense and by 
 justice is, it has been said, this : that it represents a 
 value in excess of the value of the personal product of 
 the wage-earner, the excess being provided out of the 
 product the production of which is contingent on the 
 directive ability of the employer. Now this contention 
 is, in a certain sense, identical with the socialist promise 
 that, under a system of socialism, the many shall live 
 very largely on the efforts of the super-competent few, 
 which promise has been here held up to ridicule as the 
 crowning absurdity of the whole socialist programme. 
 Why, then, is the ideal wage, as here described, rational, 
 if the ideal income, as it figures in the socialist pro- 
 gramme, is absurd ? 
 
 The answer is that, whereas the socialist programme 
 disregards or annihilates those motives of self-interest 
 by which all productive work in the actual world is 
 animated, the ideal wage, which has here been described 
 as rational, appeals to such motives in a way which is at 
 once the most precise and the most comprehensive 
 possible. By substituting for a maximum income assign- 
 able to all alike a minimum wage assignable to the 
 workers of least efficiency, and by making this minimum 
 contingent on honest work, a guarantee is provided that 
 the workers of least efficiency shall persistently do their 
 best, whatever that best may be. By including in this 
 
EFFORT AND SELF-INTEREST 299 
 
 minimum a large possibly the larger part of it, an 
 element produced by the efforts, not of the wage-earner 
 himself, but of the employer whose mind directs him, 
 the stability of the system is secured of which the direct- 
 ing employers are the head. The fact that, according 
 to the scheme here set forth as rational, all work (that 
 of the employers included) which exceeds in value the 
 work of the wage-earners of least efficiency, shall, what- 
 ever the excess may be, receive rewards which exceed 
 the minimum wage proportionally, will constitute a 
 stimulus to every higher efficiency, as measured by its 
 results, from the minimum standard upwards. 
 
 Finally, as to the surrender which the greater, and 
 especially the greatest, producers would have to make 
 of a portion of their own products for the purpose of 
 raising both the minimum and every wage to a total 
 greater than anything which the wage-earner could pro- 
 duce himself, this surrender, though absurd as it figures 
 in the programme of formal socialism, is, as a part of 
 the programme here described as rational, not an ab- 
 surdity, but a sound business transaction. As it figures 
 in the socialist programme, it is absurd for the simple 
 reason that it would, if viewed from the standpoint of 
 those who would have to make it, be surrender without 
 a motive, and would, if enforced by law, ensure that the 
 things surrendered should never be produced again. It 
 would give every man an interest in the utmost efficiency 
 of others, but would, at the same time, deprive every 
 man of the smallest interest in his own. The kind of 
 surrender here described as rational is rational because, 
 as made by the great employers, whilst still leaving them 
 with fortunes (not, indeed, equal, but proportional to 
 the magnitude of their own products), it would yield 
 them a quid pro quo something for themselves no less 
 important namely, the stability and solidarity of the 
 system on which their own fortunes depend. In other 
 words, whilst the promises and postulates of formal 
 socialism are absurdities, the conditions which, though 
 closely resembling these, are here described as rational, 
 are rational because they rest on a totally different 
 basis. The method by which they are reached is one 
 which, instead of deducing the material interests of the 
 
800 LIMITS OF PURE DEMOCRACY 
 
 individual from some fantastic vision of the united 
 interests of all, deduces a reasonable conception of the 
 united interests of all from its true psychological source 
 namely, the self-interest of the individual. 
 
 Here, then, we have the main material conditions 
 which, as the essentials of a sound and practicable polity, 
 socialism discredits by investing them with impracticable 
 forms, and placing them in impossible settings, but which 
 reason and sober justice at the present day demand. In 
 addition, moreover, to these material conditions, reason 
 and sober justice demand, as we have seen, certain moral 
 conditions also. One of these relates to the status of the 
 wage-earner as a man, the other to his status as a man 
 who, possessing or believing himself to be the possessor 
 of talents beyond the ordinary, demands the right to 
 rise. These latter conditions are more than rational 
 renderings of a something which, however obscurely, the 
 logic of socialism suggests. They are conditions which 
 the logic of socialism, if it means anything at all, posi- 
 tively and definitely excludes, thereby denying, little as 
 socialists recognise this, two of the main demands which 
 are really instinctive in the masses to whose passions 
 formal socialism addresses itself. 
 
 That such is the case with regard to the right to rise 
 is obvious. 
 
 It is less obviously, but no less truly, the case with 
 regard to that moral recognition which, it has here been 
 insisted, is due to the wage-earner as a man. Such a 
 recognition, it has been said, is, in the last analysis, a 
 recognition of each man's life even that of the com- 
 monest labourer with all its affections and all its possi- 
 bilities of pleasure, as an end in itself, like a statue 
 complete on its own pedestal. 1 But this is precisely 
 what the logic of socialism denies. It assumes, as we 
 have seen already, that the sole direct object of the 
 endeavours of the human unit is not to promote his own 
 welfare, bodily or spiritual, in any way, but is solely to 
 aid in the production of an aggregate of material equali- 
 
 1 Professor F. Nitti calls attention to the dictum of Hegel which, he 
 says, the German Socialists adopt as the basis of their social senti- 
 mentalism : " Man is beyond all doubt an end in himself, and should, 
 as such, be respected, not with regard to the State." 
 
GRADUATION AS A BASIC FACT 301 
 
 ties which are essentially external to himself, and merely 
 include his own lot by accident, as an insignificant and 
 barely distinguishable part of them. 
 
 That such is the case will be shown in greater detail 
 hereafter, when we shall have occasion to analyse the 
 curiously confused ideas which are associated by popular 
 thought with one common name, " The State." For the 
 moment it is enough to note that the moral conditions 
 here described as rational include, as integral parts of a 
 possible order of things, conditions which, coinciding 
 with the instinctive desires of mankind, the logic of 
 socialism rules out of existence. 
 
 Let us now consider the various conditions, mental 
 and moral, together, which have been here set forth as 
 representing whatever is vital and practicable either in 
 the concepts of formal socialism, or in those popular 
 desires which formal socialism ignores; and let us 
 consider how far these conditions, if fulfilled, would be 
 calculated to allay that widely diffused unrest of which 
 the promises of formal socialism may, despite their 
 absurdities, be seriously taken as a symptom, or a 
 vaguely tentative symbol. 
 
 In considering this matter, we must begin by once 
 more noting that the conditions in question are here set 
 forth as reasonable because they have as their basis two 
 general facts, one of which is now admitted by all serious 
 socialists themselves, whilst the other is attested by the 
 demands of the democratic spirit whenever men, and the 
 wage-earners more especially, express them in terms of 
 what the masses really feel. 
 
 The first of these facts that admitted by modern 
 socialists themselves, or by those, at all events, who 
 claim to be serious thinkers is that efficient production 
 the kind of production which they postulate as the 
 basis of their ideal polity involves the interaction of 
 workers of whom a few are productive to a degree 
 incomparably greater than others, whilst the various 
 degrees of productivity between the highest and the 
 lowest are numerous. The second fact is this. What- 
 ever socialists may foolishly say to the contrary, the 
 natural and real demand of workers of all classes, more 
 especially the skilled wage-earners, is that men shall get 
 

 302 LIMITS OF PURE DEMOCRACY 
 
 and keep, and be protected in getting and keeping, a 
 wage or reward in proportion to what they produce. 
 We may, therefore, assume as given, and not open to 
 dispute, the general fact that, in any satisfactory polity, 
 the scheme of distribution will be not equal but gradu- 
 ated, and that some men consequently will, in an abso- 
 lute sense, have a larger interest in the total product 
 than others. Hence, the crucial problem is how to 
 adjust these interests so that all parties may feel that 
 relatively, if not absolutely, their various interests are 
 equal, that all their interests rise and fall together, and 
 their various lots in life may, from the simplest upwards, 
 be severally the best which the nature of things makes 
 possible. 
 
 Such being the desired end, the conditions here set 
 forth as the practicable means of securing it may be 
 restated as follows. 
 
 First comes a minimum wage for the workers of least 
 efficiency, far in excess of anything which, as a body of 
 self-directed equals, the recipients could produce for 
 themselves, this condition being taken as carrying with 
 it an assured continuity of the work on which the 
 earning of the wage depends. 
 
 Secondly, for all whose efficiency exceeds the minimum 
 comes a wage which exceeds the minimum wage in 
 exactly the same proportion ; this condition being taken 
 as carrying with it a provision for exceptional talent 
 of encouragement to develop, and adequate opportuni- 
 ties of applying, itself. 
 
 Thirdly comes a respect on the part of the employing 
 class for the wage-earner, not merely as an industrial 
 implement, but as a man a being whose life has an 
 absolute value in itself, and is therefore a type of the 
 values in which all human effort and human existence 
 culminate. 
 
 If, then, we assume that these conditions are realised, 
 is there any reason for doubting that, as a matter of 
 theory at all events, the masses of mankind, even those 
 whose present "unrest" is most conspicuous, would 
 accept these conditions with contentment, in the sense 
 that, as practical men, they could not, if asked to do 
 so, formulate or devise better ? 
 
GRADUATION AND CONTENT 303 
 
 As a matter of theory, we may say that these con- 
 ditions would fulfil, if established, everything within the 
 limits of the possible which the victims of contemporary 
 " unrest " are endeavouring to visualise in their dreams ; 
 but the meaning of the qualifying phrase, "as a matter 
 of theory," is this. The conditions here in question 
 have been contrasted with the ideals of formal socialism, 
 not because the former are susceptible of more complete 
 fulfilment than the latter (for few ideals, if any, can 
 ever be fulfilled completely), but because the more nearly 
 the ideal conditions here in question are approached, 
 the more nearly do the actual conditions achieved coin- 
 cide with the actual facts of human motive and the 
 varieties of human capacity, whereas the more nearly 
 we approach a realisation of the ideals of socialism, the 
 farther should we leave actual facts behind us, and the 
 more completely would the whole structure collapse. 
 The true ideal of a carriage-wheel is, for instance, a 
 circle. No actual carriage- wheel is a circle absolutely 
 perfect, but the more nearly it is circular the better will 
 it perform its purpose. On the other hand, if we start 
 with assuming and such a procedure would be com- 
 parable to that of the socialists that the form of the 
 ideal wheel is not circular but oval, the more nearly we 
 realised such an ideal as this, the more impossible, for 
 practical purposes, would our actual wheels become. 
 
 With regard, however, to the social conditions which 
 are here described as consonant, in idea or principle, 
 with the concrete facts of life, the question still remains 
 of how near an approach to these conditions is feasible. 
 The idea of a piston and a cylinder was as perfect in the 
 mind of Watt when he made his earliest steam-engines 
 as it ever has been in the mind of any engineer since; 
 but the earlier engines of Watt were very imperfect 
 implements, owing to the extreme difficulty encountered 
 by himself and his workmen in adjusting one of these 
 parts with sufficient accuracy to the other. In the social 
 ideals with which we are here concerned, is there any 
 similar difficulty which would render impossible an 
 approach to them sufficiently near to produce the content 
 and harmony which would otherwise be their natural 
 consequences ? And the answer to this question is as 
 
304 LIMITS OF PURE DEMOCRACY 
 
 follows. Whilst none of these conditions are capable 
 of being realised completely, they are all capable of 
 being realised to a degree quite sufficient to change the 
 popular mood from one of unrest and of protest against 
 the established order generally to one in which a reason- 
 able content shall be at least the prevailing element; 
 but even this consummation is beset by certain diffi- 
 culties, which, in order to overcome or remove them, 
 must be clearly faced and recognised. 
 
 These difficulties are of two kinds those which are 
 primarily objective, material, or economic, and those 
 which are primarily subjective or moral. They are so 
 far distinct from one another that each must be con- 
 sidered separately. 
 
CHAPTER II 
 
 OBJECTIVE DIFFICULTIES 
 
 THE objective difficulties just mentioned are all ex- 
 emplified in connection with the minimum wage, and, 
 although they are not confined to it, it is in connection 
 with the minimum wage that they are exemplified most 
 clearly. 
 
 The first and most obvious of such difficulties is this. 
 The whole scheme of wages which, having as its basis 
 or starting-point a satisfactory minimum, has here been 
 represented as calculated to produce content, must, it 
 has been said, carry one condition along with it. Every 
 wage must, from the minimum upwards, be contingent 
 on the exercise, by such persons as claim it, of the best 
 efficiencies they possess; and for indolence, for careless- 
 ness, or for want of prompt obedience there must always 
 lurk in the background some curtailment of the wage 
 which would otherwise be the worker's due. By workers 
 of special skill this species of penalty need not be felt 
 as any serious hardship. They might, indeed, find occa- 
 sionally that the pleasures of partial idleness were well 
 worth some loss in money. But for the average worker, 
 who would normally earn the minimum, any such loss 
 through indolence would, if frequent, be a very much 
 graver matter. It would soon mean substantial incon- 
 venience, then galling privation ; and only a renewal of 
 diligence would at last save him from destitution. This 
 possibility of destitution is one of the primary conditions 
 against which Mr. Shaw informs us that the sentiment 
 of socialism protests. One of the favourite themes, 
 indeed, of all socialist orators is the fact, which they 
 describe as terrible, that for the great mass of the 
 workers of the modern world nothing but a week's 
 wages stands between them and famine. In a general 
 sense this may be true enough ; but it is not true of the 
 
 305 
 
 
306 LIMITS OF PURE DEMOCRACY 
 
 wage-earners, or of the modern world only. In a general 
 sense it is true of the whole human race. It always has 
 been true, and to the end of time it will be. A small 
 minority of men in highly civilised countries may enjoy 
 what is called "an independence" by having created 
 for themselves in the past, or else by having inherited 
 from their fathers, certain permanent things the use of 
 which assists the productive efforts of others, and for 
 which use those who use them pay a certain price to the 
 owners. But such owners are exceptions; and if all 
 their possessions were distributed amongst the working 
 mass, the plight of the mass would in this respect be 
 just what it was before. All the capital of the world 
 might be divided in equal shares amongst everybody; 
 but if the human race at large did no work for a week, 
 everybody at the end of a week would be either dead or 
 dying. The capital of the world may be compared to 
 so many million spades, and the masses of mankind to 
 cultivators. If one man owned all the spades, and let 
 them out to the cultivators at a shilling a year for each, 
 this one man, without working, might have a colossal 
 income of many million pounds; but if the spade of 
 every cultivator suddenly became his own, every culti- 
 vator would, if he were not prepared to starve, have to 
 go on with his digging just as he did before. No indi- 
 vidual would join his fellows in working unless want 
 or pain of some sort lay in wait for him if he failed to 
 do so. Thus no minimum wage, however ample its 
 amount, could prevent men from being miserable who 
 were not willing to work for it. Even socialists them- 
 selves, as Mr. Shaw bears witness, admit that this is 
 true in principle, and can only propose to mend matters 
 by visiting wilful idleness, not with want, but with the 
 whip. No conceivable constitution, political, economic 
 or social, could ensure content for everybody; but by 
 making the material conditions of a healthy life acces- 
 sible to every plain man who is honestly willing to work 
 for them, the material bases of content would be pro- 
 vided for an overwhelming majority, and nobody in his 
 senses could demand or hope for more. 
 
 So much, then, for the first material difficulty which 
 would stand in the way of rendering our ideal conditions 
 
SECURITY OF LIVELIHOOD 307 
 
 complete. The second arises in connection, not with 
 the perversities of men temperamentally idle, but with 
 an assured provision of suitable work for the industrious. 
 This provision, which means an assured continuity of 
 wages, is a matter no less important than that which 
 assures their quantity ; for if quantity means the enjoy- 
 ment of superfluous plenty in the present, continuity 
 means freedom from something even more fatal to happi- 
 ness than a lessening of present plenty that is to say, 
 anxiety as regards the future. 
 
 Now, as has been said already, could such a provision 
 of continuous work be complete, it would be equal to 
 a re-diffusion of industrial property generally. A 
 peasant, let us say, who by cultivating his own plot has 
 been making an income of 30 a year, sells his plot to 
 some scientific farmer, and by working under his direc- 
 tion earns, let us say, an annual wage of 60. His 
 income, whilst it lasts, is doubled, but he is no longer, 
 as he once was, master of the means of earning it. He 
 is no longer master of the means of earning any income 
 at all. But 'if he had the right of earning such a 
 doubled income continuously in one way or another, 
 even though this particular farmer should some day 
 have to dismiss him, he would be no less secure of access 
 to the means of an undiminished livelihood than he was 
 when the plot which he once cultivated was his own. 
 If a skilled engineer, earning 3 a week in a factory, 
 had a similar right to exercise his skill somewhere and 
 get for it the same payment, though this particular 
 factory was compelled to close its doors, his position 
 would be as secure as it would have been if, as a village 
 blacksmith, he were earning half that sum by blowing 
 his own bellows under the shade of his own chestnut 
 tree. Indeed, if we assume that, at any given time, 
 all the wage-workers in a great manufacturing country 
 are provided by the employers with work which is paid 
 for in proportion to its full value, and if we suppose, 
 further, that this state of things is permanent, security 
 would be self-established. There would be no need to 
 guarantee it. 
 
 The possibilities of insecurity, apart from those due 
 to sickness, can arise only from one or other of two 
 
 
308 LIMITS OF PURE DEMOCRACY 
 
 things either that the population increases whilst the 
 opportunities of work remain stationary, or that whilst 
 the population is stationary the demand for work de- 
 clines. In either case the result would be unemploy- 
 ment, unless certain businesses already prosperous could 
 be multiplied, or businesses which were naturally de- 
 clining could be artificially kept alive, or new businesses 
 created of kinds unknown before by which the declining 
 businesses might be replaced. 
 
 Now let it be said again that in countries sparsely 
 occupied, and sufficiently rich in cultivable lands and 
 pasture (such, for example, as New Zealand, with an 
 area equal to that of England and Scotland, and a 
 population equal to that of Glasgow), the first of these 
 feats namely, a multiplication of businesses already 
 prosperous would be easy. Every new family could, 
 as the population increased, be provided with a new 
 farm, and thus enabled to supply itself with the primary 
 needs of life. But in any country which is already so 
 thickly peopled that its inhabitants need more food- 
 more bread, more meat, more milk than all their acres 
 can yield them in response to their utmost labour, 
 certain of the inhabitants are already dependent for 
 their very lives on the manufacture of goods exclusively 
 designed for export. That is to say, every crust of 
 bread they eat is the product of other nations, and it 
 comes to them only in return for certain products of 
 their own such as coal, dyed fabrics, lace trimmings, 
 machinery which the food-producing nations want, but 
 cannot, or cannot as yet, produce so well for them- 
 selves. If, then, the foreign demand for the manu- 
 factures of such a country declines, this will mean that 
 the goods which it manufactures for export are failing 
 to satisfy the desires of the food-producing countries 
 any longer. The continued production of them would 
 be so much labour lost; and if, for the benefit of those 
 who have hitherto lived by producing them, new indus- 
 tries are to be created by which they may live still, the 
 goods which these industries produce must be goods of 
 a novel character, devised by inventive genius, not to 
 supply the wants of the home consumer, but to stimulate 
 or captivate afresh the alienated appetite of the foreign, 
 
THE PROBLEM OF ASSURED WORK 309 
 
 so that the latter may be willing to give food in return 
 for them. 
 
 By many foolish sentimentalists this fact and its con- 
 sequences are altogether forgotten. Such persons are 
 accustomed to argue that no country, equipped with the 
 modern mechanisms of production, need necessarily 
 suffer from any lack of employment so long as one 
 cottage remained in it for labour to improve and 
 amplify, or one poor man who would be the better for 
 a new suit of Sunday clothes. But this argument 
 ignores the entire crux of the situation. In any country 
 which cannot, by means of its own agriculture, provide 
 food, let us say, for more than a half of its population, 
 the primary meaning of unemployment due to a decline 
 in exports is, for the unemployed, this, that no employ- 
 ment, as matters stand, is open to them, the prosecution 
 of which will procure for them imported food. Such 
 food is the first necessity; for mere employment, as 
 such, is nothing more than a name if it does not, before 
 all things else, enable the employed to eat. If thou- 
 sands of English workers had hitherto made their living 
 by producing cloth of some special tint for America, and 
 getting bread and meat in return for it, and if the 
 Americans come to want this cloth no longer because 
 they could get a cloth which they liked better from Ger- 
 many, how would the English unemployed be profited 
 should some socialist sage tell them that, instead of 
 working to get food from America, they might make any 
 number of things, which were not food, for themselves ? 
 To such a consoler men in this plight would answer, " We 
 ask you for beef, and you tell us to enlarge our kitchens. 
 We ask you for bread, for tea ; and what you offer is 
 a double supply of trousers." 
 
 However a state such as that of England was organ- 
 ised whether production was controlled, as now, by 
 many private employers, or, as socialists propose, by 
 the directors of a great national trust, the crucial diffi- 
 culty would in this case be the same. The directors 
 would have to devise, by an exercise of the constructive 
 imagination, a variety of new commodities, together 
 with the machinery for making them, which commodi- 
 ties would so titillate the fancy of food-producing 
 
310 LIMITS OF PURE DEMOCRACY 
 
 workers in America or elsewhere that they would, for 
 the sake of securing them, be willing to send food to 
 England which English workers could not produce at 
 home. 
 
 Here we have a task which, in England or in any 
 country whose home-grown foodstuffs cannot keep pace 
 with the population, might any day prove impossible; 
 and no scheme of insurance no contrivance for pro- 
 viding continuous work for all could, under all circum- 
 stances, render its achievement certain. Thus, except 
 in such countries as have within their own borders 
 reserves of agricultural land which are still waiting to 
 be developed as the needs of the population demand, 
 assured continuity of work for wage-earners of all 
 capacities can at best be only partial. But this is true, 
 not of the wage-earners only ; it is true of the employers 
 also. No particular business or class of businesses, 
 however great, or however flourishing to-day, could by 
 any system of insurance be rendered secure in per- 
 petuity. Unemployment and ruin, so far as their 
 present occupations are concerned, would always be 
 possible for masters and men alike. Of all occupations, 
 the most indestructible is agriculture, which can never 
 perish so long as mankind endures. It may, however, 
 dwindle in this or in that locality; and of other 
 businesses even the greatest may be locally, or even 
 universally, destroyed. What system of insurance could 
 have secured perennial prosperity for the owners of 
 stage coaches when once the railway had begun to outdo 
 the road ? What system of insurance could possibly 
 perpetuate the fortunes of the Standard Oil Trust when, 
 as will probably happen before the end of the twentieth 
 century, not a well in all America has a drop of petrol 
 left in it ? But beyond the inherent insecurity of indi- 
 vidual businesses there always lies an insecurity of a 
 more comprehensive kind. This is the insecurity of 
 the corporate fortunes of States. What system of 
 insurance could have rendered the trade perpetual which 
 enriched Venice and Florence when the Doges wedded the 
 Adriatic, and the Pitti Palace was the home of a private 
 citizen ? 
 
 Complete security, then, either for wages or profits, 
 
ALL WEALTH PRECARIOUS 311 
 
 or even security from the effects of all recurring vicissi- 
 tudes, is no less impossible for the individual wage-earner 
 than it is for the individual employer. It is no less 
 impossible for the employer than it is for the State or 
 nation, and a recognition of this fact is very necessary 
 as an antidote to a certain childish idea with which 
 sentimentalists are apt to besot themselves. Thus a 
 writer, in many ways remarkable for sound judgment, 
 has observed, with regard to England, that "we (the 
 English) have given, it may be, too much thought to 
 wealth that we should, on the whole, be happier and 
 better men if we had less wealth, and more open air 
 and elbow-room; but we have," he proceeds, "got the 
 wealth. Here it is as a fact, and our business is to make 
 the best use we can of it." Persons who use such 
 language as this are living in a land of dreams. To their 
 eyes the wealth of a country like modern England 
 resembles a marble column, which will stand up erect 
 for ever when once placed on its pedestal. What it 
 really resembles is a column of water forced into the air 
 by the action of complex and unresting mechanisms 
 mechanisms which a careless or hostile blow might dis- 
 locate, and any dislocation of which would cause the 
 column to collapse. All modern wealth, in short, in 
 proportion as it is great is essentially artificial and pre- 
 carious. This must never be forgotten. So long, how- 
 ever, as in any given country such wealth lasts so long 
 as it exhibits no serious symptoms of a decline likely to 
 be permanent, or of any permanent failure to keep pace 
 with the population, and so long as it is subject only to 
 local and temporary fluctuations assurance for the 
 wage-earners that opportunities of work shall be con- 
 tinuous is a condition which, unlike the fantastic ideals 
 of socialism, is capable of being practically approached 
 to the advantage of all parties, and the disadvantage 
 of none. It is capable of being approached in the large, 
 if limited, sense, that wages might, by some system of 
 insurance, be rendered not less secure than the profits 
 of the employers, if the employers are taken as a whole, 
 and more secure than the profits of any one employer 
 individually. 
 
