Political Ideals | Page 8

liberating creative impulses and diminishing
possessive impulses.
Of these four purposes the last is the most important. Security is chiefly important as a
means to it. State socialism, though it might give material security and more justice than
we have at present, would probably fail to liberate creative impulses or produce a
progressive society.
Our present system fails in all four purposes. It is chiefly defended on the ground that it
achieves the first of the four purposes, namely, the greatest possible production of
material goods, but it only does this in a very short-sighted way, by methods which are
wasteful in the long run both of human material and of natural resources.
Capitalistic enterprise involves a ruthless belief in the importance of increasing material
production to the utmost possible extent now and in the immediate future. In obedience to
this belief, new portions of the earth's surface are continually brought under the sway of
industrialism. Vast tracts of Africa become recruiting grounds for the labor required in
the gold and diamond mines of the Rand, Rhodesia, and Kimberley; for this purpose, the
population is demoralized, taxed, driven into revolt, and exposed to the contamination of
European vice and disease. Healthy and vigorous races from Southern Europe are
tempted to America, where sweating and slum life reduce their vitality if they do not
actually cause their death. What damage is done to our own urban populations by the
conditions under which they live, we all know. And what is true of the human riches of
the world is no less true of the physical resources. The mines, forests, and wheat-fields of
the world are all being exploited at a rate which must practically exhaust them at no
distant date. On the side of material production, the world is living too fast; in a kind of
delirium, almost all the energy of the world has rushed into the immediate production of
something, no matter what, and no matter at what cost. And yet our present system is
defended on the ground that it safeguards progress!
It cannot be said that our present economic system is any more successful in regard to the

other three objects which ought to be aimed at. Among the many obvious evils of
capitalism and the wage system, none are more glaring than that they encourage
predatory instincts, that they allow economic injustice, and that they give great scope to
the tyranny of the employer.
As to predatory instincts, we may say, broadly speaking, that in a state of nature there
would be two ways of acquiring riches--one by production, the other by robbery. Under
our existing system, although what is recognized as robbery is forbidden, there are
nevertheless many ways of becoming rich without contributing anything to the wealth of
the community. Ownership of land or capital, whether acquired or inherited, gives a legal
right to a permanent income. Although most people have to produce in order to live, a
privileged minority are able to live in luxury without producing anything at all. As these
are the men who are not only the most fortunate but also the most respected, there is a
general desire to enter their ranks, and a widespread unwillingness to face the fact that
there is no justification whatever for incomes derived in this way. And apart from the
passive enjoyment of rent or interest, the methods of acquiring wealth are very largely
predatory. It is not, as a rule, by means of useful inventions, or of any other action which
increases the general wealth of the community, that men amass fortunes; it is much more
often by skill in exploiting or circumventing others. Nor is it only among the rich that our
present rŽgime promotes a narrowly acquisitive spirit. The constant risk of destitution
compels most men to fill a great part of their time and thought with the economic struggle.
There is a theory that this increases the total output of wealth by the community. But for
reasons to which I shall return later, I believe this theory to be wholly mistaken.
Economic injustice is perhaps the most obvious evil of our present system. It would be
utterly absurd to maintain that the men who inherit great wealth deserve better of the
community than those who have to work for their living. I am not prepared to maintain
that economic justice requires an exactly equal income for everybody. Some kinds of
work require a larger income for efficiency than others do; but there is economic injustice
as soon as a man has more than his share, unless it is because his efficiency in his work
requires it, or as a reward for some definite service. But this point is so obvious that it
needs no elaboration.
The modern growth of monopolies