💾 Archived View for library.inu.red › file › edward-carpenter-non-governmental-society.gmi captured on 2023-01-29 at 09:29:23. Gemini links have been rewritten to link to archived content
-=-=-=-=-=-=-
Title: Non-Governmental Society Author: Edward Carpenter Date: 1917 Language: en Topics: anti-work, libertarian socialist Source: Retrieved o 27 March 2011 from http://libertarian-labyrinth.org/carpenter/NonGovernmental.pdf Notes: Originally published in “Towards Industrial Freedom” (London: G. Allen & Unwin, 1917)
Most people agree nowadays in the view that the growth of bureaucracy
and officialism in the modern State is a serious evil, and that the
extension of Government interference and the multiplication of Laws are
a great danger. We all know that the institution of the Law and the
Courts actually creates and gives rise to huge masses of evil — bribery,
blackmail, perjury, spying and lying, wrongful accusation, useless and
deliberate suffering and cruelty; that it publicly sanctions and
organises violence, even in extreme forms; that it quite directly and
deliberately supports vast and obvious wrongs in Society — as for
instance land-monopoly; that it is absurd and self-contradictory in much
of its theory and practice; that (as Herbert Spencer so frequently
insists) it paralyses the folk that submit or trust to it; and finally
that it is to-day for the most part so antiquated and out of date that
(even if this were thought desirable) it might well seem impracticable
to patch it up for real human use.
Yet in these cases — though we admit that the things are evil — our
defence usually is that they carry some compensations with them, and
that anyhow they are necessary evils, which we cannot dispense with, and
without which disorder, violence and social disruption would ensue.
It may be worth while to consider this defence more closely; for
curiously enough the history of nations and peoples is, on the whole, to
contrary effect. Not only have all the early tribes of the world got on
and cohered together in order and social amity without any rigid and
ponderous system of laws; but even among the peasant peoples of to-day —
like the Irish or the Swedes or the Swiss or the Chinese — where they
are still living in moderately primitive conditions, we find the same
thing. Governmental law and its operations and institutions occupy but a
very small part in their lives. It is true that Custom is strong among
all primitive folk, no doubt as a very necessary backbone or framework
to their society; but Custom is a very different thing from Law. It is
law in its inception — when it is yet in a tentative, rudimentary
condition; and however harsh, rigid, or senseless the customs of many
savage tribes may be, they are yet easier to alter than when they have
become ossified into written forms, with their huge weight of age and
ceremony, and the authority of armed men to enforce them. [1]
That human societies can subsist without a considerable amount of Custom
we may well doubt; but that they can subsist and maintain themselves in
good order and vitality without written law and its institutions there
is no reason at all to doubt. And when Custom, among a reasonable and
moderately advanced people, leaving behind the barbarities of the savage
age, takes on a gentler form, and while exercising considerable pressure
on individuals is itself fairly plastic and adaptable to the general
movements of society — we seem to see in such pressure a force as far
superior to Law as life itself is superior to mere mechanism. A vast
amount of our social life to-day in all departments of its activity is
ruled by Custom, and some of these customs, like those of “society” and
fashion, have a very powerful sway. There is no law, for instance, for
the recovery of betting debts, yet their non-payment is extremely rare.
Of course, accustomed as we are to “call the policeman” on every
emergency, we find it hard to imagine life without this institution; and
our life being largely founded on it, it is so far necessary, and its
removal would cause dislocation. That is, since without the police the
present spoliation of the poor would not be possible, and the enormous
existing inequalities of wealth and poverty could never have been heaped
up — without them the society founded on these artificial inequalities
could not well be maintained. [2] But to say that because a certain
institution is necessary to build up and retain society in a certain
abnormal and unnatural form, therefore society cannot exist without that
institution, is the same as to say that because to a Chinese woman of
rank foot-bandages are necessary, therefore women generally cannot exist
without foot-bandages. We have to realise that our present social forms
are as ugly and inhuman as a club foot; and then we shall begin to
realise how little necessary are these institutions, like law and
police, whose chief concern and office is to retain and defend these
forms.
The chief difficulty, then, which arises in people’s minds at the
thought of a free nongovernmental society does not concern its
desirability — they are agreed as a rule that it would be desirable —
but concerns its practicability. And much of this difficulty is derived
from the society of the present. People see, in fact, that an
internecine competition for subsistence is the ruling force of life
to-day, and the chief incentive to production, and they infer that
without government society would dissolve into a mere chaos of plunder
on the one hand and of laziness on the other. [3] It is this difficulty
which has first to be removed.