 If we start, then, with a scheme of wages which are, 
 
312 LIMITS OF PURE DEMOCRACY 
 
 from the minimum upwards, largely in excess of any- 
 thing which the wage-earners could produce for them- 
 selves by their own faculties only, we may go on to say 
 that assured opportunities of earning them, and a con- 
 sequent security of livelihood for the household of every 
 willing worker, are conditions susceptible of being estab- 
 lished, if not with absolute completeness, yet at all 
 events with a completeness sufficient, so far as material 
 things are concerned, to render the wage-earner's lot, 
 under a system of industrial oligarchy, incomparably 
 ampler, and at the same time more secure, than it could 
 be under any other. Further, if to these material con- 
 ditions we add the provision of opportunities for excep- 
 tional talent to develop itself and achieve for its 
 possessors rewards in the way of wages and status which 
 are commensurate with its proved value ; and, finally, 
 if we add to this a recognition of the life of each man as 
 a moral end in itself, and deserving of respect and sym- 
 pathetic consideration accordingly, we may say of such 
 conditions that the natural tendency of the great ma- 
 jority of men would, if no difficulty exists which has not 
 yet been taken into account, be to accept them with 
 instinctive acquiescence, not as perfect, yet, at all 
 events, as the best possible. 
 
 A difficulty, however, does exist, or rather two diffi- 
 culties, both of them purely mental, by which, if not 
 removed, the development of such acquiescence, natural 
 otherwise, would be impeded. We will now go on to 
 consider what these difficulties are. 
 
CHAPTER III 
 
 SUBJECTIVE DIFFICULTIES 
 
 MANY of the bitterest resentments of which human 
 beings are conscious have their origin in ideas, not in 
 facts as known to them by direct experience; and the 
 primary cause of that discontent or unrest so widely 
 prevalent amongst the wage-earners of the modern world 
 is essentially an idea, which agitators, since the days of 
 Marx, have made it their business to disseminate. This 
 is the idea that wages, whatever their amount may be, 
 never represent in full the value of the work which the 
 wage-earner has himself performed. Thus, whether his 
 wages be absolutely large or small, he is taught to feel 
 that he is being cheated, even though he may not feel 
 that he is being starved. So long as a fixed idea of this 
 kind possesses him, no conditions will content him with 
 which the employer is associated. However advan- 
 tageous otherwise such conditions may seem to be, he 
 will look on them as so many devices for distracting his 
 attention from the thefts of which he is the constant 
 victim. If, however, wages should be such that, uni- 
 versally and beyond dispute, they represent not less 
 than the worth of his work, but more, all ground for 
 pre-condemning his conditions generally would be gone ; 
 and if only one other condition were added, he would be 
 in a position to appraise them fairly in accordance with 
 their true value. The other condition is that, not only 
 his wages shall be worth more than his own work, but 
 that this fact shall be also clearly known by himself; 
 and the question is, How shall he be made to know it ? 
 
 Here is one difficulty, but it does not stand alone. 
 Let us suppose that this is surmounted. Let us suppose 
 the typical wage-earner to be fully convinced that, as 
 a matter of objective fact, his own wage (we will say 
 
 313 
 
314 LIMITS OF PURE DEMOCRACY 
 
 the recognised minimum) is actually greater than the 
 value of what he himself produces, that it is the largest 
 wage which, for a man like himself, is practicable, and 
 that he would not gain, but would lose, by any revolu- 
 tionary change. It is, however, one thing for a man 
 to accept a principle as such, and quite another to be 
 satisfied with its particular application to himself. A 
 man, for example, arriving late at a restaurant, may 
 accept, without actual protest, the best bit of fish that 
 is left; but if, having dreamed of salmon, he has to put 
 up with a sprat, he might not be the better inclined to 
 think the sprat delicious by learning that there was on 
 the premises no other fish but an eel. With regard to 
 any given wage, and a minimum wage especially, men of 
 a certain temper might find themselves in the same pre- 
 dicament. They might know such a wage to be the 
 largest that was for themselves possible, and yet, if it 
 failed to provide them with as much as their imagina- 
 tions demanded, this knowledge, instead of allaying 
 their discontent, might embitter it. 
 
 Now, an impracticable mood of this kind, known by 
 its victims to be impracticable, might, if things were 
 left to take their natural course, remain a disease 
 peculiar to a naturally morbid few; but amongst the 
 very conditions which have here been specified as 
 essential to a sane content is one by which this disease 
 might be artificially propagated. The condition here 
 in question is the provision of special opportunities, 
 firstly for the educational development, and subse- 
 quently for the practical exercise of exceptional talent, 
 wherever such talent may exist a provision which 
 would not only recognise the claims of ambitious pas- 
 sion, but would also tend to act as a standing means 
 of inflaming it. The very idea of equal opportunity 
 every argument advanced in support of it is an appeal 
 to the spirit, not of content, but of discontent. It does 
 not, indeed, involve the suggestion that a given mini- 
 mum wage, or any given wage in excess of it, is other- 
 wise than sufficient for a large number of people. On 
 the contrary, a minimum with which large classes must 
 content themselves is practically its first assumption. 
 The idea of equalised opportunity is an idea which makes 
 
INDIVIDUAL AMBITION 315 
 
 its appeal, not to any class as a whole, but to each of 
 the units who compose the class; and beginning with 
 those who at any time happen to earn the minimum, 
 what it says to each in a quasi- whisper is this: "The 
 minimum represents a lot which ought to content the 
 great mass of your fellows ; but, in this way or in that, 
 your efficiency is appreciably greater than theirs. The 
 lot which contents them ought not to content you! 
 and your one object should be, by hook or by crook, 
 to escape from it." 
 
 Now, so far as men are concerned who, ambitious of 
 ampler fortunes than those which were theirs at starting, 
 actually possess the abilities by which these ampler 
 fortunes can be created, the individual ambitions which 
 it is the object of equalised opportunity to inflame are 
 forces of triple utility. They bring content through 
 their results to the ablest of the citizens themselves. 
 They promote general content by demonstrating to the 
 citizens generally that all effective effort is sure of its 
 due reward; and, finally, such ambitions are so many 
 contributions to the forces industrial, military or in- 
 tellectual on which the wealth, the security and the 
 civilisation of any complex modern State depend. 
 
 But ambition, when unaccompanied by commensurate 
 powers of achievement, is a malady fatal to the peace 
 of the ambitious men themselves, and injurious to the 
 society of which they form a part. If the son of a 
 ploughman should possess a potential genius which 
 would, if developed, and applied by him as a great 
 director of agriculture, enable the soil of his country to 
 double its yield of corn, to encourage in a man like this 
 the hope of exchanging his father's cottage for a palace 
 would be not only to satisfy the desires of the man 
 himself ; it would be, at the same time, to confer on his 
 country a benefit which no private fortune, however 
 large, could repay. But to encourage similar hopes in 
 the sons of all ploughmen indiscriminately would merely 
 cause them to look down with contempt on a lot which 
 they could not better, which they would else have ac- 
 cepted as natural, and which must, moreover, be always 
 the lot of a considerable portion of mankind. The in- 
 discriminate stimulation of ambition, in the case of nine 
 
316 LIMITS OF PURE DEMOCRACY 
 
 men out of ten, would be to blight their lives with a 
 purely artificial disappointment, and to stigmatise with 
 the sign of failure half the necessary occupations of the 
 world. 
 
 If, then, we assume a system of wages to be estab- 
 lished which, regard being had to the total product of a 
 nation, and to the inequalities of the productive units, 
 represents for the wage-earners generally the amplest 
 material conditions which are for them, in their several 
 degrees, possible, these material conditions must, if they 
 are to produce content, be accompanied by two others, 
 which are non-material or subjective. One is a certain 
 knowledge on the part of the wage-earners generally 
 with regard to the facts and forces which the industrial 
 system embodies, and on which the extent and limits 
 of its productive power depends. The other is a moral 
 adjustment by the wage-earners, whether as groups or 
 as individuals, of their several desires or expectations 
 to the best lot which is possible in each particular case. 
 And here we come to the question of how these two 
 essentially subjective conditions namely, a knowledge 
 of certain objective facts, and an adjustment of expecta- 
 tions to circumstances are to be secured. 
 
 The general answer to this question is obvious. They 
 must be secured, if they can be secured at all, by certain 
 processes of education; and these will be of two kinds. 
 One process will be that of imparting knowledge, which 
 is very largely statistical, whilst all of it relates to 
 matters of a kind more or less precise. The other, 
 which may seem more difficult because it is more vague, 
 may be described as a training of the imagination. 
 
 Of these two educational processes, let us consider the 
 process of instruction as to definite facts first. 
 
 The general character of the facts with which such 
 instruction would concern itself may be indicated by 
 a few examples. 
 
 The first question which the typical wage-earner will 
 be inclined to ask is this : "By what primary conditions 
 is the wage which I earn, or am likely to earn, limited ? " 
 If we suppose this question to have been put by a citizen 
 of the United Kingdom at the beginning of the twentieth 
 century, the facts which would have to be imparted to 
 
EXAGGERATED EXPECTATIONS 317 
 
 him as the basis of a rational answer would, before all 
 others, be these : The total product, or income, of the 
 United Kingdom at the time, together with the income 
 per inhabitant which this total represents. Then, for 
 purposes of comparison, would come similar facts re- 
 lating to other countries, and to the United Kingdom 
 itself at other periods of a more or less recent past. A 
 knowledge of such outstanding facts would put him in 
 a position to appreciate one which he would readily 
 recognise as bearing on his own situation. This is the 
 fact that, at the beginning of the twentieth century, the 
 actual average wage of the workers of the United King- 
 dom was incomparably greater than that which in many 
 European countries, and even in the United Kingdom 
 itself a couple of generations earlier, could have fallen 
 to the lot of any body had the total income of such 
 countries been divided equally amongst all. 
 
 A knowledge of facts like these would enable him 
 to appreciate another namely, that so many workers of 
 average capacity being given, their possibilities of ma- 
 terial welfare vary in accordance with conditions which 
 are altogether external to themselves. He would recog- 
 nise this fact as one which demands explanation; and 
 his mind would be open to an understanding of what 
 these conditions are such, for example, as the applica- 
 tion, more or less comprehensive, of the exceptional 
 talents of the few to the task of directing the co-operative 
 efforts of the many. 
 
 Further, in the case of such countries as the United 
 Kingdom, the United States and Prussia, the statistical 
 records of which are sufficiently exact for the purpose, 
 definite information might be given him as to index 
 facts such as the following : the total of the wages and 
 salaries of the workers employed by masters, the earn- 
 ings of independent workers like small shopkeepers and 
 professional men on the one hand, and of the larger 
 employers and of the rich generally on the other. 1 And 
 
 1 The super-tax returns for the United Kingdom now give precise 
 information as to the number and aggregate amount of all groups of 
 incomes exceeding 3000. Many of the absurd ideas current with 
 regard to the rich would be reduced to sobriety by the dissemination of 
 definite knowledge as to these details. 
 
318 LIMITS OF PURE DEMOCRACY 
 
 to such outstanding facts there might, as occasion re- 
 quired, be added others which have constantly been 
 subjects of wild discussion for example, the amounts 
 of income which are severally represented by land-rent 
 taken as a whole, by the annual increment in the rental 
 value of building-sites, and the quasi-rent received by 
 the owners of coal and minerals. 
 
 It may be thought that any popular education with 
 regard to facts like these would fail to be effective for 
 the two following reasons. One is the likelihood that the 
 facts, however presented, would be denounced by many 
 as inaccurate, or at least as unfairly selected with the 
 object of suggesting conclusions desired by some one 
 party. The other reason is that, as a part of any possible 
 curriculum, an exposition of these facts would, for most 
 teachers, be difficult, and would therefore have little 
 influence on the tempers and opinions of the taught. 
 
 But there is ample evidence to show that neither of 
 these objections is valid. 
 
 In the first place, as to the facts themselves, there is a 
 very considerable number of them, and these of the 
 first importance, which, though not popularly known, 
 are recorded almost as accurately as the distance from 
 New York to Liverpool. Such, for example, are the 
 incomes of certain great countries; the number of per- 
 sons commonly called "the rich "; and the ratio of the 
 aggregate income of such persons to the whole. Such, 
 also, are the fractions of the whole which are represented 
 by land-rent, by "unearned increment," and by royal- 
 ties paid to owners in respect of minerals such as iron 
 ore and coal. Facts such as these, attested by direct 
 records, not by conjectures or estimates, would, if 
 generally known, constitute so many sign-posts, by 
 which popular thought and expectation would be warned 
 off from the regions of fantastic guess-work, and guided 
 at least in a more or less right direction. Nor need such 
 facts be too complex or numerous for an intelligent 
 teacher to communicate, or an average pupil to under- 
 stand. They need not be more complex or numerous 
 than the salient facts of geography which are taught, 
 and found generally intelligible in any national school. 
 They would enlighten a man's conception of the social 
 
STATISTICAL EDUCATION 319 
 
 possibilities of his life very much as the outlines shown 
 on a geographical chart enlighten his conceptions of his 
 own place on the globe. 
 
 If any one doubts whether a correct popular education 
 with regard to facts like these would tend to exert an 
 influence such as that which is here predicted, his doubts 
 may be set at rest by the demonstrative evidence of 
 history. He need merely consider the influence which, 
 with a contrary object, has constantly been, and is con- 
 stantly being exerted, by education, incorrect and dis- 
 torted, but otherwise of the same order. The earliest 
 Manifesto of the socialist party in England began with 
 the words, "Educate, Educate, Educate," and then 
 went on to explain that the great and primary fact which 
 a socialist education would have to bring home to the 
 people was the fact that the manual labourers the sole 
 and only begetters of all the wealth of the country 
 received only " three-thirteenths " of what they them- 
 selves produced. Socialists, indeed, from the days of 
 Marx onwards herein exhibiting the soundest practical 
 sense have recognised statistical education as the most 
 potent means of appealing to the passions which they 
 desire to rouse. 
 
 Let us take two signal examples. Of all the intel- 
 lectual leaders of the modern socialist movement, two 
 men a German Jew and a Californian stand out from 
 the rest in respect of their powers of exposition, and 
 of the world-wide influence they have exercised over the 
 tempers and the imagination of multitudes. One of 
 these is Marx himself, the other is Henry George; and, 
 apart from the merits of their exposition, which was 
 the mere vehicle or instrument of their teaching, the 
 teaching of each was influential for the sole and simple 
 reason that it culminated in a passionate insistence on 
 an alleged statistical fact. The alleged fact was this, 
 that, in every progressive country, the classes who pro- 
 duce all wealth are robbed of four-fifths or three-fourths 
 of their products by a class absolutely idle, and that 
 consequently the producers ought by rights to get from 
 three to four times as much as they actually get now. 
 The Marxian doctrine in this respect has been here 
 examined already, and even by serious socialists his 
 
320 LIMITS OF PURE DEMOCRACY 
 
 statistical arithmetic is now denounced as preposterous. 
 The Georgian argument, though leading to a like con- 
 clusion, differed from that of Marx in one important 
 particular. According to Marx, the robbers who re- 
 duced the masses to beggary were the owners of indus- 
 trial capital. According to George, the capitalists were 
 extremely respectable persons. The real criminals were 
 the landlords, who robbed, not only the productive 
 wage-earners, but the no less productive owners of 
 industrial capital along with them. This conclusion was 
 deduced by George from an assumption which was, 
 according to him, of universal validity, that in propor- 
 tion as the income of any country increases, the rent 
 of crude land, as distinct from the rent of improvements, 
 forms an ever-increasing fraction of the total, eating up 
 " the earnings of capital as well as the wages of labour," 
 until nothing is left for the majority but a residue just 
 sufficient for the bare support of life. Now if anything 
 in the world is capable of being proved by evidence, one 
 such thing as this : that the basic assumption on which 
 the whole fabric of George's reasoning rests is altogether 
 a delusion. In Great Britain, for example, which George 
 cited as the classical illustration of its truth, land-rent 
 has, as the national income increased, been a relatively 
 dwindling, not an increasing, fraction of it. At the 
 beginning of the nineteenth century it was 14 per cent, 
 of the total. A century later it was barely as much as 
 4 per cent. The Georgian proposition that in all pro- 
 gressive countries 75 or 80 per cent, of the entire national 
 product is stolen from the nation by a small group of 
 landlords is no more true than the Marxian proposition 
 that a similar fraction is stolen by a small group of 
 capitalists. 
 
 Emanating, as they do, from the two most important 
 thinkers who have moulded revolutionary thought in 
 the course of the nineteenth century, it is amusing to 
 note, with regard to these two propositions, not only that 
 both of them are contradicted by definitely ascertain- 
 able facts, but also that each proposition is a vehement 
 contradiction of the other. The point, however, which 
 mainly concerns us here is that Marx and George alike 
 exercised a profound and disturbing influence on the 
 
EFFECTS OF FALSE STATISTICS 321 
 
 judgment and temper of multitudes, and that they did 
 so by a process of education, the practical object and 
 the practical effect of which was to create a popular 
 belief in the actuality of an alleged statistical fact, the 
 alleged fact being in each case a preposterous falsehood. 
 To these signal illustrations it may be interesting to 
 add two others, on a smaller scale, but essentially the 
 same in kind. George's doctrine that land-rent in every 
 progressive country necessarily eats up most of any 
 growing national income, and that thus, in Great Britain 
 especially, the only rich people are the peers and the 
 country squires, has never been practically accepted 
 even by any radical government; but many years after 
 his death the British Government accepted two minor 
 doctrines implied in it, and won, by so doing, the frantic 
 applause of all its most extreme supporters. One of 
 these minor doctrines related, not to land-rent as a 
 whole, but to the annual increase of the rent of the sites 
 of urban buildings. The other related to the income, 
 derived in the form of royalties, from minerals, and more 
 particularly coal, which was described by an eloquent 
 statesman as the basic capital of the country. On both 
 these kinds of income on royalties and on " unearned 
 increment " the government determined to levy a 
 special duty; and both these kinds of income were 
 presented to the public imagination as quantities so 
 enormous that visions were rife everywhere of the 
 almost illimitable revenue which a tax on them would 
 extract from the rich for betterment of the population 
 generally. Both these kinds of income proved, in reality, 
 to be quantities so minute that the duty imposed 
 on them was hardly worth the trouble of collecting. 1 
 
 1 If any one year be taken between the years 1900 and 1915, the 
 portion of it which consisted of the unearned increment of site-values 
 was between one three-hundredth and one four-hundredth part of it 
 So much might have been easily discovered beforehand, by collating 
 the returns of the Commissioners of Inland Revenue with other kindred 
 evidences. The over-estimate of the total of mineral royalties was much 
 more pardonable. The then Chancellor of the Exchequer was right in 
 describing the coal-deposits of Great Britain as its main capital asset ; 
 and the fact that royalties (or the profits) on this capital are only a few 
 millions is due to the fact, not at once apparent, that coal-deposits differ 
 from other property, such as the surface of the land, in this way. If so 
 many acres of laud are let for a house and garden, the occupant enjoys 
 
 T 
 
322 LIMITS OF PURE DEMOCRACY 
 
 The curious ebullitions of popular temper and expecta- 
 tion which these essays in sensational finance excited 
 were due altogether to what was virtually a process of 
 education an education wildly fallacious as to two 
 statistical facts namely, the actual amounts of the 
 two kinds of income in question. If with regard to 
 either of these two cases the statistical facts involved 
 had been matters of general, and more or less accurate, 
 knowledge, the fiscal policy of the government might 
 have roused public attention, and elicited many sober, 
 perhaps many sound, judgments ; but it would not have 
 roused, as it did, storms of popular passion which, so 
 long as they lasted, made sound judgment impossible. 
 
 If, then, a false education with regard to statistical 
 facts can produce an effect so profound on the popular 
 temper in one way, a correct education will, we may safely 
 assume, produce an effect no less profound, in another. 
 Finally, since experience has shown that a deliberate and 
 effective system of inaccurate education is practicable, 
 it stands to reason that a system of accurate education 
 relating to the same order of facts is no mere academic 
 dream, but is what would be called in America a " prac- 
 tical proposition " likewise. 1 It would not involve for 
 this would be indeed impracticable the general inculca- 
 tion of any one economic theory. To imagine such a 
 system as this would be no less absurd than to imagine 
 a national system of education in politics, which would 
 inculcate blind adherence to one particular politician. 
 The kind of education here indicated and it is only a 
 
 the entire value of the land its convenience of situation and its amenity 
 at once. But of the coal deposits of the country, so much only can 
 be enjoyed from year to year as is brought to the surface ; and the 
 larger part of it will not have been usable capital for generations. 
 
 1 A scheme of education, precisely similar in kind to that above indi- 
 cated (though relating not to economic conditions generally, but to 
 economic conditions amongst others, as bearing on the question of war) 
 has, since the above passage was written, been actually projected in 
 America by President Wilson, who it was so announced in June 1917 
 " was considering the appointment of a special board, not only for 
 the dissemination of ordinary news, but for bringing home to the 
 people at large by a series of lectures .... and also by exhaustive 
 summaries, what their vital interests, material and otherwise, in the 
 conflict are. 
 
IMAGINATIVE DISCONTENT 323 
 
 part of education, if the word "education" be used in 
 its wider sense would bear the same relation to par- 
 ticular economic theories that geography bears to 
 schemes of international policy. It would deal only 
 with facts of a certain order, these being mainly, though 
 not wholly, statistical ; and it would leave the individual, 
 with such facts in view, to judge of social conditions and 
 social possibilities for himself. It would, however, if 
 it did no more than this, create an atmosphere in which 
 outrageous expectations and outrageous judgments 
 would die. More particularly it would create in the 
 earner of a just minimum wage, who belongs to any 
 one of the richer countries of the world, a sufficiently 
 correct idea of the advantages which he gained as a 
 participator in the intellectualised industry of his own 
 country to-day. It would liberate him from the belief 
 or suspicion, which at present is the parent of unrest, 
 that, instead of being a gainer by the existing system, 
 he is a loser. It would enable him to recognise for 
 himself, with his eyes open, his lot under that system as 
 the best which was for the time possible ; and, so far 
 as knowledge and common sense are concerned, we shall 
 have the warrant of all history for saying that the wage- 
 earners of the modern world, from the earners of the 
 minimum upwards, would tend to accept with content, 
 were their judgments not otherwise disturbed, such con- 
 ditions as, lying within the limits of recognised possi- 
 bilities, were the best. 
 
 Such would be the case if men's judgments were not 
 otherwise disturbed; but, whilst knowledge and com- 
 mon sense might tend to produce content with the best 
 conditions, and more particularly with the amplest 
 minimum, definitely known to be possible, the imagina- 
 tion, as a disturbing influence, has still to be reckoned 
 with. A natural tendency to content, as the joint result 
 of knowledge and common sense, being given, the mood 
 of mind which the imagination, if improperly trained, 
 and imaginative ambition, if indiscriminately stimulated, 
 would naturally tend to foment, might not, indeed, 
 disturb the conviction that the existing order of things 
 was the best order possible, and that any revolutionary 
 change could only be a change for the worse; but what 
 
324 LIMITS OF PURE DEMOCRACY 
 
 it would do is this : it would always be prompting 
 multitudes to resent the best as bad. It would be a 
 mood resembling that which was tersely expressed by 
 the distinguished but irritable scholar, Person, when 
 he spilled, by an untoward gesture, the contents of his 
 ink-pot over the pages of a Greek play. This ornament 
 of learning, having for some moments sought in vain 
 for something on which he might vent his rage, finally 
 astonished a friend by ejaculating, "Damn the nature 
 of things." A society would hardly be in a condition 
 of corporate harmony and content if any considerable 
 section of it, whilst accepting their respective lots as 
 unalterable parts of the nature of things, were all the 
 while in a mood of imaginative rebellion against them ; 
 and much of the social unrest which prevails in the 
 modern world is due, not to the fact that the conditions 
 of the persons afflicted by it are insufficient in them- 
 selves as the material apparatus of happiness, but to 
 the fact that the imagination of such persons, artificially 
 inflamed or not reasonably disciplined, makes the good 
 seem despicable by obtruding on them, as the standard 
 of goodness, some visionary and impracticable better. 
 
