The Egoist: No. 13, Vol. 1, July 1st, 1914.
by Dora Marsden
NOT justice and morality be it noted: since these last can be left as dead: monuments of the effete: bearing testimony to the long success of a trick of language at last found out and discredited. But justice and morality abandoned, there still remain the words descriptive of human conduct which furnished the grounds off which the trick was worked to such advantage-"just and moral." We have before now said our say on both these, but only in respect of such meaning as they have when they are used carefully and delicately: used as one would use them who valued words as fine instruments to be blunted only under peril of confounding the purpose for which all words are born--the intercommunication of human feeling and understanding. We dealt with them precisely, as a good writer with an audience of good writers might, but as good writers are few and far between it is impossible to muster them in numbers, and it becomes advisable-if the audience is to be at all extended-to treat of them in those loose, rough-and-ready meanings which are attached to them variously by the curates and other orators, by the journalists and writers of philosophic treatises who bring the froth to the surface of their rhetoric by a skilfully confused use of them. So, therefore, to the popular connotation: "Just" first.
The meaning of the word "just" according to the rhetoricians- and it is their meaning which decides the popular one-is "generous," a connotation odd enough when one bears in mind the wide distinction popularly held to exist between the two. Nevertheless, that is the rhetorical meaning. To be "just" is to be "generous"; put the other way round-when a man is "generous" he is only being "just," to the heated espousal of which meaning there is likely to be appended the tale of a social struggle in the near future, which while carrying the hardship that any struggle must, will bring with it heart-burnings and resentments it certainly need not.
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Let us examine how this sagging of connotation from the "just" to the "generous" has been brought about. First as to the precise meaning of "just," which is twofold: a secondary and a primary one, of which the secondary is the obvious and the ordinarily accepted meaning, while the primary is so basic and founded on motives so deeply instinctive as to be but rarely taken count of, and only very meagrely furnished with labels. We will delineate the secondary and obvious meaning first. In this sense to be "just" has to do solely with the good faith which, having made bargains, keeps them. From bargains or contracts apart, "to be just" has no other meaning. In relation to them it means "being fair"-satisfying to the extent of one's ability the undertaking entered upon in the bargain. And in the spirit as well as the letter: which is a consideration which accounts for the distinction made between being "just" in the legal sense and being "just" to the full extent of the ground which the term covers. The "law" itself endeavours to compel men to be "just" by compelling them under threat of punishment to fulfil the terms of contracts as far as there is visible or audible evidence to testify what the contract was. Its limitations are, of course, that often the most potent inducements proffered during the shaping of a bargain, are unwritten and merely implied. Much is left to tacit assumption-especially with simpletons and honourable persons: and it is when such assumptions have been allowed to have their influence in the making of the bargain only to be ignored in the sequence, that the sense of having been treated unjustly rankles. Against the more deliberate "tricks of assumption" the law itself attempts to protect their natural victims. But strangely enough, where the sense of "unjust" treatment appears to rankle most is in circumstances where there is no unjust treatment, strictly speaking: but where, through the advent of chance or some other unforeseen factor the terms of a contract originally made in good faith have become bettered for one and have deteriorated for the other. Conduct faithful not only to the written but to the tacit and assumed terms of the contract-but terms which had one foreseen the issue one would have made otherwise-is reckoned by the sentimentalists, rhetoricians and salvationists to be "unjust." Whereas actually they mean "ungenerous" but prefer to apply the term "unjust." And from this point the sagging starts. They assume that the taking of an advantage involved in a contract, and come at by chance or even superior insight, is on all fours with advantages secured through a more or less transparent bad faith in respect of a bargain. The party finding himself on the wrong side of the contract sets himself-not to the task of learning how to bargain better in the future, or of keeping out of bargains where he stands the chance of being unlucky, or in which he does not appear to have the talent to be a success-to scold the other party regarding the sharing of the spoils. He thinks he is asking the other to be "just," whereas he is asking him to be "generous": an attitude common and good enough, if he likes it, but it is erroneous to assume he is asking not to be favoured-but to be treated "justly."
