MR. GREG ON SOCIALISM.*
THE book before us is a republication of essays about the labour- ing classes which Mr. Greg has written from time to time in the course of the last twenty-five years. Before entering upon a dis- cussion of the subjects dealt with in them, we feel it incumbent upon us as faithful critics to point out that the title of the volume much exaggerates the scope of its contents. We were led by it to expect not a number of scattered essays, but a consecutive dis- cussion of the labour-question, and pleased as we are to get any- thing from Mr. Greg, we must still protest against the use of misleading titles.
Mr. Greg belongs to that class of economists known on the Continent as " Smithians," but in this country more appropriately described as "the Manchester School." They may be said to form in England the extreme right of economic thought, when we place Socialism on the left. Readers can, therefore, easily antici- pate the attitude which Mr. Greg assumes towards com- munists and "dreamers," as they are called by the practical men who entertain his views. Indeed Mr. Greg displays all the uncompromising spirit of his party towards those who venture to question the universal applicability of free competition, and now that systematic economists begin to express doubts as to the soundness of their views, it is curious to see them here re- asserted in all their freshness. Still, it is with some pain that we find this vigorous writer unaware of the change which has come over thought, as well as social conditions, since Mary Barton and Alton Locke were written, and called for replies from those who thought they were accused of callousness to the misery of the
lower classes described in these books. And it is startling that when he adds a comment to his former views, it is only to ex- press his disappointment with our social progress, and to repeat how utterly unwilling the lower classes are to work out their own improvement.
I wish," he says in his preface, "I could say that the task of pre- paring those essays for reissue had been a gratifying or an encouraging one. It has been far otherwise. Daring that lapse of time (twenty- five years), the manufactures of England have enormously increased ; the aggregate wealth, as well as the numbers of the productive classes, has augmented in a vast and rapid ratio ; the weekly wages of artisans
* Mistaken Aims and Attainab!e Ideals of the Artisan Class. By W. It. Oreg. Loncion: Triibner and Co. 1876. and mechanics have risen from 20 to 25 per cent.; their instruction has been unquestionably, perhaps materially, improved ; while 1113 to their very extraordinary increase of power in the political arena, there can be no question whatever. But during the same period, it is impossible to say that we can trace any corresponding or parallel growth either in their sobriety, in their treatment of their own wives and children, in the sentiments of friendliness with which they regard their employers, in the sense of justice and consideration which they manifest towards their fellow-labourers, in the sagacity with which they manage their own affairs, or in the wisdom which thoy contribute to the affairs of the nation."
If Robert Owen or ttienne Cabet had spoken in this despondent• manner, we should have felt touched, for behind their weariness
there would have been the well-known failure of a life de- voted to the social cause ; but When the Manchester school laments the absence of moral improvement among the work- men, Mr. Greg must pardon us, but we begin to doubt whether he has .devoted sufficient attention to the views he condemns so confidently. However absurd working-men's notions of economy may be, the men who have succeeded in drawing public attention to their social and economic position, and the evils that attend an unassisted struggle for existence,—such men as St. Simon, Fourier, Tassaalle, and Marx, not to speak of those two men we have already mentioned, whose efforts were of a more practicable nature,—do not deserve to be classed simply with the inflam- matory orators of working-men's associations. We and Mr. Greg may differ from them in their views, but their intellectual
power, if nothing else, claims his respect. Theoretical . socialism is not, however, always the wild dreaming it is so often assumed to be. Certainly a great deal of absurdity has emanated from its more enthusiastic votaries, but as a criticism of economy it is not only deserving of consideration, but has been productive of much change in the extent to which the younger economists accredit " economic laws" with the inevitable character. of those of nature. It is also quite a legitimate growth. The introduction of steam-machinery into our industry produced a revolution in all social relations. The country became suddenly depopulated, the peasants, or rather agricultural labourers, swarmed into the towns, where they were now in great demand,
and where wages were, in consequence, much higher than those they had been hitherto receiving. But the new inventions which had called in their services followed each Other in quick succession, and philanthropists were not long in per- ceiving that what had been unquestionably for the general good might be, and was, nevertheless, attended by terrible temporary misery and degradation among the poor. This led them to the investigation of the relations of the employers to the employed, and then to the wild panaceas which Mr. Greg is so severe upon ; to ingenious solutions of all social difficulties, some- times mathematical, but more often simply romantic, till Fourier fell upon economy with his unanswerable questions as to its justi-
fication. Proudhon took up his propositions, and came with characteristic logic to views of what should be, which seemed• madness to those who did not know the course of thought which had led to them. But they were far from madness. The premises admitted, the conclusions were inevitable ; but the pre- mises were, although opponents have often failed to see how, full of error ; and this has been the weak side of all social theories, out of which new systems of things have been constructed which widely differed from our present order. It is this experience which is confining Socialism more and more to its proper position in social science, that of criticism, with a view to its moral aspects, of the Manchester economy and what survives of it.
