Chapter III: Pitfalls in Socialism


I

In its early days, socialism was a revolutionary movement of which the
object was the liberation of the wage-earning classes and the
establishment of freedom and justice.  The passage from capitalism to
the new rŽgime was to be sudden and violent: capitalists were to be
expropriated without compensation, and their power was not to be
replaced by any new authority.

Gradually a change came over the spirit of socialism.  In France,
socialists became members of the government, and made and unmade
parliamentary majorities.  In Germany, social democracy grew so strong
that it became impossible for it to resist the temptation to barter
away some of its intransigeance in return for government recognition
of its claims.  In England, the Fabians taught the advantage of reform
as against revolution, and of conciliatory bargaining as against
irreconcilable antagonism.

The method of gradual reform has many merits as compared to the method
of revolution, and I have no wish to preach revolution.  But gradual
reform has certain dangers, to wit, the ownership or control of
businesses hitherto in private hands, and by encouraging legislative
interference for the benefit of various sections of the wage-earning
classes.  I think it is at least doubtful whether such measures do
anything at all to contribute toward the ideals which inspired the
early socialists and still inspire the great majority of those who
advocate some form of socialism.

Let us take as an illustration such a measure as state purchase of
railways.  This is a typical object of state socialism, thoroughly
practicable, already achieved in many countries, and clearly the sort
of step that must be taken in any piecemeal approach to complete
collectivism.  Yet I see no reason to believe that any real advance
toward democracy, freedom, or economic justice is achieved when a
state takes over the railways after full compensation to the
shareholders.

Economic justice demands a diminution, if not a total abolition, of
the proportion of the national income which goes to the recipients of
rent and interest.  But when the holders of railway shares are given
government stock to replace their shares, they are given the prospect
of an income in perpetuity equal to what they might reasonably expect
to have derived from their shares.  Unless there is reason to expect a
great increase in the earnings of railways, the whole operation does
nothing to alter the distribution of wealth.  This could only be
effected if the present owners were expropriated, or paid less than
the market value, or given a mere life-interest as compensation.  When
full value is given, economic justice is not advanced in any degree.

There is equally little advance toward freedom.  The men employed on
the railway have no more voice than they had before in the management
of the railway, or in the wages and conditions of work.  Instead of
having to fight the directors, with the possibility of an appeal to
the government, they now have to fight the government directly; and
experience does not lead to the view that a government department has
any special tenderness toward the claims of labor.  If they strike,
they have to contend against the whole organized power of the state,
which they can only do successfully if they happen to have a strong
public opinion on their side.  In view of the influence which the
state can always exercise on the press, public opinion is likely to be
biased against them, particularly when a nominally progressive
government is in power.  There will no longer be the possibility of
divergences between the policies of different railways.  Railway men
in England derived advantages for many years from the comparatively
liberal policy of the North Eastern Railway, which they were able to
use as an argument for a similar policy elsewhere.  Such possibilities
are excluded by the dead uniformity of state administration.

And there is no real advance toward democracy.  The administration of
the railways will be in the hands of officials whose bias and
associations separate them from labor, and who will develop an
autocratic temper through the habit of power.  The democratic
machinery by which these officials are nominally controlled is
cumbrous and remote, and can only be brought into operation on
first-class issues which rouse the interest of the whole nation.  Even
then it is very likely that the superior education of the officials
and the government, combined with the advantages of their position,
will enable them to mislead the public as to the issues, and alienate
the general sympathy even from the most excellent cause.

I do not deny that these evils exist at present; I say only that they
will not be remedied by such measures as the nationalization of
railways in the present economic and political environment.  A greater
upheaval, and a greater change in men's habits of mind, is necessary
for any really vital progress.


II

State socialism, even in a nation which possesses the form of
political democracy, is not a truly democratic system.  The way in
which it fails to be democratic may be made plain by an analogy from
the political sphere.  Every democrat recognizes that the Irish ought
to have self-government for Irish affairs, and ought not to be told
that they have no grievance because they share in the Parliament of
the United Kingdom.  It is essential to democracy that any group of
citizens whose interests or desires separate them at all widely from
the rest of the community should be free to decide their internal
affairs for themselves.  And what is true of national or local groups
is equally true of economic groups, such as miners or railway men.
The national machinery of general elections is by no means sufficient
to secure for groups of this kind the freedom which they ought to
have.

The power of officials, which is a great and growing danger in the
modern state, arises from the fact that the majority of the voters,
who constitute the only ultimate popular control over officials, are
as a rule not interested in any one particular question, and are
therefore not likely to interfere effectively against an official who
is thwarting the wishes of the minority who are interested.  The
official is nominally subject to indirect popular control, but not to
the control of those who are directly affected by his action.  The
bulk of the public will either never hear about the matter in dispute,
or, if they do hear, will form a hasty opinion based upon inadequate
information, which is far more likely to come from the side of the
officials than from the section of the community which is affected by
the question at issue.  In an important political issue, some degree
of knowledge is likely to be diffused in time; but in other matters
there is little hope that this will happen.

It may be said that the power of officials is much less dangerous than
the power of capitalists, because officials have no economic interests
that are opposed to those of wage-earners.  But this argument involves
far too simple a theory of political human nature--a theory which
orthodox socialism adopted from the classical political economy, and
has tended to retain in spite of growing evidence of its falsity.
Economic self-interest, and even economic class-interest, is by no
means the only important political motive.  Officials, whose salary is
generally quite unaffected by their decisions on particular questions,
are likely, if they are of average honesty, to decide according to
their view of the public interest; but their view will none the less
have a bias which will often lead them wrong.  It is important to
understand this bias before entrusting our destinies too unreservedly
to government departments.

The first thing to observe is that, in any very large organization,
and above all in a great state, officials and legislators are usually
very remote from those whom they govern, and not imaginatively
acquainted with the conditions of life to which their decisions will
be applied.  This makes them ignorant of much that they ought to know,
even when they are industrious and willing to learn whatever can be
taught by statistics and blue-books.  The one thing they understand
intimately is the office routine and the administrative rules.  The
result is an undue anxiety to secure a uniform system.  I have heard
of a French minister of education taking out his watch, and remarking,
"At this moment all the children of such and such an age in France are
learning so and so." This is the ideal of the administrator, an ideal
utterly fatal to free growth, initiative, experiment, or any far
reaching innovation.  Laziness is not one of the motives recognized in
textbooks on political theory, because all ordinary knowledge of human
nature is considered unworthy of the dignity of these works; yet we
all know that laziness is an immensely powerful motive with all but a
small minority of mankind.

Unfortunately, in this case laziness is reinforced by love of power,
which leads energetic officials to create the systems which lazy
officials like to administer.  The energetic official inevitably
dislikes anything that he does not control.  His official sanction
must be obtained before anything can be done.  Whatever he finds in
existence he wishes to alter in some way, so as to have the
satisfaction of feeling his power and making it felt.  If he is
conscientious, he will think out some perfectly uniform and rigid
scheme which he believes to be the best possible, and he will then
impose this scheme ruthlessly, whatever promising growths he may have
to lop down for the sake of symmetry.  The result inevitably has
something of the deadly dullness of a new rectangular town, as
compared with the beauty and richness of an ancient city which has
lived and grown with the separate lives and individualities of many
generations.  What has grown is always more living than what has been
decreed; but the energetic official will always prefer the tidiness of
what he has decreed to the apparent disorder of spontaneous growth.

The mere possession of power tends to produce a love of power, which
is a very dangerous motive, because the only sure proof of power
consists in preventing others from doing what they wish to do.  The
essential theory of democracy is the diffusion of power among the
whole people, so that the evils produced by one man's possession of
great power shall be obviated.  But the diffusion of power through
democracy is only effective when the voters take an interest in the
question involved.  When the question does not interest them, they do
not attempt to control the administration, and all actual power passes
into the hands of officials.

For this reason, the true ends of democracy are not achieved by state
socialism or by any system which places great power in the hands of
men subject to no popular control except that which is more or less
indirectly exercised through parliament.

Any fresh survey of men's political actions shows that, in those who
have enough energy to be politically effective, love of power is a
stronger motive than economic self-interest.  Love of power actuates
the great millionaires, who have far more money than they can spend,
but continue to amass wealth merely in order to control more and more
of the world's finance.[2]  Love of power is obviously the ruling
motive of many politicians.  It is also the chief cause of wars, which
are admittedly almost always a bad speculation from the mere point of
view of wealth.  For this reason, a new economic system which merely
attacks economic motives and does not interfere with the concentration
of power is not likely to effect any very great improvement in the
world.  This is one of the chief reasons for regarding state socialism
with suspicion.

[2] Cf. J. A. Hobson, "The Evolution of Modern Capitalism."


III

The problem of the distribution of power is a more difficult one than
the problem of the distribution of wealth.  The machinery of
representative government has concentrated on _ultimate_ power as the
only important matter, and has ignored immediate executive power.
Almost nothing has been done to democratize administration.
Government officials, in virtue of their income, security, and social
position, are likely to be on the side of the rich, who have been
their daily associates ever since the time of school and college.  And
whether or not they are on the side of the rich, they are not likely,
for the reasons we have been considering, to be genuinely in favor of
progress.  What applies to government officials applies also to
members of Parliament, with the sole difference that they have had to
recommend themselves to a constituency.  This, however, only adds
hypocrisy to the other qualities of a ruling caste.  Whoever has stood
in the lobby of the House of Commons watching members emerge with
wandering eye and hypothetical smile, until the constituent is espied,
his arm taken, "my dear fellow" whispered in his ear, and his steps
guided toward the inner precincts--whoever, observing this, has
realized that these are the arts by which men become and remain
legislators, can hardly fail to feel that democracy as it exists is
not an absolutely perfect instrument of government.  It is a painful
fact that the ordinary voter, at any rate in England, is quite blind
to insincerity.  The man who does not care about any definite
political measures can generally be won by corruption or flattery,
open or concealed; the man who is set on securing reforms will
generally prefer an ambitious windbag to a man who desires the public
good without possessing a ready tongue.  And the ambitious windbag, as
soon as he has become a power by the enthusiasm he has aroused, will
sell his influence to the governing clique, sometimes openly,
sometimes by the more subtle method of intentionally failing at a
crisis.  This is part of the normal working of democracy as embodied
in representative institutions.  Yet a cure must be found if democracy
is not to remain a farce.

One of the sources of evil in modern large democracies is the fact
that most of the electorate have no direct or vital interest in most
of the questions that arise.  Should Welsh children be allowed the use
of the Welsh language in schools?  Should gipsies be compelled to
abandon their nomadic life at the bidding of the education
authorities?  Should miners have an eight-hour day?  Should Christian
Scientists be compelled to call in doctors in case of serious illness?
These are matters of passionate interest to certain sections of the
community, but of very little interest to the great majority.  If they
are decided according to the wishes of the numerical majority, the
intense desires of a minority will be overborne by the very slight and
uninformed whims of the indifferent remainder.  If the minority are
geographically concentrated, so that they can decide elections in a
certain number of constituencies, like the Welsh and the miners, they
have a good chance of getting their way, by the wholly beneficent
process which its enemies describe as log-rolling.  But if they are
scattered and politically feeble, like the gipsies and the Christian
Scientists, they stand a very poor chance against the prejudices of
the majority.  Even when they are geographically concentrated, like
the Irish, they may fail to obtain their wishes, because they arouse
some hostility or some instinct of domination in the majority.  Such a
state of affairs is the negation of all democratic principles.

The tyranny of the majority is a very real danger.  It is a mistake to
suppose that the majority is necessarily right.  On every new question
the majority is always wrong at first.  In matters where the state
must act as a whole, such as tariffs, for example, decision by
majorities is probably the best method that can be devised.  But there
are a great many questions in which there is no need of a uniform
decision.  Religion is recognized as one of these.  Education ought to
be one, provided a certain minimum standard is attained.  Military
service clearly ought to be one.  Wherever divergent action by
different groups is possible without anarchy, it ought to be
permitted.  In such cases it will be found by those who consider past
history that, whenever any new fundamental issue arises, the majority
are in the wrong, because they are guided by prejudice and habit.
Progress comes through the gradual effect of a minority in converting
opinion and altering custom.  At one time--not so very long ago--it
was considered monstrous wickedness to maintain that old women ought
not to be burnt as witches.  If those who held this opinion had been
forcibly suppressed, we should still be steeped in medieval
superstition.  For such reasons, it is of the utmost importance that
the majority should refrain from imposing its will as regards matters
in which uniformity is not absolutely necessary.


IV

The cure for the evils and dangers which we have been considering is a
very great extension of devolution and federal government.  Wherever
there is a national consciousness, as in Wales and Ireland, the area
in which it exists ought to be allowed to decide all purely local
affairs without external interference.  But there are many matters
which ought to be left to the management, not of local groups, but of
trade groups, or of organizations embodying some set of opinions.  In
the East, men are subject to different laws according to the religion
they profess.  Something of this kind is necessary if any semblance of
liberty is to exist where there is great divergence in beliefs.

Some matters are essentially geographical; for instance, gas and
water, roads, tariffs, armies and navies.  These must be decided by an
authority representing an area.  How large the area ought to be,
depends upon accidents of topography and sentiment, and also upon the
nature of the matter involved.  Gas and water require a small area,
roads a somewhat larger one, while the only satisfactory area for an
army or a navy is the whole planet, since no smaller area will prevent
war.

But the proper unit in most economic questions, and also in most
questions that are intimately concerned with personal opinions, is not
geographical at all.  The internal management of railways ought not to
be in the hands of the geographical state, for reasons which we have
already considered.  Still less ought it to be in the hands of a set
of irresponsible capitalists.  The only truly democratic system would
be one which left the internal management of railways in the hands of
the men who work on them.  These men should elect the general manager,
and a parliament of directors if necessary.  All questions of wages,
conditions of labor, running of trains, and acquisition of material,
should be in the hands of a body responsible only to those actually
engaged in the work of the railway.

The same arguments apply to other large trades: mining, iron and
steel, cotton, and so on.  British trade-unionism, it seems to me, has
erred in conceiving labor and capital as both permanent forces, which
were to be brought to some equality of strength by the organization of
labor.  This seems to me too modest an ideal.  The ideal which I
should wish to substitute involves the conquest of democracy and
self-government in the economic sphere as in the political sphere, and
the total abolition of the power now wielded by the capitalist.  The
man who works on a railway ought to have a voice in the government of
the railway, just as much as the man who works in a state has a right
to a voice in the management of his state.  The concentration of
business initiative in the hands of the employers is a great evil, and
robs the employees of their legitimate share of interest in the larger
problems of their trade.

French syndicalists were the first to advocate the system of trade
autonomy as a better solution than state socialism.  But in their view
the trades were to be independent, almost like sovereign states at
present.  Such a system would not promote peace, any more than it does
at present in international relations.  In the affairs of any body of
men, we may broadly distinguish what may be called questions of home
politics from questions of foreign politics.  Every group sufficiently
well-marked to constitute a political entity ought to be autonomous in
regard to internal matters, but not in regard to those that directly
affect the outside world.  If two groups are both entirely free as
regards their relations to each other, there is no way of averting the
danger of an open or covert appeal to force.  The relations of a group
of men to the outside world ought, whenever possible, to be controlled
by a neutral authority.  It is here that the state is necessary for
adjusting the relations between different trades.  The men who make
some commodity should be entirely free as regards hours of labor,
distribution of the total earnings of the trade, and all questions of
business management.  But they should not be free as regards the price
of what they produce, since price is a matter concerning their
relations to the rest of the community.  If there were nominal freedom
in regard to price, there would be a danger of a constant tug-of-war,
in which those trades which were most immediately necessary to the
existence of the community could always obtain an unfair advantage.
Force is no more admirable in the economic sphere than in dealings
between states.  In order to secure the maximum of freedom with the
minimum of force, the universal principle is: _Autonomy within each
politically important group, and a neutral authority for deciding
questions involving relations between groups_.  The neutral authority
should, of course, rest on a democratic basis, but should, if
possible, represent a constituency wider than that of the groups
concerned.  In international affairs the only adequate authority would
be one representing all civilized nations.

In order to prevent undue extension of the power of such authorities,
it is desirable and necessary that the various autonomous groups
should be very jealous of their liberties, and very ready to resist by
political means any encroachments upon their independence.  State
socialism does not tolerate such groups, each with their own officials
responsible to the group.  Consequently it abandons the internal
affairs of a group to the control of men not responsible to that group
or specially aware of its needs.  This opens the door to tyranny and
to the destruction of initiative.  These dangers are avoided by a
system which allows any group of men to combine for any given purpose,
provided it is not predatory, and to claim from the central authority
such self-government as is necessary to the carrying out of the
purpose.  Churches of various denominations afford an instance.  Their
autonomy was won by centuries of warfare and persecution.  It is to be
hoped that a less terrible struggle will be required to achieve the
same result in the economic sphere.  But whatever the obstacles, I
believe the importance of liberty is as great in the one case as it
has been admitted to be in the other.

Chapter IV: Individual Liberty and Public Control



I

Society cannot exist without law and order, and cannot advance except
through the initiative of vigorous innovators.  Yet law and order are
always hostile to innovations, and innovators are almost always, to
some extent, anarchists.  Those whose minds are dominated by fear of a
relapse towards barbarism will emphasize the importance of law and
order, while those who are inspired by the hope of an advance towards
civilization will usually be more conscious of the need of individual
initiative.  Both temperaments are necessary, and wisdom lies in
allowing each to operate freely where it is beneficent.  But those who
are on the side of law and order, since they are reinforced by custom
and the instinct for upholding the _status quo_, have no need of a
reasoned defense.  It is the innovators who have difficulty in being
allowed to exist and work.  Each generation believes that this
difficulty is a thing of the past, but each generation is only
tolerant of _past_ innovations.  Those of its own day are met with the
same persecution as though the principle of toleration had never been
heard of.

