Main currents in American thought An interpretation of American literature from the beginnings to 1920
then, forsooth, comes a rebellion. I think none can deny seeing in
these late troubles the first fruits of those pestilent notions of
equality, whereof we heard so much from certain quarters, during
the late war of independence. I would that Mr. Jefferson and some
of the other writers of disturbing democratic rhetoric might have
been here in the State the past winter, to see the outcome of their
preaching.”[781]
Nine years after _Looking Backward_ Bellamy published _Equality_, a
critical examination of economic history with a view to creating an
adequate social economics. The earlier work had drawn the outlines
of the democratic society of the future, the later supplied a
justification and a commentary. The great theme involved a twofold
problem: an analysis of the failure of social justice under private
capitalism, and a defense of the working of social capitalism. The two
threads are closely interwoven, and the effect is heightened by the
contrasts resulting from setting the two social orders over against
each other. Innumerable questions, touching diverse phases, are
propounded and answered. The apologist of private capitalism is pursued
into every stronghold of his logic; he is assailed by a hundred vivid
analogies which seek to lay bare the folly of a social system that
breeds waste only to breed poverty, that puts a premium upon greed and
yet takes away the security of possession, that bids the workers fight
each other instead of uniting for the common welfare. But men must see
a better before they will leave a worse, and so there is drawn the
picture of another commonwealth that must arise when men shall put off
the ass’s head from their shoulders, and set intelligently to work.
America is moving towards such a commonwealth, Bellamy is persuaded,
and yet how slow it is to grasp the meaning of democracy! It holds
back from its own good, loath to probe the depths of the revolutionary
philosophy of liberty, equality, fraternity. Julian West awakes in this
new world; his eyes are opened; the ass’s head is gone; he knows for
the first time the goodness of life in a rational society. And when
in a hideous nightmare he returned to the old Boston he had lived in
before he fell asleep, he tasted for the first time the full iniquity
of the old pigsty arrangement. “I have been in Golgotha,” he cried, “I
have seen Humanity hanging on a cross!” It is knowledge of the good
that must destroy the evil.
It was as a political economist that Bellamy attacked the problems
of a democratic society, and his radicalism begins and ends with the
interpretation he puts on the phrase. He was far from being a political
economist of the schools. His contempt for the older classical dogmas
was measureless. Manchesterism with its fetish of _laissez faire_ he
reckoned no better than a pseudo-science. “‘There were no political
economists before the Revolution,’” remarks one of the scholars of
the later age.[782] Such books as the _Wealth of Nations_, properly
speaking, should be called “Examinations into the Economic and Social
Consequences of trying to get along without any Political Economy.”
Before we shall get forward we must examine our terms.
Economy ... means the wise husbanding of wealth in production
and distribution. Individual economy is the science of this
husbandry when conducted in the interest of the individual without
regard to any others. Family economy is this husbandry carried
on for the advantage of a family group without regard to other
groups. Political economy, however, can only mean the husbandry
of wealth for the greatest advantage of the political or social
body, the whole number of the citizens constituting the political
organization. This sort of husbandry necessarily implies a public
or political regulation of economic affairs for the general
interest. But before the Revolution there was no conception of
such an economy, nor any organization to carry it out. All systems
and doctrines of economy previous to that time were distinctly
and exclusively private and individual in their whole theory and
practice. While in other respects our forefathers did in various
ways and degrees recognize a social solidarity and a political
unity with proportionate rights and duties, their theory and
practice as to all matters touching the getting and sharing of
wealth were aggressively and brutally individualistic, antisocial,
and unpolitical.[783]
A social arrangement based on an individual economy must necessarily
result in such monstrosities as the system of private capitalism with
its cash nexus. It is no other than an organized system of social
warfare, with all the appalling waste of war. Habit has blinded our
eyes or we should see the utter bankruptcy of individual competition,
that prides itself on its “famous process for beggaring a nation.”
“Were these serious men I saw about me,” cried Julian West as he
watched the folly of Washington Street, with its thousand shops madly
bidding against each other, its vulgar advertising and cheating and
swindling, “or children, who did their business on such a plan? Could
they be reasoning beings, who did not see the folly which, when the
product is made and ready for use, wastes so much of it in getting it
to the user? If people eat with a spoon that leaks half its contents
between bowl and lip, are they not likely to go hungry?”[784] What is
it but such folly which prevents society from doing the thousand things
which cry aloud to be done? So long as men must fight each other for
individual subsistence how shall they be able to join forces to fight
the common enemies, cold, hunger, disease? Our individualism keeps us
poverty-stricken; we are too poor to destroy the social squalor, too
poor to save our own lives.
