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The Conditions involved in the idea of a Legislative Redistribution of Wealth; and the Necessary Limitations of the Results.

◆1 All men ask of a Government either the increase or the maintenance of their incomes.

◆¹ Let me then repeat that we start with assuming cupidity as not only the general foundation, but also as the inevitable, the natural, and the right foundation, of the interest which ordinary men of all classes take in politics. We assume that where the ordinary man, of whatever class or party, votes for a member of Parliament, or supports any political measure, he is primarily actuated by one of two hopes, or both of them—the first being the hope of securing the continuance of his present income, the second being the hope of increasing it. Now, to secure what they have already got is the hope of all classes; but to increase it by legislation is the hope of the poorer only. It is of course perfectly true that the rich as well as the poor are anxious, as a rule, to increase their incomes when they can; but they expect to do so by their own ability and enterprise, and they look to legislation for merely such negative help as may be given by affording their abilities fair play.

◆1 The poor alone look for an increase of income by direct legislative means. They are right in doing this.

◆2 The cupidity which this book chiefly deals with is the cupidity of the poorer classes.

◆¹ But with the poorer classes the case is entirely different. They look to legislation for help of a direct and positive kind, which may tend to increase their incomes, without any new effort of their own: and not only do they do this themselves, but the richer classes sympathise with the desire that makes them do so. It is, for instance, by no means amongst the poorer classes only that the idea of seizing on the land, without compensating the owners, has found favour as a remedy for distress and poverty generally. Owners of every kind of property, except land, have been found to advocate it; whilst as to such vaguer and less startling proposals, as the “restoration of the labourer to the soil,” the limitation of the hours of labour, or the gradual acquirement by the State of many of our larger industries—the persistent way in which these are being kept before the public, is due quite as much to men of means as to poor men. ◆² It is then with the cupidity of the poorer classes that we are chiefly concerned to deal; and the great question before us may briefly be put thus: By what sort of social legislation may the incomes of the poorer classes—or, in other words, the incomes of the great mass of the community—be, in the first place, made more constant; and, in the second place, increased?

◆1 The first question to ask is: What is the maximum amount which it would be theoretically possible for them to obtain? For this is much exaggerated.

◆¹ But before proceeding to this inquiry, there is a preliminary question to be disposed of. What is the maximum increase which any conceivable legislation could conceivably secure for them out of the existing resources of the country? Not only unscrupulous agitators, but many conscientious reformers, speak of the results to be hoped for from a better distribution of riches, in terms so exaggerated as to have no relation to facts; and ideas of the wildest kind are very widely diffused as to the degree of opulence which it would be possible to secure for all. The consequence is that at the present moment popular cupidity has no rational standard. It will therefore be well, before we go further, to reduce these ideas—I do not say to the limits which facts will warrant—but to the limits which facts set on what is theoretically and conceivably possible.

◆1 An ascertainable limit is placed to this amount by circumstances.

◆2 And this amount would be obtainable only under certain conditions,

◆¹ Let me then call attention to the self-evident truth, that the largest income which could possibly be secured for everybody, could not be more than an equal share of the actual gross income enjoyed by the entire nation. Now it happens that we know with substantial accuracy what the gross amount of the income of the nation now is, and I will presently show what is the utmost which each individual could hope for from the most successful attempt at a redistribution of everything. ◆² But the mere pecuniary results of a revolution of this kind are not the only results of which we must take account. There are others which it will be well to glance at before proceeding to our figures.

◆1 One of which would entirely change the existing character of wealth.

◆¹ Though an equal division of wealth would, as we soon shall see, bring a large addition to the income of a considerable majority of the nation, the advantages which the recipients would gain from this addition, would be very different from the advantages which an individual would gain now, from the same annual sum coming to him from invested capital. In other words, if wealth were equally distributed, it would, from the very necessity of the case, lose half the qualities for which it is at present most coveted.

◆1 Were wealth equally distributed, nobody would have an independence.

◆¹ At present wealth suggests before all things what is commonly called “an independence”—something on which a man can live independently of his own exertions. But the moment a whole nation possessed it in equal quantities this power of giving an independence would go from it suddenly and for ever. If a workman who at present makes seventy pounds a year, would receive, by an equal division, an additional forty pounds, it is indeed true that no additional work could be entailed on him. The work which at present gets him seventy pounds, would in that case get him a hundred and ten. But he would never be able, if he preferred leisure to wealth, to forego the seventy pounds and live in idleness on the forty pounds; as he would be able to do now if the additional forty pounds were the interest of a legacy left him by his maiden aunt. Unless he continued to work, as he had worked hitherto, he would lose not only the first sum, but the second.

◆1 Every one would have to work as hard as he does now;

This is self-evident, when we consider what is the essence of such a situation, namely that the position of everybody is identical. For if everybody preferred to be idle, no wealth could be produced at all. However great nominally might be the value of our national property, it is perfectly clear that everybody could not live at leisure in it: and from the very nature of the case, in a nation where all are equal, what cannot be done by all, could not be done by anybody. ◆¹ If, therefore, we estimate the income possible for each individual as an equal fraction of the present income of the nation, it must be remembered that, to produce the total out of which these fractions are to come, everybody would have to work as hard as he does now. And more than that, it would be the concern of all to see that his share of work was not being shirked by anybody. This is at present the concern of the employer only: but under the conditions we are now considering, everybody would be directly interested in becoming his neighbour’s taskmaster.

