I have already delayed more than was necessary in this section upon the causes which render a capitalist state essentially unstable.
I might have treated the matter empirically, taking for granted the observation which all my readers must have made, that capitalism is as a fact doomed, and that the capitalist state has already passed into its first phase of transition.
We are clearly no longer possessed of that absolutely political freedom which true capitalism essentially demands. The insecurity involved, coupled with the divorce between our traditional morals and the facts of society, have already introduced such novel features as the permission of conspiracy among both possessors and non-possessors, the compulsory provision of security through state action, and all these reforms, implicit or explicit, the tendency of which I am about to examine.
VI
The Stable Solutions of This Instability
The three stable social arrangements which alone can take the place of unstable capitalism—The “distributive” solution, the “collectivist” solution, the “servile” solution—The reformer will not openly advocate the servile solution—There remain only the distributive and the collectivist solution.
Given a capitalist state, of its nature unstable, it will tend to reach stability by some method or another.
It is the definition of unstable equilibrium that a body in unstable equilibrium is seeking a stable equilibrium. For instance, a pyramid balanced upon its apex is in unstable equilibrium; which simply means that a slight force one way or the other will make it fall into a position where it will repose. Similarly, certain chemical mixtures are said to be in unstable equilibrium when their constituent parts have such affinity one for another that a slight shock may make them combine and transform the chemical arrangement of the whole. Of this sort are explosives.
If the capitalist state is in unstable equilibrium, this only means that it is seeking a stable equilibrium, and that capitalism cannot but be transformed into some other arrangement wherein society may repose.
There are but three social arrangements which can replace capitalism: slavery, socialism, and property.
I may imagine a mixture of any two of these three or of all the three, but each is a dominant type, and from the very nature of the problem no fourth arrangement can be devised.
The problem turns, remember, upon the control of the means of production. Capitalism means that this control is vested in the hands of few, while political freedom is the appanage of all. If this anomaly cannot endure, from its insecurity and from its own contradiction with its presumed moral basis, you must either have a transformation of the one or of the other of the two elements which combined have been found unworkable. These two factors are (1) The ownership of the means of production by a few; (2) The freedom of all. To solve capitalism you must get rid of restricted ownership, or of freedom, or of both. Now there is only one alternative to freedom, which is the negation of it. Either a man is free to work and not to work as he pleases, or he may be liable to a legal compulsion to work, backed by the forces of the state. In the first he is a free man; in the second he is by definition a slave. We have, therefore, so far as this factor of freedom is concerned, no choice between a number of changes, but only the opportunity of one, to wit, the establishment of slavery in place of freedom. Such a solution, the direct, immediate, and conscious reestablishment of slavery, would provide a true solution of the problems which capitalism offers. It would guarantee, under workable regulations, sufficiency and security for the dispossessed. Such a solution, as I shall show, is the probable goal which our society will in fact approach. To its immediate and conscious acceptance, however, there is an obstacle.
A direct and conscious establishment of slavery as a solution to the problem of capitalism, the surviving Christian tradition of our civilisation compels men to reject. No reformer will advocate it; no prophet dares take it as yet for granted. All theories of a reformed society will therefore attempt, at first, to leave untouched the factor of freedom among the elements which make up capitalism, and will concern themselves with some change in the factor of property.4
Now, in attempting to remedy the evils of capitalism by remedying that one of its two factors which consists in an ill distribution of property, you have two, and only two, courses open to you.
If you are suffering because property is restricted to a few, you can alter that factor in the problem either by putting property into the hands of many, or by putting it into the hands of none. There is no third course.
In the concrete, to put property in the hands of “none” means to vest it as a trust in the hands of political officers. If you say that the evils proceeding from capitalism are due to the institution of property itself, and not to the dispossession of the many by the few, then you must forbid the private possession of the means of production by any particular and private part of the community: but someone must control the means of production, or we should have nothing to eat. So in practice this doctrine means the management of the means of production by those who are the public officers of the community. Whether these public officers are themselves controlled by the community or no has nothing to do with this solution on its economic side. The essential point to grasp is that the only alternative to private property is public property. Somebody