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It is worth while lingering over this tendency of the "down" to ask for the "generous" when they are offered the "just," since from such an attitude follow many implications: which is the reason why persons with spirit care little for the ousting of the "just" by the "generous." For one thing, the action of the latter is uncertain, unreliable, and, worse than all, expected to cut both ways. He who has been generously treated must, in his turn, act generously or be considered-something which he does not care to be-mean. They would prefer to be "just" because it is expedient-and be "generous" by whim-only when they please. Plans of their own, by being generous, might be interfered with: moreover, they care little for the feeling of having been generously dealt with: they feel it to be either an investment or thinly veiled patronage, and would prefer to carve a career irrespective of it. To accept favours with indeterminate obligations attached is an irksome proceeding for able men. Only favours which are done outright, for the doer's own satisfaction, are suitable for acceptance. In short-to be "generous" is purely an affair of individual taste, while to be "just"-in this secondary sense of fulfilling fairly whatever one undertakes-is the basis of tolerable social existence.
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There is, however, a sense in which "to be just" cuts more deeply than it has been seen to in relation to bargains: it touches individual quality so closely that it becomes a question of linguistic suitability as to whether the word "just" should be used in respect of it, especially as it has to do with a something in human character which is called-quite erroneously- "moral." The decisive powers which give configuration to the grades of a community, and which fix its members' status, are not fundamentally based on bargains: the spirit which allows of bargains follows after. The decisive powers are indicated, as in a scale, by the outcome of a struggle which is always after the nature of a fight. The struggles are waged almost to exhaustion before such a scale is arrived at, and it is roughly on calculations based on their outcome, that the spirit in which subsequent bargains are struck takes its tone and temper. Before one arrives at the point where one can be "just" in the secondary sense there has been this preliminary assessment of values which have decided what is "just" in the first degree.
Assessment of one's worth precedes all one's bargaining: what is a "just" bargain for one is absurd and fantastic for another to contemplate. What is "just" for one, is based on what one "is" and "has."
This account-the basis of agreement-comprises the sum total of one's entire competence. To swell it by fraud, deception, misrepresentation, bounce, swagger, "honest" miscalculation-all these things may enter-in an attempt to confuse the exact value. They are all means endeavouring to conceal what is just: to make assessment inexact, not-nicely balanced on the precise worth of the parties with intent to confuse others as to one's just dues. Now one's just due is what one can obtain if one chooses to put the particular issue to a test of trial by strength. It is a corrollary following from one's competence.
Now it is one of the most obvious facts of life that the "competence" of individuals varies: varies to an enormous extent: and it follows, therefore, that what each individual can, in subsequent bargains, "justly" demand (justly, i.e., with due regard to the individual's power effectively to back up his demand), varies equally. That is why the equality argument never cuts any deeper than sound. That men are "equal" is the cover instinctively sought by precisely those sentimentalists who "claim" the generous because they dislike the "just." For just as it is an obvious fact that individual competence varies enormously it is a fact equally obvious that nothing hurts the humanitarian (i.e., the rhetorical salvationist, equality-cum- rights) temperament more than an open recognition of it. The patent fact that men are not equal in the only sense that matters, i.e., in power of life, is the humanitarian's skeleton in the cup board. It is the universal secret known everywhere, mentioned nowhere.
We can perhaps make this primary aspect of what is "just" more clear by turning to a consideration of the "moral" for a while, and returning to show the connection between the rhetorical meanings of the two. Accurately "the moral," as we have pointed out before, is the "traditional" "the customary." The fact that it belongs to the crowd, and describes the way of the crowd, explains why it exists in such good odour with them: it explains why it is the ready catch of all those who seek to win the favour of the crowd. To advocate a thing because it is moral is obvious flattery: it means "your"-therefore "good." Quite possibly it is "good" since it appears as such to them; and since they cling to it, it shows itself a reliable habit for them at least. The moralists, however, are not content with this account of the amount of merit in their appeal to the populace for favour under the aegis of the moral. They endeavour rather to imply that the "moral" is one and the same with that force of spirit which is the kernel of all personal competence. It is worthwhile being quite definite as to what this "spirit force" is, and since there is a popular word which is used in almost the exact connotation, this should not be difficult. The word "character" (which only inasmuch as it has been erroneously identified with the "moral" is synonymous with stodge) the word "character" will serve. Character is the living energy-varying in strength and differing in quality which, strong, weak or indifferent, is the ultimate individual competence which must be there before it can be directed towards any activity whatsoever.