 Now, to train the imagination in such a way as to 
 adjust its suggestions to limiting facts of life may seem, 
 at first sight, a much more difficult task than that of 
 training mere judgment by making the facts known. 
 Indeed, a universal adjustment of imaginative desire 
 to facts is beyond the power of any education to accom- 
 plish. There will always be people in the world who 
 can never produce the wealth or secure the social estima- 
 tion which they obstinately imagine to be their due. 
 But an imaginative content with facts, which is at once 
 approximately general and sufficient for the happiness 
 of those who have it in their hearts to be happy, is a 
 result so far from impossible that it would, in most 
 cases, tend to occur naturally if a false education were 
 not at work to prevent it. That is to say, a proper 
 training of the imagination, especially with regard to 
 the conditions represented by the minimum wage, would 
 have for its object, not the creation of any mood that 
 was artificial, but the healthy development of one to 
 which most men naturally incline. 
 
DISEASES OF THE IMAGINATION 325 
 
 With this object in view, such a training of the ima- 
 gination would resolve itself into two parts, one of which 
 would relate to the material circumstance of life, the 
 other to its moral, emotional and intellectual interests. 
 
 To begin with the former, there is a certain tendency 
 in most men, with regard to their material circum- 
 stances, to cherish an ideal somewhat more ample than 
 any which they stand much chance of realising; and if 
 their ideal is not taken too seriously, or if it does not 
 exceed the possible in any very great degree, it does 
 little or nothing to interfere with a spirit of reasonable 
 content. But certain forces at work in the modern 
 world express themselves in a scheme of deliberate and 
 emphatic teaching which aims at developing this ten- 
 dency to a degree so extreme and unnatural that multi- 
 tudes are led to adopt, as the standard of a satisfactory 
 life, a life equipped with appliances which, from the 
 nature of things, are possible for a few men only, and 
 thus to regard all lives from which such appliances are 
 absent as lives unnaturally blighted, or deprived of 
 adjuncts which human nature requires. 
 
 As an example of the mood resulting from this falsi- 
 fication of values, mention may be made of an expert 
 who, when called on to give evidence in a law-suit 
 relating to the cost of repainting a yacht of six hundred 
 tons, described himself as " one of those unfortunate 
 persons whose business is to build great yachts, not as 
 one of the fortunate persons who own them." Now, it 
 may fairly be said of a man who is a good sailor that, 
 if he owns a yacht of six hundred tons he is fortunate ; 
 but if everybody who does not own one is to be looked 
 on as unfortunate, the whole of the human race is un- 
 fortunate except a little cluster of persons whose names 
 are comprised in a page or two of The Yachting Calendar, 
 and who might dine together at the same table in the 
 local Assembly Rooms of any small provincial town. 
 
 Another example, less extreme than this, may be cited 
 from a book in which the author, a semi-socialist radical, 
 living himself on large official emoluments, described 
 the typical dwellings of the skilled artisans of England. 
 He did not deny that their houses, situated for the most 
 part in the outskirts of manufacturing centres, are, so 
 
326 LIMITS OF PURE DEMOCRACY 
 
 far as they go, substantial, well-planned and sufficient 
 for a decent and comfortable life; but, with a sigh of 
 condescending pity, he described their dimensions as 
 "tiny." Now, as compared with Buckingham Palace 
 or Blenheim, most houses are tiny ; and the houses here 
 in question are no doubt tiny as compared with the 
 author's own. But should one of these houses be turned 
 into steel and wood, and placed on the upper deck of a 
 great Atlantic liner, it would at once assume the pro- 
 portions of an enormous family suite, and a rich Ameri- 
 can traveller would pay eight hundred pounds as the 
 price of enjoying its amplitude for the inside of a week. 
 House-space which, if none ampler were possible, would 
 be looked on as a luxury by the most exacting of pluto- 
 crats, must, unless the popular imagination is disordered 
 by artificial suggestion, be not "tiny," but ample, for 
 the majority of the human race. The only sane standard, 
 by reference to which the typical dwelling sufficient for 
 the normal man can be measured, is not any type of 
 dwelling which is possible for this or for that minority 
 whose efficiencies are, to some marked degree, excep- 
 tional; but the best type of dwelling which is possible 
 for any numerous and necessary class whose efficiencies, 
 to speak broadly, do not exceed the average. This is 
 a fact which most men naturally tend to recognise ; and 
 the mental disease which, by suggesting as a standard 
 of sufficiency conditions which must always be at least 
 relatively rare, renders the best conditions susceptible 
 of common achievement despicable, is largely due to a 
 deliberate campaign of education, which aims at training 
 the imagination, not rightly, but wrongly. 
 
 This kind of mal-education (as observers in various 
 countries and at various times have noted) is due mainly 
 to the pathological activities, not of the masses, but of 
 certain peculiar sections of the middle class ; and that 
 such is the case may be seen by reference to a very 
 interesting agitation, in which, though middle-class 
 activities were very largely concerned in it, this par- 
 ticular kind of mal-education was absent. This was the 
 agitation which, beginning about the year 1880, was 
 directed against the landlords of the mountainous parts 
 of Scotland. The charge against the landlords was that. 
 
TRAINING THE IMAGINATION 327 
 
 for the purpose of increasing their rent-rolls, they had 
 evicted their tenants wholesale their tenants who were 
 also their clansmen and had converted entire counties 
 into playgrounds for rich sportsmen. Few agitations 
 have ever been based on arguments in which elements 
 of undoubted truth were seasoned with wilder false- 
 hoods; but there was one fact and this, even if some- 
 what exaggerated, was indisputable which the agitators, 
 most of them Scotchmen, put before all others, as 
 familiar to them from their own experience. This was 
 the fact that the men who had been driven from their 
 homes had been one of the happiest, the healthiest and 
 the most contented peasantries in the world. And yet 
 what sort of homes were these in which so much content 
 sheltered itself ? Compared even with those of the 
 poorest peasants of England, they were not only " tiny," 
 but rude to an extreme degree. They were cabins whose 
 chimneys were mere holes in the thatch; the occupants 
 lived mainly on oatmeal and potatoes; and yet not 
 only was their lot one to which they were passionately 
 attached themselves, but, despite its primitive sim- 
 plicity, it was proclaimed by a succession of agitators 
 to have been one so worthy of men as moral and social 
 beings that few crimes could be greater than those which 
 had put an end to it. Here, then, in the persons both 
 of the Highland peasantry themselves, and of the agita- 
 tors closely connected with them who spoke with such 
 vehemence on their behalf, we have examples of the 
 mental process on which, certain material circumstances 
 being given, men's content with such circumstances 
 tends naturally to depend. It is a process consisting 
 of certain uses of the imagination which with most men 
 are instinctive, and which cause them to identify the 
 conditions of a satisfactory life with the best, even if 
 these be simple, which life with its affections and 
 memories has rendered to them familiar, and which the 
 circle of possibilities encloses within its horizon line. It 
 is an imaginative process the precise reverse of that by 
 which middle-class apostles of discontent would stimu- 
 late men to despise houses as "tiny " which have four 
 times as many rooms in them as the houses for which 
 the Highland peasantry, when compelled to leave them, 
 
328 LIMITS OF PURE DEMOCRACY 
 
 wept, and which agitators themselves belauded as homes 
 of ideal happiness. So far, then, as material things are 
 concerned and by material things is here meant 
 primarily what is the key to the whole situation, namely, 
 the material things purchasable by a just minimum 
 wage for the workers of least efficiency such training 
 of the imagination as would be necessary to promote con- 
 tent with these, would be necessary, not for the purpose 
 of creating in men any mood that is new, or over- 
 strained, or artificial, but simply for the purpose of 
 restoring them, as sober and sensible beings, to a mood 
 of mind which is, to most men, natural. 
 
 But in concerning itself merely with material circum- 
 stances as such that is to say, with such things as can 
 be measured and bought by wages an educational 
 training of the imagination as a means to general content 
 will, if it goes no further, have done but half its work. 
 The more important half remains, and this will consist 
 in fixing the imaginative attention and interest on those 
 affections, passions, faiths, social excitements, recrea- 
 tions and other self-fruitions, which are to material 
 circumstances what drink is to the cup that holds it, and 
 without which a goblet of the costliest crystal in a palace 
 would be as useless to a thirsty man as an earthenware 
 mug in the kitchen of a "tiny " cottage. 
 
 In any case, a certain minimum of material circum- 
 stances must be given. This, in any country which is 
 enriched by the forces of industrial oligarchy, must, let 
 it be said again, be a minimum which fulfils, or is 
 associated with the following primary requirements. It 
 must represent a material lot which is not only free 
 from physical want and, so far as may be, from the fear 
 of it, but is also much ampler, so far as amplitude can 
 be bought by wages, than any which the wage-earners 
 could secure if they worked as their own masters. It 
 must, moreover, be one which all exceptional workers 
 shall have the means of amplifying in accordance with 
 what their work is worth ; and with these conditions 
 must be associated a diffusion amongst the wage-earners 
 generally of such elementary knowledge with regard to 
 statistical facts, and the manual and mental forces 
 on which efficient production depends, as will enable 
 
THE FINAL LIFE-PROCESS 329 
 
 them to estimate accurately their own situation for 
 themselves. 
 
 Should such conditions be established and they are 
 conditions which would subserve all interests and at the 
 same time antagonise none whatever is valuable and 
 practicable in the ideals of formal socialism ideals in 
 themselves impossible and self-destructive would be 
 secured ; and the causes of " industrial unrest," in so far 
 as they are capable of being expressed in any definite 
 terms, would be removed. We shall have an established 
 order to which, with all its graduations of circumstance, 
 common sense would resign itself. But if the imagina- 
 tion is to complete what common sense has begun, and 
 convert resignation into an acceptance which deserves 
 to be called content, it must not concern itself with 
 economic circumstances alone. The interplay of oli- 
 garchic and democratic forces to which the magnitude 
 and graduated distribution of modern wealth are due 
 is but one manifestation of a process which is much more 
 comprehensive ; and if the imagination is really to grasp 
 its full significance, the imagination must be trained to 
 grasp it as part of a larger whole. When this process 
 has been considered in all its various forms, what we 
 shall find is this that, as means to a certain complex 
 end, the oligarchic principle permeates every domain of 
 life, but that the final end itself which these oligarchic 
 means subserve is, in its very essence, democratic that 
 it is a life-process in which genuine democracy at last 
 comes into its own. 
 
 Of what, then, does this life-process consist ? 
 
BOOK VII 
 
 DEMOCRACY AND THE FINAL LIFE-PROCESS 
 CHAPTER I 
 
 THE MATERIAL DATA OF CONTENT 
 
 ALL life implies the will to live. This in itself can 
 hardly be called rational, for all living things, even the 
 lowest, possess it. If a kitten and a philosopher are 
 thrown into deep water, both will struggle to save them- 
 selves in substantially the same way. But in man the 
 will to live is, under normal circumstances, rational in 
 the sense that the enjoyment of life is consciously dis- 
 tinguished alike from the bare fact, and from the 
 material means, simple or elaborate, of its maintenance. 
 The poorest peasant who can by his constant labour just 
 provide food and firewood for himself and a single child, 
 would, if the child died, miss it; and, looking at its 
 empty chair, he would find that life, no matter how 
 hard, had held for him something more than the act 
 of laborious living. A celebrated English statesman, 
 wealthy and highly placed, found, when his character 
 had been blighted by the breath of malignant slander, 
 that of all the luxuries in his bedroom one alone was of 
 service to him, and this was the razor which he drew 
 across his own throat. 
 
 However simple, then, or however elaborate the ma- 
 terial appliances or adjuncts of men's lives may be, the 
 human satisfaction to which they minister consists of 
 a something which, in one way or another, men them- 
 selves add to them out of their own natures : and, if two 
 words are taken so as to cover all that is implied in them, 
 this something may be described as social intercourse. 
 
 It is for the sake of social intercourse that men are, 
 
 " 330 
 

 MECHANISMS OF SOCIETY 331 
 
 asAristotle says of them, " gregarious or political 
 animals. 77 Their instinct is to live in clusters of more 
 or less adjacent families, each family maintaining itself 
 by applying its own industry to some particular portion 
 oT" a limited geographical area. Men experience in so 
 living the need of conformity to certain common cus- 
 toms ; customs mature into a system of definite laws and 
 government ; and as soon as any one cluster, on coming 
 mto_cgjitact with, another, arms itself, for the protection 
 of its territory, as a single military force, the cluster 
 becomes what is commonly called a State. But neither 
 the military system nor the legal system nor the in- 
 dustrial system is an end in itself. These, taken 
 together, are merely the shell of the nut. Social inter- 
 course is the kernel social intercourse or, in other 
 words, all t.hnsp affections, activities and experiences 
 whicir^Qjastitute the drama of private or individual life 
 which directly minister to its amenities, or which other- 
 wise raise its character. The end of all political govern- 
 ment is to regularise these. The end of all armed force 
 is to protect them, or possibly to provide them with an 
 ampler field for their exercise. A State which had no 
 lovers in it would not be worth fighting for; but a State 
 might be worth fighting for although there were no 
 fighters in it, if the lack of fighters was due and 
 such for many years was the case of the United States 
 to geographical conditions which rendered fighters 
 superfluous. 
 
 Social intercourse is, however, not self-supporting any 
 more than it is self-regulating or self-protecting. It 
 must have, as its immediate basis, an industrial system 
 which provides it with its material appliances. It 
 depends, therefore, for its existence and security on 
 three processes external to itself, which are these : in- 
 dustrial production, political government, and the 
 process, actual or potential, of offensive or defensive 
 war. 
 
 Now the process of war, even amongst the simplest 
 tribes, has always been in a large measure oligarchic. 
 In modern warfare, which becomes ever more and more 
 a matter of industrial as well as of military genius, the 
 oligarchic element becomes more and more pronounced. 
 
332 LIMITS OF PURE DEMOCRACY 
 
 Political government, and industry in times of peace 
 both of them processes of almost pure democracy so long 
 as States are primitively small and men primitively poor 
 become more and more oligarchic as States increase 
 in size, and poverty is metamorphosed into wealth such 
 as that of the modern world. In other words, if we 
 consider men as agents capable of affecting the external 
 conditions of life and of social intercourse, as distin- 
 guished from life and from social intercourse themselves, 
 the majority of the citizens in any modern country will 
 not only be undistinguished and obscure (as everybody 
 must be whose talents are not exceptional) ; they will 
 also be persons who in some sense are subordinates. On 
 the other hand, the units of the minority, from the 
 specially skilled labourers up to the higher directorates, 
 will necessarily be persons of some sort of distinction, 
 and in the material appliances of their lives these 
 graduations of function and of personal efficiency will 
 be reflected. The minimum may increase with the 
 increase of the total produce, but between the minimum 
 of individual circumstance and the maximum the differ- 
 ence, instead of decreasing, may tend to become greater. 
 In other words, if we consider men merely as agents 
 maintaining and amplifying, according to their several 
 capacities, the material appliances of life, the spectacular 
 signs of oligarchy will be more clearly apparent than the 
 spectacular signs of democracy. But if, instead of con- 
 sidering men as agents whose function is to affect the 
 external conditions of life, we consider them as par- 
 ticipators in the social intercourse itself to which external 
 conditions minister, the case will be reversed. The 
 actualities of democracy will obliterate, if not the signs, 
 yet at all events the actualities of oligarchy. 
 
 This proposition to many may no doubt seem a 
 paradox. They may urge that, so long as absolute 
 differences in external conditions exist, it is precisely in 
 social intercourse that the special results of an oligarchy 
 most sharply obtrude themselves. But persons who 
 argue thus confuse actualities with abstractions. By a 
 certain subconscious juggling with the ambiguous word 
 " Society," which may mean either the State as a means, 
 or social intercourse as an end, they come to regard the 
 
UNITS OF SOCIAL INTERCOURSE 333 
 
 latter as a power coextensive with the former, so that 
 social intercourse, taking place within the limits of a 
 great nation, is, according to their conception of it, one 
 undivided process in which all classes participate. Now 
 if, with regard to any great and complex community, 
 this conception of social intercourse really coincided 
 with fact if the members of all classes, in taking their 
 daily pleasure, were jostled together in a kind of col- 
 lective outing, the differences between class and class 
 would, it is quite true, be not expunged but accentuated. 
 The result would be aggressions of undesired familiari- 
 ties or repulsions of them, rather than anything in the 
 way of promiscuous concord. But in no community 
 larger than that of a small village in no great country 
 of any kind does social intercourse take such a form as 
 this. For each individual it begins with his own family 
 circle, and thence extends itself gradually to a larger 
 circle of acquaintances, lovers, friends, and habitual or 
 casual associates ; and for each individual this larger but 
 narrowly limited circle comprises the actors with whom, 
 and with a view to whose esteem, affection or applause, 
 that drama is played by him for the sake of which in- 
 dustrial oligarchies and political oligarchies exist. For 
 each individual the number of such fellow actors, or the 
 content of what is for him society, is thus strictly limited 
 for the very simple reason that, except in a public 
 capacity, no one human being can be known as a person- 
 ality or a personage to more than a number, compara- 
 tively small, of others. Hence, so far as social inter- 
 course is concerned, any large community, such as a 
 great nation, automatically divides itself into a vast 
 number of small ones. These sub-communities, con- 
 sisting of kindred, friends, and acquaintances, will differ 
 in respect of the number of units comprised in each. 
 We may, however, say roughly that the number of 
 persons with whom, on an average, each man lives on 
 terms of familiar intercourse will not be more than some 
 two hundred and fifty. Each of such communities, as 
 a part of the body politic, will resemble a complex cell 
 having a private social life, more or less separate, of its 
 own; and a great national community, such as that of 
 France or the United Kingdom, will, so far as social 
 
334 LIMITS OF PURE DEMOCRACY 
 
 intercourse is concerned, be an aggregate of some two 
 hundred thousand cells or sub-communities such as 
 these, though the national life, industrial, political and 
 military, which protects and subserves the interests of 
 each social cell, is one. 
 
 By what, then, is the composition of each of these 
 social cells determined ? It is determined partly by 
 family ties and familiarities, partly by continued pro- 
 pinquity and the physical possibilities of more or less 
 frequent companionship, partly by similarities of wealth 
 and the habits of life dependent on it, and largely, also, 
 by similarities of taste and of moral temperament. 
 Thus, if we take " society " in the aristocratic sense of 
 the word, as a small group of persons distinguished by 
 wealth, rank or lineage, there is a constant tendency 
 amongst its members, despite these similarities, to 
 separate into what are called " sets," such as an ultra- 
 fashionable set, an intellectual set, a racing set, and so 
 on. But, whatever may be its principle of cohesion, the 
 members of each sub-community are, for purposes of 
 social intercourse, equals. 1 Their intercourse is an 
 exhibition of what they are, not of what they do or have 
 done. It is an interplay of lateral varieties, not a 
 parade of vertical inequalities. A statesman, when in 
 society he is talking to a charming woman, desires to 
 exhibit himself not as a statesman, but as a man. A 
 woman famous for her exploits in the world of County 
 Councils would far rather be taken in society as a woman 
 of personal charm than as a walking index to her own 
 Minutes on Education. An artisan obscure in a factory 
 may, in his social life, be the hero of a woman's affec- 
 tions. Anybody in social life may become unique for 
 somebody. Within the limits, then, of each of those 
 countless sub-communities beyond which no social inter- 
 course of an intimate kind is possible, social intercourse 
 is democratic in this fundamental sense, that each unit 
 taking part in the process is a unit of free and equal 
 influence in respect of the object which each unit has in 
 
 1 Thus Louis XV, when he played the part of private host in the 
 country, placed his guests at dinner, on the first day of the visit, 
 according to their technical rank, but afterwards according to royal 
 and other personal preferences. 
 
SOCIAL LIFE AND INDUSTRY 335 
 
 view that object being to make the best he can of his 
 own personal character either as a husband, a father, a 
 lover, a wit, a conversationalist, a boon companion, or 
 a man of respected judgment. 
 
 But this process of social intercourse is democratic, not 
 only in the sense that the units of each sub-community 
 who play a part in it act as equals in respect of the 
 process itself. It is democratic in the sense that the 
 units, taken collectively, also constitute a democracy the 
 force of which is external. We shall find that the units, 
 in using, as the material basis of their lives, those in- 
 dustrial activities to which, in any rich country, the 
 principle of oligarchy is essential, not only make use of 
 the services which the industrial oligarchy offers them, 
 but also determine ultimately what the nature of these 
 services shall be. Nor does this hold good of the indus- 
 trial oligarchy only. It holds good of other services 
 also, which are no less essential than industry to civilised 
 social intercourse, which are likewise oligarchic in origin, 
 likewise democratic in result, and to which reference, 
 except by implication, has, in our present argument, 
 not yet been made. These are the processes, intel- 
 lectual, aesthetic and moral, the results of which are 
 familiar to us as knowledge, philosophy, science, art, 
 religion. Each of these results which, as elements of 
 civilisation, are no less important than an ample mini- 
 mum wage, has everywhere a history from which the 
 action of oligarchy is inseparable ; and yet, as an ele- 
 ment of civilisation, each is what it is and is what it is 
 only through the action of forces which are, in their 
 essence, democratic. 
 
 Let us consider first the influence of the democratic 
 principle, as embodied in social intercourse, on the in- 
 dustrial oligarchy which, in a civilised modern country, 
 provides it with the larger part of the material adjuncts 
 of its existence. 
 
 A rudimentary illustration of this influence may be 
 found in the relation of social intercourse to architecture. 
 Social intercourse always begins with the family. It 
 does so because human beings are all of them born and 
 reared in essentially the same way ; and the spontaneous 
 unity of the family everywhere finds expression in the 
 
336 LIMITS OF PURE DEMOCRACY 
 
 separate house or hut, which primitively is a single 
 room. As social civilisation advances as comforts and 
 decencies are added to bare necessaries the spontaneous 
 habits of the family find expression in the house, larger 
 and more elaborate, which has two rooms or several. 
 That is to say, in proportion as the productive powers 
 of the architect or the builder increase, the democracy 
 of social intercourse exercises a more elaborate control 
 over the final uses to which these powers shall be put. 
 Wealth, as embodied in a house, becomes a commodity 
 of a more elaborate kind. 
 
 Here is a fact which most thinkers wholly fail to 
 recognise. They fail to recognise that as, under the 
 influence of an industrial oligarchy, the volume of wealth 
 increases, wealth, taken as a whole, undergoes in one 
 respect a fundamental change in character. To this 
 imperfection of thought attention has been called 
 already, in connection with Mr. Shaw's exposition of 
 what, in respect of the distribution of wealth, ideal 
 socialism or social democracy means. The ideal object 
 of socialism is, he says, to secure for all an absolute 
 equality in respect of material circumstances, which 
 equality, as measurable by " coin " or some other 
 medium of exchange, will be for each individual "the 
 quotient of the national income divided by the number 
 of the population." That is to say, he, and those who 
 reason like him, think of the income of a nation as 
 though it were a sort of homogeneous fluid such as water, 
 any one gallon of which would be throughout of the same 
 substance as any other. And in the case of a country 
 so primitively poor that the entire income of the inhabit- 
 ants was but just sufficient to keep them all alive, such 
 a conception would be no doubt correct. It is, however, 
 correct in the case of such a country only. 
 
 Even in a country whose condition is one of primitive 
 poverty, income, as measured by money, is a mere sign 
 or abstraction. Its substance is a certain quantity of 
 certain specified goods ; and all incomes the substance of 
 which does not consist solely of irreducible necessaries, 
 are divisible into two elements necessary goods and 
 superfluous goods. Now in any given country or climate, 
 the goods which are necessary for a life just above the 
 
REAL INCOME AND MONEY 337 
 
 level of crude physical hardship are practically constant 
 in respect both of kind and quantity. Hence, in pro- 
 portion as industry becomes more and more productive, 
 and the income per head of the total population in- 
 creases, the substance of the increment consists wholly 
 of goods which are, to a greater or less degree, super- 
 fluous. The element which consists of necessaries, 
 though it cannot from the nature of things suffer any 
 diminution absolutely, is always decreasing relatively, 
 and the element which consists of superfluities is always 
 becoming a larger fraction of the total. Thus, if we take 
 for example the average income per head of the popula- 
 tion of England, firstly as it was at the beginning of the 
 nineteenth century, and secondly as it was at the begin- 
 ning of the twentieth, we may say, with very fair 
 accuracy, that superfluities at the later date made up 
 at least four-fifths of it, and at the earlier not more than 
 a quarter. 
 