"In early society," says Westermarck, "customs are not only moral
rules, but the only moral rules ever thought of.  The savage strictly
complies with the Hegelian command that no man must have a private
conscience.  The following statement, which refers to the Tinnevelly
Shanars, may be quoted as a typical example: 'Solitary individuals
amongst them rarely adopt any new opinions, or any new course of
procedure.  They follow the multitude to do evil, and they follow the
multitude to do good.  They think in herds.'"[3]

[3] "The Origin and Development of the Moral Ideas," 2d edition,
Vol. I, p. 119.

Those among ourselves who have never thought a thought or done a deed
in the slightest degree different from the thoughts and deeds of our
neighbors will congratulate themselves on the difference between us
and the savage.  But those who have ever attempted any real innovation
cannot help feeling that the people they know are not so very unlike
the Tinnevelly Shanars.

Under the influence of socialism, even progressive opinion, in recent
years, has been hostile to individual liberty.  Liberty is associated,
in the minds of reformers, with _laissez-faire_, the Manchester School,
and the exploitation of women and children which resulted from what
was euphemistically called "free competition." All these things were
evil, and required state interference; in fact, there is need of an
immense increase of state action in regard to cognate evils which
still exist.  In everything that concerns the economic life of the
community, as regards both distribution and conditions of production,
what is required is more public control, not less--how much more, I
do not profess to know.

Another direction in which there is urgent need of the substitution of
law and order for anarchy is international relations.  At present,
each sovereign state has complete individual freedom, subject only to
the sanction of war.  This individual freedom will have to be
curtailed in regard to external relations if wars are ever to cease.

But when we pass outside the sphere of material possessions, we find
that the arguments in favor of public control almost entirely
disappear.

Religion, to begin with, is recognized as a matter in which the state
ought not to interfere.  Whether a man is Christian, Mahometan, or Jew
is a question of no public concern, so long as he obeys the laws; and
the laws ought to be such as men of all religions can obey.  Yet even
here there are limits.  No civilized state would tolerate a religion
demanding human sacrifice.  The English in India put an end to suttee,
in spite of a fixed principle of non-interference with native
religious customs.  Perhaps they were wrong to prevent suttee, yet
almost every European would have done the same.  We cannot _effectively_
doubt that such practices ought to be stopped, however we may theorize
in favor of religious liberty.

In such cases, the interference with liberty is imposed from without
by a higher civilization.  But the more common case, and the more
interesting, is when an independent state interferes on behalf of
custom against individuals who are feeling their way toward more
civilized beliefs and institutions.

"In New South Wales," says Westermarck, "the first-born of every lubra
used to be eaten by the tribe 'as part of a religious ceremony.' In
the realm of Khai-muh, in China, according to a native account, it was
customary to kill and devour the eldest son alive.  Among certain
tribes in British Columbia the first child is often sacrificed to the
sun.  The Indians of Florida, according to Le Moyne de Morgues,
sacrificed the first-born son to the chief....'"[4]

[4] _Op cit._, p. 459.

There are pages and pages of such instances.

There is nothing analogous to these practices among ourselves.  When
the first-born in Florida was told that his king and country needed
him, this was a mere mistake, and with us mistakes of this kind do not
occur.  But it is interesting to inquire how these superstitions died
out, in such cases, for example, as that of Khai-muh, where foreign
compulsion is improbable.  We may surmise that some parents, under the
selfish influence of parental affection, were led to doubt whether the
sun would really be angry if the eldest child were allowed to live.
Such rationalism would be regarded as very dangerous, since it was
calculated to damage the harvest.  For generations the opinion would
be cherished in secret by a handful of cranks, who would not be able
to act upon it.  At last, by concealment or flight, a few parents
would save their children from the sacrifice.  Such parents would be
regarded as lacking all public spirit, and as willing to endanger the
community for their private pleasure.  But gradually it would appear
that the state remained intact, and the crops were no worse than in
former years.  Then, by a fiction, a child would be deemed to have
been sacrificed if it was solemnly dedicated to agriculture or some
other work of national importance chosen by the chief.  It would be
many generations before the child would be allowed to choose its own
occupation after it had grown old enough to know its own tastes and
capacities.  And during all those generations, children would be
reminded that only an act of grace had allowed them to live at all,
and would exist under the shadow of a purely imaginary duty to the
state.

The position of those parents who first disbelieved in the utility of
infant sacrifice illustrates all the difficulties which arise in
connection with the adjustment of individual freedom to public
control.  The authorities, believing the sacrifice necessary for the
good of the community, were bound to insist upon it; the parents,
believing it useless, were equally bound to do everything in their
power toward saving the child.  How ought both parties to act in such
a case?

The duty of the skeptical parent is plain: to save the child by any
possible means, to preach the uselessness of the sacrifice in season
and out of season, and to endure patiently whatever penalty the law
may indict for evasion.  But the duty of the authorities is far less
clear.  So long as they remain firmly persuaded that the universal
sacrifice of the first-born is indispensable, they are bound to
persecute those who seek to undermine this belief.  But they will, if
they are conscientious, very carefully examine the arguments of
opponents, and be willing in advance to admit that these arguments
_may_ be sound.  They will carefully search their own hearts to see
whether hatred of children or pleasure in cruelty has anything to do
with their belief.  They will remember that in the past history of
Khai-muh there are innumerable instances of beliefs, now known to be
false, on account of which those who disagreed with the prevalent view
were put to death.  Finally they will reflect that, though errors
which are traditional are often wide-spread, new beliefs seldom win
acceptance unless they are nearer to the truth than what they replace;
and they will conclude that a new belief is probably either an
advance, or so unlikely to become common as to be innocuous.  All
these considerations will make them hesitate before they resort to
punishment.


II

The study of past times and uncivilized races makes it clear beyond
question that the customary beliefs of tribes or nations are almost
invariably false.  It is difficult to divest ourselves completely of
the customary beliefs of our own age and nation, but it is not very
difficult to achieve a certain degree of doubt in regard to them.  The
Inquisitor who burnt men at the stake was acting with true humanity if
all his beliefs were correct; but if they were in error at any point,
he was inflicting a wholly unnecessary cruelty.  A good working maxim
in such matters is this: Do not trust customary beliefs so far as to
perform actions which must be disastrous unless the beliefs in
question are wholly true.  The world would be utterly bad, in the
opinion of the average Englishman, unless he could say "Britannia
rules the waves"; in the opinion of the average German, unless he
could say "Deutschland Ÿber alles." For the sake of these beliefs,
they are willing to destroy European civilization.  If the beliefs
should happen to be false, their action is regrettable.

One fact which emerges from these considerations is that no obstacle
should be placed in the way of thought and its expression, nor yet in
the way of statements of fact.  This was formerly common ground among
liberal thinkers, though it was never quite realized in the practice
of civilized countries.  But it has recently become, throughout
Europe, a dangerous paradox, on account of which men suffer
imprisonment or starvation.  For this reason it has again become worth
stating.  The grounds for it are so evident that I should be ashamed
to repeat them if they were not universally ignored.  But in the
actual world it is very necessary to repeat them.

To attain complete truth is not given to mortals, but to advance
toward it by successive steps is not impossible.  On any matter of
general interest, there is usually, in any given community at any
given time, a received opinion, which is accepted as a matter of
course by all who give no special thought to the matter.  Any
questioning of the received opinion rouses hostility, for a number of
reasons.

The most important of these is the instinct of conventionality, which
exists in all gregarious animals and often leads them to put to death
any markedly peculiar member of the herd.

The next most important is the feeling of insecurity aroused by doubt
as to the beliefs by which we are in the habit of regulating our
lives.  Whoever has tried to explain the philosophy of Berkeley to a
plain man will have seen in its unadulterated form the anger aroused
by this feeling.  What the plain man derives from Berkeley's
philosophy at a first hearing is an uncomfortable suspicion that
nothing is solid, so that it is rash to sit on a chair or to expect
the floor to sustain us.  Because this suspicion is uncomfortable, it
is irritating, except to those who regard the whole argument as merely
nonsense.  And in a more or less analogous way any questioning of what
has been taken for granted destroys the feeling of standing on solid
ground, and produces a condition of bewildered fear.

A third reason which makes men dislike novel opinions is that vested
interests are bound up with old beliefs.  The long fight of the church
against science, from Giordano Bruno to Darwin, is attributable to
this motive among others.  The horror of socialism which existed in
the remote past was entirely attributable to this cause.  But it would
be a mistake to assume, as is done by those who seek economic motives
everywhere, that vested interests are the principal source of anger
against novelties in thought.  If this were the case, intellectual
progress would be much more rapid than it is.

The instinct of conventionality, horror of uncertainty, and vested
interests, all militate against the acceptance of a new idea.  And it
is even harder to think of a new idea than to get it accepted; most
people might spend a lifetime in reflection without ever making a
genuinely original discovery.

In view of all these obstacles, it is not likely that any society at
any time will suffer from a plethora of heretical opinions.  Least of
all is this likely in a modern civilized society, where the conditions
of life are in constant rapid change, and demand, for successful
adaptation, an equally rapid change in intellectual outlook.  There
should be an attempt, therefore, to encourage, rather than discourage,
the expression of new beliefs and the dissemination of knowledge
tending to support them.  But the very opposite is, in fact, the case.
From childhood upward, everything is done to make the minds of men and
women conventional and sterile.  And if, by misadventure, some spark
of imagination remains, its unfortunate possessor is considered
unsound and dangerous, worthy only of contempt in time of peace and of
prison or a traitor's death in time of war.  Yet such men are known to
have been in the past the chief benefactors of mankind, and are the
very men who receive most honor as soon as they are safely dead.

The whole realm of thought and opinion is utterly unsuited to public
control; it ought to be as free, and as spontaneous as is possible to
those who know what others have believed.  The state is justified in
insisting that children shall be educated, but it is not justified in
forcing their education to proceed on a uniform plan and to be
directed to the production of a dead level of glib uniformity.
Education, and the life of the mind generally, is a matter in which
individual initiative is the chief thing needed; the function of the
state should begin and end with insistence on some kind of education,
and, if possible, a kind which promotes mental individualism, not a
kind which happens to conform to the prejudices of government
officials.


III

Questions of practical morals raise more difficult problems than
questions of mere opinion.  The thugs honestly believe it their duty
to commit murders, but the government does not acquiesce.  The
conscientious objectors honestly hold the opposite opinion, and again
the government does not acquiesce.  Killing is a state prerogative; it
is equally criminal to do it unbidden and not to do it when bidden.
The same applies to theft, unless it is on a large scale or by one who
is already rich.  Thugs and thieves are men who use force in their
dealings with their neighbors, and we may lay it down broadly that the
private use of force should be prohibited except in rare cases,
however conscientious may be its motive.  But this principle will not
justify compelling men to use force at the bidding of the state, when
they do not believe it justified by the occasion.  The punishment of
conscientious objectors seems clearly a violation of individual
liberty within its legitimate sphere.

It is generally assumed without question that the state has a right to
punish certain kinds of sexual irregularity.  No one doubts that the
Mormons sincerely believed polygamy to be a desirable practice, yet
the United States required them to abandon its legal recognition, and
probably any other Christian country would have done likewise.
Nevertheless, I do not think this prohibition was wise.  Polygamy is
legally permitted in many parts of the world, but is not much
practised except by chiefs and potentates.  If, as Europeans generally
believe, it is an undesirable custom, it is probable that the Mormons
would have soon abandoned it, except perhaps for a few men of
exceptional position.  If, on the other hand, it had proved a
successful experiment, the world would have acquired a piece of
knowledge which it is now unable to possess.  I think in all such
cases the law should only intervene when there is some injury
inflicted without the consent of the injured person.

It is obvious that men and women would not tolerate having their wives
or husbands selected by the state, whatever eugenists might have to
say in favor of such a plan.  In this it seems clear that ordinary
public opinion is in the right, not because people choose wisely, but
because any choice of their own is better than a forced marriage.
What applies to marriage ought also to apply to the choice of a trade
or profession; although some men have no marked preferences, most men
greatly prefer some occupations to others, and are far more likely to
be useful citizens if they follow their preferences than if they are
thwarted by a public authority.

The case of the man who has an intense conviction that he ought to do
a certain kind of work is peculiar, and perhaps not very common; but
it is important because it includes some very important individuals.
Joan of Arc and Florence Nightingale defied convention in obedience to
a feeling of this sort; reformers and agitators in unpopular causes,
such as Mazzini, have belonged to this class; so have many men of
science.  In cases of this kind the individual conviction deserves the
greatest respect, even if there seems no obvious justification for it.
Obedience to the impulse is very unlikely to do much harm, and may
well do great good.  The practical difficulty is to distinguish such
impulses from desires which produce similar manifestations.  Many
young people wish to be authors without having an impulse to write any
particular book, or wish to be painters without having an impulse to
create any particular picture.  But a little experience will usually
show the difference between a genuine and a spurious impulse; and
there is less harm in indulging the spurious impulse for a time than
in thwarting the impulse which is genuine.  Nevertheless, the plain
man almost always has a tendency to thwart the genuine impulse,
because it seems anarchic and unreasonable, and is seldom able to give
a good account of itself in advance.

What is markedly true of some notable personalities is true, in a
lesser degree, of almost every individual who has much vigor or force
of life; there is an impulse towards activity of some kind, as a rule
not very definite in youth, but growing gradually more sharply
outlined under the influence of education and opportunity.  The direct
impulse toward a kind of activity for its own sake must be
distinguished from the desire for the expected effects of the
activity.  A young man may desire the rewards of great achievement
without having any spontaneous impulse toward the activities which
lead to achievement.  But those who actually achieve much, although
they may desire the rewards, have also something in their nature which
inclines them to choose a certain kind of work as the road which they
must travel if their ambition is to be satisfied.  This artist's
impulse, as it may be called, is a thing of infinite value to the
individual, and often to the world; to respect it in oneself and in
others makes up nine tenths of the good life.  In most human beings it
is rather frail, rather easily destroyed or disturbed; parents and
teachers are too often hostile to it, and our economic system crushes
out its last remnants in young men and young women.  The result is
that human beings cease to be individual, or to retain the native
pride that is their birthright; they become machine-made, tame,
convenient for the bureaucrat and the drill-sergeant, capable of being
tabulated in statistics without anything being omitted.  This is the
fundamental evil resulting from lack of liberty; and it is an evil
which is being continually intensified as population grows more dense
and the machinery of organization grows more efficient.

The things that men desire are many and various: admiration,
affection, power, security, ease, outlets for energy, are among the
commonest of motives.  But such abstractions do not touch what makes
the difference between one man and another.  Whenever I go to the
zošlogical gardens, I am struck by the fact that all the movements of
a stork have some common quality, differing from the movements of a
parrot or an ostrich.  It is impossible to put in words what the
common quality is, and yet we feel that each thing an animal does is
the sort of thing we might expect that animal to do.  This indefinable
quality constitutes the individuality of the animal, and gives rise to
the pleasure we feel in watching the animal's actions.  In a human
being, provided he has not been crushed by an economic or governmental
machine, there is the same kind of individuality, a something
distinctive without which no man or woman can achieve much of
importance, or retain the full dignity which is native to human
beings.  It is this distinctive individuality that is loved by the
artist, whether painter or writer.  The artist himself, and the man
who is creative in no matter what direction, has more of it than the
average man.  Any society which crushes this quality, whether
intentionally or by accident, must soon become utterly lifeless and
traditional, without hope of progress and without any purpose in its
being.  To preserve and strengthen the impulse that makes
individuality should be the foremost object of all political
institutions.


IV

We now arrive at certain general principles in regard to individual
liberty and public control.

The greater part of human impulses may be divided into two classes,
those which are possessive and those which are constructive or
creative.  Social institutions are the garments or embodiments of
impulses, and may be classified roughly according to the impulses
which they embody.  Property is the direct expression of
possessiveness; science and art are among the most direct expressions
of creativeness.  Possessiveness is either defensive or aggressive; it
seeks either to retain against a robber, or to acquire from a present
holder.  In either case an attitude of hostility toward others is of
its essence.  It would be a mistake to suppose that defensive
possessiveness is always justifiable, while the aggressive kind is
always blameworthy; where there is great injustice in the _status
quo_, the exact opposite may be the case, and ordinarily neither is
justifiable.

State interference with the actions of individuals is necessitated by
possessiveness.  Some goods can be acquired or retained by force,
while others cannot.  A wife can be acquired by force, as the Romans
acquired the Sabine women; but a wife's affection cannot be acquired
in this way.  There is no record that the Romans desired the affection
of the Sabine women; and those in whom possessive impulses are strong
tend to care chiefly for the goods that force can secure.  All
material goods belong to this class.  Liberty in regard to such goods,
if it were unrestricted, would make the strong rich and the weak poor.
In a capitalistic society, owing to the partial restraints imposed by
law, it makes cunning men rich and honest men poor, because the force
of the state is put at men's disposal, not according to any just or
rational principle, but according to a set of traditional maxims of
which the explanation is purely historical.

In all that concerns possession and the use of force, unrestrained
liberty involves anarchy and injustice.  Freedom to kill, freedom to
rob, freedom to defraud, no longer belong to individuals, though they
still belong to great states, and are exercised by them in the name of
patriotism.  Neither individuals nor states ought to be free to exert
force on their own initiative, except in such sudden emergencies as
will subsequently be admitted in justification by a court of law.  The
reason for this is that the exertion of force by one individual
against another is always an evil on both sides, and can only be
tolerated when it is compensated by some overwhelming resultant good.
In order to minimize the amount of force actually exerted in the
world, it is necessary that there should be a public authority, a
repository of practically irresistible force, whose function should be
primarily to repress the private use of force.  A use of force is
_private_ when it is exerted by one of the interested parties, or by
his friends or accomplices, not by a public neutral authority
according to some rule which is intended to be in the public interest.