More often than not strong character turns to new kinds of activity, leaving the moral, and courage being justified of her children, manages to inaugurate a new practice: which weaker characters later will doubtless make moral, i.e., imitate, and probably vitiate by imitation. Character is the worth-the power-in an individual apart from the thing he does though what he does is determined by what it is. The differences in character are not differences in "morals," "ways," "habits"; they are such differences as exist between a strong magnetic current and a feeble one: or between a scraggy bramble and an oak: both "good" to themselves, no doubt: but not needing and certainly not receiving identical treatment. To speak of morals when one means character is to speak of attitudes when one actually means "values."
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In order more strongly to assert that "men are equal," weak but kindly persons choose to slur lightly over this question of individual force: they are afraid to seek out the one reason why some men are cuffed while others do the cuffing, and because they dare not fact this fact, upon which what is "just" primarily is based, they change their cry from the just to the generous: and practise a little innocent but highly misleading bounce by calling the desired generosity justice. The bounce will go just a little way-but not far: certainly not far enough to make much material change in their condition.
Let us take as illustration the present outcry againstthe wage "system" (so-called). The "system" is to be abolished because, forsooth, it is "immoral" and "unjust." Just note: the very same breath which states it to be immoral, and against the deepest instincts of men-also declares that it is almost ineradicable, that it has worked itself into the very tissue of civilisation, so much so that men's minds are hypnotised by it- their very speech is at one with it, and that they cannot shed the phraseology which embodies it, but having shaken off one phrase will use another in which it is as deeply implicated. To settle down to work for subsistence wages, whether under the old slave order or this new wage system is shown to be an instinctive level to which the mass of men have set themselves throughout history. Well then: whatever the receiving of wages may not be- it certainly is the custom: it is habitual: Moral. More than any other feature common to mankind throughout the ages the custom of being paid for labour done in terms of wages-kind or coin-is the most unmistakable. Working for wages is certainly moral-so exceedingly so that we shall feel compelled, one of these days, to go into the reason why. It is hurtful, too, we are told. If so, let those who are hurt by it tell us how. If it is hurtful it is a very interesting example of the undoubtedly "moral" being only questionably "good." Doubtless what such writers mean when they say it is immoral is that wage earning is not compatible with the temper of persons of strong and original character. Which seems fairly true, since wage earning for the masses has involved the labouring on other men's schemes in which the labourers have little or no personal interest; in the main, their toil is menial, servile, obedient, submissive, and they themselves are open to suffer insult and contumely.
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Then why do they persist in it? One tells them that it is hurtful: but they should know best. As to whether the shoe pinches it is the wearer who is the best judge. All that an onlooker can say is this "wage shoe" is of such a shape as would make the wearing of it torture to feet of certain mould. But the wages-shoe seems to suit wage-earners very well: they require a very great deal of persuasion before they can be induced to say a word against it, and even then the very words which would seem to rebuke its strictures look always to its continued wear. Names matter little: they take it off as "shoe" and promptly put it on again freshly labelled "slipper." The fact is, it appears to be made to measure: it adjusts itself to the total of their actual competence. Certainly masters and men are not bargaining in the dark: from time to time they have tried their strength, and their present relations are the adjustments which have followed as the outcome of these trials. The competence of the wage-earners cannot be put at a high figure when one bears in mind that they have barely arrived at the point where bargaining is at all possible. They come to the masters as beggars: begging to be allowed to accomplish their purposes for them, and at their own request their energies are bought up for that purpose. On the strength of their own powers they are not in a position to make an advantageous bargain. Nor do they. When by combination with others as incompetent, i.e., powerless, as themselves they are able with some show of success to ask that rates be be at leats [be at least] thus much, it is often accorded by the employer because it is more convenient not to haggle: or because he can afford it: or because it pleases him to be generous and he pities the poor men's plight.