 Now the enormous increase in income which, typified 
 by the case of England, has taken place since the begin- 
 ning of the nineteenth century, and which is primarily 
 due to the forces of industrial oligarchy, does not neces- 
 sarily mean the production of better goods, for the 
 products of the self-directed craftsman are in some 
 respects still unequalled. The most obvious function 
 of the oligarchy has been to increase their number; 
 but it has, in increasing their number, performed another 
 function also, which, though less obvious, is morally of 
 far greater importance. Besides increasing the number 
 or the volume of the products, it has, to an indefinite 
 extent, diversified them. Thus, to take, for example, 
 such ornaments as are used to decorate chimneypieces 
 let us say china figures of Nelson it has not only multi- 
 plied china Nelsons and cheapened them, thus putting 
 them within the reach of an increasing number of people. 
 It has supplemented the Nelsons by a hundred other 
 figures of human or other creatures such as bishops, 
 nymphs, missionaries, milkmaids, cows, kittens which 
 are offered to the taste of the purchasing public as alter- 
 natives, and from which each purchaser will make his 
 own selection. 
 
 Thus the two elements of which a typical income in 
 
338 LIMITS OF PURE DEMOCRACY 
 
 any rich country is composed differ not only in the fact 
 that the one consists of necessaries which represent men's 
 needs, and the other of superfluities which represent 
 men's tastes, but also in the further fact that, whereas 
 the goods which satisfy men's needs are not only con- 
 stant in quantity, but constant in kind also, the things 
 which gratify their tastes are, if considered generally, 
 never the same from one ten years to another, and are, 
 if considered particularly, never the same in the case of 
 any two individuals. 
 
 Apart from certain durable things like houses, the real 
 income of a nation in any given year is comprised in the 
 goods of all kinds and descriptions offered for sale in all 
 the shops of the country; and the actual substance of 
 each individual income will consist of such of these goods 
 as each person, or each head of a household, brings 
 home for use in the course of a year's shopping. Let us 
 suppose, for example, that the necessaries and super- 
 fluities, which form the real income of a nation for some 
 particular year, are represented by four groups of com- 
 modities displayed on a shop's counter. Each of these 
 groups, let us say, is made up of ten units, and the 
 price of every unit is, let us say, five shillings. The first 
 group consists of bread, and represents all necessaries. 
 The three others, representing all superfluities, consist 
 respectively of ten lengths of green silk ribbon, ten 
 boxes of chocolates, and ten books copies of the works 
 of Shakespeare. Here we have forty units which, at 
 five shillings apiece, represent a money value of ten 
 pounds in all. And now let us suppose that ten women, 
 representing the nation, each with a pound in her pocket, 
 which ten pounds represent the national income of the 
 year, enter the shop for the purpose of converting this 
 money-income into real income or goods. Each begins 
 with converting five shillings of her pound into bread. 
 She then converts three similar sums respectively into a 
 length of green silk ribbon, a box of chocolates, and a 
 copy of the works of Shakespeare. When these transac- 
 tions have been accomplished, the conversion of money 
 into real income will be complete ; and the two will 
 coincide in the very practical sense that every one of 
 these women will get, in return for every five shillings 
 
REAL INCOME AND SHOPPING 339 
 
 spent by her, goods which minister equally to her own 
 Needs and Tastes. 
 
 Such will have been the case in the particular year 
 supposed by us. But now let us vary the supposition. 
 Let us suppose that ten years later all these conditions 
 repeat themselves, one alone excepted. Let us suppose 
 that four groups of precisely similar goods are at the 
 same counter offered at the same old prices, and that 
 the same ten women with the same sums of money in 
 their pockets enter the shop for the purpose of con- 
 verting their money incomes into real incomes as before ; 
 but let us suppose further that their Tastes, though not 
 their Needs, have in the interval changed. The women 
 will begin as before with buying up all the necessaries 
 that is to say, the bread. Money income and real income 
 will still so far coincide ; but as soon as they turn to the 
 superfluities, the sort of thing which will happen will be 
 this. On asking for ribbons, they will say, "What we 
 want are blue, or red, or rose de Barri, or orange " ; and 
 since none but green are to be had, they will turn away 
 in disdain from them. When they come to the choco- 
 lates, they will treat them in the same way, declaring 
 their palates to be so delicate that any sweetmeat but 
 sugared violets nauseates them. When they come to 
 the works of Shakespeare, they will say, "What we 
 want is Ibsen. We would none of us have a volume of 
 Shakespeare's works as a gift." Each of these women 
 accordingly will go home with her bread, and with 
 nothing else but fifteen useless shillings useless for the 
 simple reason that nothing she wants can be anyhow got 
 in exchange for them. Money income, and the prices 
 of all the articles offered, will be just the same as they 
 were ten years ago ; but the real income of these ten 
 women as a whole will have sunk in the proportion of 
 ten pounds to fifty shillings, and the real income of each 
 will have sunk in the proportion of twenty shillings to 
 five. 
 
 Now, should such a situation as this arise in actual 
 life, the great object of the producers of these useless 
 superfluities would be to see that such a situation never 
 arose again. If we take the producers to be represented 
 by one man a "universal provider" who is the oli- 
 
340 LIMITS OF PURE DEMOCRACY 
 
 garchic head of a single manufacturing business, he 
 would set himself with the utmost vigilance to discover 
 from moment to moment what the changing and diversi- 
 fied tastes of the purchasing public are. It is true that 
 before a taste developed itself for any particular super- 
 fluity a new kind of wall-paper, a new ribbon, a new 
 sweetmeat, or a new anything he might have to produce 
 samples of each article first, so as to judge of the number 
 of persons to whose Taste each article will appeal; but 
 it will depend on these persons themselves whether, or 
 amongst what number of them, a taste for this article or 
 that is really elicited or no. Thus, whilst the actual 
 process of producing the income of any rich nation, 
 such an income consisting mainly of superfluities, is one 
 in which the democratic principle is subservient to the 
 oligarchic, the process of determining from year to year 
 what the actual substance of this income shall be is one 
 in which the oligarchic principle is essentially subservient 
 to the democratic ; and the extent to which democracy, 
 in this final stage of industrial process, is supreme, can 
 be best appreciated by re-considering the necessary 
 limitations to which it is subject when applied to 
 political questions other than such as are primitively 
 and crudely simple. 
 
 Even thinkers like Mill and Rousseau admit that there 
 is one obvious reason why, in any complex State, com- 
 plete political democracy, or government in accordance 
 with the will of each, is impossible. From their point 
 of view this does not consist in the fact, which has been 
 elucidated in the present work, that masses of average 
 men, unless they are guided by the few, have as to com- 
 plex questions no common will at all. It consists in 
 the fact that of any large population the judgments of 
 one section, however completely they may be unified, 
 are always likely or liable to differ from those of the 
 remainder, so that government by democracy must 
 always mean in practice, not government by all, but 
 government by the larger number, even though, as may 
 any day happen, the larger exceeds the less by a single 
 voter only, and nearly half the population be governed 
 not by its will but against it. If this argument be 
 translated in terms of the foregoing illustrations if we 
 
CUSTOMERS AS VOTERS 841 
 
 think of voters as customers, and of political measures 
 relating to questions fiscal, electoral, international, and 
 so forth, as commodities which the government has to 
 manufacture and sell, any government, however demo- 
 cratic, will be a manufacturer who, of all the measures 
 which might be devised and supplied as alternative solu- 
 tions of any one of such questions as these, can supply 
 his customers simultaneously with one, and with one 
 only. If a hundred of his customers demand of him, 
 and get, Free Trade, he cannot simultaneously supply 
 Protection to ninety-nine. He cannot simultaneously 
 be selling a declaration of war against some foreign 
 Power to one man and a treaty of peace with the same 
 Power to another, or manhood suffrage at one counter, 
 and bi-sexual suffrage at the next. In short, any number 
 of customers which is less than half the whole will have 
 to put up with measures which they one and all detest, 
 or will rather have to swallow them as though they were 
 so much medicine. 
 
 But when we turn from democracy as applied to 
 political government to democracy as determining the 
 composition of the real national income, all these diffi- 
 culties disappear. If forty women are asking for blue 
 ribbons at a draper's, and three little groups of twenty 
 are asking respectively for yellow, green or magenta, 
 each woman, let her tastes be what they may, can be 
 satisfied in the same five minutes. That is to say, the 
 units of a nation, as considered in the act of converting 
 its money income, or its potential income, into real 
 income for the purpose of direct enjoyment, is a demo- 
 cracy in two senses : firstly in the sense that, as a court 
 of final power, it imposes its orders collectively on the 
 entire oligarchy of production ; and secondly in the sense 
 that each of its units individually is, for this particular 
 purpose, a unit of equal influence, obtaining goods which 
 correspond to his or to her own will, but not influencing 
 or being influenced by the wills of any other persons. 
 
 This fact that each money income, except in so far as 
 it consists of a few absolute necessaries, consists of goods 
 selected from an indefinite number of alternative super- 
 fluities, means a great deal more than at first sight may 
 appear. It means that out of a multitude of incomes 
 
842 LIMITS OF PURE DEMOCRACY 
 
 such, for example, as a fixed minimum wage, which are 
 as money incomes of exactly the same amount no two, 
 when converted into real income, will be the same. As 
 representing in a material sense the conditions of social 
 intercourse, they will within wide limits be more ample 
 or less ample will, according to any reasonable standard, 
 represent plenty or poverty according to the character 
 of each individual recipient. 
 
 Vivid illustrations of this fact were given incidentally 
 by several English journalists who, during the course of 
 certain coal-strikes in the year 1916, were deputed to 
 visit various colliery districts with a view to ascertaining 
 the causes of "industrial unrest " amongst the miners. 
 Of these districts a feature which attracted the attention 
 of all the inquirers equally was the curious difference, in 
 the way of aspect, upkeep and furniture, between the 
 houses of men or families known to be earning sub- 
 stantially the same wages. Of the numerous cases cited 
 the following will suffice as types. One of these homes 
 was on one occasion the scene of such absolute destitu- 
 tion that the mother of the family had appealed to an 
 opulent lady in the neighbourhood for a few shillings 
 to buy bread for herself and her starving children. The 
 cause of the destitution was this. The husband a man 
 who had been earning seventy shillings a week had 
 converted a quarter of his money income into a high- 
 power motor-bicycle, his first exploit on which had been 
 to run into a cart, injure the horse and driver, wreck the 
 bicycle, and kill himself into the bargain. His family 
 might have lived for several months in plenty on an 
 income which, by his own acts, he had converted into 
 a broken toy. Another house, incredibly bare and dirty, 
 was the home of a man and his two sons. Their joint 
 money-income exceeded three hundred pounds a year. 
 Four-fifths of their real income consisted of port wine 
 the strongest and most expensive they could get. Of 
 this fluid, between every Saturday morning and every 
 Sunday night, they managed to consume eighteen bottles 
 amongst them, with nothing to show for it on Monday 
 but the headaches it had left behind. A third house, 
 which, though much less squalid than this, was in no 
 way superior to that of an agricultural labourer, was the 
 
INCOMES VARIED BY USE 343 
 
 home of a family whose money-income was larger still. 
 Of what, then, did the bulk of its real income consist ? 
 From a very dingy ceiling much of it hung in the form 
 of expensive hams. Part of it, on a broken dish, took 
 the form of an incredibly huge beefsteak. A part of it, 
 yet more striking, was a pile of hot-house peaches, at 
 two shillings apiece, on the middle of a bare deal table. 
 From a slatternly fourth house, which seemed to be in 
 danger of collapsing, a large real income emerged on the 
 person of a dazzling female an income consisting of 
 silken skirts and stockings, laces, high-heeled shoes, a 
 sprinkling of promiscuous jewellery, and a hat of 
 elaborate plumage surmounting a powdered face. At 
 a fifth house, not far distant and not unlike in structure, 
 the inquirer was greeted on a scrupulously whitened 
 doorstep by a woman who looked the embodiment of 
 everything clean and healthy. The glow of her hearth 
 within was reflected on cheerful walls, on her dresser 
 with its spotless plates, and on dustless chairs and 
 tables. Beyond the general living-room the housewife 
 displayed to her visitor an inner world of wonders of 
 carpets and sofas, of ornaments under glass shades, a 
 gramophone, a piano, and a number of memorial cards 
 on which family affection had lavished the costliest and 
 most appropriate frames. Everything exhaled a spirit, 
 not merely of content and comfort, but of self-gratula- 
 tion also. "I think," said the woman, "I may give 
 myself the pleasure of boasting that there is not a floor 
 in this house off which you might not eat your dinner." 
 Now, the money-income of this woman and her family, 
 with their spotless house and their crowd of simple 
 comforts, was less than that of the three semi-destitute 
 drunkards ; but who would not say that, in even a mere 
 material sense, their real income was beyond comparison 
 greater ? A family with a money-income of only 200, 
 if this is converted into healthy and well-served food, 
 decent clothes and a house replete with comfort, is in- 
 comparably richer than a family whose money-income 
 is 300, if all but 50 of it is converted into intoxicating 
 drink, which is swallowed in a dirty hovel by men in 
 rags and tatters, and which, instead of inspiring social 
 intercourse, kills it. 
 
344 LIMITS OF PURE DEMOCRACY 
 
 The moral of this fact, and of these illustrations of it, 
 is as follows. In any rich modern country, let a definite 
 sum be given a certain minimum wage which is the 
 standard money-income for so many thousand people, 
 and of which, by every recipient, a fifth part must be 
 realised in the form of irreducible necessaries, whilst 
 four-fifths will be a selection from a multitude of alter- 
 native superfluities. Such a money-income being given, 
 the real income represented by it, as measured by the 
 needs of a reasonable social life, will, within wide limits, 
 vary according to the character of the individuals by 
 whom this selection is made. A thousand money- 
 incomes, let us say of 200 a year, will indeed be equal 
 in one sense, but in one sense only. They will represent 
 a right on the part of each recipient to the results of so 
 much technical effort the directive ability of the few 
 and the manual labour of the many ; but it is the choice 
 of the recipient himself which determines how, in his 
 own case, these forces shall be employed whether the 
 industrial oligarchy and all the complex apparatus, 
 mechanical and human, controlled by it, shall provide 
 him with a real income consisting of enough alcoholic 
 drink or too much ; with a clean house or a dirty one ; 
 with a comfortable ingle-nook or with peaches out of 
 season at two shillings apiece or whether, as the Vicar 
 of Wakefield might have put it, it shall consist of a 
 gross of green spectacles, or a horse which would drag 
 a plough, and carry his daughters, like "ladies of 
 quality," to church. 
 
 Thus, even in the case of a standard minimum wage, 
 which would, if fulfilling the conditions here described as 
 rational, be mainly composed of superfluities selected 
 by the recipient himself from an indefinite number of 
 alternatives, the recipient, though wanting in the abili- 
 ties by which the money-amount might be amplified, 
 would, within wide limits, be able to determine its real 
 amount, or (if we prefer the expression) to determine its 
 kind or quality. His potential income is largely deter- 
 mined by the forces of industrial oligarchy. His actual 
 income is determined by the forces of democracy ex- 
 pressing themselves in his own person, not through his 
 economic efficiency, but through his own moral tastes. 
 

 SOCIAL LIFE AND CULTURE 345 
 
 " The style is the man," a celebrated critic has said with 
 regard to literature. "The real income is the man," 
 may be said with equal truth, so far as social intercourse, 
 and all that social intercourse implies, owe their qualities 
 to the material conditions earned by him. 
 
 But, as the basis of human welfare, real income, or 
 an aggregate of material goods, does not stand alone. 
 In recognising real income as measurable in terms of 
 quality, we are appealing to some assumed standard 
 which is not in itself material. It is to be found in 
 certain qualities of the mind, the disposition, or the 
 spirit, which would make the social intercourse of some 
 men very different from that of others, even though 
 material conditions were in every detail identical. A 
 dinner party of twenty Hottentots dressed up as English- 
 men, and provided by an English vicar with his cook and 
 his vicarage for the occasion, would differ considerably, 
 in its quality as an exhibition of social intercourse, 
 from a dinner party given next day by the vicar himself 
 to twenty weekly communicants, the pick of his own 
 parishioners. 
 
 On what, then, in the case of civilised men and women, 
 will the moral and mental quality of their social inter- 
 course depend ? 
 
CHAPTER II 
 
 THE MENTAL DATA OF CULTURE 
 
 To every social gathering, whether in a tavern, a 
 cottage, a palace or on a village green, to every private 
 interview between friends or lovers, each man or woman 
 brings some hoard of ideas, judgments, interests, secret 
 experiences, or some outlook on life generally, these 
 making up what is commonly called "the heart," out 
 of the fulness of which the mouth speaks. These ele- 
 ments are innumerable, but, classified broadly, they are 
 divisible into three groups : those belonging to the life 
 of knowledge and intellectual reflection, tho?e belonging 
 to the life of emotional or aesthetic appreciation, and 
 those belonging to the life of religion the word "re- 
 ligion " being taken in its widest sense, so as to include 
 any moral idealisms in which men may seek refuge as 
 substitutes for definite religious creeds. These elements 
 affect not only the process of social intercourse itself, 
 but also the tastes and the acts of choice which deter- 
 mine what, in the form of real income, shall be the 
 character of its material appliances. With regard, then, 
 to these elements of life which are not in themselves 
 material, but which ultimately determine the character 
 of those activities and experiences for the sake of which 
 all political systems and industrial systems exist, let us 
 consider how far, and in what sense, each of these is 
 democratic, or, in other words, is determined by the free 
 use of the faculties of each average unit, and how far 
 (if at all) its origin is oligarchic, or contingent on the 
 influence of an exceptional few. What we shall find is 
 this, that just as in any wealthy country, the bulk of 
 whose wealth consists of endless alternative superfluities, 
 oligarchy in production is essential to selective demo- 
 cracy in consumption, so the action of oligarchy is 
 essential to the inner life of the spirit, but essential to 
 
 346 
 
KNOWLEDGE, ART, RELIGION 347 
 
 it as a means only, this inner life itself being determined 
 by the democratic principle even more completely than 
 the character of a man's real income. 
 
 Let us take the life of knowledge and intellectual 
 reflection first. All democratic thinkers who aspire to 
 be considered seriously acclaim the life of knowledge 
 of knowledge desired for its own sake as the choicest 
 birthright of humanity. Knowledge, as thus under- 
 stood, is mainly of three kinds historical, philosophical 
 and scientific, and its value is that it endows men with 
 an enlarged vision of existence. Now this is not a kind 
 of knowledge which a man can acquire for himself from 
 his own daily experience, or from watching and imitating 
 things that are done by others, as a shrewd boy may 
 acquire judgment of character, or as children acquire 
 the powers of speech and walking. It must, during his 
 earlier years at all events, be imparted to him by 
 teachers, through a deliberate process of education ; and 
 the taught are the many, the teachers are necessarily 
 the few. It is true, indeed, that, despite this fact, educa- 
 tion in its earlier stages, just like primitive industry, 
 may be fairly described as democratic; for although the 
 teachers are necessarily a small minority, the simpler 
 kinds of knowledge, such as reading and writing, may 
 not only be acquired by anybody, but might also be 
 taught by anybody who made it his trade to teach them. 
 This, however, ceases to be true as the scope of educa- 
 tion widens, partly because the things to be taught 
 become very much more numerous, and peculiar gifts for 
 assimilating them must be present in the teacher himself, 
 and partly because the task of conveying them in an 
 intelligible form to the pupils is one for which gifts are 
 requisite of a kind more peculiar still. By no one, as 
 we have seen already, is this fact insisted on with greater 
 vehemence than it is by the extremest advocates of 
 democratic education themselves. In order, then, that 
 the masses may have access to the higher life of know- 
 ledge, there must, even democrats admit, be an oligarchy 
 of professional teachers. 
 
 But this is not all. The professional teachers, how- 
 ever considerable their abilities, are themselves de- 
 pendent on an oligarchy higher than their own on the 
 
848 LIMITS OF PURE DEMOCRACY 
 
 supreme thinkers and the supreme discoverers such as 
 Plato, Aristotle, Columbus, Bacon, Galileo, Darwin 
 whom Nietzsche calls "the shining suns of Humanity," 
 and without whom the professional teacher would still 
 be teaching the geography of Homer, the astronomy of 
 the Ptolemies, and the ethnography of Martianus Capella. 
 But the principle is the same in any case. The intel- 
 lectual elevation of the many is contingent on the activity 
 of a certain superior few. 
 
 Of those elements of social intercourse which belong 
 to the life of emotional or aesthetic appreciation, the 
 same thing is true in a no less obvious way. There 
 are elements of aesthetic appreciation even in the 
 primitive savage; but the instruments of such ap- 
 preciation in all its higher forms have always been a 
 small company of great individual artists. Any pro- 
 fessional teacher may interpret art to his pupils, but 
 he cannot be his own Phidias, his own Wagner or 
 Shakespeare. 
 
 Of those elements of social intercourse which belong 
 to the life of religion, the same thing is true likewise. 
 There are few races, if any, no matter how primitive, in 
 which the crude elements of religion are not diffused and 
 indigenous, and so far democratic; but even amongst 
 peoples such as the aboriginal tribes of Australia, any 
 religion which binds men together has for its nucleus 
 some kind of oligarchic priesthood, by whom its rites, 
 rules and doctrines are performed, enforced or perpetu- 
 ated; whilst as to the higher religions, such as the 
 Buddhistic, the Christian and the Islamite, which dif- 
 ferentiate civilised men from the blood-stained savages 
 of Dahomey, each is inseparably connected with the 
 person of a single founder. 
 
 Thus in each of the three lives that of knowledge, that 
 of aesthetic appreciation and that of religion on which 
 the quality of social intercourse in a civilised country 
 depends, the activities of the few play a part of such 
 supreme importance that were their activities absent the 
 mass of the citizens, whatever their material wealth, 
 would be unlettered, superstitious and half-brutal bar- 
 barians, as many newly enriched men on the outskirts 
 of civilisation actually are to-day. 
 
THE GREAT MAN IN RELIGION 349 
 
 This is one side of the case, but it has another as well. 
 
 Considered as instruments of civilisation, the great 
 men in the spheres of knowledge, art and religion accom- 
 plish nothing by what they accomplish in their own 
 persons. The historian, the man of science, the philo- 
 sopher, might have all history, all the philosophies, all 
 the sciences in his head; the poet or the artist might 
 produce great poems or pictures, which he secretly read 
 or contemplated in his own study or studio; the man 
 of spiritual genius might spend every hour of his life in 
 secret union with God ; but these distinguished persons, 
 if they kept their achievements to themselves, would be 
 candles hidden under bushels. Mankind at large would 
 remain in unbroken night. What they do accomplish, 
 what they have accomplished, as an oligarchy, is to be 
 looked for, not in themselves, but in the effects produced 
 by their agency on the natures and the lives of others. 
 The man of knowledge habitually estimates the value of 
 his own discoveries by the extent to which, through 
 books or through oral teaching, he is able to make multi- 
 tudes comprehend and accept them. The poet and the 
 painter regard their arts as successful in proportion as, 
 by poem or picture, their own visions and emotions, 
 their own perceptions of beauty, of joy or sadness, are 
 awakened in the hearts of others, and there become con- 
 scious of themselves. But it is in the life of religion that 
 the relation of the few to the many shows its nature in 
 this respect most clearly. 
 