The rŽgime of private property under which we live does much too
little to restrain the private use of force.  When a man owns a piece
of land, for example, he may use force against trespassers, though
they must not use force against him.  It is clear that some
restriction of the liberty of trespass is necessary for the
cultivation of the land.  But if such powers are to be given to an
individual, the state ought to satisfy itself that he occupies no more
land than he is warranted in occupying in the public interest, and
that the share of the produce of the land that comes to him is no more
than a just reward for his labors.  Probably the only way in which
such ends can be achieved is by state ownership of land.  The
possessors of land and capital are able at present, by economic
pressure, to use force against those who have no possessions.  This
force is sanctioned by law, while force exercised by the poor against
the rich is illegal.  Such a state of things is unjust, and does not
diminish the use of private force as much as it might be diminished.

The whole realm of the possessive impulses, and of the use of force to
which they give rise, stands in need of control by a public neutral
authority, in the interests of liberty no less than of justice.
Within a nation, this public authority will naturally be the state; in
relations between nations, if the present anarchy is to cease, it will
have to be some international parliament.

But the motive underlying the public control of men's possessive
impulses should always be the increase of liberty, both by the
prevention of private tyranny and by the liberation of creative
impulses.  If public control is not to do more harm than good, it must
be so exercised as to leave the utmost freedom of private initiative
in all those ways that do not involve the private use of force.  In
this respect all governments have always failed egregiously, and there
is no evidence that they are improving.

The creative impulses, unlike those that are possessive, are directed
to ends in which one man's gain is not another man's loss.  The man
who makes a scientific discovery or writes a poem is enriching others
at the same time as himself.  Any increase in knowledge or good-will
is a gain to all who are affected by it, not only to the actual
possessor.  Those who feel the joy of life are a happiness to others
as well as to themselves.  Force cannot create such things, though it
can destroy them; no principle of distributive justice applies to
them, since the gain of each is the gain of all.  For these reasons,
the creative part of a man's activity ought to be as free as possible
from all public control, in order that it may remain spontaneous and
full of vigor.  The only function of the state in regard to this part
of the individual life should be to do everything possible toward
providing outlets and opportunities.

In every life a part is governed by the community, and a part by
private initiative.  The part governed by private initiative is
greatest in the most important individuals, such as men of genius and
creative thinkers.  This part ought only to be restricted when it is
predatory; otherwise, everything ought to be done to make it as great
and as vigorous as possible.  The object of education ought not to be
to make all men think alike, but to make each think in the way which
is the fullest expression of his own personality.  In the choice of a
means of livelihood all young men and young women ought, as far as
possible, to be able to choose what is attractive to them; if no
money-making occupation is attractive, they ought to be free to do
little work for little pay, and spend their leisure as they choose.
Any kind of censure on freedom of thought or on the dissemination of
knowledge is, of course, to be condemned utterly.

Huge organizations, both political and economic, are one of the
distinguishing characteristics of the modern world.  These
organizations have immense power, and often use their power to
discourage originality in thought and action.  They ought, on the
contrary, to give the freest scope that is possible without producing
anarchy or violent conflict.  They ought not to take cognizance of any
part of a man's life except what is concerned with the legitimate
objects of public control, namely, possessions and the use of force.
And they ought, by devolution, to leave as large a share of control as
possible in the hands of individuals and small groups.  If this is not
done, the men at the head of these vast organizations will infallibly
become tyrannous through the habit of excessive power, and will in
time interfere in ways that crush out individual initiative.

The problem which faces the modern world is the combination of
individual initiative with the increase in the scope and size of
organizations.  Unless it is solved, individuals will grow less and
less full of life and vigor, and more and more passively submissive to
conditions imposed upon them.  A society composed of such individuals
cannot be progressive or add much to the world's stock of mental and
spiritual possessions.  Only personal liberty and the encouragement of
initiative can secure these things.  Those who resist authority when
it encroaches upon the legitimate sphere of the individual are
performing a service to society, however little society may value it.
In regard to the past, this is universally acknowledged; but it is no
less true in regard to the present and the future.

Chapter V: National Independence and Internationalism



In the relations between states, as in the relations of groups within
a single state, what is to be desired is independence for each as
regards internal affairs, and law rather than private force as regards
external affairs.  But as regards groups within a state, it is
internal independence that must be emphasized, since that is what is
lacking; subjection to law has been secured, on the whole, since the
end of the Middle Ages.  In the relations between states, on the
contrary, it is law and a central government that are lacking, since
independence exists for external as for internal affairs.  The stage
we have reached in the affairs of Europe corresponds to the stage
reached in our internal affairs during the Wars of the Roses, when
turbulent barons frustrated the attempt to make them keep the king's
peace.  Thus, although the goal is the same in the two cases, the
steps to be taken in order to achieve it are quite different.

There can be no good international system until the boundaries of
states coincide as nearly as possible with the boundaries of nations.

But it is not easy to say what we mean by a nation.  Are the Irish a
nation?  Home Rulers say yes, Unionists say no.  Are the Ulstermen a
nation?  Unionists say yes, Home Rulers say no.  In all such cases it
is a party question whether we are to call a group a nation or not.  A
German will tell you that the Russian Poles are a nation, but as for
the Prussian Poles, they, of course, are part of Prussia.  Professors
can always be hired to prove, by arguments of race or language or
history, that a group about which there is a dispute is, or is not, a
nation, as may be desired by those whom the professors serve.  If we
are to avoid all these controversies, we must first of all endeavor to
find some definition of a nation.

A nation is not to be defined by affinities of language or a common
historical origin, though these things often help to produce a nation.
Switzerland is a nation, despite diversities of race, religion, and
language.  England and Scotland now form one nation, though they did
not do so at the time of the Civil War.  This is shown by Cromwell's
saying, in the height of the conflict, that he would rather be subject
to the domain of the royalists than to that of the Scotch.  Great
Britain was one state before it was one nation; on the other hand,
Germany was one nation before it was one state.

What constitutes a nation is a sentiment and an instinct, a sentiment
of similarity and an instinct of belonging to the same group or herd.
The instinct is an extension of the instinct which constitutes a flock
of sheep, or any other group of gregarious animals.  The sentiment
which goes with this is like a milder and more extended form of family
feeling.  When we return to England after being on the Continent, we
feel something friendly in the familiar ways, and it is easy to
believe that Englishmen on the whole are virtuous, while many
foreigners are full of designing wickedness.

Such feelings make it easy to organize a nation into a state.  It is
not difficult, as a rule, to acquiesce in the orders of a national
government.  We feel that it is our government, and that its decrees
are more or less the same as those which we should have given if we
ourselves had been the governors.  There is an instinctive and usually
unconscious sense of a common purpose animating the members of a
nation.  This becomes especially vivid when there is war or a danger
of war.  Any one who, at such a time, stands out against the orders of
his government feels an inner conflict quite different from any that
he would feel in standing out against the orders of a foreign
government in whose power he might happen to find himself.  If he
stands out, he does so with some more or less conscious hope that his
government may in time come to think as he does; whereas, in standing
out against a foreign government, no such hope is necessary.  This
group instinct, however it may have arisen, is what constitutes a
nation, and what makes it important that the boundaries of nations
should also be the boundaries of states.

National sentiment is a fact, and should be taken account of by
institutions.  When it is ignored, it is intensified and becomes a
source of strife.  It can only be rendered harmless by being given
free play, so long as it is not predatory.  But it is not, in itself,
a good or admirable feeling.  There is nothing rational and nothing
desirable in a limitation of sympathy which confines it to a fragment
of the human race.  Diversities of manners and customs and traditions
are, on the whole, a good thing, since they enable different nations
to produce different types of excellence.  But in national feeling
there is always latent or explicit an element of hostility to
foreigners.  National feeling, as we know it, could not exist in a
nation which was wholly free from external pressure of a hostile kind.

And group feeling produces a limited and often harmful kind of
morality.  Men come to identify the good with what serves the
interests of their own group, and the bad with what works against
those interests, even if it should happen to be in the interests of
mankind as a whole.  This group morality is very much in evidence
during war, and is taken for granted in men's ordinary thought.
Although almost all Englishmen consider the defeat of Germany
desirable for the good of the world, yet nevertheless most of them
honor a German for fighting for his country, because it has not
occurred to them that his actions ought to be guided by a morality
higher than that of the group.

A man does right, as a rule, to have his thoughts more occupied with
the interests of his own nation than with those of others, because his
actions are more likely to affect his own nation.  But in time of war,
and in all matters which are of equal concern to other nations and to
his own, a man ought to take account of the universal welfare, and not
allow his survey to be limited by the interest, or supposed interest,
of his own group or nation.

So long as national feeling exists, it is very important that each
nation should be self-governing as regards its internal affairs.
Government can only be carried on by force and tyranny if its subjects
view it with hostile eyes, and they will so view it if they feel that
it belongs to an alien nation.  This principle meets with difficulties
in cases where men of different nations live side by side in the same
area, as happens in some parts of the Balkans.  There are also
difficulties in regard to places which, for some geographical reason,
are of great international importance, such as the Suez Canal and the
Panama Canal.  In such cases the purely local desires of the
inhabitants may have to give way before larger interests.  But in
general, at any rate as applied to civilized communities, the
principle that the boundaries of nations ought to coincide with the
boundaries of states has very few exceptions.

This principle, however, does not decide how the relations between
states are to be regulated, or how a conflict of interests between
rival states is to be decided.  At present, every great state claims
absolute sovereignty, not only in regard to its internal affairs but
also in regard to its external actions.  This claim to absolute
sovereignty leads it into conflict with similar claims on the part of
other great states.  Such conflicts at present can only be decided by
war or diplomacy, and diplomacy is in essence nothing but the threat
of war.  There is no more justification for the claim to absolute
sovereignty on the part of a state than there would be for a similar
claim on the part of an individual.  The claim to absolute sovereignty
is, in effect, a claim that all external affairs are to be regulated
purely by force, and that when two nations or groups of nations are
interested in a question, the decision shall depend solely upon which
of them is, or is believed to be, the stronger.  This is nothing but
primitive anarchy, "the war of all against all," which Hobbes asserted
to be the original state of mankind.

There cannot be secure peace in the world, or any decision of
international questions according to international law, until states
are willing to part with their absolute sovereignty as regards their
external relations, and to leave the decision in such matters to some
international instrument of government.[5]  An international government
will have to be legislative as well as judicial.  It is not enough
that there should be a Hague tribunal, deciding matters according to
some already existing system of international law; it is necessary
also that there should be a body capable of enacting international
law, and this body will have to have the power of transferring
territory from one state to another, when it is persuaded that
adequate grounds exist for such a transference.  Friends of peace will
make a mistake if they unduly glorify the _status quo_.  Some nations
grow, while others dwindle; the population of an area may change its
character by emigration and immigration.  There is no good reason why
states should resent changes in their boundaries under such
conditions, and if no international authority has power to make
changes of this kind, the temptations to war will sometimes become
irresistible.

[5] For detailed scheme of international government see "International
Government," by L. Woolf. Allen & Unwin.

The international authority ought to possess an army and navy, and
these ought to be the only army and navy in existence.  The only
legitimate use of force is to diminish the total amount of force
exercised in the world.  So long as men are free to indulge their
predatory instincts, some men or groups of men will take advantage of
this freedom for oppression and robbery.  Just as the police are
necessary to prevent the use of force by private citizens, so an
international police will be necessary to prevent the lawless use of
force by separate states.

But I think it is reasonable to hope that if ever an international
government, possessed of the only army and navy in the world, came
into existence, the need of force to enact obedience to its decisions
would be very temporary.  In a short time the benefits resulting from
the substitution of law for anarchy would become so obvious that the
international government would acquire an unquestioned authority, and
no state would dream of rebelling against its decisions.  As soon as
this stage had been reached, the international army and navy would
become unnecessary.

We have still a very long road to travel before we arrive at the
establishment of an international authority, but it is not very
difficult to foresee the steps by which this result will be gradually
reached.  There is likely to be a continual increase in the practice
of submitting disputes to arbitration, and in the realization that the
supposed conflicts of interest between different states are mainly
illusory.  Even where there is a real conflict of interest, it must in
time become obvious that neither of the states concerned would suffer
as much by giving way as by fighting.  With the progress of
inventions, war, when it does occur, is bound to become increasingly
destructive.  The civilized races of the world are faced with the
alternative of cošperation or mutual destruction.  The present war
is making this alternative daily more evident.  And it is difficult to
believe that, when the enmities which it has generated have had time
to cool, civilized men will deliberately choose to destroy
civilization, rather than acquiesce in the abolition of war.

The matters in which the interests of nations are supposed to clash
are mainly three: tariffs, which are a delusion; the exploitation of
inferior races, which is a crime; pride of power and dominion, which
is a schoolboy folly.

The economic argument against tariffs is familiar, and I shall not
repeat it.  The only reason why it fails to carry conviction is the
enmity between nations.  Nobody proposes to set up a tariff between
England and Scotland, or between Lancashire and Yorkshire.  Yet the
arguments by which tariffs between nations are supported might be used
just as well to defend tariffs between counties.  Universal free trade
would indubitably be of economic benefit to mankind, and would be
adopted to-morrow if it were not for the hatred and suspicion which
nations feel one toward another.  From the point of view of preserving
the peace of the world, free trade between the different civilized
states is not so important as the open door in their dependencies.
The desire for exclusive markets is one of the most potent causes of
war.

Exploiting what are called "inferior races" has become one of the main
objects of European statecraft.  It is not only, or primarily, trade
that is desired, but opportunities for investment; finance is more
concerned in the matter than industry.  Rival diplomatists are very
often the servants, conscious or unconscious, of rival groups of
financiers.  The financiers, though themselves of no particular
nation, understand the art of appealing to national prejudice, and of
inducing the taxpayer to incur expenditure of which they reap the
benefit.  The evils which they produce at home, and the devastation
that they spread among the races whom they exploit, are part of the
price which the world has to pay for its acquiescence in the
capitalist rŽgime.

But neither tariffs nor financiers would be able to cause serious
trouble, if it were not for the sentiment of national pride.  National
pride might be on the whole beneficent, if it took the direction of
emulation in the things that are important to civilization.  If we
prided ourselves upon our poets, our men of science, or the justice
and humanity of our social system, we might find in national pride a
stimulus to useful endeavors.  But such matters play a very small
part.  National pride, as it exists now, is almost exclusively
concerned with power and dominion, with the extent of territory that a
nation owns, and with its capacity for enforcing its will against the
opposition of other nations.  In this it is reinforced by group
morality.  To nine citizens out of ten it seems self-evident, whenever
the will of their own nation clashes with that of another, that their
own nation must be in the right.  Even if it were not in the right on
the particular issue, yet it stands in general for so much nobler
ideals than those represented by the other nation to the dispute, that
any increase in its power is bound to be for the good of mankind.
Since all nations equally believe this of themselves, all are equally
ready to insist upon the victory of their own side in any dispute in
which they believe that they have a good hope of victory.  While this
temper persists, the hope of international cošperation must remain
dim.

If men could divest themselves of the sentiment of rivalry and
hostility between different nations, they would perceive that the
matters in which the interests of different nations coincide
immeasurably outweigh those in which they clash; they would perceive,
to begin with, that trade is not to be compared to warfare; that the
man who sells you goods is not doing you an injury.  No one considers
that the butcher and the baker are his enemies because they drain him
of money.  Yet as soon as goods come from a foreign country, we are
asked to believe that we suffer a terrible injury in purchasing them.
No one remembers that it is by means of goods exported that we
purchase them.  But in the country to which we export, it is the goods
we send which are thought dangerous, and the goods we buy are
forgotten.  The whole conception of trade, which has been forced upon
us by manufacturers who dreaded foreign competition, by trusts which
desired to secure monopolies, and by economists poisoned by the virus
of nationalism, is totally and absolutely false.  Trade results simply
from division of labor.  A man cannot himself make all the goods of
which he has need, and therefore he must exchange his produce with
that of other people.  What applies to the individual, applies in
exactly the same way to the nation.  There is no reason to desire that
a nation should itself produce all the goods of which it has need; it
is better that it should specialize upon those goods which it can
produce to most advantage, and should exchange its surplus with the
surplus of other goods produced by other countries.  There is no use
in sending goods out of the country except in order to get other goods
in return.  A butcher who is always willing to part with his meat but
not willing to take bread from the baker, or boots from the bootmaker,
or clothes from the tailor, would soon find himself in a sorry plight.
Yet he would be no more foolish than the protectionist who desires
that we should send goods abroad without receiving payment in the
shape of goods imported from abroad.

The wage system has made people believe that what a man needs is work.
This, of course, is absurd.  What he needs is the goods produced by
work, and the less work involved in making a given amount of goods,
the better.  But owing to our economic system, every economy in
methods of production enables employers to dismiss some of their
employees, and to cause destitution, where a better system would
produce only an increase of wages or a diminution in the hours of work
without any corresponding diminution of wages.

Our economic system is topsyturvy.  It makes the interest of the
individual conflict with the interest of the community in a thousand
ways in which no such conflict ought to exist.  Under a better system
the benefits of free trade and the evils of tariffs would be obvious
to all.

