THE DECAY OF CAPITALIST CIVILIZATION.* TIIERE are many sides from

which this able, if fierce and bitter, book can be criticized. To begin with, it almost achieves a record in begging the question. Again and again the essential point in dispute is treated as a fact beyond contradiction. Indeed, the careful reader after a few pages almost treats the phrase, " It is generally admitted," as an introduction to something that Mr. and Mrs. Webb are obliged to prove if their main contention is to hold good and if their book is to perform the work they desire—i.e., the conversion of readers by reason and argument.

Another ground on which the book might readily be criticized is the perversity of passion in which it is written. In the eyes of the writers, " owning " has become the unfor- givable sin. In a similar way, trading for a profit is assumed to harden the human heart and make it incapable of love, justice and humanity. The man who owns capital or dares to defend the system which maintains the desire for a profit as a useful accelerator to human energy is necessarily a knave, fool, rogue and bully. The writers are so much inflamed by their own rhetoric that they seem incapable of judging between the evidence in support of their contention that is of real value and that which would be discarded by any impartial tribunal which was trying the cause of Socialism or Communism or both versus Free Exchange and Individualism.

Yet another criticism—one of special import—is that the book leads up to a false issue. The attack on Capitalism, so far as it has any reality and vitality, is an attack on human nature or on particular capitalists. In a similar way religions are often attacked, not on their essentials, but on the misdeeds of those who profess to be their adherents. Because many of the Popes were men of evil minds, and because the rulers of the Middle Ages were cruel and callous tyrants, though professing Christians, and because in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries the Protestant clergy were slothful, selfish and indifferent, we have no right to impugn the teach- ings of Christ. The faith of Buddha might as fairly be judged by the devil-worshipping monks of Tibet. In a word, Mr. and Mrs. Webb put up an ogre of straw and plaster all over him the words : " This is old Devil Capitalism. This is the ogre that ate the children," and so forth, and then proceed to demolish him. This ancient trick of advocacy is no doubt a very human one, and we should not have troubled about it if Mr. and Mrs. Webb had not at the same time wearied us with perpetual appeals to the scientific spirit. If this is the way of science, give us the Jackdaw of Reims. On every page they usurp the form without the substance of scientific inquiry and indulge the licence without the temper of philosophy.

Next, our authors use a device which, though common in

the mouths of second-rate counsel at Assizes, should not have had a place in a serious work on Economics. In order to prove their allegations as to the brutality of the Capitalistic System, i.e., of the people whose minds are depraved by " owning," they do not quote the words of any of the great upholders of the policy of Free Exchange and Individual- ism, but search in the literary dustbins of a hundred and twenty years ago for quotations to uphold their charges.

• The Decay of Capitalist Civilization. By Sidney and Beatrice Webb. Published by the Fabian Society, London, and George Allen and Unwin, Ltd. [48. 6d. net.

For example, in order to prove that the supporters of Free Exchange regard poverty as necessary to progress and civilization they quite seriously parade a quotation from Patrick Colquhoun, taken at second-hand from a recent History of British Socialism. Colquhoun is referred to as " the inventor of the modem police system and a leading authority on ' the resources of the British Empire' " as if he were a great economist ! Yet we venture to say that not one in a thousand of educated people has ever heard of Colquhoun or his pamphlets. But they go a step even lower than this in their

fatal error of calling bad evidence and pretending that it is good. They quote a Rev. J. Townsend, who wrote under

the name " The Well-Wisher of Mankind " against the Poor Law, and here again they appear to be quoting from a quota- tion in Marx's Capital and not from the original. The reverend gentleman in question, who must be pronounced to be a thousand times more obscure than Colquhoun, appears to have perpetrated a sanctimonious eulogy on the beauty and utility of poverty which is so humorous that we cannot resist putting it before our readers. He seems to have declared that the poor are improvident and multiply rapidly in order " that there may always be some to fulfil the most servile, the most sordid and the most ignoble offices in the community. The stock of human happiness is thereby much increased, whilst the more delicate are not only relieved from drudgery . . . but are left without interruption to pursue those callings which are suited to their various dispositions."