Though it seems a hard thing to say, the outer life of society to-day is
animated first and foremost by Fear. From the wretched wage-slave who
rises before the break of day, hurries through squalid streets to the
dismal sound of the “hummer,” engages for nine, ten, or twelve hours,
and for a pittance wage, in monotonous work which affords him no
interest, no pleasure; who returns home to find his children gone to
bed, has his supper, and, worn out and weary, soon retires himself, only
to rise again in the morning and pursue the same deadly round; and who
leads a life thus monotonous, inhuman, and devoid of all dignity and
reality, simply because he is hounded to it by the dread of starvation;
— to the big commercial man, who, knowing that his wealth has come to
him through speculation and the turns and twists of the market, fears
that it may at any moment take to itself wings by the same means; who
feels that the more wealth he has, the more ways there are in which he
may lose it, the more cares and anxieties belonging to it; and who to
continually make his position secure is, or thinks himself, forced to
stoop to all sorts of mean and dirty tricks; — over the great mass of
people the same demon spreads its dusky wings. Feverish anxiety is the
keynote of their lives. There is no room for natural gladness or
buoyancy of spirits. You may walk the streets of our great cities, but
you will hear no one singing — except for coppers; hardly a plowboy
to-day whistles in the furrow, and in almost every factory (this is a
fact) if a workman sang at his work he would be “sacked.” We are like
shipwrecked folk clambering up a cliff. The waves are raging below. Each
one clings by handhold or foothold where he may, and in the panic if he
push his neighbor from a point of vantage, it is to be regretted
certainly, but it cannot be helped.
But such a state of affairs is not normal. Mowing that the struggle for
existence in some degree or form is unavoidable, history still, except
at rare crises, presents us with no such spectacle of widespread
anxiety; the study of native races whom we might consider in a state of
destitution — reveals no such dominion of dread. I want the reader to
imagine for a moment this burden of fear lifted off the hearts of a
whole people, and the result.
Let us imagine for a moment that some good fairy — some transcendental
Chancellor of the Exchequer — with a stroke of his wand, has assured to
us all not only an old age pension, but a decent provision for all our
days of the actual necessaries of life (to go no further than that); so
that for the future no man could feel any serious or grinding anxiety
for his own material safety, or that of his family. What would be the
result on our actions?
Perhaps, as many would maintain, nine-tenths of the population would
say, “I’m blessed if I’ll ever do another stroke of work.” Like the
organ-grinder who came into a little fortune, and who forthwith picked
up an axe and fell upon his organ, shouting as he hacked it to pieces,
“You shall neffer play dat tam Alabama Coon any more,” we should feel so
sick of our present jobs that we should want to turn our backs on them
for ever. Very likely, I should say — and rightly enough too; for “work”
in the present day is done under such degrading and miserable conditions
by the vast majority of the population that the very best and most manly
thing would be to refuse to continue doing it.
But let us suppose, since a bare living has been assured to us, and we
are in no danger of actual starvation, that we all take a good long
holiday, and abstain religiously from doing anything. Suppose that we
simply twirl our thumbs in idleness for two, three, four, or six months.
Still, is it not obvious that at the end of that time nine-tenths of the
population would find sheer idleness appallingly dreary, and that they
would set themselves to work at some thing or other to produce comforts
or conveniences rising above the level of sheer necessity — objects of
use or beauty, either for themselves, or for their families and
neighbors, or even conceivably for society at large; that, in fact, a
spontaneous and free production of goods would spring up, followed of
course by a spontaneous and free exchange — a self-supporting society,
based not on individual dread and anxiety, but on the common fullness of
life and energy?
That people relieved from care do spontaneously set themselves to work
is sufficiently shown by the case of the well-to-do classes today. For
these people, though having everything provided for them, and not merely
the bare necessaries which we have supposed, exhibit the most
extraordinary and feverish energy in seeking employment. A few decades
of years have been quite sufficient to make them feel the utter failure
of picnics as an object in life; and now we are flooded with
philanthropic and benevolent societies, leagues, charity organisations,
art missions to the poor, vigilance crusades, and other activities,
which are simply the expression of the natural energies of the human
being seeking an outlet in social usefulness. It is, of course, to be
regretted that owing to the very imperfect education of this class their
ideas and their capacities of social usefulness should be so limited.
