Utopia of Usurers — Section 11

THE TOWER OF BEBEL

Among the cloudy and symbolic stories in the beginning of the Bible there is one about a tower built with such vertical energy as to take a hold on heaven, but ruined and resulting only in a confusion of tongues.

The story might be interpreted in many ways--religiously, as meaning that spiritual insolence starts all human separations; irreligiously, as meaning that the inhuman heavens grudge man his magnificent dream;

or merely satirically as suggesting that all attempts to reach a higher agreement always end in more disagreement than there was before.

It might be taken by the partially intelligent Kensitite as a judgment on Latin Christians for talking Latin.

It might be taken by the somewhat less intelligent Professor Harnack as a final proof that all prehistoric humanity talked German.

But when all was said, the symbol would remain that a plain tower, as straight as a sword, as simple as a lily, did nevertheless produce the deepest divisions that have been known among men.

In any case we of the world in revolt--Syndicalists, Socialists, Guild Socialists, or whatever we call ourselves--have no need to worry about the scripture or the allegory.

We have the reality.

For whatever reason, what is said to have happened to the people of Shinak has precisely and practically happened to us.

None of us who have known Socialists (or rather, to speak more truthfully, none of us who have been Socialists) can entertain the faintest doubt that a fine intellectual sincerity lay behind what was called “L’Internationale.

” It was really felt that Socialism was universal like arithmetic.

It was too true for idiom or turn of phrase.

In the formula of Karl Marx men could find that frigid fellowship which they find when they agree that two and two make four.

It was almost as broadminded as a religious dogma.

Yet this universal language has not succeeded, at a moment of crisis, in imposing itself on the whole world.

Nay, it has not, at the moment of crisis, succeeded in imposing itself on its own principal champions.

Herve is not talking Economic Esperanto; he is talking French.

Bebel is not talking Economic Esperanto; he is talking German.

Blatchford is not talking Economic Esperanto; he is talking English, and jolly good English, too.

I do not know whether French or Flemish was Vandervelde’s nursery speech, but I am quite certain he will know more of it after this struggle than he knew before.

In short, whether or no there be a new union of hearts, there has really and truly been a new division of tongues.

How are we to explain this singular truth, even if we deplore it?

I

dismiss with fitting disdain the notion that it is a mere result of military terrorism or snobbish social pressure.

The Socialist leaders of modern Europe are among the most sincere men in history; and their Nationalist note in this affair has had the ring of their sincerity.

I

will not waste time on the speculation that Vandervelde is bullied by Belgian priests; or that Blatchford is frightened of the horse-guards outside Whitehall.

These great men support the enthusiasm of their conventional countrymen because they share it; and they share it because there is (though perhaps only at certain great moments) such a thing as pure democracy.

Timour the Tartar, I think, celebrated some victory with a tower built entirely out of human skulls; perhaps he thought _that_ would reach to heaven.

But there is no cement in such building; the veins and ligaments that hold humanity together have long fallen away; the skulls will roll impotently at a touch; and ten thousand more such trophies could only make the tower taller and crazier.

I think the modern official apparatus of “votes” is very like that tottering monument.

I think the Tartar “counted heads,” like an electioneering agent.

Sometimes when I have seen from the platform of some paltry party meeting the rows and rows of grinning upturned faces, I have felt inclined to say, as the poet does in the “The Vision of Sin”--“Welcome fellow-citizens, Hollow hearts and empty heads.

” Not that the people were personally hollow or empty, but they had come on a hollow and empty business: to help the good Mr. Binks to strengthen the Insurance Act against the wicked Mr. Jinks who would only promise to fortify the Insurance Act.

That night it did not blow the democratic gale.

Yet it can blow on these as on others; and when it does blow men learn many things.

I, for one, am not above learning them.

The Marxian dogma which simplifies all conflicts to the Class War is so much nobler a thing than the nose-counting of the parliaments that one must apologise for the comparison.

And yet there is a comparison.

When we used to say that there were so many thousands of Socialists in Germany, we were counting by skulls.

When we said that the majority consisting of Proletarians would be everywhere opposed to the minority, consisting of Capitalists, we were counting by skulls.

Why, yes; if all men’s heads had been cut off from the rest of them, as they were by the good sense and foresight of Timour the Tartar; if they had no hearts or bellies to be moved; no hand that flies up to ward off a weapon, no foot that can feel a familiar soil--if things were so the Marxian calculation would be not only complete but correct.

As we know to-day, the Marxian calculation is complete, but it is not correct.

Now, this is the answer to the questions of some kind critics, whose actual words I have not within reach at the moment, about whether my democracy meant the rule of the majority over the minority.

It means the rule of the rule--the rule of the rule over the exception.

When a nation finds a soul it clothes it with a body, and does verily act like one living thing.

There is nothing to be said about those who are out of it, except that they are out of it.

After talking about it in the abstract for decades, this is Democracy, and it is marvellous in our eyes.

It is not the difference between ninety-nine persons and a hundred persons; it is one person--the people.

I do not know or care how many or how few of the Belgians like or dislike the pictures of Wiertz.

They could not be either justified or condemned by a mere majority of Belgians.

