NEW SOCIALIST PROGRAMME

Wellington Independent, Volume XXVI, Issue 3377, 21 December 1871, Page 3

NEW SOCIALIST PROGRAMME

[From the Spectator. ] The " report," or series of resolutions, submitted by the " Internationale " to the workmen of Switzerland for adoption at their next meeting is by far the most dangerous programme which the Socialists have yet brought forward. It. is at all events a possible scheme, and but for one material circumstance there might be a reasonable prospect that it would be tried. Dr Karl Marx has evidently learned much from recent experience, and this time he has done his very best to refound society, not as a dreamer might, but as a statesman holding his opinions would. Supposing it conceivable that Prince Bismarck or M. de Tocqueville desired to recognise society for the sole benefit of the workmen, he would, we imagine, propound very much such a scheme as that of the " Internationale." It will, we predict, if steadily pressed, in the end fascinate millions, and be the cause of more movements, social and military, than any manifesto of our time. It promises to secure without war, without confia-

grations, and through existing machinery, all the wildest dreams of the proletariat, to abolish the power of the capitalist, and to release the workman finally from that dread of starvation which, everywhere out of Great Britain, heals and disorders his imagination. The "Internationale" proposes that the workmen of Switzerland should by their votes fuse all the Cantonal governments into one central administration, which should establish and enforce compulsory gratuitous education up to the age of fourteen ; prohibit all labor by children under that age ; organise a stringent supervision over all factories, mines, or other associations of labor ; purchase and manage all railways and

other means of communication; abrogate all " needless impediments" to the right of marriage — that is, we imagine, introduce the English system of civil registrars and personal right of choice, without reference to parental or State authority — and fix by statute a "normal" working day. So far there is nothing which will shock English reformers, for there is nothing which we are not in our tentative illogical way already trying to secure. We do not prohibit child-labor, but we do half prohibit it in factories and regulate it everywhere else in favor of the child; and though we have no statutory definition of a day, we are approaching rapidly towards the idea of a normal term of labor always to be assumed in the absence of special stipulation. If it were not for the difficulty created by the impossibility of using gaslight for agricultural labor we might go farther in that direction, and, as it is, every Union makes of this one of its special points, ten hours being now in towns the customary limit.

The " Internationale," however, goes much further than this. It proposes that the central authority in Switzerland shall abolish all indirect taxation whatever, even, we presume, upon alcohol, and substitute for all a property taxestimated by valuation, as in America, but increasing in rate with the increase of the fortunes upon which it is levied, and accompanied by a heavy succession duty. This is Robespierre's impot progressif made more severe, the higher ratio being calculated, as we understand the scheme., not on the income, but on the property, which is nearly sure to yield less in proportion to its extent. A penuy in the pound on a million in Consols is a much more severe tax as regards the consequent reduction of income than a propoi donate tax upon the annual yield of the million. With the revenue thus accumulated the central authority is to create a Stale Bank, with the sole right of issuing notes, and is with those notes to furnish all associations of operatives with the capital they require, thus superseding the ueces sity for the individual capitalist. The State itself would be the sole employer of labor, the payment or receipt of wages would be prohibited by statute, and all profits would be divided equally among those who earned them. The capitalist would thus be summarily ex tinguished. The workman, being the State — for no* law is to be passed or übolished without his direct consent, recorded by plebiscite without intervening Parliament — would be his own employer, and the " tyranny of capital," as Socialists deem it, would be finally done away. Lest it should revive, the tyranny of hunger is also abolished, every citizen being entitled to poor relief, first from his Commune, and afterwards, if the Commune is over-pressed, from the State. No condition, whatever, except poverty, is annexed to this relief.

Those who doubt thai this plan will be acceptable, more, will be fascinating, to the proletariat of a city like Geneva, know little of human nature as it becomes under the pressure of constant toil, embittered by the idea that the profits of that toil are accumulated upon the one laborer who, to the half-in-structed regard, labors least. The proposal may fail in Switzerland because it strikes at cantonal patriotism, which is very strong — as strong, perhaps, as the State-right feeling in America — and because it offers nothing to the present except increased taxation ; but it will be received with delight in a canton like Geneva, where the workmen are in an immense majority, and occasionally much distressed. Nor do we see that it is of much use to point out the economic objections to the scheme, the danger of driving the wealthy to other countries, the want of provision for increasing population, the huge loss in producing power implied in the loss of energy which must follow equal division among unequal workers. The workmen will reply to the first objection that if the rich depart, they must leave their visible wealth ; to the second, that population can be kept down by a conscription of emigrants, — of men who must go elsewhere that the remainder may have room ; and to the third, that they want their country to be happy, and not rich. Nor is it of much use to say vaguely that the scheme would not work. "Where is the proof of that until it has been tried, or the prima facie impossibility ? Granted certain conditions, a representative Council of Geneva or Birmingham might work a number of factories at a profit, and might work them very well. At all events, the assertion that they could not would convince no workman until it has been tried ; and it is in the experiment, not in its success, that the danger of civil war resides. The true objections to the scheme, as it seems to us, are its radical injustice and the suppression which it involves of human liberty. Supposing the poor plundered at present, that is no justification for robbing the rich, and taxation upon the rich alone is robbery, It might be possible to put the whole taxation of England on to income and rental, but it would be morally robbery, just as much as if every mau who lacked spoons took away any surplus spoons I might possess. In the long run, we believe, in face of some disheartening facts, that argument will tell, the religious iustinct being inherent, and not merely the result of training ; but it will not tell so rapidly as this other. Is it worth living to be a member of a society drilled into uniformity? It is the first condition of socialism that a man shall obey the community, shall put down individualism, shall do work he dislikes for people he does not caro about, shall forego the reward of his special toil, shall submit to regulation from above, shall, above all, be compelled to work when he would rather not. No society organised on the International principles could exist a week without putting down individualism with the lash and the bullet, without prohibiting resistance, without, above all, punishing idleness as a crime. The nature

of man is to 101 l about, or, at best, to do what he thinks pleasant, and as some one must cart the muck, and as there is to be no compulsion of hunger and no offer of tvages, direct physical coercion is inevitable. That coercion will be found to extend to almost every act of life, and being based on the will of the majority, and not on that of the individual capitalist, — on a will, that is, unrestrained by any law except itself, by any respect for equals, or by any fear of consequences, — strikes being forbidden and departure treated as desertion, will speedily become very terrible. We do not say the plan must therefore fail. Make Dr Karl Marx dictator of Geneva, give him the wealth of the Canton, and let him organise labor on his principles, and we believe he will succeed in brigading the people, in reorganising society on the old Peruvian basis, in governing in the interest of his ideas as sternly and successfully as ever Calvin did. Our objection is that life will not be worth having under such circumstances, that man will have no hopes but only a monotony of unrewarded toil. Life will be the li/e of a well managed jail, where also every man is fed according to his needs, and not according to his ivork ; where labor receive no wage, and yet idleuess is forbidden ; where work is distributed by capacity, and self-denial is the law of the place ; where all labor always for the good of the general community. Is it worth while to upset civilisation even by votes for such a result as that — to enjoy in the face of the sovereign community the equality of uewts under the stone ?