Chapter III (1)

CAPITALISM AND SOCIAL IDEAS (CAPITAL AND HUMAN LABOUR)

To form an opinion as to what the course of action is in the social field, which the facts of the day are so loudly demanding, is only possible, if one is willing to be guided in one's opinion by an insight which goes below the surface, to the fundamental forces of the social organism. The following introductory remarks are the outcome of an effort to arrive at such an insight. Nothing profitable can be done in the present day with social measures based on opinions that are drawn from a restricted sphere of observation. The facts that have grown out of the social movement reveal disturbances at the foundations of the social order, not merely surface ones. And to cope with these facts one needs an insight that also goes to the root of things.

Capital and Capitalism, as talked of to-day, indicates something in which the working-class portion of mankind look for the cause of their grievances. But to come to any profitable conclusion as to the part played by capital within the social processes, whether for good or ill, one must first be perfectly clear as to the way in which capital is produced and consumed, through the agency of men's individual abilities, of the "rights" system, and of the forces of economic life. Human labour one talks of, as the thing that, together with capital and the nature-basis of industry, goes to the creation of economic values, and through which the worker becomes conscious of his social position. To arrive however at any conclusion, as to the proper way of working human labour into the whole social organism without injuring the worker's sense of self-respect as a human being, one needs to keep clearly in sight the relation that human labour bears, on the one hand to individual ability and its development, and on the other to the common sense of right, the "rights-consciousness."

At the present moment people are very justly asking: What is the most immediate step to be taken in order to satisfy the claims that the social movement has brought to the front? But there is no taking even the most immediate step to good purpose, without first knowing how what one is trying to do is related to the fundamental principles of a healthy social order. And once one knows this, then, in whatever place one may find oneself, or whatever place one may select to work in, one will discover the particular task that requires doing under the circumstances. The obstacle to acquiring the kind of insight implied here, lies in that element of human will-power, which during the slow course of years has crystallised into social institutions. Men have so grown into these institutions, that the institutions themselves form the standpoint from which they view them and consider, what to change and what to leave. Their thoughts follow the lead of the facts, instead of mastering them.

To-day, it is necessary to see, that one cannot form any judgment adequate to the facts, without going back to those primal creative thoughts which underlie all social institutions. The body social requires a constant fresh supply of the forces that reside in these primal thoughts; and if the suitable channels are not there, through which these forces can flow, then social institutions assume forms which impede life, instead of furthering it. But although the conscious thoughts of men may go astray, although they may,--and have,--created facts that impede life, yet these primal thoughts live on in men's instinctive impulses. Tumultuously and destructively they break against the world of established facts that hem them in; and these primal thoughts it is, which open or disguised, find their way out in convulsions that threaten to overthrow the social order. Such revolutionary convulsions will not cease to occur, until the body social takes a form, in which there may be always both an inclination to notice when any institution is beginning to deviate from its first intention in those primal thoughts, and at the same time the possibility of counter-acting every such deviation before it becomes strong enough to be a danger. In our times, the actual conditions, throughout a wide range of human life, have come to deviate very widely from what the primal thoughts require. And these primal thoughts, as they live on in the impulses of the human soul, are a commentary,--a commentary that voices itself loudly enough in facts,--of what has been taking shape in the body social during the last few centuries. What is wanted, is good will and vigorous resolution to turn again to these primal thoughts. We must not be blind to the mischief that is done, especially at this moment, by dismissing these primal thoughts from the field of actual life as "unpractical generalities." The facts of life itself, and the claims of the working-class masses, afford a practical commentary on what the modern age has made of the body social. The task of our age, in face of these facts, is not merely to criticise, but to set about remedying them; which means going to the primal thoughts for the direction in which we must now consciously guide them. For the time is gone by, when the old instinctive guidance could suffice for mankind; what it could accomplish up till now, is now no longer enough.

One of the main questions raised by the practical criticisms of the times is this:--How is a stop to be put to the oppression which working-class humanity suffers under private capitalism. The owner, or controller, of capital is in a position to press other men's bodily labour into the service of any work he takes on hand? In the social relation that arises in the co-operation of capital and human labour-power, there are three elements to be distinguished: the enterprising activity, which must rest on the basis of individual ability in some one person or group of persons;--the relation of the "enterpriser" to the worker, which must be a "relation in right";--and the production of an object which acquires a commodity value in the circuit of economic life. For the "enterprising" activity to find its scope in a healthy way in the social order, there must be forces at work in social life which afford men's individual abilities the best possible mode of manifesting themselves; and therefore there must be one province of the body social which secures a person of ability free occasion for the employment of his abilities, and makes it possible to leave the estimation of their value to other people's free and voluntary understanding.

