Chapter 2

Democracy is, in fact, a disintegrating force. It is strong in destruction, and tends to fall to pieces when the work of demolition (which may of course be a necessary task) is over. Democracy dissolves communities into individuals and collects them again into mobs. It pulls up by the roots the social order which civilisation has gradually evolved, and leaves men _déracinés_, as Bourget says in one of his best novels, homeless and friendless, with no place ready for them to fill. It is the opposite extreme to the caste system of India, which, with all its faults, does not seem to breed the European type of _enragé_, the enemy of society as such.

6. The corruption of democracies proceeds directly from the fact that one class imposes the taxes and another class pays them. The constitutional principle, 'No taxation without representation,' is utterly set at nought under a system which leaves certain classes without any effective representation at all. At the present time it is said that one-tenth of the population pays five-sixths of the taxes. The class which imposes the taxes has refused to touch the burden of the war with one of its fingers; and every month new doles at the public expense are distributed under the camouflage of 'social reform.' At every election the worldly goods of the minority are put up to auction. This is far more immoral than the old-fashioned election bribery, which was a comparatively honest deal between two persons; and in its effects it is far more ruinous. Democracy is likely to perish, like the monarchy of Louis XVI, through national bankruptcy.

Besides these defects, the democracy has ethical standards of its own, which differ widely from those of the educated classes. Among the poor, 'generosity ranks far before justice, sympathy before truth, love before chastity, a pliant and obliging disposition before a rigidly honest one. In brief, the less admixture of intellect required for the practice of any virtue, the higher it stands in popular estimation.[3] In this country, at any rate, democracy means a victory of sentiment over reason. Some may prefer the softer type of character, and may hope that it will make civilisation more humane and compassionate than it has been in the past. Unfortunately, experience shows that none is so cruel as the disillusioned sentimentalist. He thinks that he can break or ignore nature's laws with impunity; and then, when he finds that nature has no sentiment, he rages like a mad dog, and combines with his theoretical objection to capital punishment a lust to murder all who disagree with him. This is the genesis of Jacobinism and Bolshevism.

But whether we think that the bad in democracy predominates over the good, or the good over the bad, a question which I shall not attempt to decide, the popular balderdash about it corresponds to no real conviction. The upper class has never believed in it; the middle class has the strongest reasons to hate and fear it. But how about the lower class, in whose interests the whole machine is supposed to have been set going? The working man has no respect for either democracy or liberty. His whole interest is in transferring the wealth of the minority to his own pocket. There was a time when he thought that universal suffrage would get for him what he desires; but he has lost all faith in constitutional methods. To levy blackmail on the community, under threats of civil war, seems to him a more expeditious way of gaining his object. Monopolies are to be established by pitiless coercion of those who wish to keep their freedom. The trade unions are large capitalists; they are well able to start factories for themselves and work them for their own exclusive profit. But they find it more profitable to hold the nation to ransom by blockading the supply of the necessaries of life. The new labourer despises productivity for the same reason that the old robber barons did: it is less trouble to take money than to make it. The most outspoken popular leaders no longer conceal their contempt for and rejection of democracy. The socialists perceive the irreconcilable contradiction between the two ideas,[4] and they are right. Democracy postulates community of interest or loyal patriotism. When these are absent it cannot long exist. Syndicalism, which seems to be growing, is the antipodes of socialism, but, like socialism, it can make no terms with democracy. 'If syndicalism triumphs,' says its chief prophet Sorel, 'the parliamentary régime, so dear to the intellectuals, will be at an end.' 'The syndicalist has a contempt for the vulgar idea of democracy; the vast unconscious mass is not to be taken into account when the minority wishes to act so as to benefit it.'[5] 'The effect of political majorities,' says Mr. Levine, 'is to hinder advance,' Accordingly, political methods are rejected with contempt. The anarchists go one step further. Bakunin proclaims that 'we reject all legislation, all authority, and all influence, even when it has proceeded from universal suffrage.' These powerful movements, opposed as they are to each other, agree in spurning the very idea of democracy, which Lord Morley defines as government by public opinion, and which may be defined with more precision as direct government by the votes of the majority among the adult members of a nation. Even a political philosopher like Mr. Lowes Dickinson says, 'For my part, I am no democrat.'

Who then are the friends of this _curieux fétiche_, as Quinet called democracy? It appears to have none, though it has been the subject of fatuous laudation ever since the time of Rousseau. The Americans burn incense before it, but they are themselves ruled by the Boss and the Trust.

