COLLECTIVISM AND DEMOCRACY.
ENGLISHMEN have learned for some time to look upon the acceptance of Collectivism as a grave danger to the State. But they have not yet realized in how large a measure it is already accepted. Their fears have reference mainly to the future. The present has come into being so gradually that its true proportions have received only a part of the notice they merit. In the introduction to a second edition of his Lectures on Law and Public Opinion in England during the Nineteenth Century (Macmillan and Co., 10s. 6d. net) Professor Dicey has brought together the evidence supplied by the character and tendency of the legislation of the first thirteen years of the present century and of much of that of the latter half of the preceding century. The result will startle many of his readers. They have looked upon each Act of Parliament as it came as a measure standing by itself, and leading to no results beyond the four corners of the particular statute. They will now see that these
- measures are dominated by a common purpose. That pur- pose may not have been present either to the Ministers who framed them or to the Parliament which passed them. But the means have been taken and the end has followed. In some cases it was inevitable that the means should be taken. The evils of a laissez-faire policy were too great to be passed over. But the Governments which undertook to apply a remedy were not careful enough to . lay stress upon the special nature of each case, or to guard against the probability that exceptions would multiply into a rule.
Professor Dicey begins with a striking quotation from Mill's Essay on Liberty. " The only purpose for which power can be rightfully exercised over any member of a civilized community, against his will, is to prevent harm to others. His own good, either physical or moral, is not a sufficient warranty.. . . The only part of the conduct of anyone, for which he is amenable to society, is that which concerns others. In the part which merely concerns himself his independence is, of right, absolute." In 1859 this principle was accepted, says Professor Dicey, " not only by youthful enthusiasts, but by the vast majority of English Liberals and by many Liberal Con- servatives." The State, it was held, ought not to under- take any duties which could be performed by individuals. Free Trade was the only policy which could in the long run benefit a civilized community. The State had no more power of fixing the rate of wages than of fixing the price of food or of clothes. The forces which governed these matters might have their action delayed by legislation, but in the end they would invariably prevail. "In harmony with these views, one principle wasInot only accepted, but rigidly carried out, by every Chancellor of the Exchequer according to his ability ; it was that taxation should be imposed solely for the purpose of raising revenue, and should be imposed with absolute equality, or as near equality as was possible, upon rich and poor alike." The national wealth was best left in the pockets of the individuals who composed the nation. In 1860 this ideal finance found full expression in a real Minister. It was the guiding principle of Mr. Gladstone so long as he remained at the Exchequer. In the first edition of his book Professor Dicey examined the extent to which these ideas had been departed from by the end of the century. The contrast even between 1860 and 1900 is startling. The first appearance of Collectivism in legislation dates, indeed, from an earlier period. It is plainly visible in the factory legislation of 1847 and 1850. By these measures a complete system of Govern- mental inspection and control was set up in principle, and, as a natural consequence of the legal limitation of the hours of labour in certain trades, whole fields of industry which, in the first instance, were left outside the new regulations, were ultimately brought within them. Indeed, the very arguments used against the new laws made their extension inevitable. " Why," asked Bright, " is a Scotch- man to be sent to see how I work my people, when the farmer and the carpenter and the builder and the tailor are left to the ordinary responsibilities of law and public opinion? " A question of this sort was sure to entail further advances in the same direction. It was unfortunate that the conduct of the opposition to factory legislation should have fallen to Bright instead of to Cobden, for Cobden recognized that the factory laws had their origin in a real danger. People too weak to help themselves became victims to an unqualified assertion of a true principle. The prevention of excessive labour for young persons was to Cobden "a question for the medical and not the economical profession." The community could not but be injured by the reckless using up of immature workers. As it was, neither the advocates nor the opponents of the factory laws saw the change in the direction and object of legislation which was being insensibly brought about. Individualism found another enemy in joint stock enterprise. The area of State interference was enlarged, though few people then dreamed of the absorption by the State of all national property. Joint stock com- panies were private associations, but their successes were "the triumph not of individual but of corporate energy," and so drew attention to the superiority of collective over individual action. And as the business of a great company might always be aided by the possession of land, and in some cases could not be so much as started without it, a system of compulsory purchase necessarily fol- lowed. In this way landowners were forced to sell land which they would rather have kept, or which they thought worth more than they were given for it. No doubt this may in some instances be covered by Mill's principle that individual liberty may be right- fully interfered with to prevent harm to others. But in the majority of cases it was thought enough to show that a particular interference with private property would be of advantage to others, and when once this is conceded a very great step has been made in the direction of Collectivism. The growth of democratic government caused by the admission to the Parliamentary franchise of artisans in 1867 and of agricultural labourers in 1884 carried the process further. There is no necessary con- nexion, indeed, between Democracy and Collectivism, for the first Reform Act was the work of men who desired to legislate on individualist lines. But the classes who carried the later Reform Acts were under the influence, though only vaguely and indefinitely, of Socialist ideals, and even Mill himself became, in the opinion of Henry Sidgwick, "completely Socialistic in his ideal of ultimate social improvement."