It is obvious, that the social activities, which a man is enabled to exercise by means of capital, fall within that domain of the body social which takes its laws and administration from the spiritual life. If the political State interferes to influence these personal activities, then it is unavoidable that its influence should involve a disregard of individual abilities. For the political State is necessarily based on what is similar and equal in all men's claims in life; and it is its business to translate this equality into practice. Within its own domain, the State must ensure every man having a fair chance to make his personal opinion tell. For the work the State has to do, the question of understanding or not understanding individualities does not come in; and therefore whatever the State does towards realising its own principles ought not to have any influence upon the exercise of men's individual abilities. Nor should it be possible for the prospect of economic advantage to determine the exercise of individual ability where capital is needed. Many persons in weighing the pros and cons of capitalism lay great stress upon this economic advantage. In their opinion, it is only through the incentive which this gives to individual ability that individual ability can be induced to exert itself; and they refer, as "practical men" to the "imperfections of human nature," with which they claim to be well acquainted. No doubt, in that social order, under which the present state of things matured, the prospect of economic advantage has come to play a very important part, and is in no small measure the very cause of that state of things, of which we are now feeling the effects, and which calls for the development of some other, different incentive to the exercise of individual ability. This incentive must lie in the "social sense," that will spring from a healthy spiritual life. Strong in the freedom of the spiritual life, a man's education and schooling will send him forth equipped with impulses, that will lead him, thanks to this social sense, to realise the bent of his personal abilities.

There is not necessarily anything high-flown or visionary about such a belief. No doubt high-flown illusions have wrought immeasureable harm in social endeavour, as in other fields. But all that has been said before is enough to shew, that the view here urged is not based on any fanciful notion that "the spirit" will work wonders, provided the "spiritually-minded" only talk enough about it. It is the outcome of observation, of watching how people actually work, when they work together freely in the spiritual field. This work in common, takes, of its own nature, a social character, provided it can develope in real freedom.

It is only the lack of freedom in spiritual life, which has kept its social character in abeyance. The fashion in which the forces of social life have found expression amongst the leading classes, has restricted their use and value to limited circles of mankind, in a way which is anti-social. What was produced in these circles could only be brought artificially within reach of working-class mankind. This section of mankind could draw no strength for the support of their souls from this spiritual life; for they had no real part nor property in it. Schemes for "popular instruction," for "the uplifting of the masses," "Art for the People," and so forth,--all such things are not really the means of spreading spiritual property amongst the people, whilst spiritual property keeps the character it has acquired in recent times. For "the people," as regards their inmost life and being, are not in it. All that it is possible to give them, is as it were a bird's-eye view of these spiritual treasures from a point outside. And if this is true of spiritual life in its narrower sense, it has also its meaning for those offshoots of spiritual activity, which find their way into economic life on the basis of capital. In a sound order of society, the worker will not stand at his machine, and come into contact with nothing but its mechanism; whilst the capitalist alone knows what is the destiny of the manufactured commodities in the round of economic life. The workman must share fully in the whole concern, and be able to form a distinct conception of the part that he himself is playing in social life through his work in making the commodity. The enterpriser must hold regular conferences, with the object of arriving at a common field of ideas that shall include both employers and employed. Such conferences must be regarded as being as much a part of the business as the actual work. This is a healthy way of conducting business, and one that will arouse in the workers a sense, that by the control of capital, if he uses it properly, a person benefits the whole community,--including the worker, as a member of it. The above-board dealing, necessary to a willing understanding on the part of others, will make the "enterpriser" careful to keep his business methods above suspicion.

All this will not seem negligible to anyone with a sense for the social effects of that inner community of feeling and experience, which arises from the prosecution of a common task. Those who possess this sense, will clearly perceive, how greatly it is to the benefit of economic activity that the direction of economic affairs, based on capital, should come from the spiritual life, and have its roots in the spiritual domain. This preliminary condition must be fulfilled, before people's present interest in capital and in increasing it simply for the sake of profits, can give place to an interest in the actual business of production and the doing of the job on hand.