That the trade unions by a device called the monopoly of labour have managed to secure a certain semblance of bargaining has given the union wage-earners a sense of heightened status which is likely to prove highly misleading: they are likely to confuse a reluctance to incur inconvenience into a recognition of existing competence which belongs only to positive exercise of power. The results of the exercising of a monopoly over labour, of strikes and other obstructive tactics are purely negative, and in the long run will prove nugatory. Men are not irreplacable: an ominous feature for those who would establish monopolies. Machines will go a very long way with such work as the mass of wage-earners perform. The crucial test of competence is not what men can force others to disburse, but what each has the power to set about producing for himself. That employers set no great store by the "claims" of the trade unions is proved by their determination not to yield over the question of non-union labour. These "negative" shows of power, in effect, exhibitions of absence of power, are not likely to bring people with the long purses down on their knees. If then, we were to sum up the wage earners' dues in terms of what is primarily and secondarily just, it becomes clear that their case has to do with character rather than with morals and will find its way out of the slough of wage-earning when they can rely on what is just and dispense with the generous.
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First, as to the sorts and sizes of wages. No honest minded man can contend in the main that these are unjust: that they offend as violating the terms of a bargain. On the contrary, wage-earners are seldom in a position sufficiently strong to make a bargain. They beg and receive-work with wages attached. They do the work which is given them, tolerably. They take their wages whether the concern pays or loses: on the whole they hope it "pays," since of a certainty they would not be employed for long unless there was a prospect of profit from their employ to the one who employs them. Just as they know that they would not work but for the certainty of wages, they should know that an employer would not employ them but for the hope of profits in one form or another. If the wage-earner does not like the arrangement, he can always leave and start a concern of his own. If he will face "justly" the actual reason why he has not already done so, he will allow that it is because he feels he has not the competence behind him-either in ability or possessions, or both, to start a concern for profit to himself: otherwise he would set about it. If in the future he ever feels he can-he will. His present talk about the "surplus value" which he "creates" is so much self-deception. He "creates" nothing in the initiatory sense. He does the work he applied for, is paid for, and would get the sack for not doing. He had no thought for the "created" profits when he undertook the work. His thought was to get and keep the job. His "right" to make someone else give him work; his "right" to make someone else refuse to give others work; his "right" to a certain amount of pay; his "right" to "surplus value" are afterthoughts, and poor ones. For if he had had the "might," the "competence" to cover the wide expanse of these "rights," he would not be in the position of a beggar asking for the favour of a job from a master: he would have set about being his own master: the one thing which to this day the ordinary wage-earner steadily refuses to be. That he has begun to call his shoe a slipper in no way mitigates the obstinacy of this refusal.
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Of course, his self-appointed apologists have a host of "reasons": it would, in fact, be strange if the wage earners in common with everyone else, could not find an inexhaustible supply for not doing what they have no inclination to do.
But their intellectual friends have made out apretty case for them: based on the quite questionable assumption that their present downtrodden condition is not a fair index of their actual competence, and that the primary assessment of their weight is "unjust." Their contention is that how they can be treated is no index that they cannot prevent themselves from being so treated: that their competential assessment is out of date, and that they are good for more now than when affairs became adjusted to them in their present subordinate position. And, of course, in the course of time, character values constantly change, but when they are changed in a marked degree there will be a fight-we call it a revolution-to assess anew powers to the extent to which they have changed. During such a struggle there exists a state of war in which scruples respecting the terms of contracts, the usages common to times of peace, the respect of property, and the like, will be abrogated: while the combatants will press into the waging of their contentions their entire strength, compounded of armed force, intelligence, cunning, present possessions, friends, past obligations, charm and grace, which may serve them to win allies or break the fierceness of attack. When the campaign has been fought out to exhaustion, in the lull which follows there will emerge the new estimate which each must take of other's competence: an estimate which will serve for many years to come. Whereupon the harsher terms of what is primarily "just" having been for another space decided, the period will arrive when that which is "just" in the secondary degree, and which applies to terms fixed by contract, can re-establish itself. Thus war-open war-is not in itsnature opposed to peace: it is a necessary preliminary of peace. The years of peace are based on conclusions of relative strength which can only be arrived at in war: conclusions which assert what is basically "just" whether in relation to international orintranational powers. A class or a nation will from time to time precipitate a struggle on primary terms, and for the time will regard all contractual documents between themselves and their opponents as torn up. After the issue, what was before reckoned "primarily just" will be re- adjusted. That is precisely what the term "to re-adjust" means, viz. to make a hitherto accepted assessment fit more exactly to the powers that are. So we can state the conclusion: In times of peace if we make bargains it is expedient to be content to satisfy and be satisfied with their simple fulfilment: and it is in no wise feasible to attempt to bludgeon the contractors, employers or others, into doing favours. But war declared, all bargaining is finished for the time being, and what one may demand is about to be decided on the strength of arguments not verbal but competential. What is "just" is for the moment in doubt, but will be made clear by the lie of the combatants at the close of the campaign. A revolting class, which has not an instinctive feel that this is the gist of the situation is so little advanced on the path of revolt as scarcely to be entitled to bear that description. And nothing good-for them or others-will come of hurrying them. One rises-when one is able.
