Delphi Complete Works of Stephen Leacock, page 792
“But,” objects the idealist, “you forget. Please remember that under socialism the scramble for wealth is limited; no man can own capital, but only consumption goods. The most that any man may acquire is merely the articles that he wants to consume, not the engines and machinery of production itself. Hence even avarice dwindles and dies, when its wonted food of ‘capitalism’ is withdrawn.”
But surely this point of view is the very converse of the teachings of common sense. “Consumption goods” are the very things that we do want. All else is but a means to them. One admits, as per exception, the queer acquisitiveness of the miser-millionaire, playing the game for his own sake. Undoubtedly he exists. Undoubtedly his existence is a product of the system, a pathological product, a kind of elephantiasis of individualism. But speaking broadly, consumption goods, present or future, are the end in sight of the industrial struggle. Give me the houses and the gardens, the yachts, the motor cars and the champagne and I do not care who owns the gravel crusher and the steam plow. And if under a socialist commonwealth a man can vote himself or gain by the votes of his adherents, a vast income of consumption goods and leave to his unhappy fellow a narrow minimum of subsistence, then the resulting evil of inequality is worse, far worse than it could ever be today.
Or try, if one will, the other horn of the dilemma. That, too, one will find as ill a resting place as an upright thistle. Let the wages, says the still more ideal idealist — all be equal. The managers then cannot vote themselves large emoluments if they try. But what about the purple citizens? Will they work, or will they lie round in their purple garments and loaf? Work? Why should they work, their pay is there “fresh and fresh”? Why should they turn up on time for their task? Why should they not dawdle at their labour sitting upon the fence in endless colloquy while the harvest rots upon the stalk? If among them is one who cares to work with a fever of industry that even socialism cannot calm, let him do it. We, his fellows, will take our time. Our pay is there as certain and as sound as his. Not for us the eager industry and the fond plans for the future — for the home and competence — that spurred on the strenuous youth of old days — not for us the earnest planning of the husband and wife thoughtful and anxious for the future of their little ones. Not for us the honest penny saved for a rainy day. Here in the dreamland of socialism there are no rainy days. It is sunshine all the time in this lotus land of the loafer. And for the future, let the “State” provide; for the children’s welfare let the “State” take thought; while we live it shall feed us, when we fall ill it shall tend us and when we die it shall bury us. Meantime let us eat, drink and be merry and work as little as we may. Let us sit among the flowers. It is too hot to labour. Let us warm ourselves beside the public stove. It is too cold to work.
But what? Such conduct, you say, will not be allowed in the commonwealth. Idleness and slovenly, careless work will be forbidden? Ah, then you must mean that beside the worker will be the overseer with the whip; the time-clock will mark his energy upon its dial; the machine will register his effort; and if he will not work there is lurking for him in the background the shadowed door of the prison. Exactly and logically so. Socialism, in other words, is slavery.
But here the ideal socialist and his school interpose at once with an objection. Under the socialist commonwealth, they say, the people will want to work; they will have acquired a new civic spirit; they will work eagerly and cheerfully for the sake of the public good and from their love of the system under which they live. The loafer will be extinct. The sponge and the parasite will have perished. Even crime itself, so the socialist tells us, will diminish to the vanishing point, till there is nothing of it except here and there a sort of pathological survival, an atavism, or a “throwing back” to the forgotten sins of the grandfathers. Here and there, some poor fellow afflicted with this disease may break into my socialistic house and steal my pictures and my wine. Poor chap. Deal with him gently. He is not wicked. He is ill.
This last argument, in a word, begs the whole question. With perfect citizens any government is good. In a population of angels a socialistic commonwealth would work to perfection. But until we have the angels we must keep the commonwealth waiting.
There is no way out. Socialism is but a dream, a bubble floating in the air. In the light of its opalescent colours we may see many visions of what we might be if we were better than we are, we may learn much that is useful as to what can be even as we are; but if we mistake the floating bubble for the marble palaces of the city of desire, it will lead us forward in our pursuit till we fall over the edge of the abyss beyond which is chaos.
CHAPTER IV SOCIALISM IN THE CONCRETE
BUT, IT MAY be said all the arguments above are just theory, just generalization and theory that doesn’t get down to actual facts, deals with abstractions, does not apply to actual cases, to our own people here and now. So let us try to view socialism in the concrete, to see how difficult it would be to operate it in actual detail even if we imagined its general principles at work, how difficult to apply it even with all the good will in the world.
We will begin with the difficulty which is involved by what is called by those who analyze and give names to these things, the problem of Consumer’s Choice. It is true that nobody nowadays thinks much about the consumer; indeed it has been often said that the consumer is dead, that he died about the time of the last free traders. But in the old economics the consumer played a large part. The idea was that he had to be given just what he wanted, like a silk worm on a mulberry tree. Otherwise he wouldn’t consume or he would go and consume somewhere else. Hence the satisfaction of the consumer was the guiding compass for the course of industry. At present of course we have all turned into producers. Everybody thinks of himself in terms of what he can earn not in terms of what he can buy with it. Give a man a fine job and he’ll take a chance on living expenses. A man goes to live in a town not because he hears it’s a cheap place to live in but because he hears that it’s a good place to get work in. Hence if the consumer is not exactly dead at any rate he’s lying fast asleep beside the grave of John Stuart Mill and the robins are covering him with leaves, torn off the customs tariff.
