Whenever in Ireland there has been a revolt of labor it too often finds arrayed against it the press, the law, and the police. All the great powers are in entente. The press, without inquiry, begins a detestable cant about labor agitators misleading ignorant men. Every wild phrase uttered by an exasperated worker is quoted against the cause of labor, and its grievances are suppressed. We are told nothing about how the worker lives: what homes, what food, his wage will provide. The journalist holds up a moral umbrella, protecting society from the fiery hail of conscience. The baser sort of clergyman will take up the parable and begin advocating a servile peace, glibly misinterpreting the divine teaching of love to prove that the lamb should lie down inside the lion, and only so can it be saved soul and body, forgetful that the peace which was Christ's gift to humanity was the peace of God which passes all understanding, and that it was a spiritual quietude, and that on earth—the underworld—the gospel in realization was to bring not peace but a sword.
The law, assured of public opinion, then deals sternly with whatever unfortunate life is driven into its pens. I am putting very mildly the devilish reality, for society is so constituted that the public, kept in ignorance of the real facts, believes that it is acting rightly, and so the devil has conscience on his side and that divine power is turned to infernal uses. What can labor oppose to this federation of State and Church, of press and law, of capital and physical force to back capital, when it sets about its own liberation and to institute a new social order to replace autocracy in industry? Its allies are few. A rare thinker, scientist, literary man, artist or clergyman, impelled by hatred of what is ugly in life, will speak on its behalf, and may render some aid and help to tear holes in that moral shield held up by the press, and may here and there give to that blinded public a vision of the Hosts of the Lord arrayed against it. But the only real power the workers can truly rely on is their own. Nothing but a spiritual revolution or an economic revolution will bring other classes into comradeship with them. The ideal labor should set before itself is not a transitory improvement in its wage, because a wage war never truly or permanently improves the position of labor. This section or that may, relatively to its own past or the position of other workers, improve itself; but capital is like a ship which, however the tide rises or falls, floats upon it, and is not sunken more deeply in the water at high tide than at low tide. Whenever any burden is placed upon capital it immediately sets about unloading that burden on the public. Wages might be doubled by Act of Parliament, and the net result would be to double prices, if not to increase them still more. The more the autocrats of industry are federated the more easily can they unload on others any burden placed on them.
The value of money is simply what it will purchase at any time. If the rulers of industry can halve the purchasing power of money while doubling wages at the command of the State, logic leads us to assume that wages boards, arbitration boards and the like can only be transitory in their meliorating effect; and to pursue the attack on the autocrats of industry by the road of wages alone is to attack them where they are impregnable, and where, seeming to give way, they are all the while really losing nothing, and are only fixing the wage system more permanently on those who attack them. There are fiery spirits among the proletarians who hope that militant labor will at last bring about the social revolution, taking the earthly paradise by violence. They believe that if every worker dropped his tools and absolutely refused to work under the old system, it would be impossible to continue it. That is true, but those who advocate this policy slur over many difficulties, and the relative power of endurance of both parties. They do not, I think, take into account the immense power in the hands of those who uphold the present system. Those who might be expected to strike are not—at least in Ireland—a majority of the population. They would have far fewer material resources to fall back on than those others whose interests would lead them to preserve the present social order. It is clear, too, when we analyze the forces at the command of labor and capital, that the latter has attached to itself by the bonds of self-interest the scientific men—engineers, inventors, chemists, bacteriologists, designers, organizers, all the intellect of industry—without which, in alliance with itself, revolting labor would be unable to continue production as before. Labor so revolting might indeed for a time bring the work of the nation to a standstill; but unless it could by some means attract to itself men of the class described, it would not be able to take the helm of the ship of industry and guide it with knowledge as the holders of economic power have done in the past. A policy of emancipation should provide labor with a means of attracting to itself that kind of knowledge which is gained in universities, laboratories, colleges of science, and, above all, in the actual guidance of great industrial enterprises. In any trial of endurance those who start with the greatest intellectual, moral, and material resources will win.