Apart from trade, the interests of nations coincide in all that makes
what we call civilization.  Inventions and discoveries bring benefit
to all.  The progress of science is a matter of equal concern to the
whole civilized world.  Whether a man of science is an Englishman, a
Frenchman, or a German is a matter of no real importance.  His
discoveries are open to all, and nothing but intelligence is required
in order to profit by them.  The whole world of art and literature and
learning is international; what is done in one country is not done for
that country, but for mankind.  If we ask ourselves what are the
things that raise mankind above the brutes, what are the things that
make us think the human race more valuable than any species of
animals, we shall find that none of them are things in which any one
nation can have exclusive property, but all are things in which the
whole world can share.  Those who have any care for these things,
those who wish to see mankind fruitful in the work which men alone can
do, will take little account of national boundaries, and have little
care to what state a man happens to owe allegiance.

The importance of international cošperation outside the sphere of
politics has been brought home to me by my own experience.  Until
lately I was engaged in teaching a new science which few men in the
world were able to teach.  My own work in this science was based
chiefly upon the work of a German and an Italian.  My pupils came from
all over the civilized world: France, Germany, Austria, Russia,
Greece, Japan, China, India, and America.  None of us was conscious of
any sense of national divisions.  We felt ourselves an outpost of
civilization, building a new road into the virgin forest of the
unknown.  All cošperated in the common task, and in the interest of
such a work the political enmities of nations seemed trivial,
temporary, and futile.

But it is not only in the somewhat rarefied atmosphere of abstruse
science that international cošperation is vital to the progress of
civilization.  All our economic problems, all the questions of
securing the rights of labor, all the hopes of freedom at home and
humanity abroad, rest upon the creation of international good-will.

So long as hatred, suspicion, and fear dominate the feelings of men
toward each other, so long we cannot hope to escape from the tyranny
of violence and brute force.  Men must learn to be conscious of the
common interests of mankind in which all are at one, rather than of
those supposed interests in which the nations are divided.  It is not
necessary, or even desirable, to obliterate the differences of manners
and custom and tradition between different nations.  These differences
enable each nation to make its own distinctive contribution to the sum
total of the world's civilization.

What is to be desired is not cosmopolitanism, not the absence of all
national characteristics that one associates with couriers,
_wagon-lit_ attendants, and others, who have had everything
distinctive obliterated by multiple and trivial contacts with men of
every civilized country.  Such cosmopolitanism is the result of loss,
not gain.  The international spirit which we should wish to see
produced will be something added to love of country, not something
taken away.  Just as patriotism does not prevent a man from feeling
family affection, so the international spirit ought not to prevent a
man from feeling affection for his own country.  But it will somewhat
alter the character of that affection.  The things which he will
desire for his own country will no longer be things which can only be
acquired at the expense of others, but rather those things in which
the excellence of any one country is to the advantage of all the
world.  He will wish his own country to be great in the arts of peace,
to be eminent in thought and science, to be magnanimous and just and
generous.  He will wish it to help mankind on the way toward that
better world of liberty and international concord which must be
realized if any happiness is to be left to man.  He will not desire
for his country the passing triumphs of a narrow possessiveness, but
rather the enduring triumph of having helped to embody in human
affairs something of that spirit of brotherhood which Christ taught
and which the Christian churches have forgotten.  He will see that
this spirit embodies not only the highest morality, but also the
truest wisdom, and the only road by which the nations, torn and
bleeding with the wounds which scientific madness has inflicted, can
emerge into a life where growth is possible and joy is not banished at
the frenzied call of unreal and fictitious duties.  Deeds inspired by
hate are not duties, whatever pain and self-sacrifice they may
involve.  Life and hope for the world are to be found only in the
deeds of love.

Preface


The Russian Revolution is one of the great heroic events of the
world's history. It is natural to compare it to the French Revolution,
but it is in fact something of even more importance. It does more to
change daily life and the structure of society: it also does more to
change men's beliefs. The difference is exemplified by the difference
between Marx and Rousseau: the latter sentimental and soft, appealing
to emotion, obliterating sharp outlines; the former systematic like
Hegel, full of hard intellectual content, appealing to historic
necessity and the technical development of industry, suggesting a view
of human beings as puppets in the grip of omnipotent material forces.
Bolshevism combines the characteristics of the French Revolution with
those of the rise of Islam; and the result is something radically new,
which can only be understood by a patient and passionate effort of
imagination.

Before entering upon any detail, I wish to state, as clearly and
unambiguously as I can, my own attitude towards this new thing.

By far the most important aspect of the Russian Revolution is as an
attempt to realize Communism. I believe that Communism is necessary to
the world, and I believe that the heroism of Russia has fired men's
hopes in a way which was essential to the realization of Communism in
the future. Regarded as a splendid attempt, without which ultimate
success would have been very improbable, Bolshevism deserves the
gratitude and admiration of all the progressive part of mankind.

But the method by which Moscow aims at establishing Communism is a
pioneer method, rough and dangerous, too heroic to count the cost of
the opposition it arouses. I do not believe that by this method a
stable or desirable form of Communism can be established. Three issues
seem to me possible from the present situation. The first is the
ultimate defeat of Bolshevism by the forces of capitalism. The second
is the victory of the Bolshevists accompanied by a complete loss of
their ideals and a régime of Napoleonic imperialism. The third is a
prolonged world-war, in which civilization will go under, and all its
manifestations (including Communism) will be forgotten.

It is because I do not believe that the methods of the Third
International can lead to the desired goal that I have thought it
worth while to point out what seem to me undesirable features in the
present state of Russia. I think there are lessons to be learnt which
must be learnt if the world is ever to achieve what is desired by
those in the West who have sympathy with the original aims of the
Bolsheviks. I do not think these lessons can be learnt except by
facing frankly and fully whatever elements of failure there are in
Russia. I think these elements of failure are less attributable to
faults of detail than to an impatient philosophy, which aims at
creating a new world without sufficient preparation in the opinions
and feelings of ordinary men and women.

But although I do not believe that Communism can be realized
immediately by the spread of Bolshevism, I do believe that, if
Bolshevism falls, it will have contributed a legend and a heroic
attempt without which ultimate success might never have come. A
fundamental economic reconstruction, bringing with it very
far-reaching changes in ways of thinking and feeling, in philosophy
and art and private relations, seems absolutely necessary if
industrialism is to become the servant of man instead of his master.
In all this, I am at one with the Bolsheviks; politically, I criticize
them only when their methods seem to involve a departure from their
own ideals.

There is, however, another aspect of Bolshevism from which I differ
more fundamentally. Bolshevism is not merely a political doctrine; it
is also a religion, with elaborate dogmas and inspired scriptures.
When Lenin wishes to prove some proposition, he does so, if possible,
by quoting texts from Marx and Engels. A full-fledged Communist is not
merely a man who believes that land and capital should be held in
common, and their produce distributed as nearly equally as possible.
He is a man who entertains a number of elaborate and dogmatic
beliefs--such as philosophic materialism, for example--which may be
true, but are not, to a scientific temper, capable of being known to
be true with any certainty. This habit, of militant certainty about
objectively doubtful matters, is one from which, since the
Renaissance, the world has been gradually emerging, into that temper
of constructive and fruitful scepticism which constitutes the
scientific outlook. I believe the scientific outlook to be
immeasurably important to the human race. If a more just economic
system were only attainable by closing men's minds against free
inquiry, and plunging them back into the intellectual prison of the
middle ages, I should consider the price too high. It cannot be denied
that, over any short period of time, dogmatic belief is a help in
fighting. If all Communists become religious fanatics, while
supporters of capitalism retain a sceptical temper, it may be assumed
that the Communists will win, while in the contrary case the
capitalists would win. It seems evident, from the attitude of the
capitalist world to Soviet Russia, of the Entente to the Central
Empires, and of England to Ireland and India, that there is no depth
of cruelty, perfidy or brutality from which the present holders of
power will shrink when they feel themselves threatened. If, in order
to oust them, nothing short of religious fanaticism will serve, it is
they who are the prime sources of the resultant evil. And it is
permissible to hope that, when they have been dispossessed, fanaticism
will fade, as other fanaticisms have faded in the past.

The present holders of power are evil men, and the present manner of
life is doomed. To make the transition with a minimum of bloodshed,
with a maximum of preservation of whatever has value in our existing
civilization, is a difficult problem. It is this problem which has
chiefly occupied my mind in writing the following pages. I wish I
could think that its solution would be facilitated by some slight
degree of moderation and humane feeling on the part of those who enjoy
unjust privileges in the world as it is.

The present work is the outcome of a visit to Russia, supplemented by
much reading and discussion both before and after. I have thought it
best to record what I saw separately from theoretical considerations,
and I have endeavoured to state my impressions without any bias for or
against the Bolsheviks. I received at their hands the greatest
kindness and courtesy, and I owe them a debt of gratitude for the
perfect freedom which they allowed me in my investigations. I am
conscious that I was too short a time in Russia to be able to form
really reliable judgments; however, I share this drawback with most
other westerners who have written on Russia since the October
Revolution. I feel that Bolshevism is a matter of such importance that
it is necessary, for almost every political question, to define one's
attitude in regard to it; and I have hopes that I may help others to
define their attitude, even if only by way of opposition to what I
have written.

I have received invaluable assistance from my secretary, Miss D.W.
Black, who was in Russia shortly after I had left. The chapter on Art
and Education is written by her throughout. Neither is responsible for
the other's opinions.

  BERTRAND RUSSELL

  _September, 1920._




Contents


Preface                                               


Part I
The Present Condition of Russia

   I. What is Hoped from Bolshevism           

  II. General Characteristics                     

 III. Lenin, Trotsky and Gorky
                   
  IV. Art and Education                           

   V. Communism and the Soviet Constitution         

  VI. The Failure of Russian Industry             

 VII. Daily Life in Moscow                       

VIII. Town and Country                             

  IX. International Policy                         



Part II
Bolshevik theory

   I. The Materilalistic Theory of History           

  II. Deciding Forces in Politics               

 III. Bolshevik Criticism of Democracy               

  IV. Revolution and Dictatorship                   

   V. Mechanism and the Individual                   

  VI. Why Russian Communism has Failed           

 VII. Conditions for the Success of Communism

Part I
The Present Condition of Russia




I




To understand Bolshevism it is not sufficient to know facts; it is
necessary also to enter with sympathy or imagination into a new
spirit. The chief thing that the Bolsheviks have done is to create a
hope, or at any rate to make strong and widespread a hope which was
formerly confined to a few. This aspect of the movement is as easy to
grasp at a distance as it is in Russia--perhaps even easier, because
in Russia present circumstances tend to obscure the view of the
distant future. But the actual situation in Russia can only be
understood superficially if we forget the hope which is the motive
power of the whole. One might as well describe the Thebaid without
mentioning that the hermits expected eternal bliss as the reward of
their sacrifices here on earth.

I cannot share the hopes of the Bolsheviks any more than those of the
Egyptian anchorites; I regard both as tragic delusions, destined to
bring upon the world centuries of darkness and futile violence. The
principles of the Sermon on the Mount are admirable, but their effect
upon average human nature was very different from what was intended.
Those who followed Christ did not learn to love their enemies or to
turn the other cheek. They learned instead to use the Inquisition and
the stake, to subject the human intellect to the yoke of an ignorant
and intolerant priesthood, to degrade art and extinguish science for a
thousand years. These were the inevitable results, not of the
teaching, but of fanatical belief in the teaching. The hopes which
inspire Communism are, in the main, as admirable as those instilled by
the Sermon on the Mount, but they are held as fanatically, and are
likely to do as much harm. Cruelty lurks in our instincts, and
fanaticism is a camouflage for cruelty. Fanatics are seldom genuinely
humane, and those who sincerely dread cruelty will be slow to adopt a
fanatical creed. I do not know whether Bolshevism can be prevented
from acquiring universal power. But even if it cannot, I am persuaded
that those who stand out against it, not from love of ancient
injustice, but in the name of the free spirit of Man, will be the
bearers of the seeds of progress, from which, when the world's
gestation is accomplished, new life will be born.

The war has left throughout Europe a mood of disillusionment and
despair which calls aloud for a new religion, as the only force
capable of giving men the energy to live vigorously. Bolshevism has
supplied the new religion. It promises glorious things: an end of the
injustice of rich and poor, an end of economic slavery, an end of war.
It promises an end of the disunion of classes which poisons political
life and threatens our industrial system with destruction. It promises
an end to commercialism, that subtle falsehood that leads men to
appraise everything by its money value, and to determine money value
often merely by the caprices of idle plutocrats. It promises a world
where all men and women shall be kept sane by work, and where all work
shall be of value to the community, not only to a few wealthy
vampires. It is to sweep away listlessness and pessimism and weariness
and all the complicated miseries of those whose circumstances allow
idleness and whose energies are not sufficient to force activity. In
place of palaces and hovels, futile vice and useless misery, there is
to be wholesome work, enough but not too much, all of it useful,
performed by men and women who have no time for pessimism and no
occasion for despair.

The existing capitalist system is doomed. Its injustice is so glaring
that only ignorance and tradition could lead wage-earners to tolerate
it. As ignorance diminishes, tradition becomes weakened, and the war
destroyed the hold upon men's minds of everything merely traditional.
It may be that, through the influence of America, the capitalist
system will linger for another fifty years; but it will grow
continually weaker, and can never recover the position of easy
dominance which it held in the nineteenth century. To attempt to
bolster it up is a useless diversion of energies which might be
expended upon building something new. Whether the new thing will be
Bolshevism or something else, I do not know; whether it will be better
or worse than capitalism, I do not know. But that a radically new
order of society will emerge, I feel no doubt. And I also feel no
doubt that the new order will be either some form of Socialism or a
reversion to barbarism and petty war such as occurred during the
barbarian invasion. If Bolshevism remains the only vigorous and
effective competitor of capitalism, I believe that no form of
Socialism will be realized, but only chaos and destruction. This
belief, for which I shall give reasons later, is one of the grounds
upon which I oppose Bolshevism. But to oppose it from the point of
view of a supporter of capitalism would be, to my mind, utterly
futile and against the movement of history in the present age.

The effect of Bolshevism as a revolutionary hope is greater outside
Russia than within the Soviet Republic. Grim realities have done much
to kill hope among those who are subject to the dictatorship of
Moscow. Yet even within Russia, the Communist party, in whose hands
all political power is concentrated, still lives by hope, though the
pressure of events has made the hope severe and stern and somewhat
remote. It is this hope that leads to concentration upon the rising
generation. Russian Communists often avow that there is little hope
for those who are already adult, and that happiness can only come to
the children who have grown up under the new régime and been moulded
from the first to the group-mentality that Communism requires. It is
only after the lapse of a generation that they hope to create a Russia
that shall realize their vision.

In the Western World, the hope inspired by Bolshevism is more
immediate, less shot through with tragedy. Western Socialists who have
visited Russia have seen fit to suppress the harsher features of the
present régime, and have disseminated a belief among their followers
that the millennium would be quickly realized there if there were no
war and no blockade. Even those Socialists who are not Bolsheviks for
their own country have mostly done very little to help men in
appraising the merits or demerits of Bolshevik methods. By this lack
of courage they have exposed Western Socialism to the danger of
becoming Bolshevik through ignorance of the price that has to be paid
and of the uncertainty as to whether the desired goal will be reached
in the end. I believe that the West is capable of adopting less
painful and more certain methods of reaching Socialism than those that
have seemed necessary in Russia. And I believe that while some forms
of Socialism are immeasurably better than capitalism, others are even
worse. Among those that are worse I reckon the form which is being
achieved in Russia, not only in itself, but as a more insuperable
barrier to further progress.

In judging of Bolshevism from what is to be seen in Russia at present,
it is necessary to disentangle various factors which contribute to a
single result. To begin with, Russia is one of the nations that were
defeated in the war; this has produced a set of circumstances
resembling those found in Germany and Austria. The food problem, for
example, appears to be essentially similar in all three countries. In
order to arrive at what is specifically Bolshevik, we must first
eliminate what is merely characteristic of a country which has
suffered military disaster. Next we come to factors which are Russian,
which Russian Communists share with other Russians, but not with other
Communists. There is, for example, a great deal of disorder and chaos
and waste, which shocks Westerners (especially Germans) even when they
are in close political sympathy with the Bolsheviks. My own belief is
that, although, with the exception of a few very able men, the Russian
Government is less efficient in organization than the Germans or the
Americans would be in similar circumstances, yet it represents what is
most efficient in Russia, and does more to prevent chaos than any
possible alternative government would do. Again, the intolerance and
lack of liberty which has been inherited from the Tsarist régime is
probably to be regarded as Russian rather than Communist. If a
Communist Party were to acquire power in England, it would probably be
met by a less irresponsible opposition, and would be able to show
itself far more tolerant than any government can hope to be in Russia
if it is to escape assassination. This, however, is a matter of
degree. A great part of the despotism which characterizes the
Bolsheviks belongs to the essence of their social philosophy, and
would have to be reproduced, even if in a milder form, wherever that
philosophy became dominant.