However, this is a defect which will no doubt be remedied in the future.
All that concerns us here is to see that since the rich, though in many
ways ill-adapted by training and tradition, do spontaneously take up a
life of this kind, there is nothing extravagant in supposing that the
average man, surrounded by so many unfulfilled needs, might do the same.
And if any one still doubts let him consider the thousands in our large
towns to-day who would give their ears to be able to get out and work on
the land — not so much from any prospect of making a fortune that way,
as from mere love of the life; or who in their spare time cultivate
gardens or plots or allotments as a hobby; or the thousands who when the
regular day’s work is over start some fresh little occupation of their
own — some cabinet-making, woodturning, ornamental iron-work or whatnot;
the scores of thousands, in fact, that there are of natural gardeners,
cabinet-makers, iron-workers, and so forth; and then think how if they
were free these folk would sort themselves spontaneously to the work
they delighted in.
Thus it appears to be at least conceivable that a people not hounded on
by compulsion nor kept in subjection by sheer authority, would set
itself spontaneously to produce the things which it prized. It does not,
of course, at once follow that the result should be perfect order and
harmony. But there are a few considerations in the positive direction
which I may introduce here.
In the first place, each person would be guided in the selection of his
occupation by his own taste and skill, or at any rate would be guided by
these to a greater extent than he is to-day; and on the whole would be
more likely to find the work for which he was fitted than he is now. The
increase in effective output and vitality from this cause alone would be
great. While the immense variety of taste and skill in human beings
would lead to a corresponding variety of spontaneous products.
In the second place, the work done would be useful. It is certain that
no man would freely set himself to dig a hole, only to fill it up again
— though it is equally certain that a vast amount of the work done
to-day is no more useful than that. If a man were a cabinet-maker and
made a chest of drawers, either for himself or a neighbor, he would make
it so that the drawers would open and shut; but nine-tenths of the
chests made on commercial principles are such that the drawers will
neither open nor shut. They are not meant to be useful; they are meant
to have the semblance of being useful; but they are really made to sell.
To sell, and by selling yield a profit. And for that purpose they are
better adapted if, appearing useful, they turn out really useless, for
then the buyer must come again, and so yield another profit to the
manufacturer and the merchant. The waste to the community to-day arising
from causes of this kind is enormous; but it is of no moment as long as
there is profit to a certain class.
Work in a free society would be done because it was useful. It is
curious, when you come to think of it, that there is no other
conceivable reason why work should be done. And of course I here include
what is beautiful under the term useful, — as there is no reason why one
should separate what satisfies one human need, like the need of beauty,
from another human need, like the need of food. I say the idea of work
implies that it is undertaken because the product itself satisfies some
human need. But strangely enough in Commerce that is not so. The work is
undertaken in order that the product may sell, and so yield a profit;
that is all. It is of no moment what the product is, or whether bad or
good, as long as it fulfils this one condition. And so the whole spirit
of life and industry in the other society would be so utterly different
from that of the present, that it is really difficult for us to compare
the results. But it is not difficult to see that if on the principles of
freedom there was not so much produced in mere quantity, and folk did
not (as may indeed be hoped) work so many hours a day as now, still, the
goods turned out being sincere and genuine, there would really be far
more value shown in a year than on the strictly commercial system.
In the third place, it follows — as William Morris so constantly
maintained — that “work” in the new sense would be a pleasure — one of
the greatest pleasures undoubtedly of life; and this one fact would
transform its whole character. We cannot say that now. How many are
there who take real pleasure and satisfaction in their daily labor? Are
they, in each township, to be counted on the fingers? But what is the
good of life if its chief element, and that which must always be its
chief element, is odious? No, the only true economy is to arrange so
that your daily labor shall be itself a joy. Then, and then only, are
you on the safe side of life. And, your work being such, its product is
sure to become beautiful; that painful distinction between the beautiful
and the useful dies out, and everything made is an artistic product. Art
becomes conterminous with life.
Thus it will be observed that whereas the present society is founded on
a law-enforced system of Private Property, in which, almost necessarily,
the covetous hard type of man becomes the large proprietor, and
(supported by law and government) is enabled to prey upon the small one;
and whereas the result of this arrangement is a bitter and continuous
struggle for possession, in which the motive to activity is mainly Fear;
we, on the contrary, are disentangling a conception of a society in
which Private Property is supported by no apparatus of armed authority,
but as far as it exists is a perfectly spontaneous arrangement, in which
the main motives to activity are neither Fear nor greed of Gain, but
rather Community of life and Interest in life — in which, in fact, you
undertake work because you like the work because you feel that you can
do it, and because you know that the product will be useful, either to
yourself or some one else!