But in the palmy days of political economy the satisfaction of the consumer was, we say, the guiding mechanism of the whole system. That was what put it into gear, and the wonderful thing was supposed to be that under free competition without any legislation or any compulsion the consumer always got just what he wanted, just when he needed it. Take the famous case of “Bastiat’s Breakfast.” Bastiat was a French economist of the free trade days (he lived 1801-1850) who had not only an intense belief in the merits of a free competition system but an extraordinary power of presenting these in a novel and picturesque way.
So here is Monsieur Bastiat, as he describes himself, coming in to his breakfast in his Paris apartment, (Anno Domini about 1845) and what does he see? A miracle! Nothing less than a miracle! Look, coffee! Some one has been all the way to Brazil to get it. He didn’t send them; and of all the brands of coffee, exactly the brand of his predilection. And cream! Who went out and raised that cow for him years ago? And, bless me, sugar! Someone has been out chopping sugar canes in Cuba for him . . . And with that an omelette, rolls, sliced ham! A very miracle of a tableful, all brought and collected for him — just what he wants and just when and where he wants it. Monsieur Bastiat simply can’t get over it, except by eating his breakfast.
Now of course we need not share all Bastiat’s ecstacies. But there is something in it just the same. Think of the wilderness of consumers’ preferences in food and dress; think, if you dare, of feminine styles and fashions and changes, or even among our drab selves, think of my plain polka-dot tie (exquisite taste) and the flaring four-in-hand that you wear. If Bastiat’s breakfast is a miracle, go and look at any departmental store of today. Here is tribute levied on all the world, articles on the counters for which provision must have been commenced years ago and which match and fit the needs, the preferences, the whims of thousands of customers of varying taste and fortune. Bastiat would fall down in a fit.
Would there be any way in which a socialist government could take account of such a diversity of preferences and tastes? I am certain there could not be. All that a socialist government could do would be to try to reduce consumer’s choice to its narrowest limits, to persuade its people to dress alike, live alike, play alike and enjoy the cheapness of mass-production that goes with mass-alikeness.
Let us set up for ourselves a scene of what would happen under these circumstances.
LITTLE SCENES UNDER SOCIALISM
SOCIALIZED PANTS
We are in the government Department of the Design of Clothes — section Pants, subdivision 1. Men’s Pants. We are in the cutting room of Karl Marx Schnitzki, probably the greatest designer of pants since Pantsoffski.
He stands there, deep in thought, before the broad flat surface of cloth spread tight out for his design upon a vast cutting table. His chalk is uplifted in his hand. For the moment he stands motionless, absorbed, an artist in a dream. The other workers in the room have laid aside their scissors and stand in little groups, fascinated, watching the maestro. To this man’s capacious mind, to this man’s cunning hand is entrusted the creation of a design of pants which will embrace (the word is literal) some four million male beings. With only the variation allowed as between size 1, size 2, and size 3, all will conform to the socialized model of stream-lined zipper-fastened pants which is here to be created. On these bold strokes must rest a public satisfaction that will represent a saving of eight million dollars (two dollars a pair).
The chalk descends. The hand never hesitates. The design sweeps across the cloth. The thing is done . . . An exultant “Bravo!” echoes through the great room. Bravo Maestro! No more work today — and very little tomorrow. A few minutes later the design of the socialized pants is shown to the assembled cabinet.
“This is the model,” says the exultant Minister of Clothing, “stream-lined zipper fastened and adjustable up to the neck.”
“Are there different sizes?” they ask. “What about the fit?”
“Three sizes, one for youths of fifteen to twenty, one for men of twenty to forty and for men of forty to sixty.”
“What about old men?”
“They use model three,” said the minister but they crawl in from behind and pull it up to their neck.
From the first moment socialized pants were a success. Socialists, one cannot too often repeat, are easy going people, not cranks or faddists. Around the capital city they took the new socialized pants with the greatest good nature — a little pleasant laughter and a few jokes on the street just at first but that was all. The official Gazette was able to say editorially: —
“Socialized pants have undoubtedly scored another big success in the emancipation of mankind. The tyranny of fashion had been dealt a mortal blow, and we can say now in the words of Robert Burns, ‘A man’s a man for a’ that.’ We are glad also to report that beyond a little harmless grumbling there has been no active opposition to the wearing of socialized pants. A few obstinate old-fashioned Tories refuse to wear them and are walking on the streets in their shirt tails. The government, we are glad to say, have decided to ignore them. A few extremists in the ministry have urged that the government, being the government, has the power to use force, and if need be to shoot every man without a seat to his pants. But the general feeling is in favour of waiting for cold weather.”