A great deal of the animosity which the Socialists and the older Economists have manifested against each other has arisen from impatience, if not from inability, on each side to follow the reasoning of the other. The Manchester school would seem to consider the whole aim and end of national activity to be the acquisition of capital. They regard labour simply as an ex- changeable article, whose value is to be raised in the same way as that of manufactured commodities, by free competition. We must not therefore interfere with it by restrictions, indeed we must remove every obstacle to the struggle between the individual master and the individual labourer and between the labourer and his fellows. Thus, they argue, do we arrive at the greatest ag- gregate wealth, and because the labourer pursues naturally his own interest to the fullest, the greatest private wealth of the working- classes. This might be true, were the workman and the master equally matched. On the other hand, Socialism has attacked economic principles generally, as leading to the wealth of the few, without regard to what may be the effects on the human beings who are used as instruments in its acquisition. This is equally one-sided, for it is only a near-sighted and unsound economy which would and has ever overlooked the material advantages that in every way accrue from the physical and moral improve- ment of the great mass of the nation. But that which we have described as being at the heart of Socialism, Mr. Greg seems to ignore or not to apprehend. We shall take an instance. One of the sores of our present social system which the more moderate Socialists have made it their chief aim to heal, and employers have most complained of, is the apathy of the men as regards the success of their work. "It will," said the late Mr. Mill, "sooner or later become insupportable to the employing classes to live in close and hourly contact with persons whose interests and feelings are in hostility to them. Capitalists are almost as much interested as labourers in placing the operations of industry on such a footing, that those who labour for them may feel the same interest in the work which is felt by those who labour on their own account." It is for that reason that co-operation has received so much en- couragement from the soundest of the social philosophers of the present. Let us hear Mr. Greg upon co-operative undertakings :—
"What are the anticipations with which they (the associated work- men) enter on these projects ? They assume that in the pre-existing division of gains between capital and labour, the former secures a most unjust and inordinate share of the remuneration. They affirm also that the number of middlemen is needlessly large and their profits scandalously disproportioned to their services. And they propose to themselves by the new arrangement to do away with both middleman and capitalist, and to appropriate among themselves the present remuneration of the two functionaries. It is clear that there is here an important hiatus in their premises. Even if we assume that the profits of the co-operative partnership are equal in the long-run to those of an establishment of equal size conducted by an indivi- dual capitalist,—that the interest each workman takes in the success of the concern will counterbalance the zeal, watchful- ness devotion, and single despotism of a skilful, intelligent, and wealthy tradesman,—and that the workman will consent to pay such a salary to their chief as will command a necessary amount of talent, integrity, and diligence,—still it is obvious that all which the co- operative associates could hope to grasp would be not the entire profits of the middleman and capitalist, not even the net profits after deduct- ing the interest of money, but simply the difference between such net profits and those salaries which they must and do themselves pay to those functionaries who, in their establishment, represent the capitalist and middleman,—i.e., the manager and foreman. These functionaries may be fewer in their establishment, and may possibly be worse paid, but it is reckoning without their host to imagine that they can dispense
with them altogether We do not say that collateral, moral, and educational benefits may not arise in the case of both working associa- tions and co-operative stores, for the sake of which it might be well even to encounter some pecuniary loss, but we do say that the possible pecuniary gain is limited in the manner we have specified."
Our space would not permit us, were we desirous of doing so, to point out at length the fallacies of Mr. Greg's reasoning. They will be to many self-evident. Leaving the magnitude of Mr. Greg's " difference " to the consideration of those to whom the question is more vital, we simply point out how in this passage the very essence of Socialism is made to be the securing of larger wages to workmen, while the real object, that of combining the interest of employer and workman, is not mentioned. Moreover, what Mr. Greg in his preface complains has not been the object of the working-classes, these same "moral and educational benefits," which he admits might be derived from co-operation, he dismisses as collateral, and such as "for the sake of which it might be well even to encounter some pecuniary loss." If Mr. Greg expected the moral improvement of the absence of which he speaks in such a disheartened manner in his preface, why did he so anxiously endeavour to shake the confidence of those who sought this moral improvement, in their schemes for its advance- ment, admitting, as he does, that they would not be productive of harm, though moral and educational benefits might arise from them ? Apart from the above confession, we have here clearly demonstrated the utter incompatibility of Socialism with the views of the Manchester school. The workman is to them merely a machine, to be cast aside when he no longer works, and they cannot comprehend how, with wholesome food and a night's rest, he can have anything to complain of. Elimination of the less capable human elements for the joint welfare of posterity may have led to present greatness, but we rejoice to think that the moral instinct which has developed with our progress makes us now shudder at the philosophy which would raise humanity by the destruction of the weaker. Socialism, as we have repre- sented it, is the wail of the weaker at the heartless dicta of the older economists, and it has not been unheard. As in most agi- tations, its leaders have exaggerated their demands, and from that constant pressure, have come to see out of their proper propor- tions the ill conditions they sought to ameliorate ; but they have shaken economy at its foundations, and if they have been often hard upon the masters, they have certainly brought about an improvement in the condition of the men. And social science
has profited not only by their sound criticism, but also by the blunders they have made in attempting to carry out their views. Their experiments, like those of the Manchester school, have shown us that the elements out of which the social body is con- stituted are far too complex to be moulded according to any simple principle or principles.
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