Mr. Townsend, we are told, was the Rector of Pewsey, Wilts, and Chaplain to Jean, Dowager Duchess of Atholl. It is clear in any case that he was the original of Mr. Collins.

Miss Austen saw him no doubt in one of her visits to Wiltshire, put a pin through him and stuck him on her immortal page. Yet this is the witness who is called to prove the horrible inhumanity of those who support the policy of Free Exchange and Individualism ! Adam Smith, Chalmers, McCulloch, Ricardo, Mill, Sir Robert Peel, Nassau Senior, the signatories of the Poor Law Report of 1834, and literally hundreds of other competent defenders of Individualism and opponents of Socialism though in attendance were none of them summoned.

They had to give place to the Rector of Pewsey I When such a thing happens in a Court of Justice, we all know what are the comments of the judge to the jury But we will not take up more of our space in setting forth the extreme vulnerability of Mr. and Mrs. Webb's method of argument and the sophistical system of advocacy they have adopted. To find a precedent for devices at once so unfair and so weak one must go back to the speeches of Burke against Hastings. " Lord Coke called Sir Walter Ralegh ' a spider of hell.' That was foolish and indecent in Lord Coke," said Burke. He added, however, that

if he were to refrain from calling Warren Hastings " a spider of hell " he would be guilty of a gross dereliction of duty. In the case of Mr. and Mrs. Webb, the Capitalist, or, rather, the " Owner," is always " a spider of hell." They can see him in no other guise, though they have not that sublime boldness and magnificence in their fanaticism which may half excuse the monstrosities of Burke.

We have, however, said enough as to Mr. and Mrs. Webb's methods of drawing and proving their indictment. Let us consider the matters in dispute between the upholders of Free Exchange and Individualism and those of Socialism on their merits.

The essential matter in dispute is, How are we to give man- kind what it wants ? In a matter so vital what mankind wants

is what it must have and ought to,have. That we fully admit.

Man wants food, clothing, housing, and the things which satisfy his other physical needs, and wants also as much leisure as is consistent with the obtaining of these things. Next, he wants as much liberty of action as he can obtain— subject to the satisfaction of his material needs.

Now comes the inevitable question. What is the best way of organizing a community so that its members may obtain

this double ideal of production and freedom ? How, in the first place, is man to subdue the earth to his needs and obtain the thousand things which he so anxiously, nay passionately, desires? The ascetic philosopher may tell him that he is really happiest with a jug of water, a loaf of bread, a book, and somebody of the other sex to whom he can read aloud when she is not engaged in baking the aforesaid loaf or filling the jug. But the natural man shies from so bleak a prospect. Marcus Aurelius, he thinks, was a fraud, and Diogenes a fool. He wants much here below, not a little, and likes that much strong and • long. But if he is to be supplied with what he wants, a vast amount of human energy must be developed in order to supply him. There must be steam in the boiler and plenty of it.

One section of social philosophers tells him that his only way to generate the energy required to get production in sufficient quantities is to base human society on Free Exchange and Individualism. They allege that Free Exchange vitalized by competition and the reward of a profit is the thing best calculated to stimulate human energy and to make the horse come up to the collar. But the policy of Free Exchange involves ownership, and on ownership again largely rests the maintenance of that liberty of action which we have described as one of the essentials desired by mankind. The Socialistic philosophers, on the other hand, declare that Free Exchange and Individualism, since they involve competition and profit, constitute an injurious system. They offer us the alternative of a community in which there shall be no ownership of the means of production and only a limited amount of ownership of any kind. The desire to render social service, they declare, will, under the careful direction by the State, generate not less, but more energy than the existing system.