I do not deny that the strike is a powerful weapon in the hand of labor, but it is one with which it is difficult to imagine labor dealing a knock-out blow to the present social order. I believe in an orderly evolution of society, at least in Ireland, and doubt whether by revolution people can be raised to an intelligence, a humanity, or a nobility of nature greater than they formerly possessed. Nobody can remain standing on tiptoe. After a little time disorder subsides and some strong man leads the inevitable reaction. In France people revolted against a decadent monarchy, and in a dozen years they had a new emperor. In England they beheaded a king as a protest against tyranny, and they got a dictator in his place who took little or no account of parliaments; and finally a second Charles, rather worse than the first, came to the throne. The everlasting battle between light and darkness goes on stubbornly all the time, and the gain of the Hosts of Light is inch by inch. Extraordinary efforts, impetuous charges, which seem to win for a moment, too often leave the attacking force tired and exhausted, and the forces of reaction set in and overwhelm them. I am the friend of revolt if people cannot stand the conditions they live under, and if they can see no other way. It is better to be men than slaves. The French Revolution was a tragic episode in history, but when people suffer intolerably and are insulted in their despair it is inevitable blood will be shed. One can only say with Whitman:
Pale, silent, stern, what could I say to that long-accrued retribution? Could I wish humanity different Could I wish the people made of wood and stone, or that there be no justice in destiny or time?
There is danger in revolution if the revolutionary spirit is much more advanced than the intellectual, and moral qualities which alone can secure the success of a revolt. These intellectual and moral qualities—the skill to organize, the wisdom to control large undertakings, are not natural gifts but the results of experience. They are evolutionary products. The emancipation of labor, I believe, will not be gained by revolution but by prolonged effort, continued month by month and year by year, in which first this thing is adventured, then that: each enterprise brings its own gifts of wisdom and experience, and there is no reaction, because, instead of the violent use of certain powers, the whole being is braced: experience, intellect, desire, all strong and working harmoniously, press forward and support each other, and no enterprise is undertaken where the intellect to carry it out is not present together with the desire. It requires great intellectual and moral qualities to bring about a revolution. A rage at present conditions is not enough.
Our farmers are already free. The problem with them is not now concerned with freedom, but how they may be brought into a solidarity with each other and the nation. To make our proletarians free and masters of their own energies, in unison with each other and the national being, is the most pressing labor of the many before us. Unless there be economic freedom there can be no other freedom. The right of no individual to subsistence should be at the good will of any other individual. More than mere comfort depends on it. There are eternal and august rights of the soul to be safeguarded, and the economic position of men should be protected by organization and democratic law. I have already discussed some of the avenues through which workers in our time have looked with hope. I have little belief that these roads lead anywhere but back to the old City of Slavery, however they may seem to curve away at the outset. The strike, on whatever scale, is no way to freedom, though the strike—or the threat of it—may bring wages nearer to subsistence level. The art of warfare is too much in the hands of specialists for trust to be placed in revolution. A machine-gun with a few experts behind it is worth a thousand revolutionary workers, however maddened they may be. Does political action, on which so many rely, promise more? I do not believe it does. I believe that to appeal to legislatures is to appeal to bodies dominated by those interested in maintaining the present social order, although they may act so as to redress the worst evils created by it. In Ireland, for this generation at least, it would be impossible to secure in a legislative assembly majorities representative of the class we wish to see emancipated. It may seem as if I had closed all the paths out of the social labyrinth; but the way to emancipation has, I think, already been surveyed by pioneers. A policy of social reconstruction is practical, and needs but steady persistence for its realization. That policy—I refer to co-operative action—has been adopted in various forms by workers in many countries; and what is needed here is to study and coordinate these applications of co-working, and to form a general staff of labor who will, on behalf of the workers, examine the weapons fashioned by their class elsewhere, and who will draw up a plan of campaign as the staff of an army do previous to military operations. It will be found that economic action along co-operative lines has, in one country, barriers placed before its expansion which could be set aside by supplementing this action by methods elaborated by the genius of workers elsewhere.
It is not my purpose here to repeat in detail methods of organization, partly technical, which can be found fully described in many admirable books, but rather to indicate the order of advance, the methods of coordination of these, and their final absorption and transformation in the national being. There is a great deal of ignorance about things essential to safe action. When men are filled with enthusiasm they are apt to apply their new principles rashly in schemes which are bound to fall, just as over-confident soldiers will in battle sometimes rush a position prematurely which they cannot hold, because the general line of their army has not advanced sufficiently to support them. Sacrifices are made with no permanent result, and the morale of the army is injured.