 A great preacher, with an intellect and a zeal like 
 Paul's, is, let us say, addressing some vast congregation, 
 which comprises men of all sorts and conditions. The 
 preacher is an exceptional man, or crowds would not 
 flock to listen to him; but his one aim is to appeal 
 equally to all to touch some part of the inmost nature 
 of each which the wise man shares with the fool, the 
 humblest peasant with the prince, and not to galvanise 
 this into any artificial life, but merely to rouse from sleep 
 something which is alive already. Apart from what the 
 masses bring to the religious teacher, there would be no 
 practical meaning in what the teacher brings to the 
 masses. If there were not in man some sense of distress 
 which the Christian religion has interpreted as a sense 
 
350 LIMITS OF PURE DEMOCRACY 
 
 of sin, the Christian religion could never have come into 
 existence, for no one would have been able to conjecture 
 what the Christian message meant. The Sermon on the 
 Mount, in that case, might just as well have been a pious 
 soliloquy. The stones would have cried out in answer 
 to it sooner than human beings. Let us assume that the 
 Christian religion was revealed by God Himself, through 
 the manhood of Christ, and an oligarchy of chosen inter- 
 preters; but Christianity, as a living religion for man- 
 kind, is nothing more than such elements of the divine 
 message as the masses of mankind assimilate, selecting 
 them democratically in accordance with their own free 
 proclivities, just as income in the form of coloured 
 ribbons is real income only in so far as their several 
 varieties are selected and worn by women, as becoming 
 to their own complexions. 
 
 This comparison o'f religion to shopping may perhaps 
 by some persons be reprehended as unduly flippant. It 
 is no more flippant than one with which we are all 
 familiar the comparison of the Holy Spirit to yeast 
 hidden in a meal-barrel. In each case in that of shop- 
 ping and that of vital religious belief there is a pre- 
 sentation by the few to the many of things, material or 
 spiritual, which the many could not have presented to 
 themselves, but which, when once presented to them by 
 others by the great scientific manufacturer or the great 
 religious teacher the many, according to their several 
 capacities, make their own by free acts of assimilation. 
 In the life of artistic caste and emotional refinement 
 generally, the process is essentially the same. It is the 
 same in the life of knowledge. In the most rudimentary 
 education administered to young children in any national 
 school, there are elements to-day of philosophies, of syn- 
 thetic thought and of discoveries to which, if it had not 
 been for the specially gifted few, mankind would still 
 be strangers. 
 
 The three non-material life-processes those of Know- 
 ledge, Emotional Refinement and Religion have their 
 analogues in the processes, wholly or mainly material, 
 of Industrial Production, Political Government and 
 War. But the part played by the oligarchic principle, 
 though analogous, is not the same in all. The six 
 
8 
 
 THE DEMOCRATIC CLIMAX 351 
 
 main processes in question are divisible into two kinds, 
 one of which we may call the subservient processes, 
 the other the processes of fruition. The latter consist 
 of those namely, the intellectual, the aesthetic and the 
 religious which determine the character of civilised 
 social intercourse. The former consist of war, govern- 
 ment and industry, which, except in so far as they 
 subserve social intercourse, mean nothing; and though 
 the principles of oligarchy and democracy are essential 
 to both alike, the principle of oligarchy is in the sub- 
 servient processes predominant, whilst in the ultimate 
 processes of fruition it loses itself in its own results, and 
 gives place to what, in its essentials, is a process of pure 
 democracy. The religious oligarch, when he has preached 
 his gospel to millions, lives in the democracy of his con- 
 verts. Similarly, the average wage-worker engaged in 
 the manufacture of chemicals is subject to the oligarchic 
 employer through whose intellect labour results in rib- 
 bons of a hundred colours ; but his wife knows, as nobody 
 else can know, which of these colours she herself prefers ; 
 and she, with a democracy of similar wives, by freely 
 choosing this kind of ribbon or that, gives orders to the 
 industrial oligarch, the master of chemical knowledge, 
 which determine in the long run which dyes shall be 
 produced, or the quantity which shall be produced of 
 each. It is, in short, in the process of social intercourse, 
 whether this exhibits itself in the conversion, by indi- 
 vidual character, of money income into real income, or 
 the free assimilation of moral and religious teaching, 
 
 at the true and only field of democratic freedom and 
 
 If-fruition in a civilised society will be found ; and the 
 fundamental truth as to the relation between the two 
 principles, the democratic and the oligarchic, may be 
 summed up in saying that only through oligarchy does 
 civilised democracy know itself. 
 
 But, however true this may be, one thing must never 
 forgotten. From the point of view of the great 
 sses of mankind the principle of oligarchy is justified 
 nly by the fact that through its action an ampler field 
 f self-fruition and choice is offered to the masses them- 
 
 Ives, both in material matters and non-material, than 
 possible in those simple societies where the influence 
 
352 LIMITS OF PURE DEMOCRACY 
 
 of the few is absent. Whatever the few may add to the 
 possible things of civilisation, the many must, according 
 to their several talents, share them; and amongst the 
 additions which the many will thus share with the few, 
 material things stand practically, if not logically, first. 
 In respect of these, the debt of the few to the many is 
 represented primarily by a just minimum wage, of which 
 the main attribute must be that it shall, as explained 
 already, represent conditions unquestionably ampler 
 than any which the recipients could secure by their own 
 unaided efforts. In what the average workers could 
 secure by their unaided efforts only, and without sub- 
 mission to the orders of any minds superior to their 
 own, we have the standard by ultimate reference to 
 which their conditions under a system of wage-work and 
 industrial oligarchy must be measured; and if these 
 latter conditions the conditions represented by wages 
 are adjusted in the manner here set forth as rational, 
 and are taken together with those non-material adjuncts 
 which have been here set forth as possible and rational 
 likewise, then so far as reason has any effect on the 
 emotions, however strongly they may be tinctured with 
 the sentiment of democratic freedom, however strongly 
 they may be inflamed with desire for material plenty, 
 such conditions are calculated to elicit the emotion of 
 content. If they fail to elicit it, the failure will be due, 
 not to reason, but to some other affections of the mind, 
 which have here been already glanced at, and which 
 shall now, with the aid of certain fresh illustrations, be 
 re-examined. 
 
CHAPTER III 
 
 THE MOOD OF VAGUE REBELLION 
 
 EVERY human being, whether he be wise or foolish, a 
 moderate man or an extremist, must, consciously or sub- 
 consciously, have in his mind some vision of the external 
 conditions and opportunities which would content him, 
 or at least leave him nothing to grumble at, as the setting 
 of his own life-drama. Further, this vision of circum- 
 stances and of the life-drama to which they are sub- 
 servient must in every case include the assumption, 
 conscious or sub-conscious, that they lie within the limits 
 of the possible. If a man, in his own opinion, is endowed 
 with talents which distinguish him from the great mass 
 of his fellows, these circumstances, in the way of income, 
 of position or otherwise, will not be confined within any 
 fixable limits. They may represent an income of many 
 thousands or tens of thousands a year. But if he does 
 not and cannot persuade himself that his talents exceed 
 the average, the circumstances or income which would 
 content him must be such as would have to content the 
 majority of his fellows likewise ; and the maximum which 
 possible at any given time for multitudes has limits 
 a fixed and very definite kind. In any case the 
 :cumstances which would bring content to himself must 
 measured by, if they do not coincide with, the amplest 
 linimum which would have to suffice for most. 
 The case, however, of men who are, or believe them- 
 ;lves to be, exceptional, who believe great prizes in the 
 ray of income or position to be their due, and are willing 
 make their lives a hazardous adventure in quest of 
 lem, must, with its successes or failures, be left to 
 ittle itself. Their private satisfactions or disappoint- 
 icnts will have, as subjective phenomena, no more 
 iterest of a general kind than their love-affairs. The 
 >blem of how to secure content with the existing 
 
 A A 353 
 
354 LIMITS OF PURE DEMOCRACY 
 
 system, social, political and industrial, relates to those 
 (let us say four-fifths of the population) whose faculties 
 fail to win for them, or to give them any promise of 
 winning, conditions and positions which, even when 
 they exceed the average, and are ample for purposes 
 of comfort and a rational life, not only fall short of 
 riches, but are lacking in the outward insignia of what 
 many people call mediocrity. The units of this majority 
 might, as has been said already, recognise clearly, though 
 grudgingly, as a mere matter of reason, that their lots, 
 if adjusted in the manner here described, were the best 
 which the nature of things makes possible, in the sense 
 that no radical revolution could alter them otherwise 
 than for the worse ; but reason, as matters stand, would 
 fail to impose complete acquiescence on their emotions. 
 Their emotions would be still rebellious. Unrest would 
 still survive all the possible appliances of rest. 
 
 In what part of men's nature, then, does this difficulty, 
 as matters stand, reside? It resides not in any belief 
 or opinion which sane reason can endorse, or which any 
 reasonable man would venture to state categorically 
 either to himself or others. It resides in a mood or 
 temper which, in the way of obstinate though but half- 
 recognised implications, retains what reason has alto- 
 gether rejected; and we shall find, when they are 
 analysed, that all these implications are summed up in 
 those formulae of pure democracy with an examination 
 of which the present work began. These familiar 
 formulae such as "one man one vote," or "one man 
 one unit of influence in virtue of his manhood alone " 
 are, it was there shown, applicable with substantial 
 accuracy, to the affairs of small, simple, isolated and 
 primitively poor communities; but, as applied to those 
 of the great, complex, interconnected and opulent 
 nations of to-day, they are not loose ways of expressing 
 what is substantially true; they are precise ways of 
 expressing what is essentially false. These formulae 
 are correct as applied to primitively simple communities 
 because in such communities both industrial conditions 
 and governmental are the result of the co-operation of 
 equals of human faculties reduced to their lowest 
 common denominator. They are false as applied to 
 
DEMOCRACY VERSUS AUTHORITY 355 
 
 complex and opulent communities because in such com- 
 munities both industrial conditions and governmental are 
 essentially the result of the co-operation of unequals. 
 These formulae are false, not because they assert demo- 
 cratic principle, but because they deny, or suggest a 
 denial of the oligarchic. 
 
 Of the insidious action of the Mood which holds this 
 fallacy in solution, and which is constantly pitted against 
 the reason of those who harbour it, a most remarkable 
 illustration was given by a well-known publicist, who 
 enjoys a deserved reputation, not only as a powerful 
 writer, but in many ways as a temperate thinker also. 
 In the course of the spring of the year 1917, with refer- 
 ence to the real meaning of the struggle between the 
 Germanic Powers and their opponents, he declared in a 
 journal controlled by him that "the struggle, in which 
 almost the whole of the world is locked, is a struggle 
 between two principles between the principle of demo- 
 cracy on the one hand, and the principle of authority 
 on the other." In this instinctive substitution of the 
 word "authority" for another in more common use- 
 that is to say, "autocracy," in the sense of military 
 despotism, we have a startling illustration of what was, 
 it all events, the momentary triumph of mere Mood over 
 jason. It was a triumph which will justify us in 
 lending the writer's statement, and saying, in a sense 
 iuch wider and deeper than his own, that " the struggle 
 which almost the whole of the world is locked is a 
 iggle between the irrational mood which insists on 
 reclaiming the supremacy of democracy simple and 
 talloyed, and the sober reason which, without ignoring 
 jmocracy, proclaims the principle of oligarchy as its 
 mstant and necessary counterpart." Indeed the reality 
 >f this struggle was exhibited on that very occasion by 
 writer himself; for the same series of Comments 
 rhich contained his implied attack on " authority " con- 
 dned, in an adjacent paragraph, an impassioned demand 
 >r its exercise a demand that one entire department of 
 British activities in war-time should be placed under the 
 ibsolute control of a small body of experts. 
 If the fallacious implications latent in the formulae of 
 ire democracy can so overcloud the vision and so vitiate 
 
356 LIMITS OF PURE DEMOCRACY 
 
 the mood of a mind naturally sagacious, we shall find 
 little to wonder at in the domination, not always active 
 but always ready to become so, of this same mood over 
 the natural common sense of masses unaccustomed to 
 synthetic thinking. It has been pointed out already 
 that, under the modern industrial system, the wage- 
 workers, when dealing with their various sectional inter- 
 ests, exhibit themselves generally as the last people in 
 the world to believe in any general equality, whether of 
 skill or payment ; and this is specially true of those whose 
 skill and whose wages are the highest (such, for example, 
 as the metal-workers), and whose unions are most highly 
 organised. On ordinary occasions, such as those of par- 
 ticular wage disputes, each section is preoccupied with 
 the interests of its own members. Exceptional skill is 
 vigilantly jealous of semi-skill. It demands and clings 
 to exceptional rates of wages with as much tenacity as 
 any employer to his profits, or any investor to his 
 dividends ; and in principle the representatives of excep- 
 tional skill are right. They are right in demanding for 
 it the full excess of its value over that of the ordinary 
 labour of which all human beings are capable, and which 
 is all that large multitudes can, or are required to, 
 exercise. We may even concede that they are right in 
 endeavouring by various methods by limitation of ap- 
 prenticeship or otherwise to convert its competitive 
 value into the value of an artificial monopoly. But 
 whenever any question arises with regard to more general 
 principles to principles affecting the constitution of the 
 industrial system as a whole it is precisely men like 
 these who, in alliance with discontented adventurers, 
 mainly of middle-class origin, are foremost in shouting 
 the formulae of democracy pure and simple, and deluding 
 others, and probably deluding themselves, with visions 
 of a world in which all rewards are equal, and skill, 
 semi-skill and no-skill feast at a common table. 
 
 The condition or mood of mind which renders such 
 self-contradictions possible is not susceptible of any 
 rational explanation, for it does not arise from reason. 
 It is a combination of the demand that everybody, in 
 respect both of income and of influence of influence 
 both political and industrial shall have at least an 
 

 CURES FOR A DISEASED MOOD 357 
 
 equal chance of "getting to the top of the tree," with 
 a demand that the tree shall have no top at all. In 
 particular, so far as the leaders of discontent are con- 
 cerned namely, the most successful of the manual 
 wage-workers and the least successful of the middle class 
 it is a demand on the part of each (as Professor 
 Michels shows by his quotations from the Italian 
 Syndicalist Labriola) that his own position shall be 
 superior to that of the masses of other people, but that 
 the position of no minority shall be in any way superior 
 to his own. 
 
 How, then, shall this irrational mood be rationalised 
 this mood which demands, and at the same time 
 denies, equality, and which, so long as it lasts, renders 
 all content amongst all but a few impossible? It can 
 be rationalised, and brought into accordance with fact, 
 in two ways only. One of these ways is that of per- 
 sistent appeals to the reason which, however obscured, 
 is present even in the persons themselves whom this 
 mood mainly affects, and through their reason to their 
 imagination. The other way, and the costlier way, is 
 by the teaching^ of the results which must ensue if this 
 irrational mood is carried to its logical consequences. 
 
 The way of appeal to reason, although it may be long 
 and tedious, is of far more promise than at first sight 
 may appear; for reason itself, amongst the present 
 apostles of discontent, leads, as we have seen, already 
 to the very conclusions against which the mood of dis- 
 content protests. Socialists, indeed, in defending this 
 mood, which protests against inequalities whereas sober 
 reason asserts them, are compelled to call indirect 
 reasoning, or reasoning by suggestion, to their aid. 
 Certain of their logical feats, which are somewhat of this 
 character, have been reviewed in an earlier chapter- 
 such, for example, as the doctrines that all men are born 
 equal, differences of efficiency being due to differences 
 of position only, or that all forms of effort are equal 
 which in any way whatever are necessary. But in their 
 direct forms, as parts of a formal theory of economics, 
 these democratic crudities are now virtually obsolete, 
 and have been superseded by two ideas or philosophies, 
 more comprehensive in kind, which are connected with 
 
358 LIMITS OF PURE DEMOCRACY 
 
 pure democracy by general inference rather than by 
 direct inculcation, which are peculiarly adapted to cap- 
 tivate a quasi-scientific attention, and which socialist 
 thinkers parade with all the airs of calm scientific pro- 
 fundity. One of these ideas or philosophies expresses 
 itself in a certain conception of the State ; the other 
 expresses itself in a certain interpretation of history. 
 One is derived mainly from the speculations of modern 
 sociologists, notably of Herbert Spencer. The other is 
 a resuscitation of the historical, as distinct from the 
 strictly economic and discarded, doctrines of Marx. 
 
 In all socialist thought some conception is implicit of 
 the activities of the State as contrasted with those of the 
 individual. Under the influence of what passed muster 
 as the " scientific " theories of Marx, such a conception 
 became precise and prominent ; and in all formal socialist 
 projects, from the days of Marx onwards, the State has 
 figured as a number of public officials who, as overseers 
 of the national industry and trustees of the national 
 capital, should take the place of the private capitalists 
 and employers; and, however democratic the means to 
 which they owed their power, they would constitute a 
 class distinct from the great mass of the population. 
 This conception of the State, though still a necessary 
 element of socialist thought to-day, has been gradually 
 supplemented by another, which now exists side by side 
 with it, and according to which the State, instead of 
 being a class apart, is a single and indivisible body, the 
 Marxian State being only one of his organs, whilst the 
 units, those of the official class included, are but so many 
 cells of one and the same organism. In a State, as thus 
 conceived, each cell differs from the rest, as a minute 
 particle of this organ or of that ; but all subserve equally 
 the corporate life of the whole ; and, as one of the philo- 
 sophers of the English Labour Party puts it, except in 
 relation to "this organic oneness," no cell has "an 
 individual end, or any true life of its own." 
 
 Here we have, as Bacon would have called them, the 
 " idols " of pure democracy, such as equality of function, 
 sentimental solidarity and so forth, reconstructed out of 
 new materials, or offered to observation from a new 
 point of view, with the object of inculcating by sugges- 
 
STATES AS ORGANIC UNITS 359 
 
 tion, and perpetuating in the form of a mood, the very 
 fallacies which, when expressed in detail, the reason and 
 even the emotions of socialists themselves repudiate. 
 
 In the first place it may be observed that, in represent- 
 ing each human unit as a cell of some organic body or 
 animal to whose unitary life and prosperity all cells are 
 equally necessary, socialists are provoking a comparison 
 which is singularly unfortunate for themselves. The 
 cells of a physical organism, such as that of a human 
 being, are by no means all equally essential to its life, 
 or even to its general health. A man may lose the cells 
 which make up (let us say) his thumb or his whiskers, 
 and be otherwise hale and hearty till he dies at the age 
 of ninety. He may lose the cells of his tonsils or csecus 
 appendix, and be all the better for losing them ; but if 
 certain of his brain-cells were lost, he would lose reason 
 or memory. Were others lost, he would die. The 
 analogy between cells and citizens breaks down under 
 the first touch of analysis, in respect at least of the 
 equalitarian moral which democrats seek to draw from it. 
 
 This matter is, however, of minor importance as 
 compared with two others, the first of which is as 
 follows. 
 
 One of the main demands which the spirit of socialism, 
 as a moral principle, makes is, as we have seen already, 
 a recognition of the moral value of the individual life as 
 such. "It demands," says a socialist writer in an out- 
 burst of solemn emphasis, "that every human life, 
 however weak and externally ineffectual, shall be rever- 
 enced and treated as a something unspeakably precious 
 in itself." But this is precisely what the theory of the 
 individual as nothing more than a cell in the body of a 
 State-animal, whose corporate life is the sole true life, 
 denies. To regard the individual as a cell which is 
 valuable only according to its effects on a body exterior 
 to itself, is merely to rehabilitate the mood, rightly 
 denounced by socialists, which has caused many em- 
 ployers to regard the individual labourer, not as a human 
 being, but simply as so much labour, his sole value being 
 what his labour produces, such as a wall, a corkscrew, 
 or a drain, and his microscopic humanity being an ash 
 of negligible refuse. 
 
360 LIMITS OF PURE DEMOCRACY 
 
 But the modern attempt to exhibit pure democracy 
 as finding its full embodiment in the unitary social 
 organism is vitiated by another absurdity which, includ- 
 ing this as a consequence, is even more profound. The 
 analogy between a State and a single living organism 
 has been set forth by no thinker more emphatically than 
 by Herbert Spencer, or with greater elaboration of detail. 
 He maintains that these two phenomena are not merely 
 analogous, but in a literal sense identical. He says, for 
 example, that in a complex modern society the nerves 
 of the human organism (or, as he calls them, the "inter- 
 nuncial " tissues) reproduce themselves in the form of 
 telegraph wires. Indeed to many of his followers, who 
 are otherwise in substantial agreement with him, he 
 appears, when he argues thus, to have pushed his case 
 too far. At all events, the identity of the State with 
 a unitary animal organism is, even if he does not 
 exaggerate it, presented by Spencer in the completest 
 form possible; and it is mainly from him and his fol- 
 lowers that the modern socialist philosophy of the 
 organic State is derived. But Spencer, having exhausted 
 his ingenuity in illustrating the minute likeness of a 
 State to an animal organism, at once goes on to insist 
 that, even if they are identical otherwise, there is between 
 the two one insuperable and fundamental difference. A 
 Society or a State, he says, is an animal which, unlike 
 all others, has not, and never can have, any " common 
 sensorium." Its collective activities may be unitary, 
 but it has no unitary consciousness. Whatever con- 
 sciousness it possesses is distributed throughout the body 
 in millions of isolated units, and only as conceived and 
 experienced by each of these units separately can the 
 State have for human beings any object or any meaning 
 whatsoever. The individual citizen does not value the 
 State directly as an objective fact, or on account of what 
 it is for others. He values it indirectly and derivatively 
 because other men, as units, reflect themselves in his own 
 experience, and because the prosperity of other men in 
 the mass is connected more or less with his own. The 
 contention, then, that each man's life is equally valuable 
 because each conduces equally to the life of the same 
 State may suggest such an equality by a trick of 
 
STATES NON-CONSCIOUS 361 
 
 ambiguous language, but has in reality no meaning 
 at all. 
 
 If, however, we revert to the fact, which was empha- 
 sised in the preceding chapter, that the fruition of life 
 through the State consists of the intercourse of the 
 individual with a limited circle of kindred, friends and 
 companions, the comparison of the State to an actual 
 human organism will yield us, at all events, one instruc- 
 tive analogy. We may say that, on a rough average, 
 social intercourse, in the case of each individual, is 
 limited to a sub-community of perhaps two hundred 
 persons. Thus, in a country like the United Kingdom 
 these sub-communities would be not far short in number 
 of two hundred thousand ; and if we liken the population 
 as a whole to a single national organism, we may liken 
 each sub-community, not to a simple, but to a large 
 composite cell, having within it a social life of its own. 
 Now every actual organism, such as a human being, 
 begins in the uterus as a cell compounded of two ele- 
 ments the female and the fertilising male. This, multi- 
 plied by fission, develops into an adhesive cluster, each 
 unit of which, though attached to all its neighbours, 
 lives for a time a life which is exclusively its own, like 
 a man whose house is next-door to that of a total 
 stranger. A moment arrives, however, when this state 
 of things changes. The separate life of each separate 
 cell survives, but signs appear of some one life common 
 to all of them by which they are at last absorbed. The 
 unified life thenceforth is the only life remaining; and 
 it is as a unitary consciousness that the embryo, no 
 longer embryonic, is at last born into the world. If, 
 then, we compare a State to an animal organism which 
 is embryonic and not yet complete, we shall find between 
 the former and the latter a real resemblance which, 
 when both are complete, vanishes. The cells of social 
 intercourse, being all affected by conditions, political 
 and industrial, which are more or less common to all of 
 them, are so far like the cells of the embryo in one of its 
 earlier stages. There is a common life in both cases ; 
 there is a common consciousness in neither. But these 
 multiple units of consciousness in the animal organism 
 disappear, being merged in one; whereas the cells of 
 
362 LIMITS OF PURE DEMOCRACY 
 
 social intercourse, so far as conscious experience is con- 
 cerned, always remain separate. The development in 
 the direction of unity is arrested it goes no farther; 
 and, closely connected though these cells of intercourse 
 are, the fruition of such intercourse exists so far only 
 as it is reflected in each of those globules of individual 
 consciousness of which every larger cell of social inter- 
 course is composed. 
 
 For all purposes, then, of socialist or democratic argu- 
 ment the relation of the State to an organism is one, not 
 of identity, but of violent and fundamental contrast ; and 
 the socialist attempt to suggest, by appeal to such partial 
 analogies as doubtless exist between them, that the 
 process of advanced civilisation is due to the co-operation 
 of equals has been here briefly examined, because it is 
 a signal illustration of the intellectual bankruptcy of 
 those who seek to inculcate by suggestion ideas which 
 they themselves repudiate when translated into definite 
 terms either of action or direct analysis. 
 