How is man to decide between these two schools ? We do not propose to attempt the solution of the problem to-day ; but we may point out one or two considerations which must be taken into account by the jury of public opinion before they give their verdict. The first thing for that jury to remember is that even if the evils of the Capitalistic System are as bad as Mr. and Mrs. Webb allege, the Socialist case has not been proved. Before we abandon a course of action which, at any rate, does give us a product, we have to consider whether the com- pletely different system offered as an alternative can deliver the goods. Here, no doubt, the Socialist from the purely dialectical point of view has a considerable argumentative advantage. Everybody can see the bad side of the present system. The bad side of Socialism is by no means so visible to observation. There hope and imagination hold the field. But though at first it seems as if there were very little oppor- tunity for examining the practical working of Socialism, it must not be assumed that we have no experience of the results that flow from the abolition or close restriction of ownership. There was very much less " ownership " in the Dark and Middle Ages than there is now, and yet the condition of the poor was then infinitely worse than at present. There is less ownership and still less liberty in an Oriental despotism. In such communities the land is almost always nationalized, or shall we say despotized, and all other property can be claimed by the State at any moment. That was the condition of India when we went there. That was the condition of Egypt up till the time of the British Occupation. That was the state of things in Turkey till a generation ago. The results properly understood are not encouraging from the point of view of production or of liberty, either for the peasant or the trader.

The short experience of 1848 is also one on which the Socialist does not care to dwell. More important is the example of Russia. From the end of 1917 and up to about a year and a-half ago we have had a non-capitalistic system in full blast. Remember that in the case of Russia no one can say that the system based on the abolition of private property in production has not had a fair chance and that the efforts of the Comrades have been hampered by the resistance of their opponents. The Soviet Government, no doubt, came into power when Russia had been bled white ; but the peasants were still there to grow the crops ; the railways, if injured, were not destroyed ;

the ships of Russia could still sail the seas and navigate her

incomparable system of inland waters. Again, the new Russian Government had absolute power of life and death, and did not hesitate to use it. Their executions hold the world's record. They cannot can say that they suffered from the pin-pricks of criticism, for they soon destroyed the freedom of the Press and of public meeting. From the beginning of 1918 they had the greater part of Russia abso

lutely at their disposal. and from the middle of 1921 to the mamma

present time there has practically been no serious opposition to their wishes. And yet look at the results from the point of view both of production and of liberty. It is true that things are now beginning to improve a little and that the Russians are beginning to get a product ; but how has that improvement been brought about ? It has been brought about by a return to the Capitalistic System.

We cannot at the fag end of a review put forward the case for Free Exchange and Individualism : but, by way of an envoi, we will say two things. We believe that we shall never obtain in this country either com- plete Socialism or complete freedom of Exchange and Individualism. What we shall get, whether theoretically right or wrong, is the via media—the compromise between the two. Strange, however, as it may seem to many of our readers, we believe that the ultimate development, though a slow one and with many ups and downs, will incline to what we consider the benign extreme—that is, the extreme of freedom.

The next verse in our envoi is this : Remember the consumer. It is essential that all questions of economics, and so of our industrial structure, shall be looked at from his point of view. Yet, as Bastiat pointed out so well, not only do politicians and sociologists always forget the consumer, but even the ordinary political economist ignores him. Man's interests as a consumer are quite as important as those of the producer and in many cases more important. Nevertheless, in the library of economies there is, we venture to say, hardly a book devoted wholly to the interests of this poor underdog of the industrial world.

Therefore, let the public be warned. In the storm of controversy and dialectic to which they are going to be exposed in the next thirty years, they must perpetually ask the question : " How about the consumer ? Where does he come in ? " It is on pressing this question that our safety may rest.

Let us anticipate a criticism that is likely to be made on our review. It will probably be said that we have not in our strictures differentiated sufficiently between Socialism and Communism. Our reason is that Mr. and Mrs. Webb do not make their own position clear. They appear to condemn " ownership " as an evil per se and to demand equality of division. Yet in certain respects they seem not Communists but State Socialists. They do not, in fine, declare with