In the rural districts the advance must, in the nature of things, be from production to consumption, and with urban workers inversely from a control over distribution to a mastery over production. I have often wondered over the blindness of workers in towns in Ireland, who have made so little use in the economic struggle of the freedom they have to spend their wage where they choose. They speak of this struggle as the class war; but they carry on the conflict most energetically where it is most difficult for them to succeed, and hardly at all where it would be comparatively easy for them to weaken the resources of their antagonists. In warfare much use is made of flanking movements, which aim at cutting the enemy's communication with his base of supply. Frontal attacks are dangerous. It is equally true in economic warfare. The strike is a frontal attack, and those they fight are entrenched deeply with all the artillery of the State, the press, science, and wealth on their side. What would we think of an army which, at the close of each week's fighting, voluntarily surrendered to the enemy the ground, guns, ammunition, and prisoners captured through the previous six days? Yet this is what our workers do. The power opposed to them is mainly economic, though there is an intellectual basis for it also. But the wages of the workers, little for the individual, yet a large part of the national income if taken for the mass, goes back to strengthen the system they protest against through purchases of domestic requirements. The creation of co-operative stores ought to be the first constructive policy adopted by Irish labor. It ought to be as much a matter of class honor with them to be members of stores as to be in the trade union of their craft. The store may be regarded as the commissariat department of the army of labor. Many a strike has failed of its object, and the workers have gone back defeated, because their neglect of the commissariat made them unable to hold out for that last week when both sides are desperate and at the end of their resources. But it is not mainly as an aid to the strike that I advocate democratizing the distributive trade, but because control over distribution gives a large measure of control over production. The history of co-operative workshops indicates that these have rarely been successful unless worked in conjunction with distributive stores. The retail trader is not sympathetic with co-operative production. As the cat is akin to the tiger, so is the individual trader—no matter on how small a scale he operates—a kinsman of the great autocrats of industry, and he will sympathize with his economic kinsmen and will retail their goods in preference to those produced in co-operative workshops.
The control of agencies of distribution by the workers at a certain stage in their development enables them to start productive enterprises with more safety and less expense in regard to advertisement than the capitalist can. In fact the co-operative store, properly organized, creates a tied trade for the output of co-operative workshops. It is a source of financial aid to these, and will invest funds in them and assist trades unions gradually to transform themselves into co-operative guilds of producers which should be their ultimate ideal. As I shall show later on, the store will enable the urban worker to enter into intimate alliance with the rural producer. Their interests are really identical. In every town in Ireland efforts should be made to democratize the distributive agencies, and the workers will have many allies in this, driven by the increased cost of living to search out the most economical agencies of purchase. If the proletarians are not in a majority in Ireland—a nation where the farmers are the most numerous single class—they certainly form the majority in the cities; and the co-operative store, while admitting to membership all who will apply, ought to be and would be sympathetic with the efforts of labor to emancipate itself, and would be a powerful lever in its hands. As the stores increase in number, an analysis of their trade will reveal year by year in what directions co-operative production of particular articles may safely be attempted. More and more by this means the producing power and the capital at the disposal of the worker will be placed at the service of democracy. The first steps are the most difficult. In due time the workers will have educated a number of their members, and will have attached to themselves men of proved capacity to be the leaders in fresh enterprises, manufactures of one kind or another, democratic banking institutions, all supporting each other and leaning on each other and playing into each other's hands.
The extent to which this may be carried, and the opportunities for making Ireland a co-operative democracy, I shall presently explain. I do not regard any of these forms of co-operative organization as ideal or permanent. The co-operative movement must be regarded rather as a great turning movement on the part of humanity towards the ideal. The co-operative organizations now being formed in Ireland and over the world will, I am certain, persist and outlast this generation and the next, and will grow into vaster things than we dream of; but the really important change they will bring about in the minds of men will be psychological. Men will become habituated to the thought of common action for the common good. To get so far in civil life is a great step. Today our civil life is a tangle of petty personal interests and competitions. The co-operative movement is, as I have said, a vast turning movement of humanity heavenwards, or, at least, to bring them face round to the Delectable City. When this psychological change takes place the democratic associations—which have grown up haphazard as the workers found it easiest to create them—will be changed and remodeled by men who will have the mass of people behind them in their efforts to make a more majestic structure of society for the enlargement of the lives and spirits of men.
