The Communistic Societies of the United States | Page 5

master is vigilant and intelligent, is of

proverbial value, it must be remembered that in a Socialist farm or
manufactory, each laborer would be under the eye, not of one master,
but of the whole community. In the extreme case of obstinate
perseverance in not performing the due share of work, the community
would have the same resources which society now has for compelling
conformity to the necessary conditions of the association. Dismissal,
the only remedy at present, is no remedy when any other laborer who
may be engaged does no better than his predecessor: the power of
dismissal only enables an employer to obtain from his workmen the
customary amount of labor, but that customary labor may be of any
degree of inefficiency. Even the laborer who loses his employment by
idleness or negligence has nothing worse to suffer, in the most
unfavorable case, than the discipline of a workhouse, and if the desire
to avoid this be a sufficient motive in the one system, it would be
sufficient in the other. I am not undervaluing the strength of the
incitement given to labor when the whole or a large share of the benefit
of extra exertion belongs to the laborer. But under the present system of
industry this incitement, in the great majority of cases, does not exist. If
communistic labor might be less vigorous than that of a peasant
proprietor, or a workman laboring on his own account, it would
probably be more energetic than that of a laborer for hire, who has no
personal interest in the matter at all. The neglect by the uneducated
classes of laborers for hire of the duties which they engage to perform
is in the present state of society most flagrant. Now it is an admitted
condition of the communist scheme that all shall be educated; and this
being supposed, the duties of the members of the association would
doubtless be as diligently performed as those of the generality of
salaried officers in the middle or higher classes; who are not supposed
to be necessarily unfaithful to their trust, because so long as they are
not dismissed their pay is the same in however lax a manner their duty
is fulfilled. Undoubtedly, as a general rule, remuneration by fixed
salaries does not in any class of functionaries produce the maximum of
zeal; and this is as much as can be reasonably alleged against
communistic labor.
"That even this inferiority would necessarily exist is by no means so
certain as is assumed by those who are little used to carry their minds
beyond the state of things with which they are familiar....

"Another of the objections to Communism is similar to that so often
urged against poor-laws: that if every member of the community were
assured of subsistence for himself and any number of children, on the
sole condition of willingness to work, prudential restraint on the
multiplication of mankind would be at an end, and population would
start forward at a rate which would reduce the community through
successive stages of increasing discomfort to actual starvation. There
would certainly be much ground for this apprehension if Communism
provided no motives to restraint, equivalent to those which it would
take away. But Communism is precisely the state of things in which
opinion might be expected to declare itself with greatest intensity
against this kind of selfish intemperance. Any augmentation of
numbers which diminished the comfort or increased the toil of the mass
would then cause (which now it does not) immediate and unmistakable
inconvenience to every individual in the association--inconvenience
which could not then be imputed to the avarice of employers or the
unjust privileges of the rich. In such altered circumstances opinion
could not fail to reprobate, and if reprobation did not suffice, to repress
by penalties of some description, this or any other culpable
self-indulgence at the expense of the community. The communistic
scheme, instead of being peculiarly open to the objection drawn from
danger of over-population, has the recommendation of tending in an
especial degree to the prevention of that evil."
It will be seen in the following pages that means have been found to
meet these and other difficulties; in one society even the prudential
restraint upon marriage has been adopted.
Finally, I wished to see what the successful Communists had made of
their lives; what was the effect of communal living upon the character
of the individual man and woman; whether the life had broadened or
narrowed them; and whether assured fortune and pecuniary
independence had brought to them a desire for beauty of surroundings
and broader intelligence: whether, in brief, the Communist had any
where become something more than a comfortable and independent
day-laborer, and aspired to something higher than a mere
bread-and-butter existence.
To make my