D.M.
The Egoist: No. 13, Vol. 1, July 1st, 1914.
by Dora Marsden
IT was the late lamented Queen Victoria who immortalised in a phrase a little gust of emotion which is familiar to us all, but to which most of us are too shy, or too cautious to give utterance. The incident which was able to knock this august maiden off her perch, and betray her into a very human indiscretion was the sudden announcement of her accession to the throne, whereupon she ejaculated, "I will be good," "I will be good." Who is there who has not felt such a spasm, and luckily bitten his tongue just as he was on the point of giving expression to it? Luckily-because people do so seem to expect one to live up to one's utterances, when after all, spasms are spasms-and horrible if they are mistaken for permanencies, dragging a code of conduct after them. If only some discerning person had been on the spot to explain the correct theory of spasms to the new Queen, how might she not have suppressed, instead of encouraging, all those dreadful bores of her era, who emulated her in the role of being good! Because, be it noted, she did not say she was good, which would have been at least impudent, if not exciting: she said she would be, obviously with her mind's eye on a manner of conduct not altogether native to herself. So was she-good and dull-and when ultimately she died, she unfortunately omitted to take her spiritual progeny with her. We have them yet, and they multiply and prosper, expecting us all to step out to the rhythm of "we will be good"- "we will be good."
Of course, one hears the endorsing chorus-"And a very good thing, too"-rising from the hosts of salvation. And we understand why. "Being good," in addition to being very plaguey for oneself, and being (could we say?) most interestingly "nosey" in relation to others, involves the practice of a precept too well rubbed into human consciousness to be wholly without effect. To "turn the other cheek" and receive a second smack from an offending individual instead of administering a smart one in return-is ideally "good" conduct of the modern version. It is in fact to be "generous" rather than "just": which makes it clearer from whence a new species of revolters have inbibed their peculiar doctrines, and acquired the effrontery to express them. They believe that the "haves" "ought" to be "good" because this is the burden of all modern teaching. The gist of salvationism is to build up a communal tradition of conduct which shall be regulated by what is "generous" rather than by what is "just." To erect a scheme designed on a basis of goodwill is their heart's desire. And goodwill means to be fired with the intention to be "generous" rather than "just," a sequence salvationists hope will have the same stability as its opposite. They take no count of the spasmodic nature of the impulse towards the "good," but hopefully persevere in their task of attaching wheels to an eagle. The latest example of this misguided attempt to put excellent forces to unserviceable uses comes to us in a volume of essays on "National Guilds" (Bell and Sons, 5s. net), which is offered to the public by Mr. Orage, the editor of our contemporary, "The New Age."