It is customary among the apologists of Bolshevism in the West to
excuse its harshness on the ground that it has been produced by the
necessity of fighting the Entente and its mercenaries. Undoubtedly it
is true that this necessity has produced many of the worst elements in
the present state of affairs. Undoubtedly, also, the Entente has
incurred a heavy load of guilt by its peevish and futile opposition.
But the expectation of such opposition was always part of Bolshevik
theory. A general hostility to the first Communist State was both
foreseen and provoked by the doctrine of the class war. Those who
adopt the Bolshevik standpoint must reckon with the embittered
hostility of capitalist States; it is not worth while to adopt
Bolshevik methods unless they can lead to good in spite of this
hostility. To say that capitalists are wicked and we have no
responsibility for their acts is unscientific; it is, in particular,
contrary to the Marxian doctrine of economic determinism. The evils
produced in Russia by the enmity of the Entente are therefore to be
reckoned as essential in the Bolshevik method of transition to
Communism, not as specially Russian. I am not sure that we cannot even
go a step further. The exhaustion and misery caused by unsuccessful
war were necessary to the success of the Bolsheviks; a prosperous
population will not embark by such methods upon a fundamental economic
reconstruction. One can imagine England becoming Bolshevik after an
unsuccessful war involving the loss of India--no improbable
contingency in the next few years. But at present the average
wage-earner in England will not risk what he has for the doubtful gain
of a revolution. A condition of widespread misery may, therefore, be
taken as indispensable to the inauguration of Communism, unless,
indeed, it were possible to establish Communism more or less
peacefully, by methods which would not, even temporarily, destroy the
economic life of the country. If the hopes which inspired Communism at
the start, and which still inspire its Western advocates, are ever to
be realized, the problem of minimizing violence in the transition must
be faced. Unfortunately, violence is in itself delightful to most
really vigorous revolutionaries, and they feel no interest in the
problem of avoiding it as far as possible. Hatred of enemies is easier
and more intense than love of friends. But from men who are more
anxious to injure opponents than to benefit the world at large no
great good is to be expected.

II



I entered Soviet Russia on May 11th and recrossed the frontier on June
16th. The Russian authorities only admitted me on the express
condition that I should travel with the British Labour Delegation, a
condition with which I was naturally very willing to comply, and which
that Delegation kindly allowed me to fulfil. We were conveyed from the
frontier to Petrograd, as well as on subsequent journeys, in a special
_train de luxe_; covered with mottoes about the Social Revolution and
the Proletariat of all countries; we were received everywhere by
regiments of soldiers, with the Internationale being played on the
regimental band while civilians stood bare-headed and soldiers at the
salute; congratulatory orations were made by local leaders and
answered by prominent Communists who accompanied us; the entrances to
the carriages were guarded by magnificent Bashkir cavalry-men in
resplendent uniforms; in short, everything was done to make us feel
like the Prince of Wales. Innumerable functions were arranged for us:
banquets, public meetings, military reviews, etc.

The assumption was that we had come to testify to the solidarity of
British Labour with Russian Communism, and on that assumption the
utmost possible use was made of us for Bolshevik propaganda. We, on
the other hand, desired to ascertain what we could of Russian
conditions and Russian methods of government, which was impossible in
the atmosphere of a royal progress. Hence arose an amicable contest,
degenerating at times into a game of hide and seek: while they assured
us how splendid the banquet or parade was going to be, we tried to
explain how much we should prefer a quiet walk in the streets. I, not
being a member of the Delegation, felt less obligation than my
companions did to attend at propaganda meetings where one knew the
speeches by heart beforehand. In this way, I was able, by the help of
neutral interpreters, mostly English or American, to have many
conversations with casual people whom I met in the streets or on
village greens, and to find out how the whole system appears to the
ordinary non-political man and woman. The first five days we spent in
Petrograd, the next eleven in Moscow. During this time we were living
in daily contact with important men in the Government, so that we
learned the official point of view without difficulty. I saw also what
I could of the intellectuals in both places. We were all allowed
complete freedom to see politicians of opposition parties, and we
naturally made full use of this freedom. We saw Mensheviks, Social
Revolutionaries of different groups, and Anarchists; we saw them
without the presence of any Bolsheviks, and they spoke freely after
they had overcome their initial fears. I had an hour's talk with
Lenin, virtually _tête-à-tête_; I met Trotsky, though only in company;
I spent a night in the country with Kamenev; and I saw a great deal of
other men who, though less known outside Russia, are of considerable
importance in the Government.

At the end of our time in Moscow we all felt a desire to see something
of the country, and to get in touch with the peasants, since they form
about 85 per cent, of the population. The Government showed the
greatest kindness in meeting our wishes, and it was decided that we
should travel down the Volga from Nijni Novgorod to Saratov, stopping
at many places, large and small, and talking freely with the
inhabitants. I found this part of the time extraordinarily
instructive. I learned to know more than I should have thought
possible of the life and outlook of peasants, village schoolmasters,
small Jew traders, and all kinds of people. Unfortunately, my friend,
Clifford Allen, fell ill, and my time was much taken up with him. This
had, however, one good result, namely, that I was able to go on with
the boat to Astrakhan, as he was too ill to be moved off it. This not
only gave me further knowledge of the country, but made me acquainted
with Sverdlov, Acting Minister of Transport, who was travelling on the
boat to organize the movement of oil from Baku up the Volga, and who
was one of the ablest as well as kindest people whom I met in Russia.

One of the first things that I discovered after passing the Red Flag
which marks the frontier of Soviet Russia, amid a desolate region of
marsh, pine wood, and barbed wire entanglements, was the profound
difference between the theories of actual Bolsheviks and the version
of those theories current among advanced Socialists in this country.
Friends of Russia here think of the dictatorship of the proletariat as
merely a new form of representative government, in which only working
men and women have votes, and the constituencies are partly
occupational, not geographical. They think that "proletariat" means
"proletariat," but "dictatorship" does not quite mean "dictatorship."
This is the opposite of the truth. When a Russian Communist speaks of
dictatorship, he means the word literally, but when he speaks of the
proletariat, he means the word in a Pickwickian sense. He means the
"class-conscious" part of the proletariat, _i.e._, the Communist
Party.[1] He includes people by no means proletarian (such as Lenin
and Tchicherin) who have the right opinions, and he excludes such
wage-earners as have not the right opinions, whom he classifies as
lackeys of the _bourgeoisie_. The Communist who sincerely believes the
party creed is convinced that private property is the root of all
evil; he is so certain of this that he shrinks from no measures,
however harsh, which seem necessary for constructing and preserving
the Communist State. He spares himself as little as he spares others.
He works sixteen hours a day, and foregoes his Saturday half-holiday.
He volunteers for any difficult or dangerous work which needs to be
done, such as clearing away piles of infected corpses left by Kolchak
or Denikin. In spite of his position of power and his control of
supplies, he lives an austere life. He is not pursuing personal ends,
but aiming at the creation of a new social order. The same motives,
however, which make him austere make him also ruthless. Marx has
taught that Communism is fatally predestined to come about; this fits
in with the Oriental traits in the Russian character, and produces a
state of mind not unlike that of the early successors of Mahomet.
Opposition is crushed without mercy, and without shrinking from the
methods of the Tsarist police, many of whom are still employed at
their old work. Since all evils are due to private property, the evils
of the Bolshevik régime while it has to fight private property will
automatically cease as soon as it has succeeded.

These views are the familiar consequences of fanatical belief. To an
English mind they reinforce the conviction upon which English life has
been based ever since 1688, that kindliness and tolerance are worth
all the creeds in the world--a view which, it is true, we do not apply
to other nations or to subject races.

In a very novel society it is natural to seek for historical
parallels. The baser side of the present Russian Government is most
nearly paralleled by the Directoire in France, but on its better side
it is closely analogous to the rule of Cromwell. The sincere
Communists (and all the older members of the party have proved their
sincerity by years of persecution) are not unlike the Puritan
soldiers in their stern politico-moral purpose. Cromwell's dealings
with Parliament are not unlike Lenin's with the Constituent Assembly.
Both, starting from a combination of democracy and religious faith,
were driven to sacrifice democracy to religion enforced by military
dictatorship. Both tried to compel their countries to live at a higher
level of morality and effort than the population found tolerable. Life
in modern Russia, as in Puritan England, is in many ways contrary to
instinct. And if the Bolsheviks ultimately fall, it will be for the
reason for which the Puritans fell: because there comes a point at
which men feel that amusement and ease are worth more than all other
goods put together.

Far closer than any actual historical parallel is the parallel of
Plato's Republic. The Communist Party corresponds to the guardians;
the soldiers have about the same status in both; there is in Russia an
attempt to deal with family life more or less as Plato suggested. I
suppose it may be assumed that every teacher of Plato throughout the
world abhors Bolshevism, and that every Bolshevik regards Plato as an
antiquated _bourgeois_. Nevertheless, the parallel is extraordinarily
exact between Plato's Republic and the régime which the better
Bolsheviks are endeavouring to create.

Bolshevism is internally aristocratic and externally militant. The
Communists in many ways resemble the British public-school type: they
have all the good and bad traits of an aristocracy which is young and
vital. They are courageous, energetic, capable of command, always
ready to serve the State; on the other hand, they are dictatorial,
lacking in ordinary consideration for the plebs. They are practically
the sole possessors of power, and they enjoy innumerable advantages in
consequence. Most of them, though far from luxurious, have better food
than other people. Only people of some political importance can obtain
motor-cars or telephones. Permits for railway journeys, for making
purchases at the Soviet stores (where prices are about one-fiftieth of
what they are in the market), for going to the theatre, and so on,
are, of course, easier to obtain for the friends of those in power
than for ordinary mortals. In a thousand ways, the Communists have a
life which is happier than that of the rest of the community. Above
all, they are less exposed to the unwelcome attentions of the police
and the extraordinary commission.

The Communist theory of international affairs is exceedingly simple.
The revolution foretold by Marx, which is to abolish capitalism
throughout the world, happened to begin in Russia, though Marxian
theory would seem to demand that it should begin in America. In
countries where the revolution has not yet broken out, the sole duty
of a Communist is to hasten its advent. Agreements with capitalist
States can only be make-shifts, and can never amount on either side to
a sincere peace. No real good can come to any country without a bloody
revolution: English Labour men may fancy that a peaceful evolution is
possible, but they will find their mistake. Lenin told me that he
hopes to see a Labour Government in England, and would wish his
supporters to work for it, but solely in order that the futility of
Parliamentarism may be conclusively demonstrated to the British
working man. Nothing will do any real good except the arming of the
proletariat and the disarming of the _bourgeoisie_. Those who preach
anything else are social traitors or deluded fools.

For my part, after weighing this theory carefully, and after admitting
the whole of its indictment of _bourgeois_ capitalism, I find myself
definitely and strongly opposed to it. The Third International is an
organization which exists to promote the class-war and to hasten the
advent of revolution everywhere. My objection is not that capitalism
is less bad than the Bolsheviks believe, but that Socialism is less
good, not in its best form, but in the only form which is likely to be
brought about by war. The evils of war, especially of civil war, are
certain and very great; the gains to be achieved by victory are
problematical. In the course of a desperate struggle, the heritage of
civilization is likely to be lost, while hatred, suspicion, and
cruelty become normal in the relations of human beings. In order to
succeed in war, a concentration of power is necessary, and from
concentration of power the very same evils flow as from the capitalist
concentration of wealth. For these reasons chiefly, I cannot support
any movement which aims at world revolution. The damage to
civilization done by revolution in one country may be repaired by the
influence of another in which there has been no revolution; but in a
universal cataclysm civilization might go under for a thousand years.
But while I cannot advocate world revolution, I cannot escape from the
conclusion that the Governments of the leading capitalist countries
are doing everything to bring it about. Abuse of our power against
Germany, Russia, and India (to say nothing of any other countries) may
well bring about our downfall, and produce those very evils which the
enemies of Bolshevism most dread.

The true Communist is thoroughly international. Lenin, for example, so
far as I could judge, is not more concerned with the interests of
Russia than with those of other countries; Russia is, at the moment,
the protagonist of the social revolution, and, as such, valuable to
the world, but Lenin would sacrifice Russia rather than the
revolution, if the alternative should ever arise. This is the orthodox
attitude, and is no doubt genuine in many of the leaders. But
nationalism is natural and instinctive; through pride in the
revolution, it grows again even in the breasts of Communists. Through
the Polish war, the Bolsheviks have acquired the support of national
feeling, and their position in the country has been immensely
strengthened.

The only time I saw Trotsky was at the Opera in Moscow. The British
Labour Delegation were occupying what had been the Tsar's box. After
speaking with us in the ante-chamber, he stepped to the front of the
box and stood with folded arms while the house cheered itself hoarse.
Then he spoke a few sentences, short and sharp, with military
precision, winding up by calling for "three cheers for our brave
fellows at the front," to which the audience responded as a London
audience would have responded in the autumn of 1914. Trotsky and the
Red Army undoubtedly now have behind them a great body of nationalist
sentiment. The reconquest of Asiatic Russia has even revived what is
essentially an imperialist way of feeling, though this would be
indignantly repudiated by many of those in whom I seemed to detect it.
Experience of power is inevitably altering Communist theories, and men
who control a vast governmental machine can hardly have quite the same
outlook on life as they had when they were hunted fugitives. If the
Bolsheviks remain in power, it is much to be feared that their
Communism will fade, and that they will increasingly resemble any
other Asiatic Government--for example, our own Government in India.

Footnotes:

[1] See the article "On the rôle of the Communist Party in the
Proletarian Revolution," in _Theses presented to the Second Congress
of the Communist International, Petrograd-Moscow, 18 July, 1920_--a
valuable work which I possess only in French.

III



Soon after my arrival in Moscow I had an hour's conversation with
Lenin in English, which he speaks fairly well. An interpreter was
present, but his services were scarcely required. Lenin's room is very
bare; it contains a big desk, some maps on the walls, two book-cases,
and one comfortable chair for visitors in addition to two or three
hard chairs. It is obvious that he has no love of luxury or even
comfort. He is very friendly, and apparently simple, entirely without
a trace of _hauteur_. If one met him without knowing who he was, one
would not guess that he is possessed of great power or even that he is
in any way eminent. I have never met a personage so destitute of
self-importance. He looks at his visitors very closely, and screws up
one eye, which seems to increase alarmingly the penetrating power of
the other. He laughs a great deal; at first his laugh seems merely
friendly and jolly, but gradually I came to feel it rather grim. He
is dictatorial, calm, incapable of fear, extraordinarily devoid of
self-seeking, an embodied theory. The materialist conception of
history, one feels, is his life-blood. He resembles a professor in his
desire to have the theory understood and in his fury with those who
misunderstand or disagree, as also in his love of expounding, I got
the impression that he despises a great many people and is an
intellectual aristocrat.

The first question I asked him was as to how far he recognized the
peculiarity of English economic and political conditions? I was
anxious to know whether advocacy of violent revolution is an
indispensable condition of joining the Third International, although I
did not put this question directly because others were asking it
officially. His answer was unsatisfactory to me. He admitted that
there is little chance of revolution in England now, and that the
working man is not yet disgusted with Parliamentary government. But he
hopes that this result may be brought about by a Labour Ministry. He
thinks that, if Mr. Henderson, for instance, were to become Prime
Minister, nothing of importance would be done; organized Labour would
then, so he hopes and believes, turn to revolution. On this ground, he
wishes his supporters in this country to do everything in their power
to secure a Labour majority in Parliament; he does not advocate
abstention from Parliamentary contests, but participation with a view
to making Parliament obviously contemptible. The reasons which make
attempts at violent revolution seem to most of us both improbable and
undesirable in this country carry no weight with him, and seem to him
mere _bourgeois_ prejudices. When I suggested that whatever is
possible in England can be achieved without bloodshed, he waved aside
the suggestion as fantastic. I got little impression of knowledge or
psychological imagination as regards Great Britain. Indeed the whole
tendency of Marxianism is against psychological imagination, since it
attributes everything in politics to purely material causes.

I asked him next whether he thought it possible to establish Communism
firmly and fully in a country containing such a large majority of
peasants. He admitted that it was difficult, and laughed over the
exchange the peasant is compelled to make, of food for paper; the
worthlessness of Russian paper struck him as comic. But he said--what
is no doubt true--that things will right themselves when there are
goods to offer to the peasant. For this he looks partly to
electrification in industry, which, he says, is a technical necessity
in Russia, but will take ten years to complete.[2] He spoke with
enthusiasm, as they all do, of the great scheme for generating
electrical power by means of peat. Of course he looks to the raising
of the blockade as the only radical cure; but he was not very hopeful
of this being achieved thoroughly or permanently except through
revolutions in other countries. Peace between Bolshevik Russia and
capitalist countries, he said, must always be insecure; the Entente
might be led by weariness and mutual dissensions to conclude peace,
but he felt convinced that the peace would be of brief duration. I
found in him, as in almost all leading Communists, much less eagerness
than existed in our delegation for peace and the raising of the
blockade. He believes that nothing of real value can be achieved
except through world revolution and the abolition of capitalism; I
felt that he regarded the resumption of trade with capitalist
countries as a mere palliative of doubtful value.

He described the division between rich and poor peasants, and the
Government propaganda among the latter against the former, leading to
acts of violence which he seemed to find amusing. He spoke as though
the dictatorship over the peasant would have to continue a long time,
because of the peasant's desire for free trade. He said he knew from
statistics (what I can well believe) that the peasants have had more
to eat these last two years than they ever had before, "and yet they
are against us," he added a little wistfully. I asked him what to
reply to critics who say that in the country he has merely created
peasant proprietorship, not Communism; he replied that that is not
quite the truth, but he did not say what the truth is.[3]

The last question I asked him was whether resumption of trade with
capitalist countries, if it took place, would not create centres of
capitalist influence, and make the preservation of Communism more
difficult? It had seemed to me that the more ardent Communists might
well dread commercial intercourse with the outer world, as leading to
an infiltration of heresy, and making the rigidity of the present
system almost impossible. I wished to know whether he had such a
feeling. He admitted that trade would create difficulties, but said
they would be less than those of the war. He said that two years ago
neither he nor his colleagues thought they could survive against the
hostility of the world. He attributes their survival to the jealousies
and divergent interests of the different capitalist nations; also to
the power of Bolshevik propaganda. He said the Germans had laughed
when the Bolsheviks proposed to combat guns with leaflets, but that
the event had proved the leaflets quite as powerful. I do not think he
recognizes that the Labour and Socialist parties have had any part in
the matter. He does not seem to know that the attitude of British
Labour has done a great deal to make a first-class war against Russia
impossible, since it has confined the Government to what could be done
in a hole-and-corner way, and denied without a too blatant mendacity.