We have descended from the national soul to the material plane, and we must still continue here for a time, because the doctrine that a sane mind can only manifest through a sane body is as true in reference to the State as to the individual, and necessitates a study of social fabrics. The soul creates tendencies and habits in the body, and the body repeats these vibrations automatically and infects the soul again with its old desires. Our religious hatreds created sectarian organizations, and these react again in the national soul, which would, I believe, willingly pass away from that mood, but finds itself incarnated in organizations habituated to sectarian action, and its energies are turned into these hateful channels unwillingly. So a drunkard who now realizes that intemperance is rotting his nature is conquered by the appetites he set up in the past, and with his soul in rebellion he yet satisfies the craving in the body. The individualism in our economic life reacts on the national being, and prevents concerted action for the general good. We have yet to create harmony of purpose in our economic life, and to bring together interests long separated and unmindful of each other, and make them realize that their interests are identical. It is one of the commonplaces of economics that urban and rural interests are identical: but in truth the townsman and the countryman have always acted as if their interests were opposed, and they know very little of each other. I never like to let these commonplaces of economics pass my frontiers unless they give the countersign to the challenge for truth. People declare in the same way that the interests of labor and capital are identical, and implore them not to fight with one another. But the truth of that statement seems to me to depend largely on whether capital owns labor or labor owns capital. As an abstract proposition it is one of the economic formulae I would leave instructions at my frontiers to have detained until further inquiry as to its antecedents. All these statements may be true, but to make them operative, to give them a dynamic rather than a static character, we must convince people they are true by close argument and still more so by realistic illustration.
To bring about a high nobility in the national soul we must make harmony in its economic life, and the two main currents of economic energy—the agricultural and urban—must be made to flow so that their action will not defeat each other. Let us take the farmer first. How ought he to wish to see life in the towns develop? Should he wish for the triumph of labor or capital: the success of the co-operative movement, the triumph of the multiple shop or the private trader, of guilds of workers or autocrats of industry? Economic desires generally depend on the nature of the industry men are engaged in. The jeweler would probably desire the permanence of the social order which created most wealthy people who could afford to buy his wares. The farmer's industry, if we consider it closely, is the most democratic of any in its application to society. The produce of the farm, in its final distribution, is divided into portions more or less equal and conditioned in quantity by the digestive powers of an individual. The wealthiest millionaire cannot eat more bread, butter, meat, vegetables, or fruit than the manual laborer would eat if the latter could afford to get such things. In fact he would eat rather less, because the manual worker has a much better appetite, indeed requires more food. It appears to be the interest of the farmer to support any urban movement whose object it is to see that every worker in the towns is remunerated so that he, his wife, and his children can procure as much food as they require. Any underpaid worker in the towns is a wrong to the farmer—a willing customer who yet cannot buy. If there is, let us say, a sum of fifteen hundred pounds a week to be paid away in a town, it is to the interest of farmers that that sum should be paid to a thousand men at the rate of thirty shillings a week rather than to fifty men at thirty pounds a week. In the case of the workers a greater part of the money will be spent on food. But if fifty men have thirty pounds a week each, it will be spent to satisfy the appetites of a much smaller number of people. A larger proportion will be spent on furniture, pictures, motor-cars and what not. It may be spent so as to give some kind of employment, but it will not be a division of the money so much to the interests of the farmer. However we analyze the problem it appears to be to the farmer's interests to support democratic movements in the cities, certainly up to the point where every worker in the towns has a wage which enables himself and his family to eat all they require for health. It is also to the interests of farmers to support any system of distribution of goods which eliminates the element of profit in the sale. After the farmer gets his price it is to his interests that food should be increased in cost as little as possible when the article is transferred to the consumer, because if farm produce has to bear too many profits it will be expensive for the consumer, and there will be a lessened demand. So associations like the co-operative stores, which aim at the elimination of the element of profit in distribution, should be approved of by the farmers.