A collection of essays intended to propound, in a reversion to guilds, a new version of salvation. The essays are, we gather, reprints of articles which have already appeared in "The New Age," and are accordingly written in good "journalese": good, that is, none of the writers' sentences are left wanting in any of their parts. Now good journalese is a very telling form of prose-writing: excellent within its own limits. Its virtues are that it gets on with the narrative and tell a tale as effectively as it can be told with expedition. It reaches its readers because it does not mince with terms: but accepting them with all their confused associations of meaning, uses them without a qualm, leaving the selection of meaning to the reader. Journalese is especially appropriate as the language of "news"; it is in its right place in the relating of incident and fact. Latterly it has deservedly fallen into disrepute because it has overstepped its limits and attempted tasks for which, by its nature, it is disqualified, and where indeed its very particular merit of forthrightness is an added offence. Its efforts to disport itself in such an inquiry as that presented by the subtle complex woven by the interplay of human motives have effects as disastrous as those which would ensue were a racing-car to try to show its powers in narrow streets and crowded thoroughfares. A racing-car requires a fairly clear track, and so does journalese; the words over which it makes such speed must be straightforward: stripped of all doubtful meaning. With such words as those whose vague and ambiguous connotations are the root-cause of philosophic controversies it can or should have nothing to do. And when, for instance, in addition a good journalist, i.e., one who can write good journalese, will slip and write bad journalese a quite definite word like "crime" in a sentence like this: "To reduce the untiring efforts of mankind to the level of cotton and coal is a crime and a sin against the Holy Ghost," one can imagine how he will use such words as democracy, morals, ethics, justice, sin, and "surplus value." As the writers of "National Guilds" have had the misfortune to attempt to provide a basis founded on a valuation of human motive for their system, and as they have not attempted to look at the springs of human motives any deeper than a slip-shod acceptation of the popular use of such words as above mentioned it follows, that they do not offer the preliminary part of their exposition to serious readers. Even putting the subtler evaluations of human motives aside it makes hard reading to see a word like democracy advanced as though there existed a common understanding as to what democracy implies or as though in this country its implication were understood sufficiently to allow of its merits being seriously canvassed. Accordingly, the insinuation that democratic institutions are without question advantageous, and an easy appeal built up on that makes it impossible to accord the preliminary part of this exposition anything beyond the recognition of ready speciousness which one allows to the usual stump orator. It must be dismissed as not having taken the first step towards serious inquiry; it has not started with an examination of the terms about whose meaning there lies the doubt. The writers have been content to profit by ambiguity speciously to "tell a tale": just where exposition is most needed they fix their base and take the position for granted. The result is propaganda: that usual misleading thing called a "constructive social proposal."
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Apart from the introduction of unfortunate and ill comprehended terms, perhaps dragged into the argument for elegance' sake and a sort of curate's impressiveness, the book bases its case upon two assumptions, both, we think, quite untenable. The assumptions are: (1) That the present state of affairs is intolerable, and (2) That it is leading to a condition of even greater hatefulness, which is described as the "Servile State." Now, when one endeavours to be honest about facts, one has to confess that the present state of affairs is not at all intolerable: we all seem to be bearing up very well, especially the wage-earners, who are supposed to be resenting it with a special intensity: it is indeed those who are not wage-earners who appear to be conscious of a certain inadequacy. Of the horrors of the "Servile State" itself we can fairly judge, for this is it. To think that it is necessary to place the "Servile State" in the future is to fail to understand what is implied by it. It is doubtful whether we could average out at anything more "servile," even in degree, than we are at present. Certainly not in kind. Most of us serve, and appear to find it not only tolerably comfortable, but to glory in it. Indeed, "I serve" looks very well on crests and badges: while as for those amiable and obvious persons, the politicians, who are made out to play so sinister a part in the threatened conspiracy, they are not making us "servile"-they couldn't-our own private efforts in that line are not to be bettered. They appear to be simply tidying up the mess a little, presumably to make them feel happier in accepting the money they get for their jobs.