Persons of a socialist turn of mind at the present day aim at bringing the means of production under the control of the community. What is right and desirable in their aims can only be achieved if this control is exercised through the free spiritual domain. Such control through the free spiritual domain will do away with all possibility of that economic coercion, which brings with it such a sense of degradation, and which the capitalist exerts when his capitalist activities are born and bred of the forces of economic life; and it will also prevent that crippling of men's individual abilities, which inevitably results when these abilities are directed by the political State.

Earnings on everything done through capital and individual ability must depend in a healthy social order, like all other spiritual work, on the free initiative of the doer and on the free appreciation of those who wish the work done. The estimate of what these earnings should be, must, in this field, be in accordance with a man's own free view--on what he is willing to regard as a suitable return on his work, taking into consideration the preliminary training he requires for it, the incidental expenses to which he is put, etc., etc. Whether he finds his claims gratified or not, will depend on the appreciation his services meet with.

Social arrangements on the lines here proposed will lay the basis for a really free contractual relation between the work-director and the work-doer,--a relation resting not on barter of commodities (or money) for labour-power, but on an agreement as to the share due to each of the two joint authors of the commodity.

The sort of service, that is rendered to the body social on the basis of capital, depends of its very essence on the part played in it by men's individual abilities. Nothing but the free spiritual life can give men's abilities the impulse they need for their development. Even in a society, where the development of individual ability is tied up with the administration of the political State, or to the forces of economic life, even there, real productivity, in everything requiring the expenditure of capital depends on as much of free individual power as can find its way through the shackles imposed upon it. Only, under such conditions, the development is an unhealthy one. It is not the free development of individual ability, exercised on a basis of capital, that has brought about conditions under which human labour-power can be nothing but a commodity; it is the shackling of these powers through the political life of the State or in the circuit of economic processes. An unprejudiced recognition of this fact is at the present day a necessary first step to everything that has to be done in the field of social organisation. For the superstition has grown up in modern times, that the measures needed for the welfare of society must come from either the political State or the economic system. And if we pursue any further the road along which this superstition has started us, we shall set up all manner of institutions, that, far from leading man to the goal towards which he is striving, will increasingly aggravate the oppressive conditions from which he is seeking to escape.

At the time when people first began to think about the question of capitalism, this same capitalism had already set up a disease in the body social. The disease is what people feel and are aware of. They see that it is something which has to be counteracted. But one must see further than that; one must recognise, that the origin of the disease lies in the fact, that the creative forces, at work in capital, have been absorbed into the circuit of economic life. If one is to work in the direction already urgently demanded by the evolutionary forces of mankind, one must not suffer oneself to be deluded by the type of thought, which regards as an unpractical piece of idealism the demand, that the spiritual life should be set free, and given control of the employment of capital.

At the present moment, certainly, people seem but little disposed to connect the spiritual life in any way directly with that social idea, which is to put capital on sound lines. They try to connect onto something that falls within the circuit of economic life. They see, that the manufacture of commodities in recent times has led to wholesale dealing, and this again to the present form of capitalism. And now they propose to replace this form of industrial economy by a syndical system, under which the producers will be working for their own wants. But since of course industry must retain all the modern means of production, the various industrial concerns are to be united together into one big syndicate. Here, they think, everyone will be producing to the orders of the community, and the community cannot be an exploiter, because it would simply be exploiting itself. And for the sake, or from the necessity, of linking onto something that already exists, they turn their eyes on the modern State, with a view to converting this into a comprehensive syndicate. One thing however they leave out of their reckoning, namely, that the bigger the syndicate the less possibility there is of its being able to do what they expect of it. Unless individual ability finds its place in the syndical organism in the manner and form already described, it is impossible that communal control of labour should result in a healthy commonwealth.

The reason why people are so ill-disposed to-day to form an unbiassed opinion as to the position spiritual life occupies in the social order, is that they are accustomed to think of what is spiritual as being at the opposite end from all that is material and practical. Not a few will find something rather absurd in the view here put forward, that the employment of capital in economic life must be regarded as the way in which one side of the spiritual life manifests itself. It is conceivable, that in characterising what is here said as absurd, members of the late ruling classes may even find themselves in agreement with socialist thinkers. If one would see all that this supposed absurdity means for the health of the body social, one must examine certain currents of thought in the present day,--currents of thought, which spring from impulses in the soul, that are quite honest after their fashion, but which nevertheless, wherever they find entrance, check the development of any really social way of thinking.