Now we come to the townsman again. Is it his interest to support the farmers in his own country or to regard the world as his farm? The argument on the economic side is not so clear, but it is, I think, just as sound. If agriculture is neglected in any country the rural population pour into the towns. The country becomes a fountain of blackleg labor. Rural labor has no traditions of trade unionism, and takes any work at any price. There are fewer people engaged in producing food, and its cost rises. Food must be imported from abroad; and there is national insecurity, as in times of war their is always the danger of the trade routes overseas being blocked by an enemy, and this again has to be provided against by heavy expenditure for militarist purposes. The farther away an army is from its base the more insecure is its position, and the same thing is true in the industrial life of nations. International trade there must always be. It is one of the means by which the larger solidarity of humanity is to be achieved; but that will never come about until there is a nobler and more human life within the states, and we must begin by perfecting national life before we consider empires and world federations. So in this essay only the national being is considered.
I desire to unite countryman and townsman in one movement, and to make the co-operative principle the basis of a national civilization. How are we to prevent them fighting the old battle between producer and consumer? I think that this can best be brought about by co-operative federations, which will act for both in manufacture, purchase, and sale, and with which both rural and urban associations will find it to their interest to be affiliated. Now the townsman cannot to any extent supply food for his stores by buying farms. To control agricultural production in that way would necessitate a financial operation which the State would shrink from, and which it would be impossible for urban cooperators to finance. We had better make up our minds to let farmers be syndicalists, controlling entirely the processes of agricultural production themselves. They will do it better than the townsman could, more efficiently and more economically. They will never be able, with the world in competition, to put up prices artificially. How can the two main divisions of national life be brought together in a national solidarity? We can find an answer if we remember that farmers are not only producers but consumers. They do not go about naked in the fields. They require clothes, furniture, tea, coffee, sugar, oil, soap, candles, pots and pans—in fact the farmer's wife needs nearly all the things the townsman's wife needs, except that she purchases a little less food. But even here modern conditions are driving the farmer to buy food in the shops rather than to produce it for himself on the farm. Country bread is made in the bakery more and more. Butter, cheese, and bacon are made in factories, and the farmer's tendency is to buy what bread, bacon, and butter he requires, selling the milk to be made into butter to a creamery, the grain to make the bread to a miller, and the pigs to a factory. Co-operative distribution would be as advantageous to the country as in the town. Already in Ireland a considerable number of farmers' societies are enlarging their objects, and are turning what originally were purely agricultural associations into general purposes societies, where the farmer's wife can purchase her domestic requirements as well as her man his machinery, fertilizers, feeding-stuffs, and seeds. It would be to the interest of rural societies to deal with co-operative wholesales just as much as it is in the interest of urban stores to do so. It would be to their interest to take shares in these wholesales and productive federations, and see that they cater for the farmer's interests as much as for the townsman's.
The urban co-operators, on their side, will see the opportunities for productive co-operation the union of rural and urban movements would create. They naturally will desire to employ as many people as possible in co-operative production. Farmers are surrounded by rings of all kinds: machinery manufacturers who will not sell to their societies, manure manufacturers' alliances who keep up prices. It is a great industry, this of supplying the farmer with his fertilizers, feeding-stuffs, cake, machinery. These rural co-operative societies are increasing in number year by year. Farmers want clothes, hats, and boots: and the necessary machinery for their industry is almost entirely of urban manufacture—ploughs, binders, separators, harrows, and many other implements of tillage. It is an immense industry and yet to be co-operatively exploited. In the towns some progress has been made in distribution. But a nation depends upon its wealth producers and not upon its consumers. Co-operators might double, treble, or quadruple the distributive trade, and still occupy only a very secondary position in national life unless they enter more largely upon production. We will never make the co-operative idea the fundamental one in the civilization of Ireland until we employ a very large part of the population in production. Now we have at present, thanks to the energy of the pioneers of agricultural co-operation, a new market opening in the country for things which the townsman can produce. Does not this suggest new productive urban enterprises? Does it not favor an evolution of manufacturing industry, so that democratic control may finally replace the autocratic control of the capitalist? The trades unions cannot do this alone by following up any of their traditional policies. They cannot go into trade on their own account with any guarantee of success unless they are associated with agencies of distribution. But if co-operators—urban and rural—through their federations invade more and more the field of production they will draw to themselves the hearts and hopes of the workers and idealists in the nation. People are really more concerned about the making of an income than about the spending of it. It is a necessity of our policy if it is to bring about the co-operative commonwealth, that co-operators must adventure much more largely into production than they have hitherto done.
