We all feel—and those few of us who have analysed the matter not only feel but know—that the capitalist society thus gradually developed from its origins in the capture of the land four hundred years ago has reached its term. It is almost self-evident that it cannot continue in the form which now three generations have known, and it is equally self-evident that some solution must be found for the intolerable and increasing instability with which it has poisoned our lives. But before considering the solutions variously presented by various schools of thought, I shall in my next section show how and why the English capitalist industrial system is thus intolerably unstable and consequently presents an acute problem which must be solved under pain of social death.
It must be noted that modern industrialism has spread to many other centres from England. It bears everywhere the features stamped upon it by its origin in this country.
V
The Capitalist State in Proportion as It Grows Perfect Grows Unstable
It can of its nature be but a transitory phase lying between an earlier and a later stable state of society—The two internal strains which render it unstable—(a) The conflict between its social realities and its moral and legal basis—(b) The insecurity and insufficiency to which it condemns free citizens—The few possessors can grant or withhold livelihood from the many non-possessors—Capitalism is so unstable that it dares not proceed to its own logical conclusion, but tends to restrict competition among owners, and insecurity and insufficiency among non-owners.
From the historical digression which I have introduced by way of illustrating my subject in the last two sections I now return to the general discussion of my thesis and to the logical process by which it may be established.
The capitalist state is unstable, and indeed more properly a transitory phase lying between two permanent and stable states of society.
In order to appreciate why this is so, let us recall the definition of the capitalist state:—
A society in which the ownership of the means of production is confined to a body of free citizens, not large enough to make up properly a general character of that society, while the rest are dispossessed of the means of production, and are therefore proletarian, we call “capitalist.”
Note the several points of such a state of affairs. You have private ownership; but it is not private ownership distributed in many hands and thus familiar as an institution to society as a whole. Again, you have the great majority dispossessed but at the same time citizens, that is, men politically free to act, though economically impotent; again, though it is but an inference from our definition, it is a necessary inference that there will be under capitalism a conscious, direct, and planned exploitation of the majority (the free citizens who do not own) by the minority who are owners. For wealth must be produced: the whole of that community must live: and the possessors can make such terms with the non-possessors as shall make it certain that a portion of what the non-possessors have produced shall go to the possessors.
A society thus constituted cannot endure. It cannot endure because it is subject to two very severe strains: strains which increase in severity in proportion as that society becomes more thoroughly capitalist. The first of these strains arises from the divergence between the moral theories upon which the state reposes and the social facts which those moral theories attempt to govern. The second strain arises from the insecurity to which capitalism condemns the great mass of society, and the general character of anxiety and peril which it imposes upon all citizens, but in particular upon the majority, which consists, under capitalism, of dispossessed free men.
Of these two strains it is impossible to say which is the gravest. Either would be enough to destroy a social arrangement in which it was long present. The two combined make that destruction certain; and there is no longer any doubt that capitalist society must transform itself into some other and more stable arrangement. It is the object of these pages to discover what that stable arrangement will probably be.
We say that there is a moral strain already intolerably severe and growing more severe with every perfection of capitalism.
This moral strain comes from a contradiction between the realities of capitalist society and the moral base of our laws and traditions.
The moral base upon which our laws are still administered and our conventions raised presupposes a state composed of free citizens. Our law defends property as a normal institution with which all citizens are acquainted, and which all citizens respect. It punishes theft as an abnormal incident only occurring when, through evil motives, one free citizen acquires the property of another without his knowledge and against his will. It punishes fraud as another abnormal incident in which, from evil motives, one free citizen induces another to part with his property upon false representations. It enforces contract, the sole moral base of which is the freedom of the two contracting parties, and the power of either, if it so please him, not to enter into a contract which, once entered into, must be enforced. It gives to an owner the power to leave his property by will, under the conception that such ownership and such passage of property (to natural heirs as
