CHAPTER VI.

IN THE SOCIALIST STATE (continued).

THE DISTRIBUTION OF WEALTH.

I.

AND now as regards the great question of Distribution, what is to be the rule or principle under the new Socialism? Can it lay down a juster principle than determines the division of produce to-day, that will be at once practicable and that will not result ulteriorly in having less to divide. This is the capital question on which the future of Collectivism depends.

As regards the production of wealth things go on very well at present. Labour, as a matter of fact, is already in general collectively or co-operatively organized so as to produce the greatest result, wherever it is most economical to have it so organized. The production, as a matter of fact, is very great and sufficient to give necessaries to all, comforts and decencies to multitudes, luxurious commodities to many. The only thing wrong as regards production, even according to the Socialists, is that expensive luxuries are produced for a few, necessitating much labour, which would cease under Socialism; but apart from this they have little improvements to suggest as regards production. Not so as regards distribution. The exist.

ing distribution, they say, is monstrous and iniquitous, a system of organized confiscation and plunder, partly by the capitalist employers who pay only half wages, partly by bankers, financiers and the lending class in general who get a share of profits in the shape of interest, doing little or nothing in return for it; then by a series of middlemen-carriers and distributors --who get their share for small, sometimes needless work, by raised prices or heavy rates, for which the consumer, who is mostly of the working classes, must finally pay. Thus, between the upper and the nether millstone of reduced wages which they receive, and enhanced prices which they must pay to middlemen, sometimes to monopolists and speculators, are the working classes placed, who really produce all, and for the most part transport all, while these same capitalists, middlemen, financiers, rentiers, speculators, monopolists of all sorts, flourish, not to speak of the landlords, whose rent increases while they do nothing, of the clergymen, who are either needless spiritual middlemen or the moral police of property, of the lawyers, etc., who do useless, perhaps injurious work, all of whom in the last resort have to be paid from the productive labour of the working classes.

Thus say the Socialists, in language very exaggerated, epecially as regards the employer of labour, but with certain truth withal. For that the actual existing distribution now mainly made by so-called free contracts, but based on, and its inequalities made perpetual by, private property and inheritance, results necessarily in injustice, all are agreed, from extreme Socialists down to political economists like Mill and

Cairnes; the latter of whom declares in his last book ("Leading Principles of Political Economy") that the present system had results not " easy to reconcile with any standard of right accepted amongst men." Not less emphatic is Mill's condemnation, often repeated in his treatise on "Political Economy;" and in fact there cannot be a doubt that Socialism derives its chief strength from a widespread belief that the present system results in injustices, which are condemned by the moral sense and contrary to the aims of right legislation

What is the cure proposed by Collectivism? It does not believe much in partial State-Socialism, in Co operative Production whether voluntary or Stateaided, in Profit-sharing, or in Trades Unions. These would all leave the existing system substantially intact, while co-operative production and profitsharing would still adhere in principle to the master evil of competition which, according to the Socialists, produces the existing commercial anarchy, necessitates low wages, over-production, sophisticated goods, and unemployed workers. These different remedies are not even palliatives; it is a doubtful point, they think, whether they are not mischievous by raising false hopes, delaying the true remedy, and setting the working classes on wrong roads. They can only, any one of them, be said to be good so far as they can be regarded as steps in the direction of the Collectivist ideal, as State-Socialism (in the narrower sense) in general is,—though not always; as for example, when it establishes small individual.

proprietors in Ireland, or in the Highlands, instead of introducing collective ownership.

What then is to be the new principle of Distribution? That each shall receive in proportion to his works, by which Schaffle understands, " according to the amount and social utility of the productive labour of each."

The principle, though not unexceptionable, would seem to embody a working rule of Justice.' The difficulty is to apply it. How are we to know how much a worker produces in a cotton or linen factory where machines are working as well as he, and where the work of twenty different kinds of labourers is necessary as well as his to the final product? Where there is a common result from different kinds of human labour, from machine labour, and even from the gratuitous labour of natural forces, how are we to measure the amount of the product, thus due to such different cooperant agents, with which an individual is to be credited? The fact is, we cannot pronounce how much of the final product in yards of cloth any one has produced, not even if we attribute to the man the work done by the machine he merely tends, and we are obliged to be content with the rough convention, that each one's work-the quantity of his production -shall be measured by the number of hours of his labour, the labour being supposed by Marx to be

The principle would not indeed be ideally just according to Mill to give more to those who produce more, the strong and capable, is to give more to those already most favoured by nature. Nevertheless he defends it on grounds of expediency.

of common or "average" kind, though the standard is sufficiently vague, while skilled labour is to be rated or regarded as average labour "intensified or multiplied," which imports an additional vagueness and uncertainty into the estimate.

At all events, in the factory, every eight hours of this average labour, if there be any such, is to be reckoned as good and as productive as every other, whether like or unlike in kind. The formula "To each in proportion to his works," means, "To each in proportion to the number of hours of work," or labourtime, as, according to Marx, time is essentially the stuff of which the product is made. Labour-force is converted into labour-time, of which products are only a "congelation." Products are "congealed labour-time." Labourers in the factory who have worked the same number of hours are to get the same wages, the more skilled being reduced to the average by some, we are not told what, rule of conversion; while all other labourers, spinners, masons, miners, carpenters, are to receive the same remuneration as weavers, provided their labour is as near to the standard of average labour as that of weavers.

Now let us allow that it might be possible to tell roughly the number of hours of average work rendered by these labourers per day, or per week, or per year. The book keepers and clerks might keep an account for each, and might give certificates for the number of hours or of normal days of average labour. The question is, How are we to give him his share of products proportionate to his certificates or labourcheques? Before we can do so the values of all