How Utopian it all sounds! How absurdly simple and simple-minded — to
work because you like the work and desire the product. How delightful if
it could be realised, but, of course, how “unpractical” and impossible.
Yet is it really impossible? From Solomon to Dr. Watts we have been
advised to go to the Ant and the Bee for instruction, and lo! they are
unpractical and Utopian too. Can anything be more foolish than the
conduct of these little creatures, any one of whom will at any moment
face death in defence of his tribe while the Bee is absolutely so
ignorant and senseless, that instead of storing up the honey that it has
gathered in a little cell of its own, with a nice lock and key, it
positively puts it in the common cells, and cannot distinguish it from
the stores of the others. Foolish little Bee, the day will surely come
when you will bitterly rue your “unthrifty” conduct, and you will find
yourself starving while your fellow-tribesmen are consuming the fruits
of your labor.
And the human body itself, that marvelous epitome and mirror of the
universe, how about that? Is it not Utopian too? It is composed of a
myriad cells, members, organs, compacted into a living unity. A healthy
body is the most perfect society conceivable. What does the hand say
when a piece of work is demanded of it? Does it bargain first for what
reward it is to receive, and refuse to move until it has secured
satisfactory terms, or the foot decline to take us on a journey till it
knows what special gain is to accrue to it thereby? Mot so; but each
limb and cell does the work which is before it to do, and (such is the
Utopian law) the fact of its doing the work causes the circulation to
flow to it, and it is nourished and fed in proportion to its service.
And we have to ask whether the same may not be the law of a healthy
human society? Whether the fact of a member doing service ‘however
humble) to the community would not be quite sufficient to ensure his
provision by the rest with all that he might need? Whether the community
would think of allowing such an one to starve any more than a man would
think of allowing his least finger to pine away and die? Whether it is
not possible that men would cease to feel any anxiety about the “reward
of their labor”; that they would think first of their work and the
pleasure they had in doing it, and would not doubt that the reward would
follow?
For indeed the instinct to do anything which is obviously before you to
do, which is wanted, and which you can do, is very strong in human
nature. Even children, those rudimentary savages, are often extremely
proud to be “useful,” and it is conceivable that we might be sensible
enough, instead of urging them as we do now to “get on,” to make money,
to beat their fellows in the race of life, and by climbing on other
folk’s heads to ultimately reach a position where they would have to
work no longer, — that we might teach them how when they grew up they
would find themselves members of a self- respecting society which, while
it provided them gratis with all they might need, would naturally expect
them in honor to render some service in return. Even small children
could understand that. Is it quite inconceivable that a society of grown
men and women might act up to it?
But it is really absurd to argue about the possibility of these things
in human society, when we have so many actual examples of them before
our eyes. Herman Melville, in that charming book Typee, describes the
Marquesas Islanders of the Pacific, among whom he lived for some time
during the year 1846. He says: “During the time I lived among the Typees
no one was ever put upon his trial for any offence against the public.
To all appearances there were no courts of law or equity. There was no
municipal police for the purposes of apprehending vagrants or disorderly
characters. In short, there were no legal provisions whatever for the
well-being and conservation of society, the enlightened end of civilised
legislation.” Nevertheless, the whole book is a eulogy of the social
arrangements he met with, and with almost a fervor of romance in its
tone; and yet, like all his description of the natives of the Pacific
Islands, undoubtedly accurate, and well corroborated by the travelers of
the period. An easy communism prevailed. When a good haul of fish was
made, those who took part in it did not keep the booty to themselves,
but parceled it out, and sent it throughout the tribe, retaining only
their proportionate share. When one family required a new cabin, the
others would come and help to build it. He describes such an occasion,
when, “at least a hundred of the natives were bringing materials to the
ground, some carrying in their hands one or two of the canes which were
to form the sides, others slender rods of hibiscus, strung with palmetto
leaves, for the roof. Every one contributed something to the work; and
by the united but easy labors of all the entire work was completed
before sunset.”