◆1 And be even more under the dominion of the employer than he is now;

These last considerations lead us to another aspect of the subject, with which every intelligent voter should make himself thoroughly familiar, and which every honest speaker would force on the attention of his hearers. A large number of agitators, who are either ignorant or entirely reckless, but who nevertheless possess considerable gifts of oratory, ◆¹ are constantly endeavouring to associate, in the popular mind, the legitimate hope of obtaining an increased income, with an insane hostility to conditions which alone make such an increase possible. These men[1] are accustomed to declaim against the slavery of the working classes, quite as much as against their inadequate rate of payment. By slavery they mean what they call “enslavement to capital.” Capital means the implements and necessaries of production. These, they argue, are no longer owned by the workmen as they were in former times: and thus the workers are no longer their own masters. They must work under the direction of those who can give them the means of working; and this, they are urged to believe, reduces them to the condition of slaves.

◆1 Nor could any one hope to own the instruments of production used by him.

◆2 Self-contradictions of agitators, who say that capitalism means slavery, and that socialism would make the worker free.

◆3 The industrial discipline of the State would necessarily be much harder than that of the private employer.

Of course, in these representations there is a certain amount of truth: but it is difficult to conceive of anything more stupidly and more wantonly misleading, than the actual meaning which they are employed by the agitators to convey. For that meaning is nothing else than this—◆¹ that under improved conditions, when wealth is better distributed, the so-called slavery will disappear, the workers will be their own masters again, and will each own, as formerly, the implements and the materials of his work. But, as no one knows better than the extreme socialists, and as any intelligent man can see easily for himself, such a course of events is not only not possible, but is the exact reverse of that on which the progress of the workers must depend. ◆² The wildest agitator admits, and the most ignorant agitator knows, that the wealth of the modern world, on the growth of which they insist, and which, for the very reason that its growth has been so enormous, is declared by them to offer so rich a prize to the workers, mainly owes its existence to improved conditions of production. Such persons know also that of these conditions the chief have been the development of machinery, the increased subdivision of employments, and the perfected co-operation of the workers. But the development of machinery necessarily means this—the transformation of (say) each thousand old-fashioned implements into a single vast modern one of a hundred times their aggregate power: and it means that at this single implement a thousand men shall work. The increased subdivision of labour means that no man shall make an entire thing, but merely some small part of it; and perfected co-operation is another name for perfected discipline. It will be thus seen that the conditions which the agitator calls those of slavery are essential to the production of the wealth which is to constitute the workers’ heritage. ◆³ It will be seen that the workers’ hope of bettering their own position is so far from depending on a recovery of any former freedom, that it involves yet further elaboration of industrial discipline; and puts the old ownership of his own tools by the individual farther and further away into the region of dreams and impossibilities: and that no redistribution of wealth would even tend to bring it back again. The weaver of the last century was the owner of his own loom: and a great cotton-mill may now be owned by one capitalist. But a co-operative cotton-mill that was owned by all the workers, in the old sense of the word would not be owned by anybody. Could any one of these thousand or more men say that any part of the mill was his own personal property? Could he treat a single bolt, or a brick, or a wheel, or a door-nail, as he might have treated a loom left to him in his cottage by his father? Obviously not. No part of the mill would be his own private property, any more than a train starting from Euston Station is the property of any shareholder in the London and North-Western Railway. His ownership would mean merely that he was entitled to a share of the profits, and that he had one vote out of a thousand in electing the managers. But however the managers were elected, he would have to obey their orders; and their discipline would be probably stricter than that of any private owner. Much more would this be the case if the dream of the Socialist were fulfilled, and if instead of each factory or business being owned by its own workers, all the workers of the country collectively owned all the businesses—all the machinery, all the raw materials, and all the capital reserved for and spent in wages. For though the capital of the country would be owned by the workers nominally, their use of it would have to be regulated by a controlling body, namely the State. The managers and the taskmasters would all be State officials, and be armed with the powers of the State to enforce discipline. The individual under such an arrangement, might gain in point of income; but if he is foolish enough to adopt the view of the agitator, and regard himself as the slave to capital now, he would be no less a slave to it were all capitals amalgamated, and out of so many million shares he himself were to own one.

◆1 For it must always be remembered that the idea of an equal distribution of wealth necessarily presupposes the State as sole employer and capitalist.

◆¹ It is particularly desirable in this particular place to fix the reader’s attention on this aspect of the question, because it is inseparably associated with the point we are preparing to consider—namely, the pecuniary position in which the individual would be placed by an equal division, were such possible, of the entire national income. For we must bear in mind that not even in thought or theory is an equal division of the national income possible, unless all the products of the labour of every citizen are in the first place taken by the State as sole employer and capitalist, and are then distributed as wages in equal portions. Under no other conditions could equality be more than momentary. If each worker himself sold his own products to the consumer,—which he could not do, because no one produces the whole of anything,—the strong and industrious would soon be richer than the idle; and the man with no children richer than the man with ten. Inequality would have begun again as soon as one day’s work was over. Equality demands, as the Socialists are well aware, that all incomes shall be wages paid by the State; and it implies further, as we shall presently have occasion to observe—that equal wages shall be paid to all individuals, not because they are equally productive, but because they are all equally human. When therefore I speak, as I shall do presently, of what each individual would receive, if wealth were divided equally, I must be understood as meaning that he would receive so much from the State.

◆1 A redistribution of wealth, if it increased the incomes of some, would lessen the labour of nobody.

◆2 The next chapter contains an examination of the amount of income which would theoretically result from an equal distribution in this country.

◆¹ Let us remember then that a redistribution of wealth would have in itself no tendency to alter the existing conditions of the workers in any respect except that of wages only. It would not tend to relieve any man of a single hour of labour, to give him any more freedom in choosing the nature of his work or the method of it, or make him less liable to fines or other punishments for disobedience or unpunctuality. ◆² His only gain, if any, would be a simple gain in money. Let us now proceed to deal with the pounds, shillings, and pence; and see what is the utmost that this gain could come to.