He thoroughly enjoys the attacks of Lord Northcliffe, to whom he
wishes to send a medal for Bolshevik propaganda. Accusations of
spoliation, he remarked, may shock the _bourgeois_, but have an
opposite effect upon the proletarian.

I think if I had met him without knowing who he was, I should not have
guessed that he was a great man; he struck me as too opinionated and
narrowly orthodox. His strength comes, I imagine, from his honesty,
courage, and unwavering faith--religious faith in the Marxian gospel,
which takes the place of the Christian martyr's hopes of Paradise,
except that it is less egotistical. He has as little love of liberty
as the Christians who suffered under Diocletian, and retaliated when
they acquired power. Perhaps love of liberty is incompatible with
whole-hearted belief in a panacea for all human ills. If so, I cannot
but rejoice in the sceptical temper of the Western world. I went to
Russia a Communist; but contact with those who have no doubts has
intensified a thousandfold my own doubts, not as to Communism in
itself, but as to the wisdom of holding a creed so firmly that for its
sake men are willing to inflict widespread misery.

Trotsky, whom the Communists do not by any means regard as Lenin's
equal, made more impression upon me from the point of view of
intelligence and personality, though not of character. I saw too
little of him, however, to have more than a very superficial
impression. He has bright eyes, military bearing, lightning
intelligence and magnetic personality. He is very good-looking, with
admirable wavy hair; one feels he would be irresistible to women. I
felt in him a vein of gay good humour, so long as he was not crossed
in any way. I thought, perhaps wrongly, that his vanity was even
greater than his love of power--the sort of vanity that one associates
with an artist or actor. The comparison with Napoleon was forced upon
one. But I had no means of estimating the strength of his Communist
conviction, which may be very sincere and profound.

An extraordinary contrast to both these men was Gorky, with whom I had
a brief interview in Petrograd. He was in bed, apparently very ill and
obviously heart-broken. He begged me, in anything I might say about
Russia, always to emphasize what Russia has suffered. He supports the
Government--as I should do, if I were a Russian--not because he thinks
it faultless, but because the possible alternatives are worse. One
felt in him a love of the Russian people which makes their present
martyrdom almost unbearable, and prevents the fanatical faith by which
the pure Marxians are upheld. I felt him the most lovable, and to me
the most sympathetic, of all the Russians I saw. I wished for more
knowledge of his outlook, but he spoke with difficulty and was
constantly interrupted by terrible fits of coughing, so that I could
not stay. All the intellectuals whom I met--a class who have suffered
terribly--expressed their gratitude to him for what he has done on
their behalf. The materialistic conception of history is all very
well, but some care for the higher things of civilization is a relief.
The Bolsheviks are sometimes said to have done great things for art,
but I could not discover that they had done more than preserve
something of what existed before. When I questioned one of them on the
subject, he grew impatient, and said: "We haven't time for a new art,
any more than for a new religion." Unavoidably, although the
Government favours art as much as it can, the atmosphere is one in
which art cannot flourish, because art is anarchic and resistant to
organization. Gorky has done all that one man could to preserve the
intellectual and artistic life of Russia. I feared that he was dying,
and that, perhaps, it was dying too. But he recovered, and I hope it
will recover also.

Footnotes:

[2] Electrification is desired not merely for reorganizing industry,
but in order to industrialize agriculture. In _Theses presented to the
Second Congress of the Communist International_ (an instructive little
book, which I shall quote as _Theses_), it is said in an article on
the Agrarian question that Socialism will not be secure till industry
is reorganized on a new basis with "general application of electric
energy in all branches of agriculture and rural economy," which "alone
can give to the towns the possibility of offering to backward rural
districts a technical and social aid capable of determining an
extraordinary increase of productivity of agricultural and rural
labour, and of engaging the small cultivators, in their own interest,
to pass progressively to a collectivist mechanical cultivation" (p. 36
of French edition).

[3] In _Theses_ (p. 34) it is said: "It would be an irreparable error
... not to admit the gratuitous grant of part of the expropriated
lands to poor and even well-to-do peasants."

IV



It has often been said that, whatever the inadequacy of Bolshevik
organization in other fields, in art and in education at least they
have made great progress.

To take first of all art: it is true that they began by recognizing,
as perhaps no other revolutionary government would, the importance and
spontaneity of the artistic impulse, and therefore while they
controlled or destroyed the counter-revolutionary in all other social
activities, they allowed the artist, whatever his political creed,
complete freedom to continue his work. Moreover, as regards clothing
and rations they treated him especially well. This, and the care
devoted to the upkeep of churches, public monuments, and museums, are
well-known facts, to which there has already been ample testimony.

The preservation of the old artistic community practically intact was
the more remarkable in view of the pronounced sympathy of most of them
with the old régime. The theory, however, was that art and politics
belonged to two separate realms; but great honour would of course be
the portion of those artists who would be inspired by the revolution.

Three years' experience, however, have proved the falsity of this
doctrine and led to a divorce between art and popular feeling which a
sensitive observer cannot fail to remark. It is glaringly apparent in
the hitherto most vital of all Russian arts, the theatre. The artists
have continued to perform the old classics in tragedy or comedy, and
the old-style operette. The theatre programmes have remained the same
for the last two years, and, but for the higher standard of artistic
performance, might belong to the theatres of Paris or London. As one
sits in the theatre, one is so acutely conscious of the discrepancy
between the daily life of the audience and that depicted in the play
that the latter seems utterly dead and meaningless. To some of the
more fiery Communists it appears that a mistake has been made. They
complain that _bourgeois_ art is being preserved long after its time,
they accuse the artists of showing contempt for their public, of being
as untouched by the revolutionary mood as an elderly _bourgeoise_
bewailing the loss of her personal comfort; they would like to see
only the revolutionary mood embodied in art, and to achieve this
would make a clean sweep, enforcing the writing and performance of
nothing but revolutionary plays and the painting of revolutionary
pictures. Nor can it be argued that they are wrong as to the facts: it
is plain that the preservation of the old artistic tradition has
served very little purpose; but on the other hand it is equally plain
that an artist cannot be drilled like a military recruit. There is,
fortunately, no sign that these tactics will be directly adopted, but
in an indirect fashion they are already being applied. An artist is
not to blame if his temperament leads him to draw cartoons of leading
Bolsheviks, or satirize the various comical aspects--and they are
many--of the Soviet régime. To force such a man, however, to turn his
talent only against Denikin, Yudenitch and Kolchak, or the leaders of
the Entente, is momentarily good for Communism, but it is discouraging
to the artist, and may prove in the long run bad for art, and possibly
for Communism also. It is plain from the religious nature of Communism
in Russia, that such controlling of the impulse to artistic creation
is inevitable, and that propaganda art alone can flourish in such an
atmosphere. For example, no poetry or literature that is not orthodox
will reach the printing press. It is so easy to make the excuse of
lack of paper and the urgent need for manifestoes. Thus there may
well come to be a repetition of the attitude of the mediæval Church to
the sagas and legends of the people, except that, in this case, it is
the folk tales which will be preserved, and the more sensitive and
civilized products banned. The only poet who seems to be much spoken
of at present in Russia is one who writes rough popular songs. There
are revolutionary odes, but one may hazard a guess that they resemble
our patriotic war poetry.

I said that this state of affairs may in the long run be bad for art,
but the contrary may equally well prove to be the truth. It is of
course discouraging and paralysing to the old-style artist, and it is
death to the old individual art which depended on subtlety and oddity
of temperament, and arose very largely from the complicated psychology
of the idle. There it stands, this old art, the purest monument to the
nullity of the art-for-art's-sake doctrine, like a rich exotic plant
of exquisite beauty, still apparently in its glory, till one perceives
that the roots are cut, and that leaf by leaf it is gradually fading
away.

But, unlike the Puritans in this respect, the Bolsheviks have not
sought to dig up the roots, and there are signs that the paralysis is
merely temporary. Moreover, individual art is not the only form, and
in particular the plastic arts have shown that they can live by mass
action, and flourish under an intolerant faith. Communist artists of
the future may erect public buildings surpassing in beauty the
mediæval churches, they may paint frescoes, organize pageants, make
Homeric songs about their heroes. Communist art will begin, and is
beginning now, in the propaganda pictures, and stories such as those
designed for peasants and children. There is, for instance, a kind of
Rake's Progress or "How she became a Communist," in which the Entente
leaders make a sorry and grotesque appearance. Lenin and Trotsky
already figure in woodcuts as Moses and Aaron, deliverers of their
people, while the mother and child who illustrate the statistics of
the maternity exhibition have the grace and beauty of mediæval
madonnas. Russia is only now emerging from the middle ages, and the
Church tradition in painting is passing with incredible smoothness
into the service of Communist doctrine. These pictures have, too, an
oriental flavour: there are brown Madonnas in the Russian churches,
and such an one illustrates the statistics of infant mortality in
India, while the Russian mother, broad-footed, in gay petticoat and
kerchief, sits in a starry meadow suckling her baby from a very ample
white breast. I think that this movement towards the Church tradition
may be unconscious and instinctive, and would perhaps be deplored by
many Communists, for whom grandiose bad Rodin statuary and the crudity
of cubism better express what they mean by revolution. But this
revolution is Russian and not French, and its art, if all goes well,
should inevitably bear the popular Russian stamp. It is would-be
primitive and popular art that is vulgar. Such at least is the
reflection engendered by an inspection of Russian peasant work as
compared with the spirit of _Children's Tales_.

The Russian peasant's artistic impulse is no legend. Besides the
carving and embroidery which speak eloquently to peasant skill, one
observes many instances in daily life. He will climb down, when his
slowly-moving train stops by the wayside, to gather branches and
flowers with which he will decorate the railway carriage both inside
and out, he will work willingly at any task which has beauty for its
object, and was all too prone under the old régime to waste his time
and his employer's material in fashioning small metal or wooden
objects with his hands.

If the _bourgeois_ tradition then will not serve, there is a popular
tradition which is still live and passionate and which may perhaps
persist. Unhappily it has a formidable enemy in the organization and
development of industry, which is far more dangerous to art than
Communist doctrine. Indeed, industry in its early stages seems
everywhere doomed to be the enemy of beauty and instinctive life. One
might hope that this would not prove to be so in Russia, the first
Socialist State, as yet unindustrial, able to draw on the industrial
experience of the whole world, were it not that one discovers with a
certain misgiving in the Bolshevik leaders the rasping arid
temperament of those to whom the industrial machine is an end in
itself, and, in addition, reflects that these industrially minded men
have as yet no practical experience, nor do there exist men of
goodwill to help them. It does not seem reasonable to hope that Russia
can pass through the period of industrialization without a good deal
of mismanagement, involving waste resulting in too long hours, child
labour and other evils with which the West is all too familiar. What
the Bolsheviks would not therefore willingly do to art, the Juggernaut
which they are bent on setting in motion may accomplish for them.

The next generation in Russia will have to consist of practical
hard-working men, the old-style artists will die off and successors
will not readily arise. A State which is struggling with economic
difficulties is bound to be slow to admit an artistic vocation, since
this involves exemption from practical work. Moreover the majority of
minds always turn instinctively to the real need of the moment. A man
therefore who is adapted by talent and temperament to becoming an
opera singer, will under the pressure of Communist enthusiasm and
Government encouragement turn his attention to economics. (I am here
quoting an actual instance.) The whole Russian people at this stage in
their development strike one as being forced by the logic of their
situation to make a similar choice.

It may be all to the good that there should be fewer professional
artists, since some of the finest work has been done by men and groups
of men to whom artistic expression was only a pastime. They were not
hampered by the solemnity and reverence for art which too often
destroy the spontaneity of the professional. Indeed a revival of this
attitude to art is one of the good results which may be hoped for from
a Communist revolution in a more advanced industrial community. There
the problem of education will be to stimulate the creative impulses
towards art and science so that men may know how to employ their
leisure hours. Work in the factory can never be made to provide an
adequate outlet. The only hope, if men are to remain human beings
under industrialism, is to reduce hours to the minimum. But this is
only possible when production and organization are highly efficient,
which will not be the case for a long time in Russia. Hence not only
does it appear that the number of artists will grow less, but that the
number of people undamaged in their artistic impulses and on that
account able to create or appreciate as amateurs is likely to be
deplorably small. It is in this damaging effect of industry on human
instinct that the immediate danger to art in Russia lies.

The effect of industry on the crafts is quite obvious. A craftsman who
is accustomed to work with his hands, following the tradition
developed by his ancestors, is useless when brought face to face with
a machine. And the man who can handle the machine will only be
concerned with quantity and utility in the first instance. Only
gradually do the claims of beauty come to be recognized. Compare the
modern motor car with the first of its species, or even, since the
same law seems to operate in nature, the prehistoric animal with its
modern descendant. The same relation exists between them as between
man and the ape, or the horse and the hipparion. The movement of life
seems to be towards ever greater delicacy and complexity, and man
carries it forward in the articles that he makes and the society that
he develops. Industry is a new tool, difficult to handle, but it will
produce just as beautiful objects as did the mediæval builder and
craftsman, though not until it has been in being for a long time and
belongs to tradition.

One may expect, therefore, that while the crafts in Russia will lose
in artistic value, the drama, sculpture and painting and all those
arts which have nothing to do with the machine and depend entirely
upon mental and spiritual inspiration will receive an impetus from the
Communist faith. Whether the flowering period will be long or short
depends partly on the political situation, but chiefly on the rapidity
of industrial development. It may be that the machine will ultimately
conquer the Communist faith and grind out the human impulses, and
Russia become during this transition period as inartistic and soulless
as was America until quite recent years. One would like to hope that
mechanical progress will be swift and social idealism sufficiently
strong to retain control. But the practical difficulties are almost
insuperable.

Such signs of the progress of art as it is possible to notice at this
early stage would seem to bear out the above argument. For instance,
an attempt is being made to foster the continuation of peasant
embroidery, carving, &c., in the towns. It is done by people who have
evidently lost the tradition already. They are taught to copy the
models which are placed in the Peasant Museum, but there is no
comparison between the live little wooden lady who smiles beneath the
glass case, and the soulless staring-eyed creature who is offered for
sale, nor between the quite ordinary carved fowl one may buy and the
amusing life-like figure one may merely gaze at.

But when one comes to art directly inspired by Communism it is a
different story. Apart from the propaganda pictures already referred
to, there are propaganda plays performed by the Red Army in its spare
moments, and there are the mass pageant plays performed on State
occasions. I had the good fortune to witness one of each kind.

The play was called _Zarevo_ (The Dawn), and was performed on a
Saturday night on a small stage in a small hall in an entirely amateur
fashion. It represented Russian life just before the revolution. It
was intense and tragic and passionately acted. Dramatic talent is not
rare in Russia. Almost the only comic relief was provided by the
Tsarist police, who made one appearance towards the end, got up like
comic military characters in a musical comedy--just as, in mediæval
miracle plays, the comic character was Satan. The play's intention was
to show a typical Russian working-class family. There were the old
father, constantly drunk on vodka, alternately maudlin and scolding;
the old mother; two sons, the one a Communist and the other an
Anarchist; the wife of the Communist, who did dressmaking; her
sister, a prostitute; and a young girl of _bourgeois_ family, also a
Communist, involved in a plot with the Communist son, who was of
course the hero of the play.

The first act revealed the stern and heroic Communist maintaining his
views despite the reproaches of father and mother and the nagging of
his wife. It showed also the Anarchist brother (as might be expected
from the Bolshevik hostility to Anarchism) as an unruly, lazy,
ne'er-do-well, with a passionate love for Sonia, the young
_bourgeoise_, which was likely to become dangerous if not returned.
She, on the other hand, obviously preferred the Communist. It was
clear that he returned her love, but it was not quite clear that he
would wish the relation to be anything more than platonic comradeship
in the service of their common ideal. An unsuccessful strike, bringing
want and danger from the police, together with increasing jealousy on
the part of the Anarchist, led up to the tragic dénouement. I was not
quite definite as to how this was brought about. All violent action
was performed off the stage, and this made the plot at times difficult
to follow. But it seemed that the Anarchist in a jealous rage forged a
letter from his brother to bring Sonia to a rendezvous, and there
murdered her, at the same time betraying his brother to the police.
When the latter came to effect his arrest, and accuse him also, as the
most likely person, of the murder, the Anarchist was seized with
remorse and confessed. Both were therefore led away together. Once the
plot is sketched, the play calls for no comment. It had not great
merit, though it is unwise to hazard a judgment on a play whose
dialogue was not fully interpreted, but it was certainly real, and the
link between audience and performers was established as it never
seemed to be in the professional theatre. After the performance, the
floor was cleared for dancing, and the audience were in a mood of
thorough enjoyment.