The attempt to justify the labour movement as a legitimate development of the old democratic Liberalism is futile. Freedom to form combinations is no doubt a logical application of _laisser faire_; and the anarchic possibilities latent in _laisser faire_ have been made plain in the anti-democratic movements of labour. But Liberalism rested on a too favourable estimate of human nature and on a belief in the law of progress. As there is no law of progress, and as civilised society is being destroyed by the evil passions of men, Liberalism is, for the time, quite discredited. It would also be true to say that there is a fundamental contradiction between the two dogmas of Liberalism. These were, that unlimited competition is stimulating to the competitors and good for the country, and that every individual is an end, not a means. Both are anarchical; but the first logically issues in individualistic anarchy, the last in communistic anarchy. The economic and the ethical theory of Liberalism cannot be harmonised. The result--cruel competition tempered by an artificial process of counter-selection in favour of the unfittest--was by no means satisfactory. But it was better than what we are now threatened with.

That the labour movement is economically rotten it is easy to prove. In the words of Professor Hearnshaw, 'the government has ceased to govern in the world of labour, and has been compelled, instead of governing, to bribe, to cajole, to beg, to grovel. It has purchased brief truces at the cost of increasing levies of Danegeld drawn from the diminishing resources of the patient community. It has embarked on a course of payment of blackmail which must end either in national bankruptcy or in the social revolution which the anarchists seek.' The powerful trade-unions are now plundering both the owners of their 'plant,' and the general public. It is easy to show that their members already get much more than their share of the national wealth. Professor Bowley[6] has estimated that an equal division of the national income would give about £160 a year to each family, free of taxes. But even this estimate, discouraging as it is, seems not to allow sufficiently for the fact that under the present system much of the income of the richer classes is counted twice or three times over. Abolish large incomes, and jewels, pictures, wines, furs, special and rare skill like that of the operating surgeon and fashionable portrait painter, lose all or most of their money value. All the large professional incomes, except those of the low comedian and his like, are made out of the rich, and are counted at least twice for income-tax. It is certain that a large part of the national income could not be 'redistributed,' and that in the attempt to do so credit would be destroyed and wealth would melt like a snow man. The miners, therefore, are not seeking justice; they are blackmailing rich and poor alike by their monopoly of one of the necessaries of life. And now they strike against paying income-tax!

It is not necessary or just to bring railing accusations against any class as a body. Power is always abused, and in this case there is much honest ignorance, stimulated by agitators who are seldom honest. In a recent number of the _Edinburgh Review_ Sir Lynden Macassey speaks of the widespread, almost universal, fallacies to which the hand-worker has fallen a victim. They believe that all their aspirations can be satisfied out of present-day profits and production. They believe that in restricting output they are performing a moral duty to their class. They do not believe that the prosperity of the country depends upon its production, and are opposed to all labour-saving devices. They refuse co-operation because they desire the continuance of the class-war. Such perversity would seem hardly credible if it were not attested by overwhelming evidence. The Government remedy is first to create unemployment and then to endow it--the shortest and maddest road to ruin since the downfall of the Roman Empire.

We may have a faint hope that some of these fallacies will be abandoned by the workmen when their destructive results can no longer be concealed. But sentimentalism seems to be incurable. It erects irrationality into an act of religious faith, gives free rein to the emotion of pity, and thinks that it is imitating the Good Samaritan by robbing the Priest and Levite for the benefit of the man by the road-side. The sentimentalist shows a bitter hatred against those who wish to cure an evil by removing its causes. A good example is the language of writers like Mr. Chesterton about eugenics and population. If social maladies were treated scientifically, the trade of the emotional rhetorician would be gone.

