Part 4
People's thoughts in this respect will undergo a complete change, when once they come really to feel the full weight of this fact: That, in a human community where spiritual life plays a merely ideologic role, common social life lacks one of the forces that can make and keep it a living organism. What ails the body social to-day, is impotence of the spiritual life. And the disease is aggravated by the reluctance to acknowledge its existence. Once the fact is acknowledged, there will then be a basis on which to develope the kind of thinking needed for the social movement.
At present, the worker thinks that he has struck a main force in his soul, when he talks about his "class-consciousness." But the truth is, that ever since he was caught up into the capitalist economic machine he has been searching for a spiritual life that could sustain his soul and give him a "human-consciousness,"--a consciousness of his worth as man,--which there is no possibility of developing with a spiritual life that is felt as ideology. This "human-consciousness"--was what he was seeking. He could not find it; and so he replaced it with "class-consciousness" born of the economic life. His eyes are rivetted upon the economic life alone, as though some overpowering suggestive influence held them there. And he no longer believes that elsewhere, in the spirit or in the soul, there can be anywhere a latent force capable of supplying the impulse for what is needed in the social movement. All he believes is, that the evolution of an economic life, devoid of spirit and of soul, can bring about the particular state of things, which he himself feels to be the one worthy of man. Thus he is driven to seek his welfare in a transformation of economic life alone. He has been forced to the conviction, that with the mere transformation of economic life all those ills would disappear, that have been brought on through private enterprise, through the egoism of the individual employer, and through the individual employer's powerlessness to do justice to the claims of human self-respect in the employee. And so the modern worker was led on to believe, that the only welfare for the body social lay in converting all private ownership of means of production into a communal concern, or into actual communal property. This conviction is due to people's eyes having been removed, as it were, from everything belonging to soul and spirit, and fixed exclusively on the purely economic process.
Hence all the paradox in the working-class movement. The modern worker believes, that industrial economy, the economic life itself, will of necessity evolve all that will ultimately give him his rights as man. These rights of man in full are what he is fighting for. And yet, in the heart of the fight something different makes its appearance,--something which never could be an outcome of the economic life alone. It is a significant thing, which speaks most forcibly, that here, right at the centre of the many forms which the social question assumes under the needs of human life to-day, there is something that seems, in men's belief, to proceed out of economic life, which, however, never could proceed from economic life alone,--something, that lies rather in the direct line of evolution; leading up through the old slave system, through the serfdom of the feudal age, to the modern proletariat of labour. The circulation of commodities, of money, the system of capital, property-ownership, the land system, these may have taken no matter what form under modern life; but at the heart of modern life something else has taken place, never distinctly expressed, not consciously felt even by the modern worker, but which is the fundamental force actuating all his social purpose. It is this:--The modern capitalist system of economy recognises, at bottom, nothing but commodities within its own province. It understands the creation of commodity-values as a process in the body economic. And in the capitalistic processes of the modern age something has been turned into a commodity, which the worker feels must not and cannot be a commodity.
If it were only recognised what a fundamental force this is in the social movement amongst the modern workers: this loathing that the modern worker feels at being forced to barter his labour-power to the employer, as goods are bartered in the market,--loathing at seeing his personal labour-power play part as a factor in the supply and demand of the labour-market, just as the goods in the market are subject to supply and demand. When once people become aware what this loathing of the "labour-commodity" means for the modern social movement, when once they straightly and honestly recognise, that the thing at work there is not even emphatically and drastically enough expressed in socialist doctrines,--then they will have discovered the second of the two impulses which are making the social question to-day so urgent, one may indeed say so burning,--the first being that spiritual life that is felt as an ideology.