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Let us brace up our nerves and look squarely at this word "servile." There is no obscure connotation attached to it. A person who has not the wherewithal to be independent to be his own master, must needs be as "servile" as anyone need be under any conceivable circumstances whatsoever; and it makes very little difference who the master is, or whether there is one, or two, or a multitude. Now, the very fact that it is possible for the theory of "Guilds" to be elaborated at this time of day, and with some show o{ enthusiasm, offers the best proof of how well the "servile condition" suits us all: for guilds present just another variation of the attempt to dodge the first condition independence. To seek to establish industrial guilds is not an effort to work oneself free of a master, but to secure an additional and more powerful master. It is not an effort towards the acquisition of property, i.e., possessions of one's own, which is the entrenchment behind which one can rule one's life after the manner of one's personal inclination: it is an unblushing announcement of a willingness to stand and deliver the little bit one has-one's energy-to the custodianship of a police possessed of far greater powers of preventing resumption of property than any individual or corporate body known to history. The very thin plea that each little "guildsman" is to own the whole guild should not, after the practical experience of a century of representative government, deceive an infant. It is, indeed, very odd that anyone, after being witness to, and acknowledging the disappointing failure of the representative system in politics, should have started out, baldheaded to apply the self-same system to industry. Matters of politics do not concern us more than a trifle but industrial concerns are matters of great and immediate importance. The line of mental development of persons who argue that a system tried and found wanting when applied to one set of affairs must therefore be all that can be desired when applied to more important affairs, is difficult to follow. The truth of the situation is that quite intelligent men have been misled by the concept of "bigness." They have, for instance, imagined one big world, whereas, in the actual, "the" world has no existence save as the various outlooks of each of those who make up the myriad of unique existences. "Reformers" have tried to get a comprehensive view of the "world's work"-which does not exist save in their own imagination-and they have come to neglect and hold lightly work viewed from its only real aspect-the personal satisfying of needs and wants as they rise up spontaneously from each varying individual: and from thence there has sprung an erroneous notion of "economy," itself in turn closely tracked by an erroneous notion of "waste." All this amalgamation of industries: this "elimination of waste" by joining up big businesses is a wild attempt to catch up with the initial error of imagining that "all" are responsible for each, which is a corollary following from that blatantly grotesque parody of a generalisation known pseudo scientifically as "Society an Organism," of which "Members of one Body" is the theological variety.
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Perhaps never since the days of the Chartists have the activities of those belonging to the lower-paid classes of workers been in the popular estimation regarded as possessing forces so vital and fateful as the forces known as syndicalist are to-day: and while they are hard put to it to give an account of the arresting quality, and are indeed inclined to give credence to accounts in proportion to the degree in which they are fantastic, they nevertheless feel the potentiality lying in it. Now the genius of syndicalism amounts to this: it gives expression in concrete shape to a revolt against the "Society an Organism" acceptation of social life. It expresses a revolt of those who, following the lines of this theory, must presumably be against filling the role of the trimmings of the beard or the parings of nails-those parts of the organism which are sacrificed in order to enhance the beauty of the whole; it voices the objections of those who are reckoned as nail-parings and clippings where others presumably are head, heart and eyes, or other indispensable, honoured and well cared-for features. Holding up the coal-supply or the means of transit or committing any of the sundry acts of offence and destruction comprised under the label sabotage is the protest of the less honourable members of the body against the direction of the higher powers-the brain-what-not of the body as a whole. It is as though the rebelling hair should swiftly convert itself into whip-cord or lightning to smite the barber or his client: or as if the sacrificial finger nail from which its owner seeks to sever himself should turn into a sword with will and intention in it, and smite the hand which manipulates the scissors. The directing powers of such an "organism" would be considerably shocked, no doubt: so much so as to question the advisability of separating from such "members." The same notion is behind the "principle" of being good (the principle as distinct from the whim). One returns good for evil on principle, on the same basis of reasoning as that on which one carefully tends a limb which ails constantly and gives its owner pain. It is because they are members of one body.
Syndicalism is a protest (vainly inarticulate) against a concept which has increased in strength steadily during the Christian era: it is an instinctive preference for the admonition "Call no man master" as against the democratic principle: "Ye are all members one of another." That this revolting spirit now keenly alive in a limited number of wage-earners should have used trade unions rather than some other as an instrument of offence and defence affects the nature of its motive no more than the choice of a chopper rather than a garden-hose would affect our motive if one were suddenly approached by a mad dog: one would have chosen which ever was handiest for the occasion.