 Of this intellectual bankruptcy an illustration no less 
 remarkable is the socialist attempt to suggest the same 
 conclusion, and maintain the socialist mood, by an 
 appeal to what is paraded as a scientific interpretation 
 of history. Of the invocation of history as a witness to 
 the essentially democratic character of all social progress, 
 and to the fact that oligarchy has been merely a dis- 
 astrous accident, the protagonist, as has been said, was 
 Marx; and, amongst the more thoughtful socialists, the 
 historical part of his teaching alone survives intact. 
 There are, indeed, for all thinkers, the elements in it 
 of a fundamental truth, which by the earlier econo- 
 mists of capitalism was altogether neglected. The sub- 
 stance of this teaching is as follows. The history of all 
 nations depends on the conditions under which material 
 wealth is produced. The actual agent of production is 
 always manual labour. The product of all labourers is 
 practically of equal value. Thus the actual producers 
 are always a pure democracy ; but history shows that, in 
 one way or another, they have always hitherto been sub- 
 jected to some oligarchy, which appropriates the results 
 of production but plays no part in the process. The 
 oligarchs first were slave-owners, they then were feudal 
 
SOCIALISTS AS HISTORIANS 363 
 
 superiors ; the feudal superiors have been superseded by 
 the capitalist employers of to-day; and the business of 
 history is to trace out in detail how one of these oli- 
 garchies gave place to another, whilst the actual pro- 
 ductive process, in respect of its democratic character, 
 always remained the same. In particular, said Marx, 
 the great business of history is to demonstrate how, 
 why, and when the modern capitalist system followed 
 and supplanted feudalism. 
 
 What, then, he asks, have been the historical causes 
 to which the capitalist system of the modern world is 
 due ? According to Marx, these must be sought for in 
 England, where the modern capitalist system first made 
 its appearance. The chief of these were, he said, the 
 Wars of the Roses, which caused the dissolution of many 
 great feudal households ; the distribution by Henry VIII 
 of vast monastic properties, thereby creating a virtually 
 new plutocracy; and, further, a growing demand for 
 English wool in Europe, which caused an immense 
 conversion of arable land into sheep-walks, so that 
 countless ploughmen and cultivators were turned adrift 
 on the world to look for some new employment. Here, 
 said Marx, we have the beginnings of that division of 
 society into a landless multitude on the one hand, and 
 a small group of plutocrats enriched by accident on 
 the other; and out of this division, which began in the 
 sixteenth century, that system of capitalism on the great 
 scale has arisen, which reached maturity in England 
 three centuries later. 
 
 Now let us grant that, considered as an isolated 
 chapter of history, this account of the genesis of modern 
 capitalism is correct. But in view of the ultimate facts, 
 at an explanation of which Marx aimed in elaborating 
 it, its scope is limited in a way which renders it wholly 
 valueless. If a coroner's jury were inquiring into the 
 death of a particular man, and a family doctor who had 
 known him all his life were able to show that it was due 
 to certain causes such as habits of excess, or some 
 tropical fever whicfi had so undermined his constitution 
 that a slight chill had been fatal to him which a sound 
 man would have hardly noticed, the doctor would have 
 told the jury all that they wished to know. He would 
 
364 LIMITS OF PURE DEMOCRACY 
 
 have explained a death, but he would not have explained 
 death. In the same way the historical argument of 
 Marx may do much to explain the rise of one oligarchy 
 in particular, but it does nothing to explain why oli- 
 garchy, in one form or another, should be the invariable 
 concomitant of advancing civilisations generally, the 
 capitalist oligarchy of England being only one example 
 of it. If the capitalist oligarchy of England were a fact 
 which stood by itself, every detail of its special ante- 
 cedents would be of universal import, just as the most 
 trivial incidents which led to the death of one man 
 would be of universal import if only one man died ; but, 
 if a kind of event, such as the rise of oligarchies, is 
 general, the more we confine ourselves to conditions 
 which are peculiar to any single case, the more do we 
 lose sight of the elements which are fundamental and 
 common to all. 
 
 Even Marx himself saw, and indeed drew attention to 
 the fact that, considered merely as a manifestation of 
 oligarchy, the capitalism of modern England had its 
 analogues there and everywhere in the industrial systems 
 which had preceded it namely, slavery in the ancient 
 world, and the statutory system of feudal labour-dues 
 in the mediaeval. Society, under each of these systems, 
 culminated in the persons of a guiding and ruling few. 
 Nevertheless, with this fact before him he so fixed his 
 mind on the differences by which these three systems 
 were distinguished from one another that he failed to 
 note or appreciate the significance of their persistent 
 likeness; and his failure in this respect was embodied 
 in his famous summary, to which, in its general sense, 
 socialists still cling, of what the world-process of in- 
 dustrial evolution has been, is, and in the future is 
 bound to be. Just as the slave-system was inevitably 
 transformed into feudalism, and just as feudalism 
 was inevitably transformed into capitalism, so, he 
 said, by a process essentially similar, will capitalist 
 oligarchy be transformed into the industrial democracy 
 of socialism. 
 
 It seems never to have occurred to him, when he 
 prophesies the advent of this final stage, how completely 
 all analogy between it and the three others evaporates, 
 
FALLACIOUS HISTORY 365 
 
 his whole prediction being merely one vast non sequitur. 
 When stripped of its accessories, his argument comes to 
 this : that, because in all civilisations hitherto the prin- 
 ciple of oligarchy, however it may have disappeared in 
 one form, has always reappeared in another, we have 
 ample evidence for concluding that it will in the future 
 not reappear at all. If the modern capitalist system 
 had been not only cradled in England, but if, having 
 there matured itself, it had been confined to England 
 also, the Marxian account of its origin in insular events 
 which developed themselves during the course of the 
 sixteenth century might pass muster as plausible. But 
 this same system has subsequently risen into life de novo 
 in countries such as America, between whose history and 
 that of England there is otherwise no resemblance. 
 What has the evolution of a wage-earning class in 
 America to do with any evolution of landless men in 
 England which was due to the Wars of the Roses, or the 
 growth of sheep-farms in certain English counties at the 
 expense of tillage four hundred years ago ? What has 
 the rise of an enterprise like the Standard Oil Trust to 
 do with any private fortunes which the favour of Henry 
 VIII assigned to a few individuals out of the plunder 
 of the English monasteries ? If, a few rich men being 
 given, the existence of landless masses is at once 
 necessary and sufficient to explain the rise of capital- 
 ism, why has America witnessed the rise of capitalism 
 at all ? For nobody in America need have wanted a 
 substantial farm who had the energy and the disposition 
 to till it. 
 
 The more closely we consider what the history of the 
 past has been, the more clearly does the imperfection 
 of the historical theory of Marx, which is still adopted 
 by democratic thinkers, reveal itself. From age to age, 
 in this region or that, societies, unknown to each other, 
 have formed themselves out of human units which have 
 come together like drifted grains of sand. They have 
 gradually risen into civilised States or nations, eminent 
 for wealth and power, for learning and for the arts of 
 life. They have risen, flourished and declined, and out 
 of the dust of their dissolution others have been formed 
 anew. In Phoenicia, Crete, Egypt, Assyria, Carthage, 
 
366 LIMITS OF PURE DEMOCRACY 
 
 Rome, Moorish Spain, and the northern swamps of the 
 Adriatic, this same drama has been enacted; and not 
 only in places such as these not in the Old World only. 
 It was enacting itself in the New World also, as the 
 Spaniards saw to their astonishment when they first set 
 eyes on men who till then had been as strange to Europe 
 as the inhabitants of another planet; and wherever 
 wealth, learning, art and national power have developed 
 themselves, from the lands of the Incas and Aztecs to 
 Tyre, Babylon and Chicago, some special position, 
 wholly disproportionate to their number, has always 
 been present in the persons of a ruling or leading few. 
 Every individual event has its own local and, we may 
 say, its accidental setting; but when an event, always 
 the same in its one essential characteristic, is found to 
 repeat itself in countries whose conditions and histories 
 are various and divergent otherwise in every imaginable 
 way, it obviously cannot be due to any one sequence of 
 local or historical accidents especially when the event 
 is one so unlikely on the face of it as the adverse posses- 
 sion by a few men of a force indefinitely greater than the 
 cumulative force of millions. 
 
 Nothing is more calculated to suggest this conclusion 
 to common sense than the rhetoric which even educated 
 socialists are accustomed to direct against the ruling few 
 in general. From age to age, it is said, they have lived 
 on the plunder of the masses, having first reduced them 
 to subjection. Thus one writer accuses them of having 
 " seized " the railways and locomotives of England. 
 Another declares that they have always " seized on 
 knowledge," and robbed the masses of education. Now 
 to make such statements as these, of which there are 
 endless variants, is like saying that Marx seized on the 
 ownership of his own works, or that a painter stole from 
 the masses the ownership of his own pictures. If such 
 things are owned by comparatively few persons, the 
 primary reason is that it is the intellect and enterprise 
 of the few which has caused them to come into exist- 
 ence locomotives, books, great pictures, all the higher 
 kinds of knowledge, and so forth. 
 
 But let us put the matter on a broader footing than 
 this. Let us take, for example, the statements that the 
 
&\j 
 
 s 
 
 THE POWER OF THE FEW 367 
 
 few in every civilised country have reduced the masses 
 to subjection, and, by robbing them of the higher know- 
 ledge, have made their subjection permanent. If such 
 statements purport to be even rhetorically true, the 
 kinds of question which they at once provoke are as 
 follows : If all men are naturally equal, how has so 
 prodigious a feat as the constant subjection of so many 
 thousands of men been brought about and perpetuated 
 by puny little groups of ten ? And, even if rhetorically 
 there were some truth in the statement that ten men, 
 masters of knowledge, withheld their higher knowledge 
 from the thousand, why, if all men are equal, do the 
 members of this overwhelming majority not acquire 
 such knowledge for themselves ? If the subjection of 
 the many by the few, through a monopoly of knowledge 
 or otherwise, were an event which had occurred once 
 only, or only on very rare and fortuitously-like occasions, 
 such an event might be reasonably ascribed to accident. 
 But since it is an event which, as socialists are constantly 
 declaring, has enacted and re-enacted itself everywhere 
 in all the civilisations of the past, however remote from 
 one another in circumstances, time and place, it must 
 obviously have Been due to some fact which is not 
 accidental, but universal; and this can be none other 
 than the fact that out of every thousand, or every million 
 of human beings a small minority bring with them into 
 the world faculties of will, intellect, constructive imagina- 
 tion and leadership which are, in their various ways, 
 more powerful for constructive purposes than those of 
 ordinary men. 
 
 Of such exceptional faculties those which happen to be 
 predominant are not always the same. They have 
 sometimes been mainly military, sometimes political, 
 sometimes commercial or industrial, sometimes intel- 
 ectual or artistic. In large and highly civilised States 
 
 e faculties which distinguish the few, and which give 
 them their oligarchic power, comprise all these varieties 
 simultaneously, so that the national oligarchy is several 
 oligarchies in one. But in every case the principle on 
 which progress and the conservation of its fruits depend 
 is embodied in the persons of a few. Whenever any 
 ligarchy has existed for any length of time, it will, as 
 
368 LIMITS OF PURE DEMOCRACY 
 
 an active body, appear to be larger than it is, and the 
 foundations of its power will be obscured, because the 
 active members of it, owing to family ties, will be sur- 
 rounded by an accretion of persons who belong to it by 
 accident only. But, from one generation to another, 
 these adventitious members drop off and disappear ; and 
 actual oligarchic power, to use the words of Mill, " always 
 is in, or is always passing into the hands of men " whose 
 faculties, as applied to some practical purpose, are 
 by overt experience marked out as superior to those of 
 the general mass. 
 
 This fact, indeed, is constantly admitted even by 
 socialists, though by childish abuses of language they 
 endeavour to hide its consequences. One of their stock 
 assertions is this, that the few in all ages and places have 
 acquired exceptional wealth and power "by reason of 
 their superior cunning." An English semi-socialist, in- 
 venting a word for the occasion, has said that their 
 wealth and power are due merely to a superior " pushful- 
 ness." If anybody likes to say that the telephone, the 
 turbine engine, the aeroplane, and progress in the manu- 
 facture of chemicals are due to superior "cunning," he 
 is free to do so; but in that case "cunning " is merely 
 another word for genius. If anybody likes to say that 
 the few have achieved such results merely by superior 
 "pushfulness," he is free to do so, but in that case 
 " pushf ulness " is merely another word for wholly ex- 
 ceptional energy. Changes in words effect no change in 
 things ; and even socialists, when they use such language, 
 virtually admit the fact, which cannot be ultimately 
 suppressed, that oligarchy represents the power of excep- 
 tional energy and genius, and that, though these may 
 be the results of accident in respect of the pre-natal 
 processes by which natural superiorities are determined, 
 they are not accidents in respect of those post-natal 
 processes which make up the history of nations in their 
 progress towards civilisation and wealth from primitive 
 poverty and barbarism. 
 
 Thus the Marxian theory of history, the one object of 
 which is to exhibit the oligarchic principle as an accident 
 of civilisation, as in no sense a necessary cause of it, and 
 as thus susceptible of elimination in the future by force 
 
ABSTRACTION AND ADDITION 369 
 
 or other arbitrary action, the general wealth of nations 
 being totally unaffected by the change this theory of 
 history, to which socialists still cling as a means of 
 keeping, by suggestion, the socialist mood alive, sup- 
 presses the one cause which alone makes progress 
 intelligible. 
 
 If, however, the connection which Marx was foremost 
 in establishing between historical oligarchies and the 
 democratic element in production, together with its 
 social consequences, be taken for what it is, as not acci- 
 dental but essential, the Marxian theory otherwise will 
 conduct us to a vital fact which socialists use it to 
 obscure, and which other and clearer thinkers too often 
 fail to realise. History shows us, according to Marx and 
 his followers, that in all stages of civilisation the fortunes 
 of the few have been, and still are, due to a process of 
 pure plunder, disguised as military conquest, or as legal 
 systems such as slavery, which ultimately rest on non- 
 industrial force. By whatever name they may have 
 been called, these fortunes have always consisted of 
 abstractions accomplished by the few from some revenue 
 due wholly to the efforts of the many, so that, as the 
 few grow richer, the many grow inevitably poorer in 
 exactly the same proportion. Such, according to Marx 
 and his followers, has always been the case in the past ; 
 and under the modern capitalist system so these per- 
 sons proceed this immemorial process of abstraction 
 has, owing to adventitious circumstances, reached, or is 
 reaching, its climax. 
 
 Now in this version of history a process is depicted 
 which in the past has actually taken place, and which 
 in some countries and businesses may actually take place 
 to-day ; but, under the modern system, it is so far from 
 reaching its climax that it has given way to another of 
 a radically opposite character. Largely, though by no 
 means wholly, under the slave-systems of the ancient 
 world, production, as we have seen already, was demo- 
 cratic in the sense that its technical details were deter- 
 lined by the slaves themselves, whilst the typical oli- 
 irch, who held such details in disdain, took everything 
 tat the slaves produced, over and above what was 
 jcessary for their own consumption. The manorial lord 
 
 B B 
 
370 LIMITS OF PURE DEMOCRACY 
 
 of the Middle Ages lived on the product of men whose 
 feudal dues were paid to him by a democratic cultivation 
 of his lands a process in which, personally, he played 
 no part whatever. Under both these systems the per- 
 sonal enrichment of the few resulted mainly from an 
 increase in the number of persons by whose independent 
 efforts this or that rich man profited. In ancient Rome, 
 at the time when private fortunes were greatest, these, 
 as Friedlander has shown, were largely derived from the 
 plunder of conquered provinces. Many great fortunes 
 in Spain were once derived similarly from the plunder 
 of South America. In France, under the old regime, 
 new men rose into prominence whose wealth was so con- 
 spicuous that the noblest of the old noblesse did whatever 
 they could to make it their own by marriage. These 
 new men were the farmers of the taxes. They produced 
 nothing themselves. Their wealth was made up of 
 abstractions pure and simple. All these methods of per- 
 sonal enrichment were alike in the fact that, though they 
 may have resulted in the increase of individual fortunes, 
 they were accompanied by no increase in the products 
 which, relatively to its numbers, were available for dis- 
 tribution amongst the population taken as a whole. It 
 is in relation to this fact that the modern capitalist 
 system the system of industrial oligarchy in the only 
 true sense of that term differs in such a degree as to 
 constitute a difference in kind from the systems that went 
 before it. Wherever that system has become mature 
 and dominant more particularly in the United King- 
 dom, the United States and in Germany there has not 
 only been a multiplication of large individual fortunes, 
 but also an increase, to a degree never before paralleled, 
 in the product per head of the several populations gener- 
 ally. Hence, since the increment in question is primarily 
 due, as we have seen, not to any intensification of labour, 
 or to any new faculties acquired by labouring hands, but 
 to the directive knowledge and intellect of employers of 
 a new type, the large individual fortunes which are 
 distinctive of the modern world come out of additions 
 which have been made to the general wealth by such 
 men themselves, not out of abstractions from any general 
 wealth which the mass of the population produces and 
 
THE TARANTULA 371 
 
 would continue to produce in any case. It does not 
 necessarily follow that, this increment being given, the 
 masses will derive from it any benefit whatsoever. The 
 super-capable few might conceivably appropriate the 
 whole of it, and might even steal part of the product 
 of the masses into the bargain. But, unless this incre- 
 ment was produced and maintained somehow, the masses 
 could look forward to no increment at all. On the one 
 hand, then, the submission of the many to the few is 
 the first condition which renders its production possible, 
 and, on the other hand, unless they participate in it, the 
 many will have no motive for submitting. 
 
 Hence, as has here been shown, the foundation-stone 
 of social stability, and the key to any general progress, 
 is a participation by the many in advantages which they 
 could not themselves produce. If this result, which can 
 be reached by the co-operation of unequals only, and 
 which aims at equalities which are relative but not 
 absolute, is achieved in the manner here set forth as 
 rational, it should not be difficult by an unremitting 
 exposure of the fallacies (such as the socialist conception 
 of the State and the socialist interpretation of history) 
 which are used for the purpose of keeping the socialist 
 mood alive, so to educate the masses that this result shall 
 be accepted by them in a mood, not of sullen resignation, 
 but of temperate and intelligent acquiescence. 
 
 The root of the difficulty lies, let it be said once more, 
 in the general idea suggested by the formula of pure 
 democracy the idea that the life-process of rich and 
 civilised, like that of poor and primitive, societies, rests 
 on the co-operation, not of unequals, but of equals, 
 and that some absolute equality, or an approach to it, 
 is consequently the general condition to which rational 
 society will approximate. This idea gives rise to what 
 may be called the disease of impossible expectations, 
 which are mischievous in proportion as they are vague. 
 The formula which conveys it is a sort of pocket poison, 
 those who admit it into their systems being affected by 
 it as by the bite of a tarantula, so that all their sober 
 judgments, all their natural sagacities are not, indeed, 
 destroyed, but sunk by it below the level of conscious- 
 ness. It is hard to believe that for this mood of un- 
 
372 LIMITS OF PURE DEMOCRACY 
 
 reason, of which Zola in his novel, Germinal, has given 
 a vivid description, a persistent appeal to reason will 
 not be in time an antidote ; but if mere education fails 
 to effect a cure, a method which was mentioned at the 
 close of the preceding chapter remains. This is the 
 teaching of experience to those by whom reason is 
 neglected. 
 
 
CHAPTER IV 
 
 OBJECT LESSONS OF TO-DAY 
 
 LET us suppose it to be granted by all clear and serious 
 thinkers that the higher achievements of civilisation, 
 whether in the way of wealth or culture, are not, indeed, 
 the work of the superior few exclusively, but are con- 
 tingent on the activities of the few as influencing those, 
 which must always be pre-assumed, of the many. But, 
 even if this be granted, the question still remains of what 
 the basis ultimately is on which the influence of the few 
 over the activities of the many rests. Now, so far as 
 mental, moral and religious civilisation is concerned, the 
 influence of the few depends on the voluntary assimila- 
 tion by the many of what the few teach. It depends on 
 what is called influence as something distinct from ex- 
 ternal force or authority. But in the social processes 
 which have here been called "subservient" namely, 
 political government, military action, and industry the 
 'power of the few must necessarily have some external 
 force at the back of it, which imparts to influence the 
 character of dictatorial orders. Hence with regard to 
 these subservient processes there arises the immemorial 
 question of what the force or sanction is which renders 
 such orders operative. 
 
 To this question the great majority of thinkers, in- 
 cluding the most conservative we may say, indeed, all 
 thinkers who have ceased to believe in the divine right 
 of kings would answer that the force in question resides 
 ultimately in the people. Thus, when the principle of 
 absolute monarchy still held undisputed sway in Europe, 
 a school of Catholic theologians, who had no thought of 
 overthrowing it, proclaimed this doctrine as axiomatic, 
 
 I and asked, with supreme self-confidence, "If the force 
 svhich is the essence of authority does not come ulti- 
 mately from the people, from what possible source can 
 . 
 
374 LIMITS OF PURE DEMOCRACY 
 
 it come ? " Now, if we regard this argument as meaning 
 that monarchs govern, not in virtue of a quasi-sacra- 
 mental power which heaven bestows directly on the heads 
 of particular families, but that they govern with the 
 divine sanction so long, and only so long, as their peoples 
 are thereby benefited, this way of stating the case may 
 be accepted as correct and rational. But if it be taken 
 in the more general sense that the will of the people, 
 if unanimous, can, by mere force of numbers, determine 
 government in whatever manner it pleases, and that a 
 monarchy or an oligarchy in itself, as distinct from the 
 people, has no power at all, the argument, seemingly 
 axiomatic, expresses a pure delusion. 
 
 rln what, then, does its error consist ? As opposed to 
 the physical force of a monarch, or even of an oligarchy, 
 the physical force of the people arrayed in their millions 
 is overwhelming. It may seem, therefore, at first sight 
 a self-evident truth that the millions, if they object to 
 any order issued by the one or the few, can, if they are 
 substantially unanimous, issue for themselves whatever 
 orders they please, and compel the official power, whether 
 a king or otherwise, to execute them. Thus it is con- 
 stantly said to-day, not by socialists only, that the people 
 are sovereign in the sense that their power has ultimately 
 no limit at all. How and why is this supposed power 
 illusory ? How does the illusion arise ? 
 
 It arises for the following reason, that persons who 
 argue thus have in their minds a picture of the people 
 as engaged in one species of corporate action only 
 that is to say, in action the object of which is to 
 obstruct or to destroy. Now if we limit our view of the 
 power of unanimous numbers to powers of this negative 
 kind, it is quite conceivable that, any positive govern- 
 ment being given, the people could, were they all so 
 minded, destroy it. But a nation cannot live by obstruc- 
 tion or destruction only. It can indulge itself in these 
 processes for not more than brief and rarely recurring 
 moments. Unless it is to die of anarchy, cold and 
 famine, its normal life-process must be one of continuous 
 production and construction ; and as soon as any nation 
 returns from destructive activities to constructive, the 
 unlimited powers which are claimed for the mere force 
 
THE REAL BASIS OF AUTHORITY 375 
 
 of numbers, as arrayed against authority external to 
 themselves, disappear. The first thing which the masses 
 of a people must do, when they are hoarse with pro- 
 claiming their freedom to do whatever they like, is to 
 cringe to an authority which enforces on them the con- 
 tinuous production of food, and dictates the primary 
 terms on which alone food can be produced. This 
 authority is based on two things, against which a million 
 wills are as powerless as the will of one, the first being 
 the needs and the structure of the human body, the 
 second being the constitution of Nature, and in par- 
 ticular of the earth's surface. The primary business"" 
 which is thus imposed on men, and from which there 
 can never be more than brief intervals of cessation, is 
 that of following the plough in good weather or bad, or 
 bending over the spade or sickle. No popular will could 
 abolish the business of agriculture, or radically change 
 its character; and if the power of the people is thus 
 limited in respect of the production of necessaries, it is 
 limited no less stringently, though in part for a different 
 reason, in respect of the production of superfluities. In 
 proportion as nations experience the comforts and 
 luxuries of civilisation, the things things such as these 
 on which their keenest desires are concentrated, are 
 things the production and multiplication of which are 
 possible only through the action of a knowledge and 
 intellect which achieves an effective force in the persons 
 of a few men only; and it is only on condition that the 
 people obey these few that such superfluities can be 
 either produced at all, or produced in sufficient volume 
 to satisfy the appetites of the multitudes who are alls' 
 clamouring for a share of them. 
 