If competition entails irretrievable waste, he points out, the system
of competitive profit involves economic suicide. It is a pistol which
private industrialism points at its own head. The struggle for profit
is the hidden cancer that is eating out the heart of modern society,
and Bellamy examines it searchingly in the chapter, “Economic Suicide
of the Profit System.”[785] Under private industrialism profits are
the oil to the wheels of industry, which turn in response to the
market. By the market is meant those who have money to buy with; and
demand is brisk or slack according to the diffusion of economic means.
When the buyers are satisfied and abstain from further purchases, the
market becomes glutted and the wheels of production cease to turn
“though starving and naked mobs might riot in the streets.” Profits,
however, must come out of somebody’s pocket; and the greater they are
the more the pocket that pays is emptied; unless replenished by other
profits, taken from still other pockets, it ceases to be able to buy in
like proportion. In consequence the market slacks off and the wheels
of industry run slower. The manufacturer takes his profits out of his
workmen, the merchant takes his out of the public--which is another
term for the workman; he who takes most grows rich fastest and is most
successful. Obviously, however, such riches are acquired at the expense
of the public capacity to buy; and such lessening capacity is ominous
of gluts and crises to ensue, with losses which must be made good by
greater profits when the wheels turn again. It is only too clear that
society is suffering from a chronic dyspepsia of its industrial system;
it cannot digest its food. The current maxim that a fair exchange is no
robbery--so confidently urged--cannot apply to the profit system, for
if the exchange is fair there is no profit, and if there is no profit
there will be no exchange. The further maxim that demand governs supply
and supply keeps pace with demand, refers only to the profit-market,
and quite overlooks the important detail of social need.
The stupidity of such a system Bellamy never tires of pointing out.
His striking analogy of the stage-coach has become a classic; the less
known parable of the water-tank[786] is equally vivid; a hundred other
shafts are directed at the profit-theory which underlies our individual
economy. Until the sway of such anarchy is broken, until society learns
to regulate its industrialism on the principles of a wise political
economy, there can be no hope of betterment. To create and apply this
wise political economy is the urgent business of democracy if it is not
to perish. It must be such an economy as shall satisfy both our ethical
ideals and our material needs. It must embody the spirit of democratic
solidarity and it must look beyond the demands of the profit-market to
the well-being of all. It must substitute coöperation for competitive
warfare. The criminal waste which keeps the gray wolves forever
snarling at the threshold of society, must cease; the specter of
poverty which disorders the lives of men and distempers their hopes,
must be banished by the united strength of all. If democracy cannot
achieve such a democratic political economy it must flounder through
deepening bogs until finally it sinks in the morass of plutocracy.
The fatal mistake of democracy heretofore has been the insufficiency
of its program. It is incredible how limited has been its vision and
how few and how minor have been its greatest revolutions. To overthrow
monarchy was excellent, but it did not bring in democracy; rather,
the unchecked sway of plutocracy. “‘The people, indeed, nominally
were sovereigns; but as these sovereigns were individually and as a
class the economic serfs of the rich, and lived at their mercy, the
so-called popular government became the mere stalking-horse of the
capitalists.’”[787] Political revolutions have proved heretofore to be
mere flashes in the pan; not until the economic revolution has been
effected will the old tyranny be blown to pieces:
The second phase in the evolution of the democratic idea began with
the awakening of the people to the perception that the deposing of
kings, instead of being the main end and mission of democracy, was
merely preliminary to its real programme, which was the use of the
collective social machinery for the indefinite promotion of the
welfare of the people at large....
Which amounts to saying ... that there never was a democratic
government properly so called before the twentieth century.... The
so-called republics of the first phase we class as pseudo-republics
or negative democracies....
Regarded as necessary steps in the evolution of society from pure
monarchy to pure democracy, these republics of the negative phase
mark a stage of progress; but if regarded as finalities they were
a type far less admirable on the whole than decent monarchies.
In respect especially to their susceptibility to corruption and
plutocratic subversion they were the worst kind of government
possible.... How could intelligent men delude themselves with the
notion that the most portentous and revolutionary idea of all time
had exhausted its influence and fulfilled its mission in changing
the title of the executive of a nation from king to President,
and the name of the national Legislature from Parliament to
Congress?... The American people fancied that they had set up a
popular government when they separated from England, but they were
deluded. In conquering the political power formerly exercised by
the king, the people had but taken the outworks of the fortress of
tyranny. The economic system which was the citadel and commanded
every part of the social structure remained in possession of
private and irresponsible rulers, and so long as it was held, the
possession of the outworks was of no use to the people, and only