RIGHT CONTROL OF INDUSTRY BY DEMOCRACY

New Zealand Tablet, 8 May 1919, Page 17

RIGHT CONTROL OF INDUSTRY BY DEMOCRACY

(By AitCHßisiiop Redwood.) - Any well-informed student of the industrial state of the world may safely affirm that, as long as what is fitly called the Servile State prevails, namely, the regime under which the masses of the people possess little else than their labor-power, while a few powerful employers concentrate in their hands the ownership of the instruments of production, no industrial peace is possible. Such a system precludes any democratic peace, no matter how much wages are increased or hours -shortened. Nor are democratic,forms of Government/' a ; satisfactory solution. -. Because it easily happens that, while the Constitution is becoming more and more democraticas in England just before the war:—the legislature, under the guise of "social reform," tends to mark off all wage-earners as a definitely servile class. So we are assured by Cardinal Bourne. But against such conditions a violent reaction existed in England even prior to the great war. To gain correct ideas, from the Christian standpoint, about desirable democratic control of industry, it is essential to distinguish different kinds of productive property. Many among the Syndicalists and Socialists make a great mistake in overlooking the complexity of modern social problems. • One must beware of panaceas warranted to cure all evilstheir sole credential is their seductive optimism. The first kind of productive property in need of democratic control is undoubtedly the public-service utilities. No solid objection can be found, cither in sound reason or Christian faith, to putting the publicservice utilities under municipal or national ownership, provided it can be proved that such a 'transference from private ownership makes for the common good, and that proper compensation is offered to private owners. It. is a fact of experience that public ownership has, in certain conditions and places, been a great advantage, while, in other conditions, such ownership has been financially disastrous. IS '■ So it lias also been with natural monopolies. They are open to public or private ownership and management, according as the general welfare may in a given case require. One fails to see what -valid ground for complaint any private owner of public-service utilities

or of natural monopolies can have, ; if, jffter due compensation to him, his business is absorbed by the city or the State. ~. Evidently the only j consideration that ought to Weigh with any public authorities, in such transactions, is the reasonable conviction that, they are promoters thereby of the common good. With this proviso such action ' has not a shadow of Socialism. . But such transference of ownership requires great circumspection. One undeniable fact must never be overlooked, namely, that apart from all advantages which may arise from increased centralisation", public management: involves generally increased expenditure. Under equal conditions, great advantages result from private owners, at less cost, than is- possible under public ownership. Yet, spite of this fact, it may. sometimes happen that the elimination of the enormous profits reaped at the public expense by private capitalists, will still leave a substantial gain to the people. Another drawback here is the power given to politicians, who may prove in unscrupulousness ; more than a match for the most criminal profiteers. The question, accordingly, requires most careful consideration, in each single instance, to see whether a strict, and complete government control may not be more . advantageous than public ownership. Prudence suggests that, before nationalisation is called in, private ownership shall always have a previous trial. It may also be laid down, as a general and safe rule, that- the less an industry partakes of the nature of a publicservice utility, the greater is the likelihood that private ownership in it is preferable, as being more conducive to the common good. , Similarly where public ownership is not desirable, government control and supervision will be more or less necessary according as the industry is nearer to or farther from the nature of , a public-service utility. It seems that industries ■., which have not the character of public-service utilities would sufficiently protect the wage-owners and the consumers from exploitation, if a graduated tax on the profits of large-scale concerns were levied, so that the fullest measure of liberty would be left to those smaller concerns which, to the general benefit of the public, are achieving for themselves a moderate prosperity under the stimulus of private enterprise. | But there is one form of public ownership against which all those who have at heart the welfare of their fellow-men should combine with all their might, although there is a wide agitation in its favor, namely, the universal nationalisation of the land. Than this there could not be a more disastrous social error. If, in the whole range of. economic science, there is any one thing certain, it is that the land- should, so far as possible, be owned by the men who till it, and not controlled by the Socialistic Co-operative Commonwealth, a State monopoly, or any other form of government absolutism. This is the one instance purposely

selected ;by Leo XIII. ; to urge, the widest j- reasonable distribution .of . private ownership among the people. What crying injustice and public crime it would be to alienate \ for., public ownership the' land cultivated ;by the hardened, hands and moistened with the sweat of the farmer! ; Let voluntary co-operation produce the utmost results,. but hot land-nationalisation. Pope Leo XIII. ; deserves the endless praise of all good men for his noble defence of the toiler. "We are told that it is, right for private persons to have the use of the soil and the fruit of the land, but that it is unjust for anyone to possess, as owner, either the land on which he has built or the estate which he has cultivated." The modern argument could not be more fairly stated, and the Pontiff proceeds to expose its fallacy. "Those who assert this do not perceive that they are robbing man, of what his own labor has produced. For the soil, which is tilled and cultivated , with toil and skill merely changes its condition:' it was wild before, it is now fruitful it was barren, and now it brings forth in abundance. That which has thus altered and improved it becomes so truly part of itself as to be in great measure indistinguishable and inseparable from it. Is it just the fruit of a man's sweat and labor should be enjoyed by another? As effects follow their cause, so it is just and right that the results of labor should belong to him who has labored." (The Condition of Labor.) Not content with advocating the nationalisation of the land, Socialism extends its demands still further. It clamors for the public ownership and management of the means of production in every line. But in its impotent and vague attempt to vest this public ownership and management in the entire commonwealth, it fails, more egregiously than Capitalism had done, to answer man's natural desire for private ownership. Socialism lacks the profound understanding of human nature which Christianity possesses, and hence it is opposed to the entire Christian tradition and teaching. No doubtand here there is a large promise of agreement between certain moderate Socialists and Christian tradition —public ownership of public utilities or of certain natural monopolies, is, under proper conditions, highly advisable yet the great bulk of the productive property within a nation ought to be privately owned, for the reasons already adduced. The main problem. is to ascertain how private ownership can be most widely distributed among the people. What would" happen under Socialism? The consciousness which, under that system, the laborer would have that his means of livelihood belonged to everybody in common, would not satisfy his instinct for ownership, nor would it stimulate his energy. Hence production would lag and its cost would "rise. He would see all avenues to economic betterment closed against him ; because strikes would be considered tile mutiny of labor. Hence revolution' and counter-revolution would make dire and monotonous history, until the last state would be worse than the first. Socialism would introduce not democratic, but bureaucratic control of industry. A great truth, no doubt, underlies the Socialist contention, namely that wastage, both in production and distribution, can be prevented by centralisation. Of this Christianity takes full account in accepting government ownership and control, whenever it can serve the common good. But it is equally true that you can readily have over-centralisation, which will interfere with private rights and individual liberty, and, what is worse, will lead to confusion, to bureaucratic tyranny ■ and deadly, retardation of production even in the most essential necessities of life. Christianity fully perceives and valuates the elementary truths contained in Socialism —pernicious error though it be as a whole—but those truths are merely its own principles seen through a distorted lens. Whatever is truly best and most progressive in modern social doctrine was put into practice by Christianity more than four centuries ago, and Catholic sociologists are alike amused and irritated to hear "these commonplaces ~of ' Christian tradition palmed off as modern discoveries. _

■■•-■■• What is good in Socialism is Christian. The rest is pernicious error. ; However, it would be a mistake to consider public • ownership as the v chief means—as some wrongly attain just democratic control of industry. Co-operation is the man's field for this achievement. There is a wide and almost interminable province of co-operative enterprise lying beween public-service utilities or such great monopolies as closely approximate to them, and industrial undertakings which of their very nature'call for individual management, as the essential factor of success. But this would require extensive treatment in another article.