 Thus, whatever the powers may be by which masses 
 of human beings are compelled to perform productive 
 work, these powers are not primary, but derivative. 
 So far as the production of necessaries is concerned, 
 these powers represent a pressure put upon men by 
 Nature by Nature which, with various degrees of 
 severity according to soil and climate, flogs them into 
 labour of some simple and orderly sort, as the sole alter- 
 native to death. So far as the production of superfluities 
 is concerned, these powers represent the monopolist 
 
376 LIMITS OF PURE DEMOCRACY 
 
 possession by a few of that rare directive capacity, 
 obedience to which by the many alone renders an abun- 
 dance of such superfluities possible, and which compels 
 the many, as the price of obtaining them, to obey. The 
 authority, in short, of industrial oligarchy has its basis 
 in the simple fact that, unless the many submit to it, 
 they extinguish every chance of gaining what they are 
 determined not to lose. The same argument applies to 
 political government and war. The power of govern- 
 mental oligarchy, whether in war or peace, has its basis 
 in the fact that, unless the many submit to it, even the 
 simplest industries are paralysed, the higher are made 
 impossible, and the wealth, the welfare, the freedom, the 
 lives of all, will be at the mercy of any foreign aggressor 
 whose armies, vitalised by obedience, put them to flight, 
 or make them sane by enslaving them. 
 
 The authority of the few, which thus has its real basis 
 in the permanent needs of the many, differs as much 
 from the power imputed to the people in virtue of their 
 mere overwhelming numbers as it differs from any power 
 which has been ever imputed to kings as ^derived by them 
 from a quasi-sacrament which Heaven administers only 
 to the heads of elect families. The heads of governments 
 may, so far as their formal character in concerned, be 
 Emperors, Kings, republican Presidents, or little groups 
 of Ministers ; but the ultimate source of their power, as 
 contrasted with the power of the many, is the fact that 
 they possess amongst them certain more or less rare 
 capacities, the exercise of which by somebody is essential 
 to the many themselves, if they wish in the first place to 
 be kept alive, v in the second place to be kept in comfort, 
 and in the third place to be kept secure from the attacks 
 of other nations, whether their attacks are in the way 
 of competitive industry or of war. 
 
 In this fact lies the meaning of what has here been 
 said already, to the effect that, if reason should prove 
 insufficient to bring home a certain lesson to the masses, 
 there is another schoolmaster always lying in wait for 
 them, who will teach it to them with rods of iron, this 
 schoolmaster being experience. The lesson to be taught 
 is this, that every civilisation, in respect of wealth, 
 government and self-defence, is due to the co-operation 
 
THE TEACHINGS OF RUSSIA 377 
 
 of unequals of the few who lead and give orders, and 
 of the many who follow and obey ; that this fact reflects 
 itself in the general configuration of society; and that 
 in proportion as the masses of any country neglect it, 
 they will, as a whole or sporadically, lose what they 
 have in their efforts to seize more. 
 
 Of this fact, which has here been elucidated in detail, 
 various illustrations have been given in the body of the 
 present work. It is, however, now possible, owing to a 
 series of unparalleled circumstances, to supplement these 
 by others of a yet more mordant kind. The present 
 work was begun some months before any immediate war 
 with Germany was regarded as a likely event by most 
 men, or by anybody as an event "that was inevitable. 
 This book was, in substance, virtually complete by the 
 end of the year 1916. Since that time two great events 
 have happened, which have given the world a surprise 
 unequalled in history. One of these is the participation 
 of America in a war primarily European. The other, 
 more sensational, and yet more widely instructive, is 
 the outbreak of the Russian Revolution, and certain of 
 its outstanding incidents. As detailed corroborations of 
 the arguments which follow each other in the preceding 
 pages, the author, had he given rein to invention, could 
 have invented none more striking. Whatever the ulti- 
 mate outcome of the Russian revolution may be, the 
 more important events which have marked its opening 
 will remain for all time as demonstrations of what the 
 principles are on which anything in the nature of civilisa- 
 tion rests, and of the ludicrous ruin which ensues when, 
 or for as long as, these principles are violated. It has 
 therefore been thought well to substitute, at the present 
 juncture, a brief reference to certain of the events in 
 question for a more general summary of the arguments 
 to which this volume has been devoted. 
 
 On the outbreak of the Russian revolution a prominent 
 London journal, with very judicious promptitude, 
 secured as its Petrograd correspondent a writer who was 
 a professed socialist, but who was not afraid of pro- 
 claiming that socialism, as a practicable system, must 
 find its basis in reason and common sense before invoking 
 the impulses of mere imagination and sentiment. Such 
 
378 LIMITS OF PURE DEMOCRACY 
 
 being the case, one of the first and most important facts 
 recorded by him was, as has been mentioned in a brief 
 footnote already, that revolution in Russia had converted 
 itself almost immediately into what, so long as it lasted, 
 was hopeless ruin for everybody that is to say, into 
 "a rebellion against all controlling persons." 
 
 Now this means, when put into plainer language, pre- 
 cisely what has been argued in the course of the present 
 work. It means that in any great country pure demo- 
 cracy is impossible, or that democracy is impossible 
 unless the principle of oligarchy is its concomitant ; and 
 that Russia should be the country in which, on the 
 admission of even a candid socialist, such a conclusion 
 has been first demonstrated by a vast national experi- 
 ment, is all the more remarkable for the following broad 
 reasons. 
 
 Pure democracy, at all events in economic production, 
 is, as has here been urged, not impossible in itself. On 
 the contrary, it is historically the system of primitive 
 or sub-primitive poverty. It is a system founded on 
 the agriculture of self-directed peasant families. Their 
 labour produces little, but is sufficient for their bare 
 support. Now of all great countries, civilised or in con- 
 tact with civilisation, Russia is the one in which the 
 self-directed agriculture of peasants forms incomparably 
 the largest element ; and of all such countries it is, rela- 
 tively to its population, the poorest. According to the 
 values and prices preceding the war and the revolution, 
 an equal division amongst everybody of the entire 
 income of Russia would have yielded to each adult less 
 than half the wages of the poorest English labourer; 
 and of a total population of 180 millions, the self- 
 directed peasant cultivators represented at least nine- 
 tenths. 1 Since, therefore, a peasant population, so long 
 as it continues to exist, must at least be capable of 
 producing, by its own self-directed efforts, enough to 
 
 1 Webb's analysis (Dictionary of Statistics) of the Bulletin of the 
 United States Labour Bureau, Washington, 1908. The agricultural 
 workers who worked for wages were about 7 per cent, of the cultivators 
 taken as a whole. Factory and railway workers, miners, dockers, and 
 industrialists generally, formed only about one-thirtieth of the entire 
 employed population. 
 
AGRICULTURAL CHAOS 379 
 
 maintain its life according to its own standards of living, 
 it might seem that the Russian masses were so far 
 secure in a merely economic sense that their condition 
 under pure democracy could not, except for the better, 
 differ from what it was already. And yet, even in 
 Russia, democracy or socialism, as a rebellion against 
 "all controlling persons," has caused discord, calamity 
 and death even amongst the peasants themselves. 
 
 Of this fact the socialist correspondent, to whom 
 reference has just been made, gives the following 
 illustrations. Socialism, he says, as preached to the 
 Russian peasantry, has been identified both by the 
 teachers and the taught with desires and expecta- 
 tions which are wholly incapable of fulfilment, and 
 which, moreover, directly contradict themselves. The 
 peasants have been taught to expect an era of in- 
 definite enrichment by the acquisition of new lands the 
 property of individuals or of the State which are to be 
 seized by them at their own discretion under a system 
 of momentary communism, this system to be followed 
 forthwith by a system of private ownership which will 
 re-establish in their own favour every right which they 
 are themselves violating. Thus, with a curiously correct, 
 and yet curiously suicidal logic, the first ambition of each 
 of them has been in many places " to peg out " for him- 
 self as many acres as he could, no regard being had to his 
 own powers of tilling them, and then either to till them 
 by hired labour or sell them proceedings which have 
 often ended in battles between neighbours, each of whom 
 was determined that the best plot should be his own. 
 Thus the peasants of one village, says the writer here 
 referred to, "were busy in distributing the estate of a 
 local landowner, when a free fight ensued from which 
 hardly a man in the neighbourhood issued without 
 wounds, and in which fifteen were killed." In another 
 case, according to the same authority, a body of revolu- 
 tionaries, having seized a large estate, appointed men 
 to work it for them "at three or four times the usual 
 wages. They began with paying these wages out of the 
 cash discovered in the estate office. When this fund was 
 exhausted, they continued the payments in question by 
 selling the trees and cattle; and when this source of 
 
380 LIMITS OF PURE DEMOCRACY 
 
 I 
 
 revenue had run dry likewise (the estate being no longer 
 capable of yielding anything), they actually applied to 
 the expropriated landlord for a cheque to pay the wages 
 of men now employed as their own servants." In yet 
 another case a generous proprietor gave the wife of an 
 absent soldier leave to take grass from a small plot. 
 The local agrarian council suggested that he should do 
 the same with his whole property, but the president 
 intervened with the stipulation that the peasants should 
 only take land on condition that they worked it them- 
 selves. A peasant, who had already taken a large slice, 
 calculated on selling many loads of hay to the govern- 
 ment, and, finding himself barred from exploiting labour 
 to work it, gave up that particular slice, and, appropri- 
 ating the plot given to the soldier's wife, sold the hay 
 which the poor woman had raised on it. 
 
 Incidents such as these illustrate, not merely the 
 economic chaos to which even the simplest of all possible 
 industries may be reduced by a practical application of 
 the principle of pure democracy. They illustrate also 
 the absence from the natural human character of any- 
 thing approaching that sentiment of "each for all," on 
 the supremacy of which the more scientific socialists of 
 to-day have been driven to base their hopes of equal 
 conditions and positions as the result of efforts admitted 
 by themselves to be unequal. In accordance with what 
 has been said in a previous chapter as to average men 
 generally, the idea of equality appeals to the Russian 
 peasant, like a match applied to tinder, so long as 
 equality is a mere vague idea ; but it does not appeal to 
 him even then for its own sake. It appeals to him so 
 long as it is a symbol of some indefinite change which 
 comprises, as one of its incidents, some indefinite advan- 
 tage for himself, and which, when its consequences are 
 complete, will leave him in the possession of advantages 
 greater than those of others. Thus, jealous of the high 
 money-wages known to have been claimed and secured 
 by the wage-earners in various factories munition 
 works in particular the Russian peasants have been 
 actually burying loaves sooner than supply them to the 
 government for the benefit, so they put it, "of those 
 idle fellows in Petrograd." 
 
INDUSTRIAL CHAOS 381 
 
 The factory workers, so says the same writer, have 
 outdone the peasants by follies of a similar, but more 
 elaborate, kind. As mentioned already in certain brief 
 footnotes, they have demanded that the heads of complex 
 and scientific businesses should transfer the management 
 to committees of elected workmen, who proved so in- 
 capable of grasping the most rudimentary facts on which 
 a scientific or any other business depends, that they sold, 
 in order to augment their immediate wages, whatever 
 raw materials happened to be stored on the premises, 
 and thus deprived themselves of the means of earning 
 any wages whatever. In certain cases the wage-earners 
 have demanded that the employers, under pain of 
 death, let conditions be what they may, should keep 
 their businesses going, and pay whatever wages the 
 wage-earners happen to demand. Thus, the writer here 
 quoted mentions a group of eighteen engineering com- 
 panies, the gross profits of which were less than eight 
 million pounds, whilst the total wages demanded came 
 to nearly twenty-two million. But even this demand 
 was modest when compared with another a demand in 
 one business for wages which bore to the total value of 
 the product a proportion of not less than two hundred 
 to fifteen. 
 
 It is not surprising that, in view of facts like these, 
 one of the revolutionary leaders declared that "Russia 
 was on the eve of a financial and economic crash " ; that 
 "never since railways began has transport been reduced 
 to such disorder and anarchy " ; and that, unless matters 
 should mend, " winter would find the country in the grip 
 of a colossal famine." 
 
 Similar observations have again and again been made 
 by the socialist writer here quoted himself, and by pro- 
 minent members of the revolutionary party also, with 
 regard to the collapse of all civil order, and to local 
 rebellions (as at Cronstadt) against any central author- 
 ity; whilst all these events have, with a dramatic 
 fatality, culminated in one which needs no rhetoric to 
 emphasise it namely, the total collapse of the army 
 wherever, or in so far as, principles accepted as those 
 of pure democracy have prevailed. Well may the 
 socialist writer here quoted say, "It is the irony of 
 
382 LIMITS OF PURE DEMOCRACY 
 
 fate that the most socialistic government ever formed 
 should find its greatest dangers in these nihilistic (or 
 purely destructive) activities ; and that unless the 
 Russian government can quickly destroy them, they will 
 quickly destroy government, and destroy Russia along 
 with it." 
 
 To what causes, then, in the opinion of this candid 
 critic, are these fatal results ultimately or fundamentally 
 attributable ? They are, he says, if we take them gener- 
 ally, due to the fact that "our Russian friends," as he 
 calls them, " have found, rather late in life, some socialist 
 lumber, which has now been discarded by Western demo- 
 cratic nations, and imagine that they have discovered 
 brand-new scientific truths, never used before. It will 
 be useful," he proceeds, "to shatter their flattering 
 faith, and bring them out of the clouds, to a firmer 
 earth, and to contact with grim realities." And of what, 
 then, let us ask once more, do these " clouds " of thought 
 consist, which " Western democratic nations have dis- 
 carded as so much lumber " ? This writer, in words 
 which have been quoted already, puts the matter very 
 succinctly when he says that these "clouds " consist of 
 the fatal idea which identifies freedom and prosperity 
 with the extirpation or elimination of "all controlling 
 persons." 
 
 Now if such observations made by a professed socialist 
 are taken together and analysed, it will be found that 
 their substance coincides in a very remarkable way with 
 the arguments which, from the beginning to the end of 
 it, have been elucidated in the present work, the coinci- 
 dence amounting in some cases to an equivalence even 
 of phrase. For example, it has here been said that the 
 practical effect of the formulae of pure democracy is to 
 popularise a mood of mind which may be best described 
 as "a disease of impossible expectations." Further, 
 the dementing effect of these formulas have been here 
 described as comparable to those of the bite of a 
 tarantula. The socialist writer whose criticisms we have 
 just been quoting, declares that the disastrous first-fruits 
 of revolution in Russia "are the results of the general 
 upheaval of an immature population, ignorant of eco- 
 nomics, and vaguely expectant of an immediate mil- 
 
CALLS FOR DICTATORSHIP 383 
 
 lennium." In short, the general mood prevalent 
 amongst the Russian masses -for he, too, recognises the 
 distinction between a mood and precise thought was 
 described by him as resembling the effects of the bite 
 of a mad dog in other words, as resembling, not 
 tarantulation, but " hydrophobia." If between the 
 main argument elucidated in the present work and the 
 arguments of a professed socialist there is, as to certain 
 fundamentals, a resemblance so close as this, there must 
 be certain elements of agreement between the principles 
 of the saner socialism and the principles of scientific as 
 distinct from mere party conservatism. 
 
 This will be still more obvious if we consider how the 
 argument of the writer here in question proceeds. 
 Having described and analysed the various events and 
 causes which were threatening to make the Russian 
 revolution hopeless, he proceeds to ask by what possible 
 means a situation so desperate could be retrieved; and 
 he answers that, in his own opinion, and in the opinion 
 of all Russians who had not lost their sanity, the cause 
 of democratic revolution could be saved by one means 
 only this means being a dictatorship entrusted to the 
 proper hands. Further, as the one man in Russia, whose 
 strength of character and whose principles would fit him 
 for the supreme office, he did not hesitate to name 
 M. Kerensky ; and what the principles were, on a fearless 
 vindication of which the success of democracy in Russia 
 for the tune being depended, he proclaimed in no un- 
 certain language. We can, he says, best grasp them by 
 remembering how in the summer of the year 1917 
 M. Kerensky deliberately ignored the assumed authority 
 of the so-called Workmen's and Soldiers' Delegates, 
 when he ordered, as an absolute autocrat, "the begin- 
 ning of the June offensive " ; how he threatened death 
 to all who should, by disobeying his mandates, prove 
 themselves, by disobeying him, " traitors to the red flag 
 of revolution"; and how he declared that, "for the 
 purpose of checking military retreat, and putting an end 
 to economic disorder," he would, were commands in- 
 sufficient, have recourse to the methods of " blood and 
 
 
 Here, indeed, is a case which might, to the mere cynic, 
 
384 LIMITS OF PURE DEMOCRACY 
 
 well suggest the question, " Quis tulerit Gracchos de sedi- 
 tione querentes ? " But the merely cynical mood will, in 
 a case like this, not carry us far. When men who, as 
 dreamers or agitators, have been clamouring for pure 
 democracy, find themselves transformed by action into 
 oligarchs or imperious autocrats, to denounce them as 
 renegades is not only an unjust, it is also a ludicrously 
 shallow, criticism. If blame attaches to them at all, 
 they are blamable, not because they have renounced their 
 old opinions, but because they ever entertained and 
 promulgated them. The act of renouncing them may be 
 an act of the highest courage; but this courage, unfor- 
 tunately, is not seldom accompanied by what may fairly, 
 though regretfully, be called a certain continuation of 
 cowardice. Such persons, whilst in action renouncing 
 their earlier principles, permit themselves to pretend, 
 by a gross abuse of language, that these principles are 
 still their own; or at all events they do their best to 
 hide that essential difference between their old opinions 
 and their new, which they recognise as dividing the prin- 
 ciples of military collapse, civil chaos and economic 
 famine, from those of any possible civilisation, of any 
 rational freedom, of any effective industry, or secure 
 material welfare. They endeavour to hide this difference 
 by continued appeals to what they call "the red flag of 
 revolution "; though by every constructive act they are, 
 happily for their country, violating every distinctive 
 hope with which, in the popular mind, the "red flag " 
 is associated. They are in this way constantly foment- 
 ing, in the form of a vague mood, hopes which, as think- 
 ing men, they have themselves renounced as illusory, 
 and which, as men of action, they have made it their 
 task to extirpate. 
 
 M. Kerensky calls in passionate but vague tones on the 
 nation "to come down from the clouds," and fix their 
 minds on the possible instead of besotting themselves 
 with dreams of what is only imaginable. If he would 
 but teach them in what precise respects a possible pro- 
 gramme differs from those impossible hopes which many 
 of his own associates have spent their lives in inflaming, 
 he would be accomplishing an act of statesmanship 
 as great as any recorded in the annals of the human 
 
UNRECOGNISED OLIGARCHY 385 
 
 race. It would perhaps also be one of the most difficult ; 
 but it might, for the following reason, prove less difficult 
 than it seems. The principal difficulty with which M. 
 Kerensky and his supporters have had to contend in the 
 task of re-establishing order is, according to their own 
 estimate of it, and that of the English socialist who has 
 here been freely quoted, the spirit of pure democracy 
 which, already abroad in Russia, is determined not to 
 submit itself to any guidance but its own. Here, how- 
 ever, the champions of order, and their English critic 
 also, in spite of his sober shrewdness, appear, from facts 
 which the latter himself records, to have gauged very 
 imperfectly the actual nature of the situation. 
 
 In the present work the fact has been constantly 
 emphasised that, except as to questions which are either 
 primitively simple, restricted in their scope, or conceived 
 so vaguely that no definite meaning is attached to them, 
 no purely democratic will has ever any real existence, 
 what professes to be a popular will being merely so many 
 reverberations of what various small groups have, by 
 their superior energy, suggested to various sections of 
 the many. It has further been pointed out that this 
 fundamental fact is apt to escape notice because oli- 
 garchs and oligarchies are traditionally identified with 
 men of wealth, of distinguished birth, of culture, of com- 
 manding knowledge, and a high sobriety of intellect. 
 This idea, it has been shown, is altogether a delusion. 
 Men may be oligarchs, however obscure in origin, how- 
 ever unbalanced in intellect, provided only that they 
 have in them an energy and a gift of speech which exceed 
 to any great, or indeed to any appreciable, degree the 
 persuasive powers and energies of most of the men 
 around them. Almost every popular manifestation of 
 discontent and disorder, in so far as it assumes any 
 definite form, is due to such men as these ; and the 
 history of all revolutions begins as the history of a swarm 
 of rival oligarchs, most of them squalid, none of them 
 capable of any permanent leadership, each of them 
 (either singly or allied with a small group of associates) 
 endeavouring to destroy some other group or individual, 
 and each of them pretending, by some trick of successful 
 or unsuccessful ventriloquism, that his own voice is really 
 cc 
 
386 LIMITS OF PURE DEMOCRACY 
 
 that of the people. Such is the way in which popular 
 revolutions begin, and two forces always combine to end 
 them. One of these is the experience of the people 
 themselves, who learn that of all evils anarchy is the 
 most intolerable. The other is the will of some one 
 man which, associated with that of strong and loyal 
 supporters, reduces the petty oligarchs masquerading as 
 democrats to a nullity, and succeeds in restoring to a 
 nation the order and security without which no tolerable 
 life is possible. 
 
 Now in what precise manner the Russian revolution 
 may end itself it is idle as yet to speculate ; but with 
 regard to the initial events of it we are in a position to 
 say this : that the truth of the above analysis has never 
 been illustrated more clearly than it has, in the case of 
 Russia, been already illustrated by these. Thus, the 
 socialist correspondent, to whose evidence we will once 
 more return, points out that the sub-rebellion of Cron- 
 stadt a rebellion against a rebellion was the work, not 
 of "the people," as the word is commonly understood, 
 but of a middle-class adventurer of some scientific attain- 
 ments, who had never done a stroke of manual work in 
 his life. Again, amongst the earlier examples of rebellion 
 which was purely industrial, he mentions a case in which 
 an attempt was made at conciliation by inducing the em- 
 ployers to confer with ten deputies representing manual 
 labour. When the deputies made their appearance, they 
 were found to comprise two labourers only, the remainder 
 being middle-class men, agitators pure and simple, who 
 had no connection with the industries then in question 
 whatever. According to the same writer and others, 
 when independence was claimed for certain of the 
 southern provinces, this was the work of men who neither 
 had, nor pretended to have, so much as the shadow of 
 any popular election at the back of them. The body 
 which pretended to be the voice of all the workmen and 
 soldiers of all the Russias together consisted at first of 
 some 1500 persons, or one out of every 6000 of those for 
 whom they affected to speak. This mob being found 
 unmanageable, its numbers were reduced to 500, then to 
 five-and-twenty, and then to no more than five, these 
 five persons demanding recognition and obedience as the 
 
AMERICAN OLIGARCHY 387 
 
 mouthpiece of 90 millions. 1 According to trustworthy 
 information, said The Times of September 13, 1917, the 
 body of extremists whose ambition is to dominate the 
 country " is a self-constituted organisation of idealists, 
 theorists, anarchists, syndicalists, who are largely of the 
 international Jew type, and who have very few workmen 
 and very few soldiers amongst them." 
 
 If the men of strong will and practical aptitude for 
 affairs M. Kerensky may be taken as an example of 
 them through whose dictatorship alone, in the opinion 
 even of reasonable socialists, Russia may be saved from 
 ruin, or from the virtual dictatorship of Germany, would 
 but realise that the foes of their own household are not 
 the forces of pure democracy as such, but of the forces 
 of democracy reduced to rival implements of ruin by a 
 conflict of bastard oligarchies, a supreme directorate, 
 whether called by name of a dictatorship or no, might 
 recognise in these last a collection of disunited enemies 
 who are less formidable than they seem. 
 
 The lesson, however, which is here indicated, though 
 Russia has been teaching it to the world with unexpected 
 and unequalled emphasis, has not been taught by the 
 example of Russia only. History has been teaching it 
 by example in America and Great Britain also. 
 
