CHRISTIAN WRITERS (continued 2)

The case of agriculture at once reveals what was found to be the strong point of slave labour, the feasibility of employing it in large masses. Much of the work consisted in the mere mechanical use of brute force, and one overseer could direct many hands. In operations dependent on the seasons, the labour must be at hand to utilize opportunities. The choice lay between slaves not working with a will and free wage-earners not likely to be on the spot when wanted. Why were slaves preferred? Because their presence in sufficient number could be relied on in the existing conditions of the world. The history of industrial agriculture was a long tale of effort so to organize slave labour as to get out of it the greatest possible margin of profit. Not that slavery was thought preferable in itself; but a means of wholesale cultivation had to be found, and the then available resources of civilization offered no other. When the supply of slaves began to fail, landlords sought a remedy in letting some or all of their land to tenant farmers (extending an old practice), not in attempting to farm on their own account with hired labour. Hired labour remained as before, an occasional appliance to meet temporary needs.

The use of the terms Medieval and Modern as labels[1819] for ancient civilization in two clearly marked stages has, I repeat, just enough truth in it to be dangerous. As a rhetorical flourish it may pass. But it conveys by suggestion much that cannot be accepted. No doubt it is not meant to imply that what we call the Middle Ages is to be ignored. But it inevitably tends to stifle a belief in historical continuity, a faith in which is the soul of historical inquiry as generally understood in the present day. That modern labour-conditions shew a powerful reaction against medieval, is obvious: that medieval conditions have not influenced the modes of this reaction, is to me incredible. I do not believe that the modern free wage-earning system could have grown out of the ancient slave-labour system, had there been no such intervening period as the ‘Middle Ages.’ That the aims of the capitalist ancient and modern are the same, is a mere truism: but is not the same true of the medieval capitalist also?

That the wage-earning handworker often finds his freedom of self-disposal limited in practice, though his position is very far removed from slavery, I have pointed out above. Also, that modern facilities for movement have helped materially to assert and enlarge his freedom. From this point of view the discovery of the New World was the turning-point of European history. But in course of time capitalistic phenomena appeared there also, and on a larger scale. And now, almost the whole world over, the handworker is striving, not only for higher wages but for more complete self-disposal. This necessitates some control of the industries in which he works. Individual effort being vain, he forms unions to guard his interests. The unions, acting by strike-pressure, come into conflict with governments representing the state. The next step is to employ political pressure by gaining and using votes under representative systems, so as to remodel legislation and administration in a sense favourable to the handworker. This movement, now well under way in the most civilized countries, is not perhaps socialistic in principle, and we do not yet know how far it is likely to take that turn. In order to fight exploitation, the handworker has to surrender a good deal of his individual freedom: whether he will be content to surrender a good deal more, the coming age will see. This much at least is clear,—the handworking wage-earners are no longer, as in the ancient world, a class of no account. That they have wrung so many great concessions from unwilling capitalists seems to me a proof that their freedom, even under medieval[1820] restrictions, had always in it something real, some quality that sharply distinguished it from ancient slavery. In ancient slavery I can see no germ out of which betterment of labour-conditions could conceivably arise. It simply had to die, and modern attempts to revive it have had to die also.

In the foregoing pages I have recognized two lines of distinction. One is that commonly admitted, the line that parts freeman from slave. The other is that between free wage-earner and slave. In looking back from modern circumstances to ancient, the latter is much the more important. For, now that slavery in the proper sense has been abolished by modern civilized peoples, the conditions of wage-earning stand out as presenting the most momentous issues of the present age. To the statesmen the questions raised are full of anxiety as to the probable influence of present policies on future wellbeing. A student of Greco-Roman civilization must ask himself whether modern labour-questions and their attempted solutions may not indirectly furnish help in appraising and judging the conditions of the past. Now it so happens that in the case of agriculture recent events in Russia possess very marked significance, and it is therefore hardly possible to leave them unnoticed here.

