Читать книгу The Definite National Purpose - William Henry Moore - Страница 5

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When the world was yet young a group of savages lived before the mouth of a deep cave. They had the curious idea that the cave was occupied by monsters that exercised an influence for good or evil over their lives. They may have gorged themselves one day but blamed the evil spirits if, on the morrow, they starved. Nor were they all of one mind as to which were the good spirits and which the bad; and sometimes they broke each other’s heads over their differences.

In the midst of a long spell of hard times, certain of the bolder savages expressed the desire to enter the cave and see for themselves what the spirits were really like. The cave was dark, they did not know how to create fire, and the project would have come to naught, had not someone suggested consulting a man who lived alone at the foot of a nearby mountain. “No trouble at all” he assured them, when the project had been explained: “Fetch me several bamboo sticks, some dry grass and a little fish oil.” When they were furnished, with the aid of flint and stone, he produced several flaming torches. “With these,” said he, “you may go into the cave, search its crevices and have a good square look at the spirits. Pull them out by the ears, if you want to.”

I have forgotten the rest of the fable, but suspect the savages found only such birds and reptiles as live in dark caves. Looking back one can see that the savages had bad times because the fish swam out to sea, or the animals wandered into the woods. The savages had not progressed far in the arts; they had not learned to work with Nature; but modern man has discovered such marvellous ways of creating wealth that he sometimes wonders if there is anything left to discover.

We are not all alike. Providence, or whoever arranges the distribution of natural resources, has not been equally generous. In Thibet, a sparse population struggles for existence on vast barren lands; in Siam a dense population has a bare existence from a small rich country. Canadians are neither Thibetans nor Siamese, and consider themselves vastly more intelligent. Self-appreciation used to be much above par on both sides of the Great Lakes. Once Canadians on the 1st of July, and Americans on the 4th, talked grandly of the happy coincidence of rich natural resources in the possession of people with indomitable courage. Now we shake our fists at monsters in the cave.

We have made astounding headway in the arts. We carry brown earth from British Guiana into the forests of Northern Quebec and smelt it with the aid of water power, and actually spin it into all sorts of useful things. They used to say you couldn’t make a silk purse out of a sow’s ear, but the textile man has done it; at least he has processed pigs’ ears into purses that look and feel like silk and are called artificial silk.

The social sciences have not kept pace with the practical sciences. Men have lagged behind their own creations. Collectively we have not learned how to care for ourselves, and have dropped into all sorts of trouble because we have not recognized the fact. I feel quite sure the textile men are in agreement as to the principles of chemistry by which pigs’ ears are converted into silk purses. But when it comes to human action we are at sixes and sevens. We have not agreed upon general principles of human conduct. With a common desire for human happiness we are ready to break each others heads over the best means of securing it.

For some years I have been deeply concerned over this matter and eight years ago wrote a little book in which I said: “It may be our civilization is not worth preserving, but let us at least know it is going and why it is going.” My comment was based on Dr. Albert Schweitzer’s contention that what we call civilization had come about by individual men thinking out ideals which were fitted into the realities of life. Once that contention is accepted you can see for yourself that our Great Misadventure was inevitable. Within recent years we have had much talk upon the subject of social life but little solid reflection. The course of Society remains uncharted.

I cannot recall that anyone was much disturbed over the prediction that our civilization was slipping. Some may have welcomed the thought, because our civilization is far from being wholly good; most people were probably too busy to bother; and besides, they had heard before of man being at the “cross-roads,” entering “new eras” and all that sort of thing. In the four years that followed, prosperity flowered in the America north of the Rio Grande as never before. North Americans, at least, were satisfied to let things take their course.

Then came the depression.

Significantly enough Schweitzer wrote “The Decay of Civilization” from a lonely African mission field. With clear perspective he saw that your dependence and mine upon the tenets of social and political parties had become so serious that we had almost ceased to claim an existence of our own. He saw us as rubber balls that had lost elasticity, preserving indefinitely every impression that was made upon us. We were drawing from organized groups the opinions on which we lived, asserting them as our own, and were rather proud of the achievement. While, at sixes and sevens in our contentions as to how best the social good is to be attained, our differences are basically two: whether we should proceed mainly by individual, or by collective action.

Now I propose that you and I should have a good square look at these two contentions, not for the purpose of shaking fists at each other’s monsters, but with the express object of finding out what is best to be done. The depression has served one good purpose, it has given us an x-ray of society with enlarged plates of its germs and fractures. To get the best results we should think away from the tenets of our respective political groups. Just now Liberalism is blaming Conservativism and Socialism is blaming them both. Where lies the truth? Do you recall that when a great Mohammedan Emperor asked a Kazi whether truth was to be found in the East, West, North or South, the Kazi sent for a lighted candle and when it was brought the light did not face East, West, North or South.

As you may have suspected I have held very strong views as to the direction we should follow as we search for the social good. You are quite right in thinking I shall stress my views upon you but my mission is essentially not one of party politics. The politicians seek power for the social good; we shall seek truth for the social good. There is a wider difference between our objects than at first sight appears. Truth is not always palatable. Sometimes whole masses of people are ready to sacrifice what they know to be right for what they believe to be expedient. Then the politicians must follow the masses. I am not insinuating that you and I are going to be more righteous than the common run, but I do contend that we should, at least, know the truth and then assume whatever responsibility it imposes.

We have an advantage when we think things out at home. When men get into stuffy halls they do not think clearly. Better ventilation would do something to improve public health, but even in the open spaces man subjected to the influence of the crowd becomes credulous.