The legislation of the years between 1865 and 1900 yielded a long list of Acts of a similar tendency. Pro- fessor Dicey groups them under four heads—" The Extension of the Idea of Protection ; the Restriction on Freedom of Contract ; the Preference for Collective as contrasted with Individual Action, especially in the matter of bargaining ; the Equalization of Advantages among individuals possessed of unequal means for their attainment." No doubt in all these classes there are statutes which can establish a good case for them- selves. The general error of the legislator has been to treat each fresh instance as the natural development of those that have gone before, instead of examining with increasing vigilance the pleas advanced for swelling the list of exceptions to a rule which ought never to be suspended except for good cause shown in each particular case. The list of laws which treat large classes of citizens as incapables in reference to particular subjects is constantly growing. A farmer cannot contract himself out of the Agricultural Holdings Acts, nor a workman, whether artisan or labourer, out of the Workmen's Compensation Acts. It is conceivable that in certain cases it may be to a workman's interest to take payment for his services in goods rather than in money. But no contract that he enters into for this purpose will be in any way binding on him. Parliament claims to know his interest better than he knows it himself, and passes the Truck Acts. Very often the process has two stages. First, the law interprets a contract in a sense specially favourably to one of the parties, but leaves him free to forgo this benefit if he wishes to do so. Then, a year or two later, Parliament goes a step further and forbids any waiver of the contract actually entered into. The equalization of advantages is the object of a whole series of Acts of Parliament relating to education, to employers' liability, and to municipal trading. " If we add to this vast fabric of labour legisla- tion our system of Poor Law, we find the rather amazing result that in the country where Socialism has been less talked about than any other country in Europe its principles have been most extensively applied." So wrote Lord Morley in 1881. By 1900 the truth of this state- ment had been confirmed by the still vaster fabric of legislation we have just been describing, and since 1906 Collectivism can claim further triumphs in the way of Old Age Pensions, National Insurance, the fixing of a minimum wage in certain employments, the provision of meals for school-children, the Mental Deficiency Act, the Coal Mines Regulation Act, and the Finance Act of 1909. Each of these measures may conceivably be justified in view of its special object. The really disturbing element in the situation is that it is no longer considered necessary even to set up this defence. The natural and inevitable recognition of beneficence on the part of the State, at the cost of the individual, as the lawmaker's proper object is a sufficient answer to all objectors.
Yet Professor Dicey does not wholly despair of the future. He thinks that the universal acceptance of Collectivism in this country " will certainly be delayed, and quite possibly be arrested, by various counter-currents
of opinion. The policy of laissez-faire " has still a very strong hold upon Englishmen," and though in England to-day a Democrat is more than half a Collectivist, and a Collectivist is generally a Democrat, there is no necessary connexion between the two creeds :— "The ideal of democracy is government for the good of the people by the people, and in accordance with the wish of the people ; the ideal of collectivism is government for the good of the people by experts or officials who know, or think they know, what is good for the people better than either any non-official person or than the mass of the people themselves. . . . Beliefs marked by essential inconsistencies are certain to give rise to most serious and, it may be, very practical and embittered dissension."
Those who think, as we do, that in the victory of the Democratic over the Collectivist ideal lies the best hope for the future of England will desire to see this distinc- tion recognized as an essential element in the political creed of Englishmen.
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