In old days there were slaves. The entire man was sold as a commodity. Rather less of the man, but still a portion of the human-being himself was incorporated in the economic process by serfdom. To-day, capitalism is the power, through which still a remnant of the human-being,--his labour-power,--is stamped with the character of a commodity. I am not saying, that this fact has remained unnoticed. On the contrary, it is a fact which in social life to-day is recognised as a fundamental one, and which is felt to be something that plays a very important part in the modern social movement. But people in studying it keep their attention solely fixed on economic life. They make the question of the nature of a commodity solely an economic one. They look to economic life itself for the forces that shall bring about conditions, under which the worker shall no longer feel that his labour-power is playing a part unworthy of him in the body social. They see, how the modern form of industrial economy came about historically in the recent evolution of mankind. They see too, how it gave the commodity character to human labour-power. What they do not see, is, that it is a necessity inherent in economic life, that everything incorporated in it becomes a commodity. Economic life consists in the production and useful consumption of commodities. One cannot divest human labour-power of its commodity character, unless one can find a way of separating it out from the economic process. It is of no use trying to remodel the economic process so as to give it a shape in which human labour may come by its rights inside that process itself. What one must endeavor, is to find a way of separating labour-power out from the economic process, and bringing it under social forces that will do away with its commodity character. The worker sets his desire upon some arrangement of economic life, where his labour-power shall find a fitting place; not seeing, that the commodity character of his labour is inherently and essentially due to his being bound up in the economic processes as part and parcel of them. Being obliged to surrender his labour-power to the economic processes, the whole man himself is caught up into them. So long as the economic system has the regulating of labour-power, it will go on consuming labour-power just as it consumes commodities,--in the manner that is most useful to its purposes. It is as though the power of economic life hypnotised people, so that they can look at nothing except what is going on inside it. They may look for ever in this direction without discovering how labour-power can escape being a commodity. Some other form of industrial economy will only make labour-power a commodity in some other manner. The labour question cannot find place in its true shape as part of the social question, until it is recognised that the considerations of economic life which determine the laws governing the circulation, exchange and consumption of commodities, are not such whose competence should be extended to human labour-power.
New age thought has not learned to distinguish the totally different fashions in which the two things enter into economic life: i.e., on the one hand, labour-power, which is intimately bound up with the human-being himself; and, on the other hand, those things that proceed from another source and are dissociated from the human-being, and which circulate along those paths that all commodities must take from their production to their consumption. Sound thinking on these lines will shew both the true form of the labour-power question, and the place that economic life must occupy in a healthily constituted society.
From this, it is obvious that the "social question" will divide itself into three distinct questions. The first is the question of a healthy form of spiritual life within the body social; the second, the consideration of the position of labour-power, and the right way to incorporate it in the life of the community. Thirdly, it will be possible to deduce the proper place and function of economic life.
II.
HOW ACTUAL LIFE REQUIRES THAT WE SHOULD SET ABOUT SOLVING SOCIAL NEEDS AND PROBLEMS
The characteristic feature, then, to which the special form of the social question in recent times is directly traceable, may be expressed as follows: The modern life of industrial economy, grounded in technical science,--modern capitalism,--all this has acted in a sort of instinctive way, like a force of nature, and given modern social life its peculiar internal structure and method. But whilst men's attention grew thus absorbed in all that technical industry and capitalism brought with them, it became at the same time diverted from other branches, other departments of social life,--departments whose workings no less require direction by conscious human intelligence, if the body social is to be a healthy one.
I may perhaps be allowed to start by drawing a comparison, in order the better to describe what here, in any really comprehensive study of the social question, reveals itself as a powerful, indeed a main, actuating impulse. It must however be borne in mind, that this comparison is intended as a comparison only, used to help out the human understanding and give it the turn of thought needed for picturing what health in the body social implies. Accepting this point of view, then, if one turns to the study of that most complex of all natural organisms, the human organism, it is noticeable, that, running through the whole structure and life of it, there are three systems, working side by side, and each functioning to a certain extent separately and independently of the others. These three neighbour systems may be distinguished as follows: One system, forming a province all to itself in the natural human organism, is that which comprises the life of the nerves and senses. It may be named, after the principal part of the organism where the nerve and sense-life is more or less centred,--the head-system. Second comes what I should like to call the rhythmic system, which, to arrive at any real understanding of man's organisation, must be recognised as forming another branch to itself. This rhythmic system comprises the breathing, the circulation of the blood,--all that finds expression in rhythmic processes within the human organism. The third system, then, must be recognised as comprising all those organs and functions that have to do with actual matter-changes--the metabolic process. These three systems together comprise everything which, duly co-ordinated, keeps the whole human complex in healthy working order.