These currents of thought tend more or less unconsciously away from all that gives due energy and driving power to the inward life. They make for a conception of life,--an inner life of thought, of soul, directed to the pursuit of knowledge,--which shall be as it were an island in the common sea of human existence. Thus they are not in a position to build the bridge between this inner life and that other which binds men to the everyday world. It is not uncommon to-day, to find persons who think it rather "distinguished" to sit aloft in castles of cloudland, meditating in somewhat pedantic abstractness over all manner of ethico-religious problems. One finds them meditating on virtue and how a man may best acquire it; how he should dwell in loving-kindness towards his neighbours, and how he may be so blessed as to find "a meaning in life." And, all the time, one recognises the impossibility of bridging the gulf between what these folks call good, and sweet, and kindly, and right, and proper, and all that is going on in the outer world amongst men's everyday surroundings, in the manipulation of capital, the payment of labour, the consumption, production and circulation of commodities, the system of credit banking, and the stock-exchange. One can see two main streams running side by side even in men's very habits of thought, one of which remains up aloft as it were in divine spiritual altitudes, and has no desire to build a bridge from spiritual impulses to life's ordinary affairs. The other stream runs on, void of thought, in the everyday world. But life is a single whole. It cannot thrive unless the forces that dwell in all ethical and religious life bring driving power to the most commonplace, everyday things of life, into the sort of life that some persons may think rather beneath them. For, if people neglect to build the bridge between the two regions of life, then not only their religious and moral life, but their social thinking too, degenerates into mere wordy sentiment, far removed from commonplace, true realities. And then these commonplaces have their revenge as it were. For there is then still a sort of "spiritual" impulse in man, urging him in pursuit of every imaginable ideal and every conceivable thing that he calls "good"; whilst on the other side there are those different instincts, which are in opposition to these ideals,--the instincts that underlie the ordinary daily needs of life and require an economic system for their satisfaction, and to which he devotes himself minus his spirit. He knows no practicable path from his conception of spirituality to the business of everyday life. And so everyday life acquires a form, which is not even supposed to have any connection with those ethical impulses that remain aloof in the more distinguished altitudes, all soul and spirit. And then, the daily commonplaces are avenged; for the ethical religious life turns to a living lie in men's hearts, because, all unperceived it is being dissevered from commonplace practice and from all direct contact with life.

How many people there are to-day, who, from a certain ethical or religious distinction of mind, have all the will to live on a right footing with their fellow-men, who desire to act by others only in the best conceivable way, and yet fall short of the kind of feeling that would enable them to do so, because they cannot lay hold upon any social conception that finds its outlet in practical habits of life! It is people such as these, who, at this epoch-making moment in the world's history when social questions have become so urgent, are blocking the road to a true practice of life. They reckon themselves very practical persons, and all the time are visionary obstructionists. One can hear them making speeches like this: "What is really needed, is for people to rise above all this materialism, this external material life which drove us into the disaster of the great war and into all this misery. They must turn to a spiritual conception of life." And to illustrate man's path to spirituality, they are forever harping upon great men of byegone days, who were venerated for their conversion to a spiritual way of thinking. One finds, however, that directly one tries to bring the talk round to the very thing that the spirit has to do for real practical life, and what is so urgently required of the spirit to-day: the creation of daily bread, one is at once reminded, that the first thing, after all, is to bring people again to acknowledge the spirit. At this moment however, the urgent thing is, to employ the powers of the spiritual life to discover the right principles of social health. And for this it is not enough that men should make a hobby of the spirit, as a bye-path in life. Everyday existence needs to be brought into line with the spirit. It was this taste for turning spiritual life into bye-paths, that led the late ruling classes to find their pleasure in social conditions that ended in the present state of affairs.