“I think then,” said the socialist prime minister in congratulating his colleague, “that we may consider that this forward step in the unification of fashion is definitely advanced. Socialized pants, gentlemen, have come to stay—”
“To stay buttoned,” — chuckled a minister.
“Zippered,” laughed the premier — poking him in the ribs.
“But now,” he continued, assuming a more serious air. “These garments, I understand, were designed only for men.” He turned to the Minister of Clothing. “What about women?”
“I propose,” said the Minister, “that we discuss that in camera.”
Or let us take, as a thing less needing theory than obvious fact, the question of banking under a socialist regime. Here I must confess that I can see no possibility of successful operation. Banking in its essence means the lending of money to some one who has not got money but who has got character and opportunity and will presently return the money with interest to the bank and profit to himself. That is what real banking means, as worked out, let us say, in Scotland and thence transferred to Canada as the basis of our system. Banking when it is restricted to the lending of money on sound, undeniable, realizable collateral is not performing its full function. It means only lending money to people who have it themselves. One would have to admit, in fairness, that if a socialist government could define collateral in sufficiently rigid terms it might carry on a form of banking by printing money and lending it on deposit of such collateral. But the system would never get far; it would blow up by the pressure for loans on something less rigid than authorized collateral, and then for something less rigid again than that.
The true essence of banking lies in gathering up the idle funds of a mass of people, ignorant of opportunity or absorbed in other things, and in lending them to the right man for the right purpose. The test of the right man is that, by and large, he pays it back. Then what a bank really does is to distribute idle funds into busy employment, which means, when we translate it out of money into the operations which the money represents, that the bank facilitates the direction of physical goods and services from idleness to profitable activity. The banker, in looking for the right men to lend to, is another of Adam Smith’s “invisible hand” men.
But with a socialist government of elected managers and appointed officials, none of whom has anything personal at stake, it is hard to imagine bank loans being made on a true basis. Some of those who discuss the problem tell us, and indeed warn us, that under a socialist regime it would be impossible to get loans without a special personal pull, without political influence. I prefer to see the question in a kindlier light and to think that under socialism the loans would be all too easy. I think of the kindly socialist-banker sitting in his office and dipping out loans out of the loan barrel. He listens with a tear in his eye to a plea for a loan of a thousand dollars, the main argument being that the applicant has no means of paying it back. The tear falls on the ledger and blots out the debt. But those blotted pages and unpaid loans mean sooner or later, inflation, national bankruptcy, collapse.
Or let us imagine, to make the picture kindlier still, the genial socialist banker handing out a loan to an equally genial customer, no tragedy about it, just, so to speak, good fun all round.
LITTLE SCENES UNDER SOCIALISM
A LOAN OUT OF THE BANK BARREL
“Well, Charlie,” laughed the local manager of the Socialist Government Bank at Pleasantville as his visitor entered. “Here you are again.”
“Here I am again, Joe,” said Charlie, . . . shaking hands with the manager and laughing in turn. “You always say that.”
“And I suppose,” said the manager,— “Sit down, Charlie, sit down — I suppose you’ve come to take up one of those thousand dollar loans you owe?”
Then they both laughed.
“Well, no,” said Charlie, “not exactly. The fact is I want another thousand. I think I am on to something pretty big this time.”
“Wait a minute before you tell me about it,” said the manager. “I must just check over the loans you have out now.” He called from the door of his office.
“Miss Killboy, has the accountant come in yet?”
Miss Killboy turned from fixing her yellow curls in front of a wall mirror.
“He’s here,” she said. “He’s asleep in the vault just now.”
“Oh, all right, don’t wake him. I only want the current lists of overdue notes. I guess I can find it.”
He stepped out of his side office into the bank and returned with a docket of papers.
“Now, Charlie,” he said as he sat down and turned over the papers with his finger and thumb. “What’s this new thing you are after?”
“It’s big,” said Charlie, “It’s a plan for making beeswax from thistles.”
“By George!” said the manager with admiration. “You certainly are a wonderful fellow. Beeswax from thistles? Can you do it?”
“I don’t know,” said Charlie, “but I’m going to have a try at it. Do you know the idea just came to me the other night, sitting in my den, just suddenly, just like that. I poured myself out a drink of Scotch and soda so as to think it over quietly and calmly and the more I worked at it the better it looked.”
“But can you get a government permit to do it? You see, Charlie, that kind of thing looks very much like private enterprise, doesn’t it?”
“That’s all right,” said Charlie. “It appears it comes under the list of exceptions. You remember how the government — or rather the party even before they were the government — accepted the principle that they would never interfere with private enterprise in any case where it hadn’t a chance to succeed, and where it is no good even if it does?”
“That’s right,” said the manager.
“Well, it comes under that,” said Charlie, “so all I need is the money.”
“You promoters are wonderful fellows,” said the manager, “and where does the loan come in?”