But I am very certain that the defiance to Prussia did not come from a majority of Belgians.

It came from Belgium one and indivisible--atheists, priests, princes of the blood, Frenchified shopkeepers, Flemish boors, men, women, and children, and the sooner we understand that this sort of thing can happen the better for us.

For it is this spontaneous spiritual fellowship of communities under certain conditions to which the four or five most independent minds of Europe willingly bear witness to-day.

But is there no exception: is there no one faithful among the unfaithful found?

Is no great Socialist politician still untouched by the patriotism of the vulgar?

Why, yes; the rugged Ramsay MacDonald, scarred with a hundred savage fights against the capitalist parties, still lifts up his horny hand for peace.

What further need have we of witnesses?

I, for my part, am quite satisfied, and do not doubt that Mr. MacDonald will be as industrious in damping down democracy in this form as in every other.

A REAL DANGER

Heaven forbid that I should once more wade in those swamps of logomachy and tautology in which the old guard of the Determinists still seem to be floundering.

The question of Fate and Free Will can never attain to a conclusion, though it may attain to a conviction.

The shortest philosophic summary is that both cause and choice are ultimate ideas within us, and that if one man denies choice because it seems contrary to cause, the other man has quite as much right to deny cause because it seems contrary to choice.

The shortest ethical summary is that Determinism either affects conduct or it does not.

If it does not, it is morally not worth preaching; if it does, it must affect conduct in the direction of impotence and submission.

A writer in the “Clarion” says that the reformer cannot help trying to reform, nor the Conservative help his Conservatism.

But suppose the reformer tries to reform the Conservative and turn him into another reformer?

Either he can, in which case Determinism has made no difference at all, or he can’t, in which case it can only have made reformers more hopeless and Conservatives more obstinate.

And the shortest practical and political summary is that working men, most probably, will soon be much too busy using their Free Will to stop to prove that they have got it.

Nevertheless, I like to watch the Determinist in the “Clarion” Cockpit every week, as busy as a squirrel--in a cage.

But being myself a squirrel (leaping lightly from bough to bough) and preferring the form of activity which occasionally ends in nuts, I should not intervene in the matter even indirectly, except upon a practical point.

And the point I have in mind is practical to the extent of deadly peril.

It is another of the numerous new ways in which the restless rich, now walking the world with an awful insomnia, may manage to catch us napping.

Must Be a Mystery There are two letters in the “Clarion” this week which in various ways interest me very much.

One is concerned to defend Darwin against the scientific revolt against him that was led by Samuel Butler, and among other things it calls Bernard Shaw a back number.

Well, most certainly “The Origin of Species” is a back number, in so far as any honest and interesting book ever can be; but in pure philosophy nothing can be out of date, since the universe must be a mystery even to the believer.

There is, however, one condition of things in which I do call it relevant to describe somebody as behind the times.

That is when the man in question, thinking of some state of affairs that has passed away, is really helping the very things he would like to hinder.

The principles cannot alter, but the problems can.

Thus, I should call a man behind the times who, in the year 1872, pleaded for the peaceful German peasants against the triumphant militarism of Napoleon.

Or I should call a man out of date who, in the year 1892, wished for a stronger Navy to compete with the Navy of Holland, because it had once swept the sea and sailed up the Thames.

And I certainly call a man or a movement out of date that, in the year 1914, when we few are fighting a giant machine, strengthened with all material wealth and worked with all the material sciences, thinks that our chief danger is from an excess of moral and religious responsibility.

He reminds me of Mr. Snodgrass, who had the presence of mind to call out “Fire!

” when Mr. Pickwick fell through the ice.

The other letter consists of the usual wiredrawn argument for fatalism.

Man cannot imagine the universe being created, and therefore is “compelled by his reason” to think the universe without beginning or end, which (I may remark) he cannot imagine either.

But the letter ends with something much more ominous than bad metaphysics.

Here, in the middle of the “Clarion,” in the centre of a clean and combative democratic sheet, I meet again my deplorable old acquaintance, the scientific criminologist.

“The so-called evil-doer should not be punished for his acts, but restrained.

” In forty-eight hours I could probably get a petition to that effect signed by millionaires.

A short time ago a Bill was introduced to hold irresponsible and “restrain” a whole new class of people, who were “incapable of managing their affairs with prudence.

” Read the supporters’ names on the back of that Bill, and see what sort of democrats they were.

Now, clearing our heads of what is called popular science (which means going to sleep to a lullaby of long words), let us use our own brains a little, and ask ourselves what is the real difference between punishing a man and restraining him.

The material difference may be any or none;

for punishment may be very mild, and restraint may be very ruthless.

The man, of course, must dislike one as much as the other, or it would not be necessary to restrain him at all.

And I assure you he will get no great glow of comfort out of your calling him irresponsible after you have made him impotent.

A man does not necessarily feel more free and easy in a straight waistcoat than in a stone cell.

The moral difference is that a man can be punished for a crime because he is born a citizen;

while he can be constrained because he is born a slave.

But one arresting and tremendous difference towers over all these doubtful or arguable differences.

There is one respect, vital to all our liberties and all our lives, in which the new restraint would be different from the old punishment.

It is of this that the plutocrats will take advantage.