We have seen that democracy--the rule of majorities--has been discredited and abandoned in action, though officially we all bow down before it. Another popular delusion is that the chief change in the last fifty years has been a conversion of the world from individualism to socialism. In the language of the Christian socialists, who wish to combine the militant spirit and organisation of medieval Catholicism with a bid for the popular vote, we have 'rediscovered the Corporate Idea.' But if we take socialism, not in the narrower sense of collectivism, which would be an economic experiment, but in the wider sense of a keen consciousness of the solidarity of the community as an organic whole, there is very little truth in the commonly held notion that we have become more socialistic. It is easy to see how the idea has arisen. It became necessary to find some theoretical justification for raising taxes, no longer for national needs, but for the benefit of the class which imposed them; and this justification was found in the theory that all wealth belongs to 'the State,' and may be justly divided up as 'the State'--that is to say, the majority of the voters--may determine. Whenever the question arises of voting new doles to the dominant section of the people at the expense of the minority, our new political philosophers profess themselves fervent socialists. But true socialism, which is almost synonymous with patriotism, is as conspicuously absent in those who call themselves socialists as it is strong in those who repudiate the title. This paradox can be easily proved. The most socialistic enterprise in which a nation ever engages is a great war. A nation at war is conscious of its corporate unity and its common interests, as it is at no other time. The nation then calls upon every citizen to surrender all his personal rights and to offer his life and limbs in the service of the community. And what has been the record of the 'socialists' in the struggle for national existence in which we have been engaged? In the years preceding the war they ridiculed the idea that the country was in danger of being attacked, and used all their power to prevent us from preparing against attack. They steadily opposed the teaching of patriotism in the schools. When the war began, they prevented the Government from introducing compulsory service until our French Allies, who were left to bear the brunt, were on the point of collapse; they, in very many cases, refused to serve themselves, thereby avowing that, as far as they were concerned, they were willing to see their country conquered by a horde of cruel barbarians; and they nearly handed over our armies to destruction by fomenting strikes at the most critical periods of the war. This attitude cannot be accounted for by any conscientious objection to violence, which is in fact their favourite weapon, except against the enemies of their country. Their socialism is, in truth, individualism run mad; it is the very antithesis to the consciousness of organic unity in a nation, which is the spiritual basis of socialism. In this sense, the nation as a whole has shown a fine socialistic temper; but the disgraceful exception has been the socialist party. The intense and perverted individualism of the so-called socialist is shown in another way. Whatever liberties a State may permit to its citizens, it is certain that no nation can be in a healthy condition unless the government keeps in its own hands the keys of birth and of death. The State has the right of the farmer to decide how many cows should be allowed to graze upon ten acres of grass; the right of the forester to decide how many square feet are required for each tree in a wood. It has also the right and the duty of the gardener to pull up noxious weeds in his flower-beds. But the socialist vehemently repudiates both these rights. Being an ultra-individualist, he is in favour of _laisser faire_, where _laisser faire_ is most indefensible and most disastrous.

It would be easy to maintain that the organic idea was more potent, both under medieval feudalism and under nineteenth-century industrialism, than it is now. In former days, economic and social equality were not even aimed at, because it was thought inevitable that in a social organism there must be subordination and a hierarchy of functions. Essentially, and in the sight of God, all are equal, or, rather, the essential differences between man and man are absolutely independent of social status. In a few years Lazarus may be in heaven and Dives in hell. Beside this equality of moral opportunity and tremendous inequality in self-chosen destiny, the status of master and servant seemed of small importance; it was a temporary and trivial accident. Accordingly, in feudal times, as to-day in really Catholic communities, feelings of injustice and social bitterness were seldom aroused and class differences take on a more genial colour. In spite of the lawlessness and brutality of the Middle Ages it is probable that men were happier then than they are now.

The French Revolution, which was a disintegrating solvent, pulverised society, and was impotent to reconstruct it. Yet under the industrial régime which followed it in this country, the nation was conscious of its unity. The system was the best that could have been devised for increasing the population and aggregate wealth of the country; and even those who suffered most under it were not without pride in its results. The ill-paid workman of the last century would have thought it a poor thing to do a deliberately bad day's work.

I am not praising either the age of feudalism or the 'hungry forties' of the nineteenth century. In the latter case especially the sacrifice exacted from the poor was too great for the rather vulgar success of which it was the condition. But to call that age the period of individualism, and our own generation the period of socialism, is in my opinion a profound mistake. In Germany, too, the real socialists are not the 'Spartacist' scoundrels who have betrayed and ruined their country, but the bureaucracy with their _Deutschland über Alles_. If I were a little more of a socialist, I could almost admire them, in spite of all their crimes.