Now let us see what we have come to. There is a country movement which is not merely one for agricultural production. It is rapidly taking up the distribution of goods. There is an urban movement not merely concerned with distribution but entering upon production. They can be brought into harmony if the same federations act for both branches of the movement. The meeting-place of the two armies should be there. If this policy is adopted there will gradually grow-up that unity of purpose between country and urban workers which is the psychological basis and necessary precedent for national action for the common good. The policy of identity of interest must be real, and it can only be real when the identity of interest is obvious, and it can only be made obvious when the symbols of that unity and identity are visible day by day in buildings and manufactures, things which are handled and seen, and in transactions which daily bring that unity to mind. The old poetic ideal of a United Ireland was and could only be a geographical expression, and not a human reality, so long as men were individualist in economics and were competing and struggling with each other for mastery.
By the co-operative commonwealth more is meant than a series of organizations for economic purposes. We hope to create finally, by the close texture of our organizations, that vivid sense of the identity of interest of the people in this island which is the basis of citizenship, and without which there can be no noble national life. Our great nation-states have grown so large, so myriad are their populations, so complicated are their interests, that most people in them really feel no sense of brotherhood with each other. We have yet to create inside our great nation-states social and economic organizations, which will make this identity of interest real and evident, and not seem merely a metaphor, as it does to most people today. The more the co-operative movement does this for its members, the more points of contact they find in it, the more will we tend to make out of it and its branches real social organisms, which will become as closely knit psychically as physically the cells in a human body are knit together. Our Irish diversities of interest have made us world-famous; but such industrial and agricultural organizations would swallow up these antagonisms, as the serpents created by the black art of the Egyptian magicians were swallowed up by the rod Aaron cast on the floor, and which was made animate by the white magic of the Lord.
It will appear to the idealist who has contemplated the heavens more closely than the earth that the policy I advocate is one which only tardily could be put into operation, and would be paltry and inadequate as a basis for society. The idealist with the Golden Age already in his heart believes he has only to erect the Golden Banner and display it for multitudes to array themselves beneath its folds; therefore he advocates not, as I do, a way to the life, but the life itself. I am sympathetic with idealists in a hurry, but I do not think the world can be changed suddenly by some heavenly alchemy, as St. Paul was smitten by a light from the overworld. Such light from heaven is vouchsafed to individuals, but never to nations, who progress by an orderly evolution in society. Though the heart in us cries out continually, "Oh, hurry, hurry to the Golden Age," though we think of revolutions, we know that the patient marshalling of human forces is wisdom. We have to devise ways and means and light every step clearly before the nation will leave its footing in some safe if unattractive locality to plant itself elsewhere. The individual may be reckless. The race never can be so, for it carries too great a burden and too high destinies, and it is only when the gods wish to destroy or chastise a race that they first make it mad. Not by revolutions can humanity be perfected. I might quote from an old oracle, "The gods are never so turned away from man as when he ascends to them by disorderly methods." Our spirits may live in the Golden Age, but our bodily life moves on slow feet, and needs the lantern on the path and the staff struck carefully into the darkness before us to see that the path beyond is not a morass, and the light not a will o' the wisp.