In my book, "Riddles of the Soul," I have already attempted to give a brief description of this threefold character of the natural human organism in a way that tallies completely with what scientific research has as yet to tell us on the subject. It seems to me clear, that biology, physiology, and natural science in general as it deals with man, are all rapidly tending to a point of view which will shew, that what keeps the whole complex process of the human organism in working order is just this comparatively separate functioning of its three separate systems, the head system, the circulation, or chest system and the metabolic system,--that there is no such thing as absolute centralisation in the human organism, and, moreover, that each of these systems has its own special and distinct relation to the outer world, the head system through the senses, the rhythmic or circulatory system through the breathing, the metabolic system through the organs of nourishment and organs of movement. What I have here indicated goes much deeper down to spiritual sources that I have tried to utilise for natural science. In natural-science circles themselves, it is a fact not yet so generally recognised as might perhaps be desirable for the advancement of knowledge; but that merely means that our habits of thought, our whole way of picturing the world to ourselves, is not yet completely adapted to the inner life and being of nature's workings, as manifested, for instance, in the human organism. People of course may say, "No matter. Natural science can afford to wait. She will come to her ideals bit by bit, and views such as yours will gain recognition all in good time." But the body social cannot afford to wait, neither for the right views nor for the right practice. Here an understanding is necessary,--if only an instinctive one,--of what the body social needs,--and not merely an understanding amongst a handful of experts, but in every single human soul;--for every human soul takes its own share in the general working of the body social. Sane thinking and feeling, sane will and desires as to the form to be given the body social,--these are only to be developed, when one comes to recognise,--even though only instinctively,--that, in order to thrive, the social organism, like the natural one, requires to be threefold.
Now, since Schäffle wrote his book on the structure of the social organism, all sorts of attempts have been made to trace out analogies between the organic structure of a natural creature,--a human being, say,--and of a community of human beings. People have tried to map out the body social into cells, network of cells, tissues and so forth. Only a little while ago, there was a book published by Méray, "World Mutations," in which various natural science facts and laws were simply transferred to what is supposed to be man's social organism. That sort of analogy-game has nothing whatever to do with what is meant here; and anyone who mistakes what is said above for just such another play upon analogies between the natural and the social organism, has plainly not entered into the spirit of these observations. The present comparison is not an attempt to take some natural science truth and transplant it into the social system. Its object is quite different:--namely, to use the human body as an object lesson for training human thought and feeling to a sense of what organic life requires, and then to apply this perceptive sense to the body social. If one simply transfers to the body social something one thinks one has found out about the human body,--as is commonly done,--it merely shews that one is not willing to acquire the faculties needed for studying the social organism in the way one has to study the natural organism,--that is, as a thing by itself, with special laws of its own.
It might again be thought, that this manner of depicting the social organism arises from the belief that it should be "built up" after some cut-and-dried theory borrowed from natural science. Nothing could be further from all that is here in question. What I am trying to shew is something very different. The present crisis in the history of mankind demands the development in every single human being of certain faculties of apprehension, of which the first rudiments must be started by the schools and system of education,--like the first four rules of arithmetic. Hitherto, the body social received its older forms from something that never entered consciously into the life of the human soul; but in the future this force will cease to be active. Fresh evolutionary impulses are coming in, and from now on will be active in human life; and it is part of them, that every individual should be required to have these faculties of apprehension, just as each individual has long been required to have a certain measure of education. From now on, it is necessary that the individual should be trained to have a healthy sense of how the forces of the body social must work in order for it to live. People must learn to feel, that it would be unhealthy, anti-social, not to possess such sense of what the body social needs and to want to take one's place in it.
One hears much talk to-day about "socialisation" as the thing that the age needs. But this socialisation will prove no true cure but a quack remedy, possibly even a fatal one for social life, unless in men's hearts, in men's souls, there dawns at least an instinctive perception of the necessity for a threefold division of the body social. If the body social is to function healthily, it must regularly develope three organic divisions such as here described.