The pageant of the "World Commune," which was performed at the opening
of the Third International Congress in Petrograd, was a still more
important and significant phenomenon. I do not suppose that anything
of the kind has been staged since the days of the mediæval mystery
plays. It was, in fact, a mystery play designed by the High Priests of
the Communist faith to instruct the people. It was played on the steps
of an immense white building that was once the Stock Exchange, a
building with a classical colonnade on three sides of it, with a vast
flight of steps in front, that did not extend the whole width of the
building but left at each side a platform that was level with the
floor of the colonnade. In front of this building a wide road ran
from a bridge over one arm of the river to a bridge over the other, so
that the stretches of water and sky on either side seemed to the eye
of imagination like the painted wings of a gigantic stage. Two
battered red columns of fantastic design, that were once light towers
to guide ships, stood on either side midway between the extremities of
the building and the water, but on the opposite side of the road.
These two towers were beflagged and illuminated and carried the
limelight, and between and behind them was gathered a densely packed
audience of forty or fifty thousand people. The play began at sundown,
while the sky was still red away to the right and the palaces on the
far bank to the left still aglow with the setting sun, and it
continued under the magic of the darkening sky. At first the beauty
and grandeur of the setting drew the attention away from the
performers, but gradually one became aware that on the platform before
the columns kings and queens and courtiers in sumptuous conventional
robes, and attended by soldiers, were conversing in dumb show with one
another. A few climbed the steps of a small wooden platform that was
set up in the middle, and one indicated by a lifted hand that here
should be built a monument to the power of capitalism over the earth.
All gave signs of delight. Sentimental music was heard, and the gay
company fell to waltzing away the hours. Meanwhile, from below on the
road level, there streamed out of the darkness on either side of the
building and up the half-lit steps, their fetters ringing in harmony
with the music, the enslaved and toiling masses coming in response to
command to build the monument for their masters. It is impossible to
describe the exquisite beauty of the slow movement of those dark
figures aslant the broad flight of steps; individual expressions were
of course indistinguishable, and yet the movement and attitude of the
groups conveyed pathos and patient endurance as well as any individual
speech or gesture in the ordinary theatre. Some groups carried hammer
and anvil, and others staggered under enormous blocks of stone. Love
for the ballet has perhaps made the Russians understand the art of
moving groups of actors in unison. As I watched these processions
climbing the steps in apparently careless and spontaneous fashion, and
yet producing so graceful a result, I remembered the mad leap of the
archers down the stage in _Prince Igor_, which is also apparently
careless and spontaneous and full of wild and irregular beauty, yet
never varies a hair-breadth from one performance to the next.

For a time the workers toiled in the shadow in their earthly world,
and dancing continued in the lighted paradise of the rulers above,
until presently, in sign that the monument was complete, a large
yellow disc was hoisted amid acclamation above the highest platform
between the columns. But at the same moment a banner was uplifted
amongst the people, and a small figure was seen gesticulating. Angry
fists were shaken and the banner and speaker disappeared, only to
reappear almost immediately in another part of the dense crowd. Again
hostility, until finally among the French workers away up on the
right, the first Communist manifesto found favour. Rallying around
their banner the _communards_ ran shouting down the steps, gathering
supporters as they came. Above, all is confusion, kings and queens
scuttling in unroyal fashion with flying velvet robes to safe citadels
right and left, while the army prepares to defend the main citadel of
capitalism with its golden disc of power. The _communards_ scale the
steps to the fortress which they finally capture, haul down the disc
and set their banner in its place. The merry music of the _Carmagnole_
is heard, and the victors are seen expressing their delight by dancing
first on one foot and then on the other, like marionettes. Below, the
masses dance with them in a frenzy of joy. But a pompous procession of
Prussian legions is seen approaching, and, amid shrieks and wails of
despair, the people are driven back, and their leaders set in a row
and shot. Thereafter came one of the most moving scenes in the drama.
Several dark-clad women appeared carrying a black pall supported on
sticks, which they set in front of the bodies of the leaders so that
it stood out, an irregular pointed black shape against the white
columns behind. But for this melancholy monument the stage was now
empty. Thick clouds of black smoke arose from braziers on either side
and obscured the steps and the platform. Through the smoke came the
distant sound of Chopin's _Marche Funèbre_, and as the air became
clearer white figures could be dimly seen moving around the black pall
in a solemn dance of mourning. Behind them the columns shone ghostly
and unreal against the glimmering mauve rays of an uncertain and
watery dawn.

The second part of the pageant opened in July 1914. Once again the
rulers were feasting and the workers at toil, but the scene was
enlivened by the presence of the leaders of the Second International,
a group of decrepit professorial old men, who waddled in in solemn
procession carrying tomes full of international learning. They sat in
a row between the rulers and the people, deep in study, spectacles on
nose. The call to war was the signal for a dramatic appeal from the
workers to these leaders, who refused to accept the Red Flag, but
weakly received patriotic flags from their respective governments.
Jaurès, elevated to be the symbol of protest, towered above the
people, crying in a loud voice, but fell back immediately as the
assassin's shot rang out. Then the people divided into their national
groups and the war began. It was at this point that "God Save the
King" was played as the English soldiers marched out, in a comic
manner which made one think of it as "_Gawd_ save the King." Other
national anthems were burlesqued in a similar fashion, but none quite
so successfully. A ridiculous effigy of the Tsar with a knout in his
hand now occupied the symbolic position and dominated the scene. The
incidents of the war which affected Russia were then played.
Spectacular cavalry charges on the road, marching soldiers, batteries
of artillery, a pathetic procession of cripples and nurses, and other
scenes too numerous to describe, made up that part of the pageant
devoted to the war.

Then came the Russian Revolution in all its stages. Cars dashed by
full of armed men, red flags appeared everywhere, the people stormed
the citadel and hauled down the effigy of the Tsar. The Kerensky
Government assumed control and drove them forth to war again, but soon
they returned to the charge, destroyed the Provisional Government, and
hoisted all the emblems of the Russian Soviet Republic. The Entente
leaders, however, were seen preparing their troops for battle, and the
pageant went on to show the formation of the Red Army under its emblem
the Red Star. White figures with golden trumpets appeared foretelling
victory for the proletariat. The last scene, the World Commune, is
described in the words of the abstract, taken from a Russian
newspaper, as follows:--

    Cannon shots announce the breaking of the blockade against
    Soviet Russia, and the victory of the World Proletariat. The
    Red Army returns from the front, and passes in triumphant
    review before the leaders of the Revolution. At their feet lie
    the crowns of kings and the gold of the bankers. Ships draped
    with flags are seen carrying workers from the west. The
    workers of the whole world, with the emblems of labour, gather
    for the celebration of the World Commune. In the heavens
    luminous inscriptions in different languages appear, greeting
    the Congress: "Long live the Third International! Workers of
    the world, unite! Triumph to the sounds of the hymn of the
    World Commune, the 'International'."

Even so glowing an account, however, hardly does it justice. It had
the pomp and majesty of the Day of Judgment itself. Rockets climbed
the skies and peppered them with a thousand stars, fireworks blazed on
all sides, garlanded and beflagged ships moved up and down the river,
chariots bearing the emblems of prosperity, grapes and corn, travelled
slowly along the road. The Eastern peoples came carrying gifts and
emblems. The actors, massed upon the steps, waved triumphant hands,
trumpets sounded, and the song of the International from ten thousand
throats rose like a mighty wave engulfing the whole.

Though the end of this drama may have erred on the side of the
grandiose, this may perhaps be forgiven the organizers in view of the
occasion for which they prepared it. Nothing, however, could detract
from the beauty and dramatic power of the opening and of many of the
scenes. Moreover, the effects obtained by movement in the mass were
almost intoxicating. The first entrance of the masses gave a sense of
dumb and patient force that was moving in the extreme, and the
frenzied delight of the dancing crowd at the victory of the French
_communards_ stirred one to ecstasy. The pageant lasted for five hours
or more, and was as exhausting emotionally as the Passion Play is said
to be. I had the vision of a great period of Communist art, more
especially of such open-air spectacles, which should have the grandeur
and scope and eternal meaning of the plays of ancient Greece, the
mediæval mysteries, or the Shakespearean theatre. In building,
writing, acting, even in painting, work would be done, as it once was,
by groups, not by one hand or mind, and evolution would proceed slowly
until once again the individual emerged from the mass.

In considering Education under the Bolshevik régime, the same two
factors which I have already dealt with in discussing art, namely
industrial development and the communist doctrine, must be taken into
account. Industrial development is in reality one of the tenets of
Communism, but as it is one which in Russia is likely to endanger the
doctrine as a whole I have thought it better to consider it as a
separate item.

As in the matter of art, so in education, those who have given
unqualified praise seem to have taken the short and superficial view.
It is hardly necessary to launch into descriptions of the crèches,
country homes or palaces for children, where Montessori methods
prevail, where the pupils cultivate their little gardens, model in
plasticine, draw and sing and act, and dance their Eurythmic dances
barefoot on floors once sacred to the tread of the nobility. I saw a
reception and distributing house in Petrograd with which no fault
could be found from the point of view of scientific organization. The
children were bright-eyed and merry, and the rooms airy and clean. I
saw, too, a performance by school children in Moscow which included
some quite wonderful Eurythmic dancing, in particular an
interpretation of Grieg's _Tanz in der Halle des Bergkönigs_ by the
Dalcroze method, but with a colour and warmth which were Russian, and
in odd contrast to the mathematical precision associated with most
Dalcroze performances.

But in spite of the obvious merit of such institutions as exist,
misgivings would arise. To begin with, it must be remembered that it
is necessary first to admit that children should be delivered up
almost entirely to the State. Nominally, the mother still comes to see
her child in these schools, but in actual fact, the drafting of
children to the country must intervene, and the whole temper of the
authorities seemed to be directed towards breaking the link between
mother and child. To some this will seem an advantage, and it is a
point which admits of lengthy discussion, but as it belongs rather to
the question of women and the family under Communism, I can do no more
than mention it here.

Then, again, it must be remembered that the tactics of the Bolsheviks
towards such schools as existed under the old régime in provincial
towns and villages, have not been the same as their tactics towards
the theatres. The greater number of these schools are closed, in part,
it would seem, from lack of personnel, and in part from fear of
counter-revolutionary propaganda. The result is that, though those
schools which they have created are good and organized on modern
lines, on the whole there would seem to be less diffusion of child
education than before. In this, as in most other departments, the
Bolsheviks show themselves loath to attempt anything which cannot be
done on a large scale and impregnated with Communist doctrine. It goes
without saying that Communist doctrine is taught in schools, as
Christianity has been taught hitherto, moreover the Communist teachers
show bitter hostility to other teachers who do not accept the
doctrine. At the children's entertainment alluded to above, the dances
and poems performed had nearly all some close relation to Communism,
and a teacher addressed the children for something like an hour and a
half on the duties of Communists and the errors of Anarchism.

This teaching of Communism, however necessary it may appear for the
building of the Communist state of the future, does seem to me to be
an evil in that it is done emotionally and fanatically, with an appeal
to hate and militant ardour rather than to constructive reason. It
binds the free intellect and destroys initiative. An industrial state
needs not only obedient and patient workers and artists, it needs also
men and women with initiative in scientific research. It is idle to
provide channels for scientific research later if it is to be choked
at the source. That source is an enquiring and free intellect
unhampered by iron dogma. Beneficial to artistic and emotional
development therefore, the teaching of Communism as a faith may well
be most pernicious to the scientific and intellectual side of
education, and will lead direct to the pragmatist view of knowledge
and scientific research which the Church and the capitalist already
find it so convenient to adopt.

But to come to the chief and most practical question, the relation of
education to industry. Sooner or later education in Russia must become
subordinate to the needs of industrial development. That the
Bolsheviks already realize this is proved by the articles of
Lunacharsky which recently appeared in _Le Phare_ (Geneva). It was the
spectre of industry that haunted me throughout the consideration of
education as in the consideration of art, and what I have said above
of its dangers to the latter seems to me also to apply here.
Montessori schools belong, in my view, to that stage in industrial
development when education is directed as much towards leisure
occupations as towards preparation for professional life. Possibly the
fine flower of useless scientific enquiry belongs to this stage also.
Nobody in Russia is likely to have much leisure for a good many years
to come, if the Bolshevik programme of industrial development is
efficiently carried out. And there seemed to me to be something
pathetic and almost cruel in this varied and agreeable education of
the child, when one reflected on the long hours of grinding toil to
which he was soon to be subject in workshop or factory. For I repeat
that I do not believe industrial work in the early days of industry
can be made tolerable to the worker. Once again I experienced the
dread of seeing the ideals of the Russian revolutionaries go down
before the logic of necessity. They are beginning to pride themselves
on being hard, practical men, and it seems quite reasonable to fear
that they should come to regard this full and humane development of
the child as a mere luxury and ultimately neglect it. Worse still, the
few of these schools which already exist may perhaps become exclusive
to the Communists and their children, or that company of Samurai which
is to leaven and govern the mass of the people. If so, they will soon
come to resemble our public schools, in that they will prepare, in an
artificial play atmosphere, men who will pass straight to the position
of leaders, while the portion of the proletariat who serve under them
will be reading and writing, just so much technical training as is
necessary, and Communist doctrine.

This is a nightmare hypothesis, but the difficulties of the practical
problem seem to warrant its entertainment. The number of people in
Russia who can even read and write is extremely small, the need to
get them employed industrially as rapidly as possible is very great,
hence the system of education which develops out of this situation
cannot be very ambitious or enlightened. Further it will have to
continue over a sufficiently long period of time to allow of the risk
of its becoming stable and traditional. In adult education already the
pupil comes for a short period, learns Communism, reading and
writing--there is hardly time to give him much more--and returns to
leaven the army or his native village. In achieving this the
Bolsheviks are already doing a very important and valuable work, but
they cannot hope for a long while to become the model of public
instruction which they have hitherto been represented to be. And the
conditions of their becoming so ultimately are adherence to their
ideals through a very long period of stress, and a lessening of
fanaticism in their Communist teaching, conditions which, unhappily,
seem to be mutually incompatible.

The whole of the argument set out in this chapter may be summed up in
the statement of one fact which the mere idealist is prone to
overlook, namely that Russia is a country at a stage in economic
development not much more advanced than America in the pioneer days.
The old civilization was aristocratic and exotic; it could not survive
in the modern world. It is true that it produced great men, but its
foundations were rotten. The new civilization may, for the moment, be
less productive of individual works of genius, but it has a new
solidity and gives promise of a new unity. It may be that I have taken
too hopeful a view and that the future evolution of Russia will have
as little connection with the life and tradition of its present
population as modern America with the life of the Red Indian tribes.
The fact that there exists in Russia a population at a far higher
stage of culture, which will be industrially educated, not
exterminated, militates against this hypothesis, but the need for
education may make progress slower than it was in the United States.

One would not have looked for the millennium of Communism, nor even
for valuable art and educational experiment in the America of early
railroading and farming days. Nor must one look for such things from
Russia yet. It may be that during the next hundred years there,
economic evolution will obscure Communist ideals, until finally, in a
country that has reached the stage of present-day America, the battle
will be fought out again to a victorious and stable issue. Unless,
indeed, the Marxian scripture prove to be not infallible, and faith
and heroic devotion show themselves capable of triumphing over
economic necessity.

V



Before I went to Russia I imagined that I was going to see an
interesting experiment in a new form of representative government. I
did see an interesting experiment, but not in representative
government. Every one who is interested in Bolshevism knows the series
of elections, from the village meeting to the All-Russian Soviet, by
which the people's commissaries are supposed to derive their power. We
were told that, by the recall, the occupational constituencies, and so
on, a new and far more perfect machinery had been devised for
ascertaining and registering the popular will. One of the things we
hoped to study was the question whether the Soviet system is really
superior to Parliamentarism in this respect.

We were not able to make any such study, because the Soviet system is
moribund.[4] No conceivable system of free election would give
majorities to the Communists, either in town or country. Various
methods are therefore adopted for giving the victory to Government
candidates. In the first place, the voting is by show of hands, so
that all who vote against the Government are marked men. In the second
place, no candidate who is not a Communist can have any printing done,
the printing works being all in the hands of the State. In the third
place, he cannot address any meetings, because the halls all belong to
the State. The whole of the press is, of course, official; no
independent daily is permitted. In spite of all these obstacles, the
Mensheviks have succeeded in winning about 40 seats out of 1,500 on
the Moscow Soviet, by being known in certain large factories where the
electoral campaign could be conducted by word of mouth. They won, in
fact, every seat that they contested.

But although the Moscow Soviet is nominally sovereign in Moscow, it is
really only a body of electors who choose the executive committee of
forty, out of which, in turn, is chosen the Presidium, consisting of
nine men who have all the power. The Moscow Soviet, as a whole, meets
rarely; the Executive Committee is supposed to meet once a week, but
did not meet while we were in Moscow. The Presidium, on the contrary,
meets daily. Of course, it is easy for the Government to exercise
pressure over the election of the executive committee, and again over
the election of the Presidium. It must be remembered that effective
protest is impossible, owing to the absolutely complete suppression of
free speech and free Press. The result is that the Presidium of the
Moscow Soviet consists only of orthodox Communists.

Kamenev, the President of the Moscow Soviet, informed us that the
recall is very frequently employed; he said that in Moscow there are,
on an average, thirty recalls a month. I asked him what were the
principal reasons for the recall, and he mentioned four: drinking,
going to the front (and being, therefore, incapable of performing the
duties), change of politics on the part of the electors, and failure
to make a report to the electors once a fortnight, which all members
of the Soviet are expected to do. It is evident that the recall
affords opportunities for governmental pressure, but I had no chance
of finding out whether it is used for this purpose.

In country districts the method employed is somewhat different. It is
impossible to secure that the village Soviet shall consist of
Communists, because, as a rule, at any rate in the villages I saw,
there are no Communists. But when I asked in the villages how they
were represented on the Volost (the next larger area) or the Gubernia,
I was met always with the reply that they were not represented at all.
I could not verify this, and it is probably an overstatement, but all
concurred in the assertion that if they elected a non-Communist
representative he could not obtain a pass on the railway and,
therefore, could not attend the Volost or Gubernia Soviet. I saw a
meeting of the Gubernia Soviet of Saratov. The representation is so
arranged that the town workers have an enormous preponderance over the
surrounding peasants; but even allowing for this, the proportion of
peasants seemed astonishingly small for the centre of a very important
agricultural area.