 The history of the formation, under President Wilson, 
 of a will to war in America is a history less sensational, 
 but no less profoundly significant, than the history of 
 the dissolution in Russia of anything like a will, general 
 and practicable of any kind, into a multitude of wills 
 constantly shifting and conflicting wills either too in- 
 definite to afford guidance to anybody, or serving, in so 
 far as they were definite, merely as guides to ruin wills 
 which, professing to be democratic, represent nothing 
 more than the dreams of oligarchic visionaries, or the 
 oligarchic ambitions and vanities of criminal or semi- 
 criminal adventurers. In both countries the oligarchic 
 element has been active ; but its triumph in America has 
 been constructive, the greater oligarchy of construction 
 having extirpated or crippled the lesser oligarchies of 
 
 1 These five professed representatives of the pure will of the people 
 must not be confounded with the five quasi-dictators, with M. Kerensky 
 at their head, who formed subsequently the official government. 
 
388 LIMITS OF PURE DEMOCRACY 
 
 disruption. In Russia, at all events for a time, the latter 
 have done nothing but reduce the former to impotence. 
 
 Contemporary attempts at socialist rule in Great 
 Britain have shown themselves to be, as from the nature 
 of things they must have been, not democratic pheno- 
 mena that is to say, exhibitions of the spontaneous 
 will of the many, but partly as the will of the many 
 manipulated with changing and uncertain results by a 
 few; partly as the will of a few men who, bitterly hostile 
 to one another, have acted, planned and plotted, without 
 any direct reference to the opinions of the many at all. 
 
 Anything like an attack on individuals has, in the 
 present work, been, so far as possible, avoided, the aim 
 of the writer being to establish general principles, which 
 always remain the same, however their manifestations 
 vary; but it will not be improper or inappropriate to 
 allude to certain events, the mere mention of which will 
 recall the names of certain individuals to the reader. 
 The professors of pure democracy in Great Britain and 
 elsewhere have constantly, and with perfect justice, 
 declared that, if pure democracy is ever to be a realised 
 fact, the deliberations and plans of the executive must 
 always be public property, anything "secret," as the 
 Russian Council of Soldiers and Workmen put it, being 
 always and everywhere the hall-mark or brand of oli- 
 garchy. Such being undoubtedly the case, attention 
 may be briefly called to a series of incidents which 
 occurred in connection with the proposed presence of 
 members of the English Labour Party at a Socialist 
 Conference in Sweden. In the first place, these incidents 
 turned largely on the personalities of particular men 
 a situation which would have been wholly impossible if 
 the many all thought alike, for in that case any one man 
 would be equal to any other. Events proved, however, 
 that the many, if they had, when left to themselves, any 
 will as to the matter at all, had a will which was never 
 the same from one week to another. In view of these 
 instabilities, the representatives of pure democracy, in 
 order to make it as real and pure as possible, summoned 
 a conference which was held behind closed doors, not 
 a syllable of the proceedings being allowed to reach the 
 millions of adult persons whose will was being manu- 
 
ENGLISH LABOUR-OLIGARCHS 389 
 
 factured within. It might be difficult to imagine any 
 more complete proof of how distinct is the process of 
 will-making from the raw popular material out of which 
 alone any general will can be made, if this secret con- 
 ference had not been followed by a second, to which 
 newspaper reporters were admitted, and at which the 
 most prominent speaker, whose policy had been publicly 
 repudiated by the very masses to whom he had made 
 appeal, is reported to have exclaimed to his opponents, 
 "with a mixture of defiance and mystery," " Your com- 
 mittee and my executive may have done things before 
 many hours are over which will make you reconsider 
 your position." This speaker, who had once held Cabinet 
 rank, may, in his reasoning, his will and his policy, have 
 been wrong, or perfectly right. The sole fact with which 
 we are here concerned is that his will was, on his own 
 admission, an element essentially distinct from that of 
 the democratic masses, which, whilst professing to reflect 
 it, it was in reality his ambition we may say, if we like, 
 his conscientious ambition to dictate. 
 
 This confusion, however, of the oligarchic element an 
 element inseparable from all complex social action with 
 pure democracy, which is an element no less inseparable, 
 is not confined to extremists. By temperate men, men 
 of acute insight, men illustrious as the beneficial wielders 
 of oligarchic power men illustrious as statesmen, men of 
 business, as political thinkers, or otherwise this con- 
 fusion is constantly disseminated in the form of vague 
 suggestions, though every one of such men, were he 
 catechised, would repudiate it as a monstrous error. 
 This feat of suggestion is accomplished by their almost 
 unabated use of the formula of pure democracy, without 
 even the hint of an explanation which might bring this 
 into harmony with the limited meaning which they 
 must, in their own minds, attribute to it. Democracy 
 is a word which may be conveniently and correctly em- 
 ployed to designate the constitution of any complex 
 State, if by all parties concerned it is understood to mean 
 simply a state in which the democratic principle is 
 powerful within certain limits; in which it is provided 
 with legal means of expressing itself; and which is thus 
 contrasted with States in which no such means exist. 
 
390 LIMITS OF PURE DEMOCRACY 
 
 But if the word is so used as to carry with it the sugges- 
 tion that in political government, and in human affairs 
 generally, merely popular power that is, a power in 
 respect of which all units are equal is or can be 
 supreme in any great State whatever, and that it ought 
 to be supreme in all, every time the word is so used 
 by men of light and leading, such men are helping to 
 diffuse, stimulate and perpetuate a mood which, in pro- 
 portion as it is generally cherished, tends to render their 
 own activities difficult, or at best only half successful. 
 They render it difficult in political government, they 
 render it difficult in industry, and, as events in Russia 
 have demonstrated, they render it impossible in war. 
 
 Let us take the chorus of official utterances which, in 
 Great Britain and America, have emanated from sober 
 and weighty statesmen, Conservative and Liberal alike, 
 and have been echoed and cheered by multitudes, to the 
 effect that the great object of the anti-Germanic nations 
 is to establish democracy everywhere, and utterly to 
 destroy autocracy. If the word " autocracy" has any 
 general meaning at all if it means more than abuses of 
 autocracy in this country or in that it means any kind 
 of power in the way of sagacity and intellect which the 
 many do not share with the few, or which gives to the 
 few any power which is out of proportion to their rela- 
 tively negligible number, the essence of autocracy is oli- 
 garchy of one kind or another. Let us, then, in a spirit 
 of all respect for him and the greater our respect for 
 him, the more pertinent will our argument ad hominem 
 be consider in particular the case of President Wilson. 
 No statesman, by the exercise of his personal gifts, has 
 influenced the will of any great nation more conspicu- 
 ously than he, in respect of a will to war, has influenced 
 the will of the population of the United States. What, 
 then, if accurately analysed, has the nature of his in- 
 fluence been ? Has it been no more than it ought to 
 have been according to the philosophers of the French 
 Revolution, who declared that democracy "had no need 
 of chemists," and that no one citizen even if called a 
 king should count for more than one will out of so many 
 tens of millions ? Has nothing been done by him and his 
 chief associates in the government, in the Press, in the 
 
THE GREAT SUPPRESSIO VERI 391 
 
 conduct of scientific industry, that could not, and would 
 not, have been done by an equal number of units picked 
 up by chance in the streets of New York, or of San 
 Francisco ? With equal pertinence, the same question 
 might be asked of the leading statesmen of Great Britain, 
 amongst whom "the cause of democracy " has been a no 
 less frequent watchword. And in every case, if they 
 answered it accurately, the answer of such men let us 
 say President Wilson, Mr. Lloyd George, or Mr. Bonar 
 Law would be the same. The American President and 
 the British Prime Minister may both be sincere demo- 
 crats, if the word "democrat" is used in a certain 
 limited sense; but they are obviously, at the back of 
 their minds, sincere oligarchs also, for the personal 
 power which they devote their lives to exercising would 
 not be power at all unless it were of the nature of 
 oligarchy unless it consisted in an exercise, by certain 
 exceptional units, of faculties not possessed in an equal 
 degree by all. Mr. Bonar Law, by implication, admitted 
 this fact with great wealth of detail in his statements 
 (published in June, 1917) as to Business Brains, and the 
 Men who are Winning the War. He dwelt on the un- 
 paralleled success of the British Government in securing 
 the aid of some hundred of the greatest employers and 
 industrial organisers of the country, mentioning as an 
 example one who alone, by his rare abilities, was saving 
 the country as much as a million pounds a week; and 
 Mr. Wilson, if he spoke for America, could give similar 
 evidence. 
 
 If such men are, then, aware if they show by their 
 own actions that the case stands really thus : that in 
 great and complex States the principle of oligarchy plays 
 a part no less essential than that of democracy why do 
 they continue to use and emphatically insist on a formula 
 by which the principle of oligarchy is denied, or (what 
 is the same thing) altogether suppressed ? Would any 
 such procedure be tolerable in chemistry, in medicine, in 
 the manufacture of explosives, or the construction of an 
 aeroplane a procedure which consisted in laying such 
 exclusive emphasis on one necessary factor that another, 
 equally necessary, was not only ignored, but actually 
 relegated by implication to the category of things 
 
392 LIMITS OF PURE DEMOCRACY 
 
 rejected as superfluous, or definitely condemned as 
 noxious ? 
 
 The real solution of the difficulty lies in a full recogni- 
 tion of the fact to an exhibition of which, under all its 
 aspects, the present volume has been devoted, that 
 democracy and oligarchy are principles not mutually 
 exclusive, but that in any great and complex State the 
 one is the complement of the other. The formula of pure 
 democracy has, for purposes of agitation, the great ad- 
 vantage of being simple, and easily reduced to a few 
 telling words; but in proportion to its simplicity it is 
 false and its effects fatal, for the necessary elements of 
 civilisation are not simple, but complex. A true formula 
 cannot, therefore, from the nature of things, be presented 
 to the masses in the guise of an equally effective aphor- 
 ism ; but an approach to such an aphorism may be made 
 by repeating what has here been said already, that in 
 any great and civilised State Democracy only knows itself 
 through the co-operation of oligarchy, or that the many 
 can prosper only through the participation in benefits 
 which, in the way alike of material comfort, opportunity, 
 culture and social freedom, would be possible for no one 
 unless the many submitted themselves to the influence 
 or authority of the super-capable few. 
 
INDEX 
 
 ABSTRACTION or addition, incomes 
 
 derived from, 369 
 Agriculture, the basis of secure 
 
 employment, 308-9 
 Altruism, limits of, 233 
 Ambition, as related to capacity, 
 
 315 
 Anti-aircraft gun, as related to 
 
 the general will, 29 
 Architecture, influence of de- 
 mocracy on, 335 
 Aristotle on the final end of 
 
 action, 66 
 Art, and great artists, as agents 
 
 of social culture, 348 
 Arts of oligarch in will-formation, 
 
 32, 35 
 Authority, false opposition of 
 
 democracy to, 355 
 Average mass, units of, 9-10 
 Aztecs, the ruling few amongst, 
 
 366 
 
 Babeuf on the nullity of political 
 
 democracy, 74 
 Bakunin, his denial of votes to 
 
 masses, 58 
 Bernstein, on the incompetence 
 
 of democracy, 54 
 Bi-metallism as the subject of a 
 
 general will, 15 
 Brook Farm, 211 
 Business, large and small, 133, 
 
 159, 160. See " Income " 
 
 Collectivism not in itself Social- 
 ism, teste Mr. Shaw, 189 
 
 Companies, earned and unearned 
 profits of, in England and the 
 United States, 134-7 
 
 Content, the data of, Book VI, 
 passim, 303, 323 
 
 Culture, intellectual, aesthetic and 
 moral, 335-50 
 
 Democracy, industrial 
 
 Definition of industrial de- 
 mocracy, 80 
 
 Trade Union, as such, not in- 
 dustrial, 81-3 
 
 Industrial democracy is self- 
 guidance by all manual 
 workers in respect of their 
 technical actions, 83 
 
 The Marxian theory of produc- 
 tion as related to industrial 
 democracy, 85, 87 
 
 Progress of industrial de- 
 mocracy, its four causes, and 
 very narrow limits, 91-2 
 
 Slavery, largely democratic, 95 
 Democracy, political 
 
 Discussed generally, 4-77 
 
 Definitions of, 4-10 
 
 In primitive and in complex 
 States, 21 
 
 In complex States oligarchy is 
 necessarily concomitant, 30, ^ 
 ol 
 
 Government by wills of the ir 
 average units, 14, 15 
 
 How far, if left to themselves, 
 the average units have any ^ 
 one will whatsoever, 16 * 
 
 Groups of political questions 
 with regard to which a purely 
 democratic will is possible 
 and impossible, 30, 31 
 
 Pure democracy a basic fact 
 with regard to fundamentals, 
 43 
 Democracy, social 
 
 General definition of social 
 democracy 188 
 
 393 
 
394 
 
 INDEX 
 
 Democracy, social continued 
 Social democracy as a general 
 
 sentiment which demands 
 
 equalised incomes, 189. See 
 
 (t Social Intercourse" 
 Social democratic sentiment as 
 
 tested by experiments. See 
 
 " Experiments " 
 Social democracy and mental 
 
 civilisation, 335-50 
 Demos, new definition of, by 
 
 Italian Syndicalists, 59 
 Distribution of incomes 
 
 by facts of production, Book 
 
 III, passim 
 
 by sentiment, Book IV, passim 
 by facts of production, the 
 
 doctrine of Marx, 85 
 Denunciation of this doctrine 
 
 by later socialists, 184, 188 
 
 Education 
 Statistical, 317 
 A training of the imagination, 
 
 323 
 Education and oligarchy, 284, 
 
 287 
 Engels, one of the oligarchs of 
 
 "The International," 53 
 Equality 
 
 . An illusion in respect of per- 
 sonal efficiency and energy, 58 
 Denial by recent revolution- 
 aries, e.g. Labriola, 59 
 Moral equalities, and recogni- 
 tion of them, 264, 273 
 > Material equality, as such, de- 
 / sired by nobody, 231, 264, 277 
 Valued for its incidents, by the 
 
 idle, 295 
 Experiments, Socialist, Religious, 
 
 202-6 
 
 Secularist, Owen's, 207, 212 
 " Brook Farm " and " Wiscon- 
 sin," 210, 212 
 "The North American," 213- 
 
 16 
 
 41 New Australia," 217, 226 
 Causes of failure, 229-31 
 
 Fission of effort into manual and 
 purely mental, 106 
 
 Freedom, Rousseau's fantastic 
 conception of, 1-4 
 
 George, Henry, his system based 
 on absolutely false statistics,321 
 
 History, false interpretation of, 
 by Marx and subsequent 
 socialists, 363-8 
 
 Partial but important truth in 
 
 the Marxian statement as to 
 
 the source of incomes in the 
 
 past, 369, 370 
 
 Hogarth, his picture showing the 
 
 interior of a cloth-weaver's 
 
 establishment, 100 
 
 Imagination, the proper training 
 
 of, and its relation to contact, 
 
 323, 328 
 
 Incas, empire of, 366 
 Incomes, national 
 
 Enormous share of modern 
 national incomes alleged by 
 socialists to be taken by non- 
 earners, 129 
 
 Promised "recovery of this 
 enormous share by the people 
 themselves," 131 
 
 Income of the United Kingdom 
 at the beginning of the 20th 
 century, 132 
 
 The large part identifiable as 
 directly earned, 133, 134 
 
 Profits of companies, earned 
 and unearned, 134, 136 
 
 True meaning of " unearned " 
 income, 136, 137 
 
 Relative smallness of unearned 
 fraction, 139, 140 
 
 Total of incomes above 3000 
 
 and 5000, 141 
 
 Incomes, distribution of, in 
 different countries 
 
 Comparative distribution of, in 
 the_ United Kingdom and 
 America, 144 
 
 Extraordinary similarity of dis- 
 tribution in the two countries, 
 145 
 
 Similar distribution of wage- 
 incomes, 147 , 
 
INDEX 
 
 395 
 
 Incomes, distribution confirmed 
 
 Refutation by such international 
 facts of the socialist theory of 
 wages, 148, 151 
 
 Super-millionaires in the two 
 countries, relative insignifi- 
 cance of their aggregate 
 wealth, 153, 155 
 
 Income of England in 1801 and 
 1907, 158 
 
 Size of businesses at the two 
 dates, 159 
 
 The 1000 largest businesses at 
 the two dates, 160 
 
 Small businesses stationary, 
 large businesses increasing, 
 161 
 
 Small portion of total incomes 
 going to great employers, 162 
 
 Large portion going to a novel 
 class of mental subordinates, 
 162, 164 
 
 The largest part taken by 
 manual labour, 165 
 
 The gains of labour due to the 
 development of new kinds 
 and grades of labour by the 
 industrial oligarchy, 166-72 
 
 Dwindling estimates by social- 
 ists of the amount of unearned 
 incomes in typical modern 
 countries, 179 
 
 General conformity of distribu- 
 tion to the broad facts of 
 production, 182 
 
 Admission of this fact by 
 modern socialists, 183 
 
 Emphatic assertion of it by an 
 
 American socialist, 184 
 Industry, definition of, 80 
 " International, the," oligarchy 
 
 in, 52-53 
 
 Jesuits, the, in Paraguay, as 
 industrial oligarchs, 176 
 
 Knowledge as derived from an 
 oligarchy, 347 
 
 Land, Henry George on rent of, 
 321 
 
 Land ownership, and secure em- 
 ployment, 307 
 Lassalle an avowed autocrat, 55 
 
 Malarial fly, industrial oligarchs 
 
 compared to, 120 
 Marx, his general theory of pro- 
 duction summarised, 85, 87 
 His doctrine applicable to 
 
 simple communities, 88 
 His vain attempt to apply it to 
 production in its higher form, 
 93, 96 
 
 His false interpretation of his- 
 tory, 363-8 
 
 Michels, Professor, his account 
 of oligarchy in revolutionary 
 parties, Book I, ch&p.v, passim 
 Mind, the sense in which it pro- 
 duces the whole, and only a 
 part of the increment, 161, 175 
 Minimum Wage. See " Wages " 
 Monism, industrial, 114 
 Monopolists of business ability, 
 111, 127 
 
 " New Australia," 217, 226 
 
 Objectives in politics as distinct 
 from means, Book I, chap, vi, 
 passim 
 Oligarchy, industrial 
 
 Industrial oligarchy as the 
 
 cause of all modern progress, 
 
 101 
 Development of mind-workers 
 
 essential to the efficiency of 
 
 hand-work, 103 
 Development of mind-workers 
 
 into a separate directing class, 
 
 105 
 The great mind as the centre 
 
 round which hand-workers 
 
 cluster, 107-9 
 Admission by socialists that 
 
 industrial oligarchy is neces- 
 sary, 111 
 Arguments by which they 
 
 attempt to minimise these 
 
 admissions, 112 
 
396 
 
 INDEX 
 
 Oligarchy, industrial continued 
 Three of these arguments 
 
 childish, 113-16 
 Two, more serious, examined, 
 
 116-20 
 
 Oligarchy, political 
 Oligarchy essential to the for- 
 mation of a general will as 
 to all questions, even the 
 simplest, 25 
 Electoral Reform, Free Trade, 
 
 etc., 22-7 
 
 The oligarchy of invention, 29 
 The arts by which oligarchies 
 
 elicit general wills, 31-5 
 The Referendum as an imple- 
 ment of oligarchy, 36-8 
 Every man an oligarch who 
 influences the votes of any 
 other, 40 
 
 Oligarchs of the tap-room, 40 
 Conversational oligarchy, 40, 41 
 Public meetings, and all oratory, 
 implements of oligarchy, 41, 
 42 
 
 Oligarchy absent, and not 
 needed with regard to funda- 
 mental questions, 43 
 Leaders of revolutionary and 
 labour parties essentially 
 oligarchs, as shown by ex- 
 amples collected by Professor 
 Michels, 47-61 
 Oligarchy, social 
 
 Oligarchy and the life of know- 
 ledge, 347 
 
 Oligarchy and art, 348 
 Oligarchy and religion, 348, 
 
 349 
 
 Opportunity, equality of (or the 
 right to rise), essentially a pro- 
 test against equality of condition 
 in general, Book V, chap, iv, 
 passim 
 
 Owen, his experiences in Social- 
 ism, 209^12 
 
 Personal product, meaning of, in 
 case of wage-earners, 240, 241 
 the basis of just wages, 243 
 True calculus of, 123 
 
 Proudhon on the inevitability of 
 
 oligarchy, 56 
 Psychology, false, of Socialism 
 
 Socialism founded on an in- 
 verted psychology, ( ' each and 
 all," 293 
 
 Altruism deduced from egoism 
 "a mother's love," 294 
 
 Self-interest the primary factor, 
 295 
 
 Objective equality desired by 
 nobody for its own sake, 
 296, 297 
 
 Effort and self-interest, 299 
 
 Real income as distinct from 
 
 money income, 336, 338 
 Religion purely democratic in 
 
 essence, 349 
 Respect due from one class to 
 
 another, 273 
 
 Mutual respect necessary for a 
 sound industrial understand- 
 ing, 266, 267 
 
 Graduation of respect in ac- 
 cordance with facts, 269 
 "Rich," the, small aggregate in- 
 come of the rich in modern 
 countries, 141, 147, 153, 155 
 Rousseau on Freedom, 1-4 
 Russian revolution, instructive 
 incidents of, 377-86 
 
 Security of work as an adjunct to 
 
 a just minimum wage, 268 
 Difficulties of establishing com- 
 plete security, 260, 306, 309 
 Sentiment, socialist, described by 
 
 Mr. Shaw, 190 
 
 Unreality of this sentiment, 
 227, 230, 238 ; except in des- 
 perate situations, 232 
 Shaw, Mr. G. B., on the real 
 meaning of Socialism, Book IV, 
 chap, i, passim 
 Social intercourse as the object 
 
 for which States exist, 331 
 not a national process, but a 
 
 group process, 333 
 and its material appliances, 
 335 
 
INDEX 
 
 397 
 
 Social intercourse as democracy 
 controlling industrial oli- 
 garchy, 335, 336 
 
 and shopping, 336-9 
 
 as determining what goods shall 
 be produced, the most perfect 
 example of democracy,338,339 
 
 Comparison of democracy in 
 shopping with democracy in 
 politics, 339 
 
 as determining for each man 
 the substance of his real in- 
 come, 341, 342 
 
 Examples different homes of 
 families earning the same 
 wages, 342-4 
 
 as related to the oligarchies of 
 knowledge, taste and reli- 
 gion, 349, 350 
 
 as a democratic assimilation by 
 the many of the results of the 
 powers of the few, 351, 352 
 Socialism, elements of, in every 
 
 State, 235 
 State, the 
 
 Ambiguous use of the word 
 "State" by socialists, 358 
 
 Attempts to suggest Socialism 
 by false conception of the 
 State, 358 
 
 Conception of the State as an 
 animal organism, 359 
 
 False analogy between the or- 
 ganic cell and the individual 
 citizen, 359 
 
 The cell, which is likened to 
 the individual, has no unitary 
 value, 359 
 
 The State, unlike an animal 
 organism, has no common 
 sensorium, 360, 361 
 
 Partial likeness of States to the 
 half-formed animal embryo, 
 361, 362 
 
 Unemployment, how far it can be 
 
 eliminated, 260 
 
 Summary of difficulties, Book 
 VI, chap, xi, passim 
 
 Voters, customers as, 341 
 
 Wages, the ideal minimum 
 The minimum must not be less 
 than the value of the personal 
 product, 241 
 How to measure the personal 
 
 product, 241 
 
 Socialist experiments as at- 
 tempts to measure the per- 
 sonal product of the ordinary 
 worker, 242 
 
 The wages of economic equiva- 
 lence, 243 
 
 Moral justice and mere equiva- 
 lence, 244 
 
 Wages of compensation, 245 
 Wages of stability, or the wage- 
 earner's net advantage, 246, 
 247 
 The minimum and the needs of 
 
 manhood, 252, 253 
 Limits of the minimum, 253, 
 
 254 
 The minimum and the normal 
 
 lot, 255, 256 
 Security as an adjunct of the 
 
 minimum, 259, 262 
 Wealth, as distinguished from 
 
 mere sufficiency 
 Nothing absolute in wealth, 336 
 Only necessary goods are an 
 
 absolute quantity, 336 
 Increase in wealth is an in- 
 crease in superfluous goods, 
 339 
 
 Superfluous goods are wealth 
 according as changing taste 
 desires them, 337, 339 ; neg- 
 lect of this fact by Mr. 
 Shaw and kindred writers, 
 196 
 
 Wish and Will in politics, con- 
 fusion between, 63-9 
 Wilson, President, the functions 
 of oligarchy as essential to those 
 of oligarchy, ignored in his 
 public utterances, 390-391 
 
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