Similar communistic habits prevail, of course, through a vast number of
savage tribes, and indeed almost anywhere that the distinctively
commercial civilisation has not set its mark. They may be found close at
home, as in the little primitive island of St. Kilda, in the Hebrides,
where exactly the same customs of sharing the hauls of fish or the
labors of housebuilding exist to-day, [4] which Melville describes in
Typee; and they may be found all along the edges of our: civilization in
the harvesting and house-warming “bees” of the backwoods and outlying
farm populations. And we may fairly ask, not whether such social habits
are possible, but whether they are not in the end the only possible
form; for surely it is useless and absurd to call these modern hordes of
people, struggling with each other for the means of subsistence, and
jammed down by violent and barbaric penal codes into conditions which
enforce the struggle, societies; as it would be absurd to call the
wretched folk in the Black Hole of Calcutta a society. If any one will
only think for a minute of his own inner nature he will see that the
only society which would ever really satisfy him would be one in which
he was perfectly free, and yet bound by ties of deepest trust to the
other members; and if he will think for another minute he will see that
the only conditions on which he could be perfectly free (to do as he
liked) would be that he should trust and care for his neighbor as well
as himself. The conditions are perfectly simple; and since they have
been more or less realized by countless primitive tribes of animals and
men, it is surely not impossible for civilized man to realise them. If
it be argued (which is perfectly true) that modern societies are so much
more complex than the primitive ones, we may reply that if modern man,
with his science and his school-boards, and his brain cultivated through
all these centuries, is not competent to solve a more complex problem
than the savage, he had better return to savagery.
But it is getting time to be practical.
Of the possibility of a free communal society there can really, I take
it, be no doubt. The question that more definitely presses on us now is
one of transition — by what steps shall we, or can we pass to that land
of freedom?
We have supposed a whole people started on its journey by the lifting
off of a burden of fear and anxiety; but in the long, slow ascent of
evolution sudden miraculous changes are not to be expected; and for this
reason alone it is obvious that we can look for no very swift
transformation to the communal form. Peoples that have learnt the lesson
of “trade” and competition so thoroughly as the modern nations have —
each man fighting for his own hand — must take some time to unlearn it.
The sentiment of the common life, so long nipped and blighted, must have
leisure to grow and expand again; and we acknowledge that — in order to
foster new ideas and new habits — an intermediate stage of definite
industrial organization may be quite necessary.
When one looks sometimes at the awful residue and dregs which were being
left as a legacy to the future by our present commercial system — the
hopeless, helpless, drunken, incapable men and women who drift through
London and the country districts from workhouse to workhouse, or the
equally incapable and more futile idlers in high places, one feels that
possibly only a rather stringent industrial organisation (such as the
War has brought upon us) could have enabled society to cope with these
burdens. The hand of the nation has already been forced to the
development of Farm-colonies, Land-reclamations, Afforestation,
Canal-restoration, and other big industrial schemes, and these are
leading to a considerable socialisation of land and machinery. At the
same time the rolling up of companies into huge and huger trusts is, as
we plainly see, making the transference of industries to public control
and to public uses, daily more easy to effect.
On the other hand, the Trade Unions and Cooperative Societies by the
development of productive as well as distributive industries, and by the
interchange of goods with each other on an ever-growing scale, are
bringing about a similar result. They are creating a society in which
enormous wealth is produced and handled not for the profit of the few,
but for the use of the many — a voluntary collectivism working within
and parallel with the official collectivism of the State.
As this double collectivism grows and spreads, profit-grinding will more
and more cease to be a lucrative profession. Though no doubt great
efforts will be made in the commercial world to discountenance the
public organisation of the unemployed (because this will cut away the
ground of cheap labor on which commercialism is built), yet as we have
seen, the necessity of this organisation has reached such a point that
it can no longer be denied. And as it comes in more and more, it will
more and more react on the conditions of the employed, causing them also
to be improved. Besides, we are fain to hope that something else of
which we see growing signs on every hand, will also come in — namely a
new sense of social responsibility, a new reading of religion, a
healthier public opinion — which will help on and give genuine life to
the changes of which we speak. If so, it might not be so very long
before the spread of employment, and the growing security of decent
wages, combined with the continual improvement of productive processes
and conditions, would bring about a kind of general affluence — or at
least absence of poverty. The unworthy fear which haunts the hearts of
nine-tenths of the population, the anxiety for the beggarly elements of
subsistence, would pass away or fade in the background, and with it the
mad nightmarish competition and bitter struggle of men with each other.