The All-Russian Soviet, which is constitutionally the supreme body, to
which the People's Commissaries are responsible, meets seldom, and has
become increasingly formal. Its sole function at present, so far as I
could discover, is to ratify, without discussion, previous decisions
of the Communist Party on matters (especially concerning foreign
policy) upon which the constitution requires its decision.

All real power is in the hands of the Communist Party, who number
about 600,000 in a population of about 120 millions. I never came
across a Communist by chance: the people whom I met in the streets or
in the villages, when I could get into conversation with them, almost
invariably said they were of no party. The only other answer I ever
had was from some of the peasants, who openly stated that they were
Tsarists. It must be said that the peasants' reasons for disliking the
Bolsheviks are very inadequate. It is said--and all I saw confirmed
the assertion--that the peasants are better off than they ever were
before. I saw no one--man, woman, or child--who looked underfed in the
villages. The big landowners are dispossessed, and the peasants have
profited. But the towns and the army still need nourishing, and the
Government has nothing to give the peasants in return for food except
paper, which the peasants resent having to take. It is a singular fact
that Tsarist roubles are worth ten times as much as Soviet roubles,
and are much commoner in the country. Although they are illegal,
pocket-books full of them are openly displayed in the market places. I
do not think it should be inferred that the peasants expect a Tsarist
restoration: they are merely actuated by custom and dislike of
novelty. They have never heard of the blockade; consequently they
cannot understand why the Government is unable to give them the
clothes and agricultural implements that they need. Having got their
land, and being ignorant of affairs outside their own neighbourhood,
they wish their own village to be independent, and would resent the
demands of any Government whatever.

Within the Communist Party there are, of course, as always in a
bureaucracy, different factions, though hitherto the external pressure
has prevented disunion. It seemed to me that the personnel of the
bureaucracy could be divided into three classes. There are first the
old revolutionists, tested by years of persecution. These men have
most of the highest posts. Prison and exile have made them tough and
fanatical and rather out of touch with their own country. They are
honest men, with a profound belief that Communism will regenerate the
world. They think themselves utterly free from sentiment, but, in
fact, they are sentimental about Communism and about the régime that
they are creating; they cannot face the fact that what they are
creating is not complete Communism, and that Communism is anathema to
the peasant, who wants his own land and nothing else. They are
pitiless in punishing corruption or drunkenness when they find either
among officials; but they have built up a system in which the
temptations to petty corruption are tremendous, and their own
materialistic theory should persuade them that under such a system
corruption must be rampant.

The second class in the bureaucracy, among whom are to be found most
of the men occupying political posts just below the top, consists of
_arrivistes_, who are enthusiastic Bolsheviks because of the material
success of Bolshevism. With them must be reckoned the army of
policemen, spies, and secret agents, largely inherited from the
Tsarist times, who make their profit out of the fact that no one can
live except by breaking the law. This aspect of Bolshevism is
exemplified by the Extraordinary Commission, a body practically
independent of the Government, possessing its own regiments, who are
better fed than the Red Army. This body has the power of imprisoning
any man or woman without trial on such charges as speculation or
counter-revolutionary activity. It has shot thousands without proper
trial, and though now it has nominally lost the power of inflicting
the death penalty, it is by no means certain that it has altogether
lost it in fact. It has spies everywhere, and ordinary mortals live in
terror of it.

The third class in the bureaucracy consists of men who are not ardent
Communists, who have rallied to the Government since it has proved
itself stable, and who work for it either out of patriotism or because
they enjoy the opportunity of developing their ideas freely without
the obstacle of traditional institutions. Among this class are to be
found men of the type of the successful business man, men with the
same sort of ability as is found in the American self-made Trust
magnate, but working for success and power, not for money. There is no
doubt that the Bolsheviks are successfully solving the problem of
enlisting this kind of ability in the public service, without
permitting it to amass wealth as it does in capitalist communities.
This is perhaps their greatest success so far, outside the domain of
war. It makes it possible to suppose that, if Russia is allowed to
have peace, an amazing industrial development may take place, making
Russia a rival of the United States. The Bolsheviks are industrialists
in all their aims; they love everything in modern industry except the
excessive rewards of the capitalists. And the harsh discipline to
which they are subjecting the workers is calculated, if anything can,
to give them the habits of industry and honesty which have hitherto
been lacking, and the lack of which alone prevents Russia from being
one of the foremost industrial countries.

Footnotes:

[4] In _Theses_ (p. 6 of French edition) it is said: "The ancient
classic subdivision of the Labour movement into three forms (parties,
trade unions, and co-operatives) has served its time. The proletarian
revolution has raised up in Russia the essential form of proletarian
dictatorship, the _soviets_. But the work in the Soviets, as in the
industrial trade unions which have become revolutionary, must be
invariably and systematically directed by the party of the
proletariat, i.e. the Communist Party. As the organized advanced guard
of the working class, the Communist Party answers equally to the
economic, political and spiritual needs of the entire working class.
It must be the soul of the trade unions, the soviets, and all other
proletarian organizations.

"The appearance of the Soviets, the principal historical form of the
dictatorship of the proletariat, in no way diminishes the directing
rôle of the party in the proletarian revolution. When the German
Communists of the 'Left' ... declare that 'the party itself must also
adapt itself more and more to the Soviet idea and proletarianize
itself,' we see there only an insinuating expression of the idea that
the Communist Party must dissolve itself into the Soviets, so that the
Soviets can replace it.

"This idea is profoundly erroneous and reactionary.

"The history of the Russian Revolution shows us, at a certain moment,
the Soviets going against the proletarian party and helping the agents
of the bourgeoisie....

"In order that the Soviets may fulfil their historic mission, the
existence of a Communist Party, strong enough not to 'adapt' itself to
the Soviets but to exercise on them a decisive influence, to force
them _not to adapt themselves_ to the bourgeoisie and official social
democracy, ... is on the contrary necessary."

VI



At first sight it is surprising that Russian industry should have
collapsed as badly as it has done, and still more surprising that the
efforts of the Communists have not been more successful in reviving
it. As I believe that the continued efficiency of industry is the main
condition for success in the transition to a Communist State, I shall
endeavour to analyse the causes of the collapse, with a view to the
discovery of ways by which it can be avoided elsewhere.

Of the fact of the collapse there can be no doubt. The Ninth Congress
of the Communist Party (March-April, 1920) speaks of "the incredible
catastrophes of public economy," and in connection with transport,
which is one of the vital elements of the problem, it acknowledges
"the terrible collapse of the transport and the railway system," and
urges the introduction of "measures which cannot be delayed and which
are to obviate the complete paralysis of the railway system and,
together with this, the ruin of the Soviet Republic." Almost all those
who have visited Russia would confirm this view of the gravity of the
situation. In the factories, in great works like those of Putilov and
Sornovo, very little except war work is being done; machinery stands
idle and plant is becoming unusable. One sees hardly any new
manufactured articles in Russia, beyond a certain very inadequate
quantity of clothes and boots--always excepting what is needed for the
army. And the difficulty of obtaining food is conclusive evidence of
the absence of goods such as are needed by the peasants.

How has this state of affairs arisen? And why does it continue?

A great deal of disorganization occurred before the first revolution
and under Kerensky. Russian industry was partly dependent on Poland;
the war was conducted by methods of reckless extravagance, especially
as regards rolling-stock; under Kerensky there was a tendency to
universal holiday, under the impression that freedom had removed the
necessity for work. But when all this is admitted to the full, it
remains true that the state of industry under the Bolsheviks is much
worse than even under Kerensky.

The first and most obvious reason for this is that Russia was quite
unusually dependent upon foreign assistance. Not only did the
machinery in the factories and the locomotives on the railways come
from abroad, but the organizing and technical brains in industry were
mainly foreign. When the Entente became hostile to Russia, the
foreigners in Russian industry either left the country or assisted
counter-revolution. Even those who were in fact loyal naturally became
suspect, and could not well be employed in responsible posts, any more
than Germans could in England during the war. The native Russians who
had technical or business skill were little better; they almost all
practised sabotage in the first period of the Bolshevik régime. One
hears amusing stories of common sailors frantically struggling with
complicated accounts, because no competent accountant would work for
the Bolsheviks.

But those days passed. When the Government was seen to be stable, a
great many of those who had formerly sabotaged it became willing to
accept posts under it, and are now in fact so employed, often at quite
exceptional salaries. Their importance is thoroughly realized. One
resolution at the above-mentioned Congress says (I quote verbally the
unedited document which was given to us in Moscow):

    Being of opinion that without a scientific organization of
    industry, even the widest application of compulsory labour
    service, as the great labour heroism of the working class,
    will not only fail to secure the establishment of a powerful
    socialist production, but will also fail to assist the country
    to free itself from the clutches of poverty--the Congress
    considers it imperative to register all able specialists of
    the various departments of public economy and widely to
    utilize them for the purpose of industrial organization.

    The Congress considers the elucidation for the wide masses of
    the workers of the tremendous character of the economic
    problems of the country to be one of the chief problems of
    industrial and general political agitation and propaganda; and
    of equal importance to this, technical education, and
    administrative and scientific technical experience. The
    Congress makes it obligatory on all the members of the party
    mercilessly to fight that particular obnoxious form, the
    ignorant conceit which deems the working class capable of
    solving all problems without the assistance _in the most
    responsible cases_ of specialists of the bourgeois school, the
    management. Demagogic elements who speculate on this kind of
    prejudice in the more backward section of our working classes,
    can have no place in the ranks of the party of Scientific
    Socialism.

But Russia alone is unable to supply the amount of skill required, and
is very deficient in technical instructors, as well as in skilled
workmen. One was told, over and over again, that the first step in
improvement would be the obtaining of spare parts for locomotives. It
seems strange that these could not be manufactured in Russia. To some
extent they can be, and we were shown locomotives which had been
repaired on Communist Saturdays. But in the main the machinery for
making spare parts is lacking and the skill required for its
manufacture does not exist. Thus dependence on the outside world
persists, and the blockade continues to do its deadly work of
spreading hunger, demoralization and despair.

The food question is intimately bound up with the question of
industry. There is a vicious circle, for not only does the absence of
manufactured goods cause a food shortage in the towns, but the food
shortage, in turn, diminishes the strength of the workers and makes
them less able to produce goods. I cannot but think that there has
been some mismanagement as regards the food question. For example, in
Petrograd many workers have allotments and often work in them for
eight hours after an eight hours' day in their regular employment. But
the food produced in the allotments is taken for general consumption,
not left to each individual producer. This is in accordance with
Communist theory, but of course greatly diminishes the incentive to
work, and increases the red tape and administrative machinery.

Lack of fuel has been another very grave source of trouble. Before the
war coal came mostly from Poland and the Donetz Basin. Poland is lost
to Russia, and the Donetz Basin was in the hands of Denikin, who so
destroyed the mines before retreating that they are still not in
working order. The result is a practically complete absence of coal.
Oil, which is equally important in Russia, was also lacking until the
recent recovery of Baku. All that I saw on the Volga made me believe
that real efficiency has been shown in reorganizing the transport of
oil, and doubtless this will do something to revive industry. But the
oil used to be worked very largely by Englishmen, and English
machinery is much needed for refining it. In the meantime, Russia has
had to depend upon wood, which involves immense labour. Most of the
houses are not warmed in winter, so that people live in a temperature
below freezing-point. Another consequence of lack of fuel was the
bursting of water-pipes, so that people in Petrograd, for the most
part, have to go down to the Neva to fetch their water--a considerable
addition to the labour of an already overworked day.

I find it difficult to believe that, if greater efficiency had existed
in the Government, the food and fuel difficulties could not have been
considerably alleviated. In spite of the needs of the army, there are
still many horses in Russia; I saw troops of thousands of horses on
the Volga, which apparently belonged to Kalmuk tribes. By the help of
carts and sledges, it ought to be possible, without more labour than
is warranted by the importance of the problem, to bring food and
timber into Moscow and Petrograd. It must be remembered that both
cities are surrounded by forests, and Moscow at least is surrounded by
good agricultural land. The Government has devoted all its best
energies hitherto to the two tasks of war and propaganda, while
industry and the food problem have been left to a lesser degree of
energy and intelligence. It is no doubt probable that, if peace is
secured, the economic problems will receive more attention than
hitherto. But the Russian character seems less adapted to steady work
of an unexciting nature than to heroic efforts on great occasions; it
has immense passive endurance, but not much active tenacity. Whether,
with the menace of foreign invasion removed, enough day-by-day
detailed energy would exist for the reorganization of industry, is a
doubtful question, as to which only time can decide.

This leads to the conclusion--which I think is adopted by most of the
leading men in Russia--that it will be very difficult indeed to save
the revolution without outside economic assistance. Outside assistance
from capitalist countries is dangerous to the principles of Communism,
as well as precarious from the likelihood of fresh causes of quarrel.
But the need of help is urgent, and if the policy of promoting
revolution elsewhere were to succeed, it would probably render the
nations concerned temporarily incapable of supplying Russian needs.
It is, therefore, necessary for Russia to accept the risks and
uncertainties involved in attempting to make peace with the Entente
and to trade with America. By continuing war, Russia can do infinite
damage to us, especially in Asia, but cannot hope, for many years, to
achieve any degree of internal prosperity. The situation, therefore,
is one in which, even from the narrowest point of view, peace is to
the interest of both parties.

It is difficult for an outsider with only superficial knowledge to
judge of the efforts which have been made to reorganize industry
without outside help. These efforts have chiefly taken the form of
industrial conscription. Workers in towns seek to escape to the
country, in order to have enough to eat; but this is illegal and
severely punished. The same Communist Report from which I have already
quoted speaks on this subject as follows:

    _Labour Desertion._--Owing to the fact that a considerable
    part of the workers either in search of better food conditions
    or often for the purposes of speculation, voluntarily leave
    their places of employment or change from place to place,
    which inevitably harms production and deteriorates the general
    position of the working class, the Congress considers one of
    the most urgent problems of Soviet Government and of the Trade
    Union organization to be established as the firm, systematic
    and insistent struggle with labour desertion, The way to fight
    this is to publish a list of desertion fines, the creation of
    a labour Detachment of Deserters under fine, and, finally,
    internment in concentration camps.

It is hoped to extend the system to the peasantry:

    The defeat of the White Armies and the problems of peaceful
    construction in connection with the incredible catastrophes of
    public economy demand an extraordinary effort of all the
    powers of the proletariat and the drafting into the process of
    public labour of the wide masses of the peasantry.

On the vital subject of transport, in a passage of which I have
already quoted a fragment, the Communist Party declares:

    For the most immediate future transport remains the centre of
    the attention and the efforts of the Soviet Government. The
    improvement of transport is the indispensable basis upon which
    even the most moderate success in all other spheres of
    production and first of all in the provision question can be
    gained.

    The chief difficulty with regard to the improvement of
    transport is the weakness of the Transport Trade Union, which
    is due in the first case to the heterogeneity of the personnel
    of the railways, amongst whom there are still a number of
    those who belong to the period of disorganization, and,
    secondly, to the fact that the most class-conscious and best
    elements of the railway proletariat were at the various fronts
    of the civil war.

    Considering wide Trade Union assistance to the railway workers
    to be one of the principal tasks of the Party, and as the only
    condition under which transport can be raised to its height,
    the Congress at the same time recognizes the inflexible
    necessity of employing exclusive and extraordinary measures
    (martial law, and so forth). Such necessity is the result of
    the terrible collapse of the transport and the railroad system
    and is to introduce measures which cannot be delayed and which
    are to obviate the complete paralysis of the railway system
    and, together with this, the ruin of the Soviet Republic.

The general attitude to the militarization of labour is stated in the
Resolution with which this section of the Proceedings begins:

    The ninth Congress approves of the decision of the Central
    Committee of the Russian Communist Party on the mobilization
    of the industrial proletariat, compulsory labour service,
    militarization of production and the application of military
    detachments to economic needs.

    In connection with the above, the Congress decrees that the
    Party organization should in every way assist the Trade Unions
    and the Labour Sections in registering all skilled workers
    with a view of employing them in the various branches of
    production with the same consistency and strictness as was
    done, and is being carried out at the present time, in
    relation to the commanding staff for army needs.

    Every skilled worker is to return to his particular trade
    Exceptions, i.e. the retention of the skilled worker in any
    other branch of Soviet service, is allowed only with the
    sanction of the corresponding central and local authorities.

It is, of course, evident that in these measures the Bolsheviks have
been compelled to travel a long way from the ideals which originally
inspired the revolution. But the situation is so desperate that they
could not be blamed if their measures were successful. In a shipwreck
all hands must turn to, and it would be ridiculous to prate of
individual liberty. The most distressing feature of the situation is
that these stern laws seem to have produced so little effect. Perhaps
in the course of years Russia might become self-supporting without
help from the outside world, but the suffering meantime would be
terrible. The early hopes of the revolution would fade more and more.
Every failure of industry, every tyrannous regulation brought about by
the desperate situation, is used by the Entente as a justification of
its policy. If a man is deprived of food and drink, he will grow weak,
lose his reason, and finally die. This is not usually considered a
good reason for inflicting death by starvation. But where nations are
concerned, the weakness and struggles are regarded as morally
culpable, and are held to justify further punishment. So at least it
has been in the case of Russia. Nothing produced a doubt in our
governing minds as to the rightness of our policy except the strength
of the Red Army and the fear of revolution in Asia. Is it surprising
that professions of humanitarian feeling on the part of English people
are somewhat coldly received in Soviet Russia?