Other critics may say I would destroy the variety of civilization by the inflexible application of a single idea. Well, I realize that the net which is spread for Leviathan will not capture all the creatures of the deep; and the complexity of human nature is such that it is impossible to imagine a policy, however fitting in certain spheres of human activity, which could be applied to the whole of life. What I think we should aim at is making the co-operative idea fundamental in Irish life. But to say fundamental is not to say absolute. Always there will be enter rising persons—men of creative minds—who will break away from the mass and who will insist, perhaps rightly, on an autocratic control of the enterprises they found, which were made possible alone by their genius, and which would not succeed unless every worker in the enterprise was malleable by their will. It is unlikely that State action will cease, or that any Government we may have will not respond to the appeal of the people to do this, that, or the other for them which they are too indolent to do for themselves, or which by the nature of things only governments can undertake. For a principle to be fundamental in a country does not mean that it must be absolute. I hope society in Ireland will be organized that the idea of democratic control of its economic life will so pervade Irish thought that it will be in the body politic what the spinal column is to the body—the pillar on which it rests, the strongest single factor in the body. Another illustration may make still clearer my meaning. In a red sunsetting the glow is so powerful that green hills, white houses, and blue waters, touched by its light, assume a ruddy color, partly a local color, and partly a reflected light from the sun. Now in the same way, what is most powerful in society multiplies images and shadows of itself, and produces harmonies with itself which are yet not identities. It is by a predominating idea that nations achieve the practical unity of their citizens, and national progress becomes possible. In the future structure of society I have no doubt there will be elements to which the socialist, the syndicalist, the capitalist, and the individualist will have contributed. By degrees it will be discovered what enterprises are best directed by the State, by municipalities, by groups, or by individuals. But if the idea of democratic control is predominant, those enterprises which are otherwise directed will yet meet the prevalent mood by adopting the ideas of the treatment of the workers enforced in democratically controlled enterprises, and will in every respect, except control, make their standards equal. All the needles of being point to the centres where power is most manifested. The effects of the French revolution—a democratic upheaval—invaded men's minds everywhere. Even the autocratically ruled States, hitherto careless about the people in their underworlds, had to make advances to democracy, and give it some measure of the justice democracy threatened to deal to itself. Without demanding absolutism I do desire a predominant democratic character in our national enterprises, rather than a confused muddle or struggle of interests where nothing really emerges except the egoism of those who struggle.
It will be noticed that in all that has preceded I have referred little to action by government, though it is on governments that democracies over the world are now fixing all their hopes. They believe the State is the right agency to bring about reforms and changes in society. And I must here explain why I do not share their hopes. My distrust of the State in economic reform is based on the belief that governments in great nation-states, even representative governments, are not malleable by the general will. They are too easily dominated by the holders of economic power, are, in fact, always dominated by aristocracies with land or by the aristocracies of wealth. It is the hand at the helm guides the ship. The larger the State is the more easily do the holders of economic power gain political power. The theory of representative government held good in practice, I think, so long as parliaments were engaged in formulating general rights, the right, for example, of the individual to think or profess any religion he pleased; his right not to be deprived of liberty or life without open trial by his fellow-citizens. So long as legislatures were affirming or maintaining these rights, which rich and poor equally desired, they were justified. But when legislatures began to intervene in economic matters, in the struggles between rich and poor, between capital and labor, it became at once apparent the holders of economic power had also political power; and that the institution which operated fairly where universal rights were considered did not operate fairly when there was a conflict between particular interests.
The jury of the nation was found to be packed. At least nine-tenths of the population in Great Britain, for example, belong to the wage-earning class. At least nine-tenths of the members of legislatures belong to the classes possessing land or capital. Now, why any member of the wage-earning class should look with hope to such assemblies I cannot understand. Their ideal is, or should be, economic freedom, together with democratic control of industries, an ideal in every way opposed to the ideal of the majority of the members of the legislatures. The fiction that representative assemblies will work for the general good is proclaimed with enthusiasm; but the moment we examine their actions we see it is not so, and we discover the cause. Where the nation is capitalist and capitalism is the dominant economic factor, legislatures invariably act to uphold it, and legislation tends to fix the system more securely. We see in Great Britain that wage-earners are now openly regarded by the legislatures as a class who must not be allowed the same freedom in life as the wealthy. They must be registered, inspected, and controlled in a way which the wealthy would bitterly resent if the legislation referred to themselves. After economic inferiority has been enforced on them by capital, the stigma of human inferiority is attached to the wage-earners by the legislature. But I must not be led away from my theme by the bitter reflections which arise in one who lives in the Iron Age and knows it is Iron, who feels at times like the lost wanderer on trackless fields of ice, which never melt and will not until earth turns from its axis.