One of these three divisions is the economic life. It is the best one to begin with here, because it has obviously, through modern technical industry and modern capitalism, worked its way into the whole structure of human society, to the subordination of everything else. This economic life requires to form an independent organic branch by itself within the body social,--relatively as independent as the nervous and sensory system within the human body. Its concern is with everything in the nature of production of commodities, circulation of commodities, consumption of commodities.
Next comes the life of public right,--political life in the proper sense. This must be recognised as forming a second branch of the body social. To this branch belongs what one might term the true life of the State,--taking "State" in the sense in which it was formerly applied to a community possessing common rights.
Whilst economic life is concerned with all that a man needs from Nature and what he himself produces from Nature,--with commodities and the circulation and consumption of commodities,--the second branch of the body social can have no other concern than what is involved in purely human relations, in that which comes up from the deep-recesses of the inner life and affects man's relation towards man. It is essential to a right understanding of the composition of the social organism, that one should clearly recognise the difference between the system of "public right," which can only deal from inner and purely human grounds with man-to-man relations, and the economic system, which is concerned solely with the production, circulation and consumption of commodities. People must become possessed of an instinctive sense for distinguishing between these two in life, so that in practice the economic life and the life of "right" will be kept distinct;--just as, in man's natural organism, the lungs' function in working up the outer air keeps distinct from the processes going on in the nervous and sensory life.
As the third division, alongside the other two and equally independent, are to be understood all those things in the social organism which are connected with mental and spiritual life. The term "spiritual culture," or "everything that is connected with mental and spiritual life," is scarcely a term that accurately describes it in any way. Perhaps one might more accurately express it as "Everything that rests on the natural endowments of each single human being--everything that plays a part in the body social on the ground of the natural endowments, both spiritual and physical, of the individual."
The first function,--the economic one,--has to do with everything that must exist in order that man may keep straight in his material adjustments to the world around him. The second function has to do with whatever must exist in the body social because of men's personal relations to one another. The third function has to do with all that must spring from the personal individuality of each human being, and must be incorporated as personal individuality in the body social.
The more true it is that our social life has of recent years taken its stamp from modern technical industry and modern capitalism, the more necessary it is, that the injury thus unavoidably done to the body social should be healed by bringing man, and man's communal life, into right relation to these three systems of the body social. Economic life has, in recent times, singly and of itself, taken on quite new forms. And because it has worked all alone, unbalanced, it has asserted undue power and preponderance in human life. The two other branches of social life have not until now been in a position to work themselves in this matter-of-course way into the social organism and become incorporated with it according to their own proper laws. Here man must step in, with the instinctive sense I spoke of, and set to work to evolve the threefold order, each individual working on the spot and at the spot where he happens to be. To attempt to solve the social problem in the way meant here, will leave not one individual without his task, now and in the days that are coming.
To begin with the first division of the body social, the economic life:--This is grounded primarily in conditions of Nature,--just as the individual man starts with special qualities of mind and body as the basis for what he may be able to make of himself by study, education and the teaching of life. This nature-basis sets a unique stamp on economic life, and through economic life on the whole organism of society. It is there, this nature-basis, and no methods of social organisation, no manner of socialising measures, can affect it,--at least, not radically. One must accept this nature-basis as the groundwork of life for the body social,--just as, in educating an individual, one must take his natural qualities as groundwork,--how nature has endowed him in this or that respect, his mental and physical power. Every experiment in socialisation, every attempt at giving man's communal life an economic form, must take this nature-basis into account. At the bottom of all circulation of commodities, of all human labour, and of every form of spiritual life too, there lies something primal, elementary, basic, which links man to a bit of nature. The connection between a social organism and its nature-basis is a thing that has to be taken into consideration,--just as one has to consider an individual in regard to his personal endowment, when it is a question of his learning something.--This is most obvious in extreme cases. Take, for instance, those parts of the earth, where the banana affords man an easily accessible form of food. Here, it will be a question of the amount and kind of labour that must be expended to bring the banana from its place of origin to a convenient spot and deliver it ready for consumption; and this will enter into all considerations of men's communal life together. If one compares the human labour, that must be exerted to make the banana ready for human consumption, with the labour that must be exerted in Central Europe, say, to make wheat ready for consumption, it is at least three hundred times less for the banana than for the wheat.