The landed gentry (and in honesty I must add the endowed clergy) are a survival of feudalism, as the capitalist is a survival of industrialism. Both have to a large extent survived their functions. The mailclad baron, round whose fortified castle the peasants and others gathered for protection, has become the country gentleman, against whom the indictment is not so much that his only pursuit is pleasure, as that his only pleasure is pursuit. 'The rich man in his castle, the poor man at his gate' were intelligible while the rich man protected the poor man from being plundered and killed by marauders; but in our times nobody wants a castle or to live under the shadow of a castle. The clerical profession was a necessity when most people could neither read nor write. But to-day our best prophets and preachers are laymen. As at ancient Athens, in the time of Aristophanes, 'the young learn from the schoolmaster, the mature from the poets.' Similarly, the captain of industry cannot hold the same autocratic position as formerly, in view of the growing intelligence and capacity of the workmen; and the capitalist who is not a captain of industry is a debtor to the community to an extent which he does not always realise. This class is becoming painfully conscious of its vulnerability.

There are, therefore, irrational survivals in our social order; and though it may be proved that they are not a severe burden on the community, it is natural that popular bitterness and discontent should fasten upon them and exaggerate their evil results. It cannot be disputed that this bitterness and discontent were becoming very acute in the years before the war. An increasing number of persons saw no meaning and no value in our civilisation. This feeling was common in all classes, including the so-called leisured class; and was so strong that many welcomed with joy the clear call to a plain duty, though it was the duty of facing all the horrors of war. What is the cause of this discontent? There are few more important questions for us to answer.

Those who find the cause in the existence of the survivals which we have mentioned are certainly mistaken. It is no new thing that there should be a small class more or less parasitic on the community. The whole number of persons who pay income-tax on £5000 a year and upwards is only 13,000 out of 46 millions, and their wealth, if it could be divided up, would make no appreciable difference to the working man. The wage-earners are better off than they have ever been before in our history, and the danger of revolution comes not from the poor, but from the privileged artisans who already have incomes above the family average. We must look elsewhere for an explanation of social unrest. If we consider what are the chief centres of discontent throughout the civilised world, we shall find that they are the great aggregations of population in wealthy industrial countries. Social unrest is a disease of town-life. Wherever the conditions which create the great modern city exist, we find revolutionary agitation. It has spread to Barcelona, to Buenos Ayres, and to Osaka, in the wake of the factory. The inhabitants of the large town do not envy the countryman and would not change with him. But, unknown to themselves, they are leading an unnatural life, cut off from the kindly and wholesome influences of nature, surrounded by vulgarity and ugliness, with no traditions, no loyalties, no culture, and no religion. We seldom reflect on the strangeness of the fact that the modern working-man has few or no superstitions. At other times the masses have evolved for themselves some picturesque nature-religion, some pious ancestor-worship, some cult of saints or heroes, some stories of fairies, ghosts, or demons, and a mass of quaint superstitions, genial or frightening. The modern town-dweller has no God and no Devil; he lives without awe, without admiration, without fear. Whatever we may think about these beliefs, it is not natural for men and women to be without them. The life of the town artisan who works in a factory is a life to which the human organism has not adapted itself; it is an unwholesome and unnatural condition. Hence, probably, comes the _malaise_ which makes him think that any radical change must be for the better.

Whatever the cause of the disease may be (and I do not pretend that the conditions of urban life are an adequate explanation) the malady is there, and will probably prove fatal to our civilisation. I have given my views on this subject in the essay called _The Future of the English Race._ And yet there is a remedy within the reach of all if we would only try it.

The essence of the Christian revelation is the proclamation of a standard of absolute values, which contradicts at every point the estimates of good and evil current in 'the world.' It is not necessary, in such an essay as this, to write out the Beatitudes, or the very numerous passages in the Gospels and Epistles in which the same lessons are enforced. It is not necessary to remind the reader that in Christianity all the paraphernalia of life are valued very lightly; that all the good and all the evil which exalt or defile a man have their seat within him, in his own character; that we are sent into the world to suffer and to conquer suffering; that it is more blessed to give than to receive; that love is the great revealer of the mysteries of life; that we have here no continuing city, and must therefore set our affections and lay up our treasures in heaven; that the things that are seen are temporal, and the things that are not seen are eternal. This is the Christian religion. It is a form of idealism; and idealism means a belief in absolute or spiritual values.

When applied to human life, it introduces, as it were, a new currency, which demonetises the old; or gives us a new scale of prices, in which the cheapest things are the dearest, and the dearest the cheapest. The world's standards are quantitative; those of Christianity are qualitative. And being qualitative, spiritual goods are unlimited in amount; they are increased by being shared; and we rob nobody by taking them.