In the social life of the present day, the control of capital for the production of commodities is very closely bound up with the ownership of the means of production, amongst which capital is of course included. And yet these two relations between man and capital are quite different as regards the way they operate within the social system. The control of capital by individual ability is, when suitably applied, a means of enriching the body social with wealth which it is to everyone's interest should exist. Whatever a person's position in life, it is to his interest that nothing should be wasted of those individual abilities which flow from the fountain-head of human nature, and through which things are created that are of use to the life of man. These abilities, however, never become developed, unless the human beings endowed with them have free initiative in their exercise. Any check to the free flow from these sources means a certain measure of loss to the welfare of mankind. Now capital is the means of making these abilities available for extended fields of social life. It must be to the true interests of everybody in a community to have the collective property in capital so administered, that individuals specially gifted in one direction, or groups of people with special qualifications, should be able to acquire the use of capital, and should use it in the way their own particular initiative prompts them. Everybody, be he brainworker or labourer, if he consults his own interests without prejudice, must say: "I should not only wish an adequate number of persons, or groups of persons, to have absolutely free use of capital, but I should also like them to have access to capital on their own initiative; for they themselves are the best judges of how their particular abilities can make capital a means of producing what is useful to the body social."

It does not fall within the scope of this work to describe how, in the course of mankind's evolution, as individual human abilities came to play a part in the social order, private property also grew up out of other forms of ownership. Ownership has, under the influence of the division of labour, gone on developing in this form within the body social down to the present day. And it is with present conditions that we are here concerned, and with what the next stage in their evolution must be. But in whatever way private property arose,--by the exercise of power, conquest, etc.,--it is an outcome of the social creativeness which is associated with individual human ability. And yet socialists to-day, with their thoughts bent upon social reconstruction, hold the theory, that the only way to obviate what is oppressive in private ownership, is to turn it into communal ownership. They put the question thus: How can private property in the means of production be prevented from arising, so that its oppressive effect upon the unpropertied masses may cease? In putting the question in this way, they overlook the fact, that the social organism is something that is constantly changing, growing. One cannot ask about a growing organism. What is the best form of arrangement to preserve it in the state which one regards as the suitable one for it. One can think in that way about something which starts at a certain point and then goes on in the same way ever afterwards without any essential change. But that will not do for the body social. Its life is a continual changing of each thing as it arises. To fix on some form as the very best, and expect it to remain in that form, is to undermine the very conditions of its life.

One of the conditions of life for the body social is, that whoever can serve the community through his individual abilities should not be deprived of the power to do so freely of his own initiative. Where such service involves free use of the means of production, to hamper free initiative would be to injure the general social interests. I am not proposing here to urge the argument commonly used in this connection, namely, that the prospect of the gains associated with the ownership of means of production is needed in order to stimulate the "enterpriser" to exertion. The whole form of thought represented in this book, with its conception of a progressive evolution in social conditions, must lead to the expectation, that this kind of incentive to social activity may be eliminated, through the emancipation of the spiritual life from its association with the political and economic system. Once it is free, the spiritual life will of itself inevitably evolve a social sense; and this social sense will provide incentives of a very different kind from the hope of economic advantage. But it is not so much a question of the kind of impulse which makes men like private ownership of the means of production, as of whether the necessary conditions of life for the body social are best fulfilled when the use of the means of production is free, or when it is directed by the community. And here, one must always clearly remember, that one cannot draw conclusions for the social organism of the present day from the conditions of life supposed to be found in primitive communities, but from such only as correspond to man's present stage of development. At the present stage, it is not possible for individual ability to find fruitful exercise through capital in the round of economic life, unless its use of capital is free. For fruitful results in any field of production there must be opportunity for the free use of capital; not because it gives an advantage to some individual or group; but because, opportunely directed by a social sense, it is the best way of serving the community. Whether he is producing alone or in company, the material a man is working on is in a manner bound up with himself, much like the skill of his own arms or legs. To interfere with his free use of the means of production, is like crippling the free exercise of his bodily skill. Private ownership, however, is simply the medium for this free use of the means of production. As regards ownership, all that matters to the body social, is that the owner should have the right to use it of his own free initiative. Clearly, two things are joined together in social life, that are of quite distinct implications for the body social--one, the free use of the capital basis of social production; the other, the "relation in right" which arises between the user of capital and other people, from the fact that his right of use precludes these other people from free activity on this same capital basis.

It is not the free use of itself in the beginning, which does the mischief in society, but the continuance of the right of use after the circumstances have come to an end which linked that use opportunely to individual abilities. Anyone who looks upon the social organism as a changing, growing thing, cannot fail to see what is meant. He will look about for some possible mode of arranging what is helpful to life in one way, so that it may not have bad effects in another. For a live thing, there is no possible mode of arrangement, that can lead to fruition, in which the finished process in its growth will not in turn become detrimental. And if one is oneself to collaborate at a growing organism,--as man necessarily must in the body social,--one's business cannot lie in checking necessary developments, for the sake of obviating detrimental consequences. That would be to sap every possibility of life for the body social. It is solely a question of intervening at the right moment, when what was helpful and opportune is beginning to turn detrimental.