I know a hard-headed farmer who, only a few years ago, attended all the political meetings within 10 miles of his home and was carried away with the promise of a miracle on butter to be performed by protection. When the protection had been applied and there was no miracle he became disillusioned; and vowed never again would he be caught in a mesh of political promise, no matter its eloquence, no matter its assurance. And yet that man is to-day accepting the tenets of another set of politicians, even more extravagant in promise, and never once has he seriously asked himself: have those theories ever worked?

Mind you, he is not credulous in the working of his farm. An implement salesman could not persuade him to smash his old binder and take on an untried harvesting contrivance, not even if he waved his arms and shouted from the top of a stump. If the farmer did not laugh at him, he would stubbornly say: show me where your machine has worked well under field conditions such as mine. We should not be less cautious in public matters.

When in crowds, we are extraordinarily credulous. It was not new, that doctrine of protection, which was preached so vehemently three years ago. By now we ought to know exactly what the customs tariff can do to a country; yet if you will take the trouble to listen to the budget debate at the next session of Parliament, you will probably hear precisely what your father heard forty years ago. That is the way we conduct our collective affairs.

The doctrines that are being preached from Socialists’ hustings are not new. Their identical planks have been tried out in Australia by a people akin to us in national and social aspirations; we may for ourselves have the promise upon which they were accepted and the consequences. Most European countries, at one time or another have been governed by Socialist parties; and the results are a matter of public record. We have in our own social order a mixture of capitalism and socialism, with a touch of communism, and may have many a valuable lesson by simply opening our eyes.

I am not preaching the doctrine of defeatism. After a while, with the others, I shall undertake to show you where we have failed, and how we can retrieve ourselves, and go on to better and still better conditions. But I shall not say anything which you may not for yourself immediately check. Personally I can see several reasons why there should be distress in England, for after all, the Englishman is a bit redundant in that tight little island; but it is different here. Personally, I believe that Canadian poverty is largely caused by our collective stupidities. That is my monster. I believe it has taken the conduct of life out of our hands.

Of course you and I may have been riding around in La Salle cars when a Chevrolet would have better fitted our incomes. Perhaps we spent money for a hundred and one things that we could have done without, and should have laid by for a rainy day. “It was a bit of luck we didn’t” you say. Well, I have not forgotten the man who would not let his wife have a new dress, or go to the movies, because he was saving to buy shares of Amalgamated Cats and Dogs, common, that dropped from 100 to 3 almost over-night. But that is hardly my point.

I started out to say that our individual extravagances do not account for our present plight. If you are an unplaced man, you are conscious that you gave capable service and are still ready to give it. Then, with all those raw materials about, why should you not have a buying power? For instance, you are a smart weaver, why then should our clothes be thread-bare while I am getting 5 to 10 cents a pound for wool, especially as your old loom is standing idle? Naturally you put the blame on one of the monsters in the cave, and I suspect it is capitalism. Let us see what it is. You may say you have no desire for closer acquaintance; capitalism paid you scanty wages when it was making huge profits and threw you on the street the moment profits began to fall away; it pilfered from your coal bin; it dodges its taxes, and in short it is a bad egg. Confident that capitalism is incorrigible you are impatient with suggestion of its reform. There is much truth in what you say, but that is all the more reason for a second look under the candle’s light.

Capital itself is good; in fact, quite essential, if we are to have the comforts of modern civilization, especially if we are to have more of them. Capital is simply goods and services saved for further production. The most hardened State Socialist deriding capitalism covets capital for the State, although, it seems to me, frequently quite confused as to its nature. Just now Mr. Stalin is endeavouring to induce people to lend capital to the Socialist Soviet Union, so capital is obviously not to be produced by the printing press. The Socialist Soviet has a printing press of its own and recently has been running it overtime.

The issue then is plainly; who is to own the goods and services that are saved for further production? The State Socialist holds out for State ownership narrowing the list or widening it, according to his degree of socialism, and sometimes, according to his desire to avoid giving offence to those from whom it is hoped to draw support. Even Socialists are politicians.

The word “capitalism” is clearly a misnomer. Sometimes we use in its place the word “individualism” but that word does not precisely convey the idea. Away from the farm, production is carried on by groups of individuals organised in joint-stock companies, and sometimes co-operatively. In fact the words and phrases surrounding this matter are most misleading, especially when one relies so largely upon headlines for information.

We are approaching a welter of the “isms” and before going further ought to sort them out. With the men who make the headlines we can do it but roughly.

Socialism bent upon the destruction of capitalism is itself divided sharply into State socialism and corporatism, each seeking to destroy the other. State socialism may be illustrated by what they have in Russia; corporatism (or fascism) by what they have in Italy and apparently are going to have in Germany.

Communism is at once a political party and a theory as to division of the proceeds of production. As a political party, its caucus runs the Socialist Soviets; it dropped some of its platform when it tried to apply its theory as to the equality of the rewards of labour. The Communists used to contend that when a big man and a little man together were called upon to lift a load, both should have the same rewards. That was the theory. When the two were actually set to work on that theory it was found that the big man suddenly became weak. Of course he was lashed. They are stern people, those Socialists.

But just at present we must not be drawn aside by details. Exact classification is impossible by reason of overlapping. My old friend Peter Kropotkin used to hold out for both communism and anarchy.

In a general way economic liberalism is the antithesis of socialism and to it we shall almost immediately turn.

Meantime may I just say that the spring of my thought is that in this New World, where we have not yet been welded into bodies, ready to die and have people die for social creeds, instead of killing each other or even shaking fists, we should calmly review the “isms” and take from each what in its proper place will contribute most to the social good. Again I shall not blame you for smiling incredulously. You feel that I am going to oppose socialism and support economic liberalism. Should I fail to follow the light of the candle, or reject truth when it appears, I shall have deserved your condemnation. I shall try to be fair, but I want you to recall that I could not publish what I have to say in Russia and possibly not in Italy or Germany.