I wish to see society organized so that it shall be malleable to the general will. But political and economic progress are obstructed because existing political and economic organizations are almost entirely unmalleable by the general will. Public opinion does not control the press. The press, capitalistically controlled, creates public opinion. Our legislators have grown so secure that they confess openly they have passed measures which they knew would be hateful to the majority of citizens, and which, if they had been voted on, would never have been passed. The theory of representative government has broken down. To tell the truth, the life of the nation is so complicated that it is difficult for the private citizen to have any intelligent opinion about national policies, and we can hardly blame the politician for despising the judgment of the private citizen. Government departments are still less malleable by public opinion than the legislature. For an individual to attack the policy of a Government department is almost as hopeless a proceeding as if a laborer were to take pickaxe and shovel and determine to level a mountain which obstructed his view. Yet Government departments are supposed to be under popular control. The Castle in Ireland, theoretically, was under popular control, but it was adamantine in policy. If the cant about popular control of legislation and Government departments is obviously untrue, how much more is it in regard to public services like railways, gas works, mines, the distribution of goods, manufacture, purchase and sale, which are almost entirely under private control and where public interference is bitterly resented and effectively opposed. What chance has the individual who is aggrieved against the great carrying companies? To come lower down, let us take the farmer in the fairs. What way has he of influencing the jobbers and dealers to act honestly by him—they who have formed rings to keep down the prices of cattle? Are they malleable to public opinion? The farmers who have waited all day through a fair know they are not.
When we consider the agencies through which people buy we find the same thing. The increase of multiple shops, combines, and rings makes the use of the limited power a man had to affect a dealer by transferring his custom to another merchant to dwindle yearly. Everywhere we turn we find this adamantine front presented by the legislature, the State departments, by the agencies of production, distribution, or credit, and it is the undemocratic organization of society which is responsible for nine-tenths of our social troubles. All the vested interests backed up by economic and political power conflict with the public welfare, and the general will, which intends the good of all, can act no more than a paralyzed cripple can walk. We would all choose the physique of the athlete, with his swift, unfettered, easy movements, rather than the body of the cripple if we could, and we have this choice before us in Ireland.
If we concentrate our efforts mainly on voluntary action, striving to make the co-operative spirit predominant, the general will would manifest itself through organizations malleable to that will, flexible and readily adjusting themselves to the desires of the community. To effect reforms we have not first to labor at the gigantic task of affecting national opinion and securing the majorities necessary for national action. In any district a hundred or two hundred men can at any time form co-operative societies for production, purchase, sale, or credit, and can link themselves by federation with other organizations like their own to secure greater strength and economic efficiency. By following this policy steadily we simplify our economic system, and reduce to fewer factors the forces in conflict in society. We beget the predominance of one principle, and enable that general will for good, which Rousseau theorized about, to find agencies through which it can manifest freely, so changing society from the static condition begot by conflict and obstruction to a dynamic condition where energies and desires manifest freely.
The general will, as Rousseau demonstrated, always intends the good, and if permitted to act would act in a large and noble way. The change from static to dynamic, from fixed forms to fluid forms, has been coming swiftly over the world owing to the liberation of thought, and this in spite of the obstruction of a society organized, I might almost say, with egomania as the predominant psychological factor. The ancient conception of Nature as a manifestation of spirit is incarnating anew in the minds of modern thinkers, and Nature is not conceived of as material, but as force and continual motion; and they are trying to identify human will with this arcane energy, and let the forces of Nature have freer play in humanity. We begin to catch glimpses of civilizations as far exceeding ours as ours surpasses society in the Stone Age. In all our democratic movements, in these efforts towards the harmonious fusion of human forces, humanity is obscurely intent on mightier collective exploits than anything conceived of before. The nature of these energies manifesting in humanity I shall try to indicate later on. But to let the general will have free play ought to be the aim of those who wish to build up national organizations for whatever purpose; and to let the general will have free play we require something better than the English invention of representative government, which, as it exists at present, is simply a device to enable all kinds of compromises to be made on matters where there should be no compromise, as if right and wrong could come to an agreement honestly to let things be partly right and partly wrong. We are importing into Ireland some political machinery of this antiquated pattern. I have written the foregoing because I dread Irish people becoming slaves of this machine. I fear the importers of this machinery will desire to make it do things it can only do badly, and will set it to work with the ferocity of the new broom and will make it an obstruction, so that the real genius of the Irish people will be unable freely to manifest itself. The less we rely on this machinery at present, and the more we desire a machinery of progress, at once flexible and efficient, the better will it be for us later on. What must be embodied in State action is the national will and the national soul, and until that giant being is manifested it is dangerous to let the pygmies set powers in motion which may enchain us for centuries to come.