Free use of the capital-basis through individual ability:--this must be an established possibility. The ownership right involved in it must be shiftable, directly this right begins to turn to a means of unrightfully acquiring power. There is one institution, introduced in our times, which partially meets this social requirement, though only for what one may call "spiritual property." "Spiritual property" when its author is dead, passes after a while into the ownership of the community for free use. Here we have an underlying conception, that is in accordance with the actual nature of life in a human society. Closely as the production of a purely spiritual possession is bound up with the private endowment of the individual, yet this possession is, at the same time, a result of the common social life, and must pass at the right moment into the common life. But it is just the same with other property. By aid of his property the individual person produces for the service of the community; but this is only possible in co-operation with the community. And accordingly the right to the use of a piece of property cannot be exercised apart from the interests of the community. The problem is not, how to abolish ownership of the capital-basis? but, how can ownership be best turned to the service of the community?

The way to do so, is to be found in the threefold order of society. The people combined in the threefold order act as a collective community through the "rights-State." The exercise of individual abilities comes under the spiritual organisation.

Everything in the body social indicates the necessity of introducing this threefold organic arrangement, when regarded with a sense of actualities, and not from a view entirely dominated by subjective opinions, theories, predilections, and so forth;--and this question of the relation of individual abilities to the capital-basis of economic life and its ownership, is a special case in point. The "rights-State" will not interfere with the formation and control of private property in capital, so long as the connection of the capital-basis with personal ability remains such, that this private control implies a service to the total community. Moreover, it will remain a "rights-State" in respect to its dealings with private property. It will never itself take over the ownership of private property. It will only ensure that the right of use is transferred at the right moment to a person or group of persons, who, again, through individual conditions, are capable of establishing a purely personal relation to this ownership. This will benefit the body social in two different aspects. The democratic foundation of the "rights-State," being concerned with the everything that touches all men equally, will enable a sharp watch to be kept, that property rights do not in course of time become property wrongs. And again,--(since the State does not itself administer property, but ensures its transference to individual ability),--men's individual abilities will develope their fructifying power for the whole body of the community. Under an organisation of this sort, property rights, or their exercise, can safely be left attached to a personality, for so long as seems opportune. One can conceive the representatives in the "rights-State" laying down quite different regulations at different times as to the way in which property is to be transferred from one person or group to another. At the present day, when private property has come to be regarded altogether with great distrust, the proposal is, to convert private property wholesale into communal property. If people proceed far enough along this road, they will find out, that they are strangling the life of the community; and, taught by experience, they will then pursue a different path. But it would undoubtedly be better now, at once, to take measures that would secure social health on the lines here indicated.

So long as an individual alone, or in combination with a group, continues to carry on that productive activity which first procured him a capital-basis to work on, so long he shall retain the right to use accumulations of capital arising as business gains on the primary capital where the gains are applied to the productive extension of the business. Directly this particular personality ceases to control the work of production, the accumulation of capital shall pass on to another person, or group, to carry on the same kind of business, or some other branch of productive industry useful to the whole community. Capital also, that accrues from a productive industry but is not used for its extension, must from the beginning go the same way. Nothing shall count as the personal property of the individual directing the business, except what he receives in accordance with the claim he made when he first took over the business--claims, which he felt able to make on the ground of his personal abilities, and which appear justified by the fact, that he was able to impress people with his abilities sufficiently for them to trust him with capital. If through his personal exertions the capital has been increased, then a portion of this increment will pass into his private ownership,--the addition so made to his original earnings representing a percentage on the addition to the capital. Where the original controller of an industry is unable, or unwilling, to continue in charge, the capital used to start it will either pass over to the new controller with all incumbent obligations, or else will revert to the original owners, according as these latter may decide.

