labour standards and so creating a sweated system. A community cannot avoid paying the full price for everything it uses. If it does not pay in one coinage, it pays in another.

Therefore, the Socialist takes a purely historical and not a moral view of combination. It is the inevitable development of Capitalism, not the sinister design of the capitalist. Its appearance, though attended with the dangers I have indicated, ought not to give rise merely to moral condemnation ; it is a problem in the evolution of economic power. It marks the end of one phase of the function of Capitalism in Society and the beginning of a new one with problems peculiar to itself. Capitalism grown into the giant that controls monopoly is in a totally different relationship to Society from what it was when it was merely a lusty youth increasing its strength by wrestling in competition with others of its own kin. The end of Capitalism is monopoly, and when that end is reached, the menace of Capitalism, uncontrolled except by its own self-regarding will, is undoubted. It then becomes a State within the State with power that can be used far more effectively than political power. Freedom (for capital) from public control will therefore mean not free competition, but concerted or unified control by private interests." The simple issue then is: Can the community be the combination, or is it doomed to be ruled by the combination ?

66

THE FUNCTION OF CAPITAL

Before proceeding to detail the constructive plans of Socialism to procure abundant production, I must point out how impossible it is under Capitalism to procure the most essential condition for such a

production, namely, the getting from labour a hearty and a maximum effort. Let me try and make this hard and clear, even if in order to put the essential facts together here, I may have to repeat some already used for other purposes.

The interest of Capitalism is to take to itself all the advantages of improved management, invention, efficient labour, social opportunity, and in its practice, as I have shown, it is often very successful. On the other extreme, labour often puts forth the claim that all wealth belongs to it, basing itself on the generalization of Adam Smith that labour is the source of all wealth, a statement very much in need of analysis and definition. Further, more confusion has arisen in sociological enquiry owing to technical definitions of capital which do not correspond to the common and every-day use of the word. Where the context does not show otherwise I use the word in its every-day meaning. But if we stick to simplicity where that does no serious injury to accuracy, we can say that in the process of production labour has to be aided by accumulation of past products, the consumption of which has not taken place at the time of production but is averaged out so that some prolonged period can divide production and consumption and thus enable long processes of production to be undertaken.* As I have pointed out, this necessity for holding up and averaging consumption, was the condition from which the system of Capitalism arose. As economic systems become more complex, means are found-characteristically by banking and creditfor handling and systematising the processes of de

*This is only a prolonged and organized form of the capitalism of the primitive man who sustained himself by the game which fell to one arrow whilst he was making a new one.

ferred consumption and add to it the equally potent instrument of anticipated production. In the end, we have the capitalist system armed from head to heel with all its resources from workshop ownership to high finance-the humble but useful servant of the community become its controlling and all-powerful master.

LABOUR UNDER CAPITALISM

In this system, labour is absolutely subordinate, and its function is as mechanical as though it were a machine driven by power, and begun and stopped by the pulling of a lever. It has its prescribed day; it has its stoppages to prevent deterioration, to enable it to be oiled, adjusted, mended; it has to produce a standard product in quality and amount; its costs are reckoned up, and how to work it most efficiently is studied—whether it should play football at its employer's expense or have one per cent. of his profits; when producing, it is the property of other people; when it is not required for profit its power is turned off and it lies idle. The friction shown in that false distinction which has been creeping into our minds of late owing to the claptrap phrases of politicians who are demagogues and can only appeal to passion and enmity-labour versus the community-is a proof of the constant injustice in thought and word done to labour when it comes into conflict with capital or capitalist governments. People will not take the trouble to understand that this mechanical and property relation is the actual relation of labour to capital under Capitalism. Labour is the property of capital, and when it fights to be free it must damage the community through Capitalism, and on such occasions "the community" imagines itself

to be the party attacked. The enemy of the community is in reality Capitalism, whose economic system is at war with reason and equity.

The temper shown by classes to each other and the way they regard each other, are products of historical experience.

Labour is no willing or hearty co-operator with capital. Its first position on any matter in dispute is one of opposition. In every trade, at some period or other, the hard and absolute relationship of ownership, the relationship of labour as a seller and capital a buyer driving an exclusively economic bargain on a market where the seller was so weak that his bargaining power was nil, held good.* The personal touch of the employer could modify this to some extent, but with combination that goes, and labour then comes in conflict with a system or a machine, and personal influences are no longer available for reason and amelioration. The most cruel case of all is that of the miners, who, a century ago, were sunk right down to the bottom of the darkest pit of brutish treatment and economic slavery. No social conscience came to their aid. They had to perform the miracle of lifting themselves up by their own belts. Society regarded them purely as outcasts moved by passions and appetites that were sub-human. So, when they began to improve themselves, their very degradation was the cause of prejudice, and to this day the public cannot weed out from its mind the terrors which possessed its forebears a century ago, when the horrid miner was mentioned, or when he stirred ominously in his pit or his hovel. A movement on the part of the miner has always filled the

*See Mr. and Mrs. Hammond's "The Agricultural Labourer," "The Town Labourer," ""The Skilled Labourer."

mind of the ordinary member of Society with a resentment and fear which lend themselves to an unbridled credulity as to the habits of this poor human being struggling from slavery to self-respect. He meets on the way all the temptations to which his superior brethren joyfully succumb, but to him they come in hobnails and fustian-whippets instead of racehorses, cheap fancy drink (occasionally) instead of dear champagne (habitually), Ford cars (now and then) to go to work in instead of Daimlers (always) to go to pleasures in. (So far as the miner is concerned the last two luxuries are more imaginary than real.) And those whose " respectability" he would imitate and whose pleasures he would copy with the means at his disposal, find in his efforts nothing but proofs of his degradation! No section in the community has had more injustice done to him by public opinion than the miner. Can it be wondered if he, left to battle his own way to self-respect, returns these feelings with interest ?

In none of its effects has the system of Capitalism done more harm to Society than in this divisive tendency. Labour eyes Capitalism as a traveller on the highway used to eye every gay and well-appointed gallant whom he happened to have to pass. And, again, the experience of the war has added to the suspicion and the enmity. I can speak from my own experience of both sides of the gap. Class antagonism is more bitter, and the gap itself is wider, in 1920 than it was in 1913. Each side fears the other, more than it has ever done, as an enemy seeking to take advantage of it. To Capitalism, labour is Bolshevik; to labour, Capitalism is a White Guard; the Girondins on both sides are being wiped out by the demagogues on both sides.