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The fact, however, that they have used the trade unions as a means has been productive of certain very interesting but very erroneous conceptions. Of the misconceptions thus created, perhaps those indicated by the writings of the authors of "National Guilds" are amongst the most noteworthy. The advocates of the guilds have endeavoured to be in the swim of two fashions at one and the same time. Besides syndicalism, which is a practice rather than a theory, the most notable tendency of the last few years has been the swing from collectivism towards egoism. It is true that the crowd is just now surging in full tide towards collectivism-in social as well as religious and philosophical affairs: that makes no matter: the strongest forces are set against it: and the popular collectivist triumph is already tawdry and of the vulgar. Now, "National Guilds" is the effort of certain collectivists-honest enough-to cover the badges of their collectivism. They are wholly unsuccessful: everything which has of late years been said to discredit State- collectivism could be said with four-fold emphasis to discredit this double-handled engine of State-recognised, State recognising, National Industrial Guilds. This effort to escape the reproach of State-collectivism has resulted in the conception of a State-fortified guild-collectivism. If the Servile State means anything more than a condition where in addition to the mass of the people being so propertyless that they must of necessity work for wages on the property of governors-the owners-it means the establishment of a police with powers to invade one's most intimate concerns and interfere with one's means of securing vital necessities; and the enormous industrial guild system possessing the "instruments of production," with the politicians holding the estate, is in a hundredfold stronger position to bring this latter about. Under the guilds, the propertyless will still be propertyless-owning nothing fundamentally wealth producing of their own. A political bureaucracy is to be backed up by an industrial one: which two, as organisations, will negotiate with each other. The mass are to serve: that is, do as they are told on the governors' jobs- for wages which are then to be decorated with the title "pay": the abolition of the wage-system, according to the "National Guilds" is to be effected by calling the "shoe" the "slipper." The volume contains a chapter enlarging on "pay" in the Army, which is so striking in its lack of penetration into the implications of wages and pay in general and pay in the Army in particular, that we hope to go into the causes which can give rise to a mal-comprehension so complete in a later issue.
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Not comprehending that the importance which syndicalism gives to trade unionism is merely adventitious the propounders of the National Guilds propose to install them as the lungs of their new social system. Now in proposals of changes as comprehensive and vast as one must expect the effects of the guilds to be it should be necessary to take views a little beyond to-morrow. Now the present unions have sprung up as local institutions to protect the labour which clustered into localities primarily decided upon by the location of machines. The trade unions are the outcome of the nature and (in addition) the size of the machines, and the stability and permanence of the unions primarily depend upon the continuance of like attributes in the machines. It therefore requires to be pointed out that if there are two modern and patently existent tendencies-egoism and syndicalism-which the "Guildsmen" have taken into account only to miscomprehend there is an incipient tendency of vast importance of which they have taken no account at all: the tendency following the advent of electricity to reconvert the enormous machine back into the individualised maniable tool. What the effects of this may be-geographically as well as industrially-the change from agricultural to industrial England effected by the advent of the steam engine will sufficiently indicate. It therefore becomes evident that the enormous organisation of which the trade union is typical is threatened not merely by the spiritedness of human temper, but even more by the inward sweep of its intelligence: and robbed of the integrating force supplied by the amalgamation of employed persons (servants) engaged in numbers upon a "master's" trade, the bottom falls out of the unions, and there remains nothing wherewith to create the national industrial guild.
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To sum up: syndicalism is in its infancy and is comfused in its expression. What it means to say, and what it will say when it is more accustomed to itself is that the workers' great quarrel with employers has been a vast irrelevance: that the workers themselves are responsible each for himself and that if they are "down" it is their business to find the ways and means of getting up: that their task is a much nearer, simpler, yet more difficult one than that of "undertaking the world's work." It is attending to their own business-not a master's nor any other-themselves finding out the means how, and applying them. When they do that on an extended scale the spectre of the "servile state" not merely in its dressed out bogey-form of state or guild socialism, but in the existence of an actually "serving" population such as at present exists in this nation will have vanished. With the renewed realisation that "each is responsible for himself and his" but not for all, the questions of "the decline of crafts," "the economy of production and distribution," and "the elimination of waste" will be found to have eliminated themselves.
D. M.