In such an arrangement, one is dealing with transfers of a right. The legal regulation of the terms on which such transfers shall take place, is a matter for the "rights-State." It will be for the "rights-State" also to see that these transfers are carried out and to conduct the process. It is conceivable that, in detail, the regulations laid down for any such transfer of a right will take very various forms, according as the common sense of right (the "rights-consciousness") varies in its view of what is right. No mode of conception, which, like the present one, aims at being true to life, will ever attempt to do more than indicate the general direction that such regulation should take. If one keeps to this direction and uses one's understanding, one will always, in any concrete instance discover what is the appropriate thing to do. One must judge always from the special circumstances and according to the spirit of the thing, what the right course is in actual practice. The more true to life any mode of thought is, the less it will attempt to lay down hard-and-fast rules for details, from preconceived notions of what is requisite. On the other hand, the very spirit of such a form of thought will lead necessarily and decisively to one result or another. For instance, it results unquestionably from such a mode of thought, that the "rights-State" must never use its control of rights-transfers to get any capital into its own hands. Its only business will be to see, that the transfer is made to a person, or group, whose individual abilities seem to warrant it. This at once presupposes also, as a general principle, that anyone, who is proposing to effect a transfer of capital under the circumstances described, will be at liberty to select his successor in the use of it. He will be free to select a person or group of people, or else to transfer the right of use to a corporate body belonging to the spiritual organisation. For anyone, who has rendered practical services to society through his management of capital is a person likely to judge from native ability and with social sense, what should be done with the capital afterwards. And it will be more advantageous to the community to go upon what he decides, than to discard his judgment, and leave the decision to persons who have no direct connection with the matter.

Some settlement of this kind will be required in the case of capital accumulations over a certain amount, which have been acquired by persons, or groups, through the means of production (including land),--except where these accumulations become private property by the terms originally agreed upon for the exercise of individual ability.

In this latter case, what is so earned, as well as all savings that spring from the results of a person's own work, will remain until the owner's death, or some later date, in the private possession of the earner or his descendants. Until this date also, these savings will draw an interest from the person who is given them to procure the means of production. The amount of the interest will be the outcome of the general "rights-consciousness," and be fixed by the "rights-State." In a social order, based on the principles here described, it will be possible to effect a complete distinction between proceeds that are due to the employment of means of production, and sums accumulated through the earnings of personal labour, spiritual or physical. It is in accordance with the common sense of right, as well as to the general social interest, that these two things should be kept distinct. What a person saves and places at the disposal of a productive industry, is a service rendered to the general interests, inasmuch as it makes it possible in the first place for personal ability to direct production. But where, after deducting the rightful interest, there is an increase on the capital, arising out of the means of production, such increase is due to the collective working of the whole social organism, and must accordingly flow back into it again in the way above described. All that the "rights-State" will have to do, is to pass a resolution, that the capital accumulations in question are to be transferred in the prescribed way. It will not be called on to decide, which material or spiritual branch of production is to have the disposal either of capital so transferred or of capital savings;--for this would lead to the State tyrannising over spiritual and material production, which are best directed for the body social by men's individual abilities, as has been shewn. But it will be open to anyone to appoint a corporate body of the spiritual organisation to exercise the right of disposal over capital that he has created, if he does not want himself to select his successor.

Property acquired through saving, together with the interest on it, will also pass at the earner's death, or a while later, to some person or group actively engaged in spiritual or material production,--but only to a producer, not to be turned into an income by someone who is not producing. The choice will be made by the earner in his last will. Here again, if no person or group can be chosen direct, it will be a question of transferring the right of disposal to a corporation of the spiritual system. Only when a person himself makes no disposition of his savings, then the "rights-State" will act on his behalf, and require the spiritual organisation to dispose of them.

In a society ordered on these lines, due regard is paid both to private initiative on the part of the individual and at the same time to the social interests of the general community. Indeed the latter receive their full satisfaction through private initiative being set free to serve them. Whoever has to entrust his labour to the direction of another person, can at least know, under such an order of things, that their joint work will bear fruit to the best advantage of the community, and therefore of the worker himself.

The social order,--as here conceived,--will establish a proportionate relation, satisfactory to healthy human sense, between the prices of manufactured products and the two joint factors of their production,--namely human labour-power and these rights of use over capital (embodied in the means of production) which are subject to the common sense of right. No doubt all sorts of imperfections may be found in this. Imperfections do not matter. For a mode of thought that is true to life, what is of importance is not to lay down a perfect and complete programme for all time, but to point out the direction for practical work. The special instances, discussed here, are simply intended as illustrations to map out the direction more clearly. Any particular illustration may be improved upon; and this will be all to the good, provided the right direction is observed.