Even the sense of Property itself would be alleviated. Today the
institution of Property is like a cast-iron railing against which a
human being may be crushed, but which still is retained because it saves
us from falling into the gulf. But tomorrow, when the gulf of poverty is
practically gone, the indicating line between one person and another
need run no harsher than an elastic band. [5] People will wake up with
surprise, and rub their eyes to find that they are under no necessity of
being other than human.
Simultaneously (i.e. with the lessening of the power of money as an
engine of interest and profit-grinding) the huge nightmare which weighs
on us to-day, the monstrous incubus of “business” — with its endless
Sisyphus labors, its searchings for markets, its displacement and
destruction of its rivals, its travelers, its advertisements, its armies
of clerks, its banking and broking, its accounts and checking of
accounts — will fade and lessen in importance; till some day perchance
it will collapse, and roll off like a great burden to the ground! Freed
from the great strain and waste which all this system creates, the body
politic will recover like a man from a disease, and spring to unexpected
powers of health.
Meanwhile in the great industrial associations, voluntary and other,
folk will have been learning the sentiment of the Common Life — the
habit of acting together for common ends, the habit of feeling together
for common interests — and once this has been learnt, the rest will
follow of its own accord.
In the course of these changes, moving always towards a non-governmental
and perfectly voluntary society in the end, it is probable that some
Property-founded institutions, like the payment of labor by wages,
though not exactly ideal in their character, will continue for a long
period. It may perhaps be said that in some ways a generous wage-payment
convention (as for instance sketched in the last chapter of Carruthers’
Commercial and Commercial Economy) on a thoroughly democratic basis,
gives more freedom than a formless Anarchism in which each one takes
“according to his needs,” simply because under the first system A could
work two hours a day and live on the wage of two, and B could work eight
and live on the wage of eight, each with perfect moral freedom — whereas
if there was no wage system, A (however much he might wish to loaf)
would feel that he was cheating the community — and the community would
think so too — unless he gave his eight hours like everybody else. [6]
Some system too of National Guilds will quite probably be worked out,
which, while rendering the worker-groups self-determining will award to
them their fair share and their fair share only of the National income.
Then, though the Cash-nexus I may and no doubt will linger on for a long
time in various forms of Wages, Purchase, Sale, and so forth, it must
inevitably with the changing sentiment and conditions of life lose its
cast-iron stringent character, and gradually be converted into the
elastic cord, which while it may indicate a line of social custom will
yield to pressure when the need arises. Private Property will thus lose
its present virulent character, and; subside into a matter of mere use
or convenience; monetary reckonings and transfers, as time goes on, will
seem little more than formalities — as to-day between friends.
Finally, Custom alone will remain. The subsidence of the Property
feeling will mean the subsidence of brute-force Law, for whose existence
Property is mainly responsible. The peoples accustomed to the varied
activities of a complex industrial organism, will still — though not
suffering from the compulsion either of hunger or of brute authority —
continue through custom to carry on those activities, their Reason in
the main approving.
Custom will remain — slowly changing. And the form of the Societies of
the future will be more vital and organic, and far more truly human,
than they have been or could be under the rigid domination of Law.
[1] See below, p. go Spencer and Gillen, in their late book The Northern
Tribes of Australia, say that there are no chiefs even or headmen among
these people; but the old men constitute an informal council, which
punishes “crime”, and the breaking of marriage rules, organises the
ceremonies, and from time to time inaugurates reforms.
[2] Though, as all more primitive society shows us, small inequalities
and such as arise from natural differences of human industry and
capacity will always be welcome.
[3] Though it must, to be strictly impartial, be pointed out that this
difficulty is chiefly felt by those classes who themselves live on
interest and in ornamental idleness.
[4] See Chapter XI of Poverty and the State, by H. V. Mills.
[5] This alleviation indeed is already in gome curious ways visible.
Forty years ago the few dressed in broadcloth, the masses in fustian;
but now that silk is made out of wood-pulp, and everybody can dress and
does dress in the latest fashion, it is no distinction to have fine
clothes. Similarly with books, travel, and a hundred other things. What
is the good of being a millionaire when the man with three pounds a week
can make almost as good a show as you?
[6] It is difficult also to see how things like railways and the immense
modern industries (if these survive) could be carried on without some
such system of wage-payment and the definite engagement to fulfill
certain work which it carries with it.