RELIGION OF CAPITAL.

Waikato Times, Volume 100, Issue 16712, 30 January 1926, Page 11 (Supplement)

RELIGION OF CAPITAL.

A CLUTTON-BROCK ESSAY.

(By "Scissibus.")

That some of the essays written by the late Mr A. Clutton-Brock, and which were discovered after his death, have been gathered and published by his wife, will be good news to those who value Mr Clutton-Brock's writings. "Essays on Life" is the title cNosen, and We quote from one of them, entitled "The Rcligion'of Capital." There have been many definitions of capital, and "they in their differences make the gradual advance of human thought towards an understanding of the true nature of capital, that it is the reserve -of surplus energy, over and above what is needed for the hand-to-mouth satisfaction of the wants of mankind; and, further, that this surplus energy becomes capital only when it is employed to make that satisfaction less hand to mouth. \

But the second clause, how surplus energy becomes capital, is still only dimly understood. We talk as if all surplus energy and power were capital, no matter how it may be misused or wasted; or as if it were capital only if used for material ends.

. We have not yet grasped the fact that capital is most completely capital when used for spiritual ends; man would escape from the struggle for life, so that lie may lie in the sun and eat and sleep; he is of such a nature that he must either use his leisure for spiritual ends or misuse it in material excess.

All this may seldom be clearly slated, but the mass of workers are not satisfied with any other use or meaning of capital; and because they see it used otherwise and defined otherwise, they often think of capital as the enemy, and talk of capitalists as those who waste and misuse capital. But behind all the talk and exasperation there remains the hope, however baffled, that capital, if rightly used, may save the world, and the refusal to put up with any society in which it is misused or wasted.

Very slowly there is growing a religion of capital, a religion different from all religions of the past, because the hope out of which it has been born is different from all past hopes, because the Industrial Revolution has made men dream of a kingdom of htaven not distinct from the kingdom of this world but to be realised in it. Is this religion material? It seems so only to those who do not understand what capital truly is—namely, surplus energy and power used for the spiritual ends of mankind. All kinds of material energy and power may be used for spiritual ends, and that they are not capital until they are so used. Capital Should be Liberating.

And so it is with all inventions. If good, they are all liberating to the spirit; and if they do not liberate then either they are bad or misused, as we misuse aeroplanes to drop bombs on each other. And as evolution is liberation, so capital, a great new factor in evolution, is, or ought to be, liberating, or it is not capital. The Romans never saw that their trouble was not political but economic; but more and more we begin to see that our trouble is always economic, and that no political changes will end it.

The desired change cannot be made by politicians, because they do .not know how to make it; nor by government officials, for they cannot apply the power at the right point. The power is capital, the reserve of surplus energy, and that is not controlled or understood by politicians or by Government officials.

The religion of capital is a new religion, although based upon the principles of Christianity, because it is the result of a hope that came into being only with the Industrial Revolution. That revolution so increased the productive powers of mankind that all men, even the poorest drudges, began to hope for a deliverance, from the necessity of drudgery. It was clear that mechanical discoveries had given to mankind a new reserve of surplus energy, which, if only it could be rightly applied, would give to all men a leisure and well-be-ing. Never before in the history of the world had this seemed possible. This magnificence of Rome had been based, not only on an increase of production for all, but on slavery—that is to say, on the utter and hopeless subjection of one class to another. Nothing- could be hoped for from sla\ery but the sacrifice of some men to others. Splendour above, squalor below. , .

At bottom society was hard and irrational, based upon wrong; and this underlying wrong perverted thought and religion always, made a mockery of Christianity itself, and undermined the .Roman Power until it chumbled and made way for a much more primitive and poorer society. In that society there was more violence hut ! less underlying wrong, because the proportion of those who lived on the toil of others was smaller. But still this was achieved only by a return to barbarism, and in that barbarism the mass of men had to drudge harder than ever, consenting to their drudgery as a law of nature. The Kingdom of Heaven Now.

Now and agaii; they rose blindly against some intolerable wrong, and burnt and slew and pillaged, but these risings were sporadic; there was no cumulative growing sense of injustice or mismanagement, nor did religion ever connect itself permanently with the economic problem, because there was not so much a problem as a pressure, and religion remained a compensation and a consolation. The Kingdom of Heaven was never conceived as something to be realised here and now. Then came, slowly at first, and afterwards swiftly, the Industrial Revolution, and, as it took meh~by surprise so it was mismanaged, and the worst men profited by it most. But, however much they might profit, the poor were not reconciled to their profiting, and the exasperation of the poor has grown ever since with their baffled hopes. "The Industrlial Revolution, we all know ought to have meant a freeing of the spirit of man for spiritual tasks. In fact, it has meant the multiplying of material iasks and of material possessions. Nor has any political change been able to prevent this vicious process. The politicians talk and get great rewards for their talking', but they do nothing because they are not the men who can do anything. The freeing, if it is ever to happen, mv.st be achieved not by political changes but within the industries themselves, and if. must be achieved by the power of the religion of capital working in those industries.