Through social institutions of this kind, personal and family feelings will admit of being brought into harmony with the claims of general humanity. It may of course be pointed out, that there will be a great temptation for people to transfer their property during their life-time to their descendants, or to some one of them, and that it is quite easy to give such a person the appearance of a producer, whilst all the while he may be quite incompetent compared to others, who would be much better in his place. The temptation to do this, can however be reduced to a minimum under social institutions of the above kind. The "rights-State" has only to require, that property, which is transferred from one member of a family to another, should under all circumstances, be made over to a corporation of the spiritual system, after the lapse of a certain period from the first owner's death. Or an evasion of the rule may be prevented in some other way by rights-law. The "rights-State" will merely see to it, that the property is so made over. The spiritual organisation must make provision for the choice of the person to inherit it. In the fulfillment of these principles a general sense will grow up, that the next generation must be trained and educated to fit them for the body social and that one must not do social mischief by passing capital on to persons who are non-productive. No one, in whom a real social sense is awakened, cares to have his own connection with the capital basis of his work carried on by any individual or group whose personal abilities do not warrant it.

These proposals cannot be regarded as a mere utopia by anybody who has a sense of what is really practicable. For the kind of institutions here proposed are such as spring directly out of existing circumstances anywhere in life. Only, people will have to make up their minds, gradually to give up administering spiritual life and industrial economy within the "rights-State," and not to raise opposition, when private schools and colleges are started and economic life put on its own footing,--seeing that this is just what is wanted. There is no need to abolish the State schools and the State economic undertakings straight away. But, beginning perhaps in quite a small way, it will be found increasingly possible to do away with the whole structure of State education and State economy.

This requires, however, first of all, individuals, convinced that these, or some such social ideas as these are the right ones, and able so thoroughly to imbue themselves with their rightness, that they will make it their business to spread them. Wherever such ideas find understanding, they will arouse confidence in the possibility of changing the present state of things into a healthy one, where the same evils will not arise. But this is the only kind of confidence which can lead to a really healthy state of things. For, before one can arrive at any such confidence, one must have a clear perception in what way, practically, it is possible to connect new institutions on to the existing old ones. The essential feature of the ideas here put forward would seem to be, that they do not propose to bring about a better future by destroying the present social order further than has already been done; but that their realisation will come through building upon what already exists; and that as the building-up process goes on, what is rotten and unsound will fall away. No new views nor teachings, that do not aim at establishing confidence in this respect, will attain the object which it is absolutely necessary to attain, namely, an unbroken course of evolution, in which all that men have hitherto achieved, the wealth they have worked for, and the faculties they have won, are not cast to the winds, but stored up. Even the most sweeping radical may feel confidence in a form of social reconstruction that still preserves the old heritage, when he has ideas laid before him which are capable of initiating really sane and healthy developments. Even he will have to recognise, that whatever class of men may get into power, they will not be able to remove existing evils, unless their impulses are supported by ideas that can put health and life into the body social. To despair,--to believe it impossible to find a sufficient number of people who, even in these days of turmoil will have understanding for these ideas, if only they are spread with enough energy,--this would be to despair of human nature and of its openness to healthful and purposeful impulses. Is it desperate? That is not the question to be asked. But rather, What must I do to give full force to the teaching and spread of ideas that can awaken men's confidence?

Any effective spread of these ideas will find its first obstacle in the habits of thought of the present age, which will quarrel with them on two grounds:--Either it will be objected in some form or another, that any dismemberment in the unity of the social life is inconceivable, that its three supposed branches cannot be torn apart, seeing that in actual practice they are everywhere intertwined. Or else people will opine, that it is quite possible under the onefold state to give each of the three branches its necessary independent character; that all these ideas are mere cobweb-spinning, with nothing in them, and quite apart from all reality. The first objection comes from thinking unreally, from presupposing that unity of life is only possible in a community of human beings, when the unity is introduced by ordinance. What life in reality requires is, however just the reverse. Unity must be the result, the final outcome of all the streams of activity flowing together from various directions. This idea is the one in accordance with life; but it had the evolution of the latter age against it; and so the tide of life in men bore down against the artificial "order" in its path,--and landed in the present social conditions. The second preconception arises from inability to distinguish the radical difference in the working of the three systems of social life. People do not see, that man stands in a separate and peculiar relation to each of the three; that, for the full development of its special quality, each of these three relations requires a ground to itself in actual life, where it can evolve its own form apart from the other two, in order that all three may combine in their working.