It seems to be established[1821] beyond reasonable doubt that the genuine and effective doctrine of Leninite Bolshevism, in its definition of the ‘working class,’ excludes the peasantry. They are not ‘proletarian.’ That is, the great majority of peasants have something. This each wants to keep, and if possible to augment. In short, they are Individualists. Now Bolshevism builds on dogmas of Marxian Socialism, however much it may warp their application, however widely it may depart from Marxian theory in its choice of methods. Therefore it sees in the peasants only a class of petty bourgeoisie with the anti-socialistic instincts of that hated class, and will spare no effort to exclude them from political power. It disfranchises employers, even though the work they do is productive and useful to society. We need go no further: these principles of the Bolshevik creed, be it prophetic vision or be it crazy fanaticism blind to the facts of human nature and devoid of all practical sense of proportion, are enough for my present purpose. It results from them that all wage-earning is wrong: no man has the right to employ another man for his own purposes: that the relation benefits both employer and employed, even if true, is a consideration[1822] wholly irrelevant. For it is promised that the new civilization, recast on the Bolshevik model, will leave no room for wage-service of one man to another.

I am not to criticize this scheme of social and economic life, but to look at it coolly as an illustrative fact. It is surely a significant thing that, while slavery and serfdom are now reckoned as virtually obsolete phenomena of the past, the old distinction, between the man who works himself for himself and the man who works for another, is still before us as the vital line of division in labour-questions. Bloodshed and torture as means of enforcing the dogma may be confined to Russia, but the distinction is at the bottom of industrial unrest all over the world. Most significant of all is the admission that peasant landholders are not a ‘proletariate.’ Of course they are not. But to philosophers and statesmen of antiquity they appeared as an all-important class, not only as producers of food but as a solid element of population, promoting the stability of state governments. This stability was favourable to continuity of policy and enabled all interests to thrive in peace. Have the development of machinery and transport in recent times so far altered the conditions of agriculture that this is no longer the case? In other words, is the agricultural labourer, the present wage-earner, to supersede the peasant landholder as the dominant figure of rustic life? Is the large-scale farmer to survive only as the impotent figurehead of rural enterprises? Is a political proletariate competent to regulate the conduct of an industry directly dependent on soil climate and seasons? Wherever man is in immediate contact with forces of nature, in farm-life as in seafaring, the bodily energies of many can only be effective through subordination to the mind of one. How far, under the modern factory system, where the mill goes on as usual in all weathers, direction by wage-earners may be a practicable proposition, I cannot tell. That such a plan would be a failure on a farm, I have no doubt whatever.

My general conclusion then is that the old distinction observable under Greco-Roman civilization was in itself a sound one. Yet it led to no lasting and satisfactory solution of agricultural labour-problems. Many causes no doubt contributed to this failure; but the lack of a satisfactory labour-system was probably the greatest. Neither slavery nor serfdom was capable of meeting the need, and the wage-earning system never grew so as efficiently to supersede them. Now, after centuries of the wage-system, we are uneasily asking ourselves whether modern civilization is gravely endangered through the failure of this system also. It seems that in agriculture at least there are two possible alternatives, either a final settlement of the wage-question on a footing satisfactory to the labourer, or a return to αὐτουργία. Probably neither of these will be found to exclude the other or to be equally applicable to the circumstances of all countries. That communal ownership and shifting tenure can be revived seems impossible under modern conditions, whatever some Socialists may fancy. On the other hand voluntary cooperation in marketing seems to have a great future before it. Of a movement in that direction I have found no traces among the ancients: but modern developments in the way of transport may remove many difficulties. At any rate it is in such efforts of adaptation and compromise that expert agriculturists seem to be looking for help. As to labour, slavery and serfdom being excluded from modern civilized states, the coming problem is how to secure the performance of agricultural work. The choice lies between attractive wage-conditions, appealing to individual interest, and the Socialist scheme of tasks carried out under official direction, assumed to be in the best interests of a whole community. Both plans offer a substitute for the crude compulsory methods vainly employed in the ancient world. Which plan is the more suited to the demands of human nature, whether self-disposal or communism is to be the dominant aim and note of society, coming generations must decide.