The Servile State

“… If we do not restore the Institution of Property we cannot escape restoring the Institution of Slavery; there is no third course.”

To
E. S. P. Haynes

Preface to Second Edition

With the issue of a second edition of this book the author may perhaps be excused for adding, by way of preface, a few words upon the thesis it maintains and the method through which that thesis is treated.

It appears the more necessary to do so because a careful comparison of the reviews and other expressions of opinion which it has received convinces the author that parts of his argument are liable to misconception. It would be a pity to correct such misconception by any changes in a completed book; a few words set down here by way of preface should be sufficient for the purpose.

First: I would point out that the argument contained in the book bears no relation to the common accusation levelled against socialists (that is, collectivists) that life in a socialist state would be so subject to regulation and order as to be unduly oppressive. With this common objection to the reform advocated by socialists I have nothing to do in this book, nor can it touch my subject at any point. This book does not discuss the socialist state. Indeed it is the very heart of my thesis that we are not, as a fact, approaching socialism at all, but a very different state of society; to wit, a society in which the capitalist class shall be even more powerful and far more secure than it is at present: a society in which the proletarian mass shall not suffer from particular regulations, oppressive or beneficent, but shall change their status, lose their present legal freedom, and be subject to compulsory labour.

Next, I would beg my readers to believe that I have not attempted to set up this thesis as a warning or as a piece of gloom. I say nowhere in the book that the reestablishment of slavery would be a bad thing as compared with our present insecurity, and no one has a right to read such an opinion into this book. Upon the contrary, I say clearly enough that I think the tendency towards the reestablishment of slavery is due to the very fact that the new conditions may be found more tolerable than those obtaining under capitalism. Which state of society might reasonably be preferred—the reestablishment of slavery or the maintenance of capitalism—would make an ample subject for another book: but that alternative does not concern this volume or the thesis therein maintained.

Finally, I would beg such of my readers as are socialist by conviction not to misconceive my opinion upon what their movement is effecting. The most sincere and the best writer among the English socialists wrote of this book that the author had mistaken the “social reform” of the professional politicians for socialism, and that while this “social reform” might be tending towards the reestablishment of compulsory labour for the benefit of an owning class, yet socialism had no such intention or tendency.

Now I never made such an error. What I have said in this book is that the object of the socialist (a very simple and clear matter—the putting of the means of production into the hands of politicians to hold in trust for the community) is not in practice being approached; that we are not, as a matter of fact, coming nearer towards the collective ownership of the means of production, but that we are rapidly coming nearer to the establishment of compulsory labour among an unfree majority of non-owners for the benefit of a free minority of owners. And I say that this tendency is due to the fact that the socialist ideal, in conflict with and yet informing the body of capitalism, produces a third thing very different from the socialist ideal—to wit, the servile state. It is important to have this point clear, and perhaps a metaphor is needed. I will present one.

A traveller sincerely desirous of escaping from the cold climate of the mountains conceives the obvious plan of going south, where he will find lower and warmer land. With this project in his head he finds a river flowing in a southerly direction and he says, “If I travel upon this river I will reach my object the more readily.” One who has studied the nature of that mountainous region may say to him: “You are in error. The very evils from which you are trying to escape, the mountains, are so constructed that in a short while you will find them diverting the course of this river northward again. Indeed, if you will look at your compass you will see that the big bend has already begun.”

The traveller is the socialist. The south which he desires to reach is the collectivist state. The river is modern “organised reform.” The northern country where the mountain river will ultimately find a quiet bed is a society reposing upon compulsory labour.

A man thus speaking to the traveller would not be denying either the sincerity of his desire to get southward or his belief that the river would lead him there; all he would be denying would be the fact that the river does lead him there.

There is only one discrepancy in this parallel, which is that the traveller in the metaphor could, upon being convinced of his error, leave the river and get south by land. That would correspond in the case of the socialist to a bold policy of confiscation, to a taking of the means of production from the hands of those who now own them and to a placing of them in the hands of politicians to be held in trust for the community.

I nowhere deny in my book that this is ideally possible: just as it is ideally possible that tomorrow all Englishmen shall take and preserve for twenty-four hours a vow of silence. What I say is that nothing like it or approaching it has ever been done or is now being done. I say further, what is of capital importance, that with every step taken along the existing lines of change in our industrial society we are making it more and more difficult to retrace such steps, to abandon the accepted method and to pursue the collectivist ideal. The path of confiscation, the only way by which socialists can reach their goal, gets more and more remote with every new and positive economic reform, undertaken, remember, with the aid and under the advice of socialists themselves.

These, then, are the three main points, I think, upon which there has been misconception and against which I hope I may warn the reader. To recapitulate:—

1. The misconception that I have used the word “servile” in some rhetorical sense of “irksome” or “oppressive,” whereas I have attempted to use it only under the limits of my definition, viz., that labour is “servile” which is undertaken not in fulfilment of contract but under the compulsion of positive law and which attaches to the status of the labourer, and is performed for the benefit of others who are under no such compulsion.

2. The misconception that the advent of the servile state is put forward for a warning or a danger-sign: I am concerned in this book to say how and why we are approaching it; not whether we should approach it.

3. The misconception that I have misstated the aims and the convictions of socialists. These aims and convictions are simple enough, and my point is not that they are either illusions or doubtful, but that in point of fact we are not heading towards them and that the effect of socialist doctrine upon capitalist society is to produce a third thing different from either of its two begetters—to wit, the servile state.

Apart from these three main points I must, in view of certain less intelligent criticisms the book has provoked, mention one or two other matters.

Thus, my argument that slavery was slowly transformed and that the old pagan servile state slowly approached a distributive state under the influence of the Catholic Church is not a piece of special pleading put forward to please my coreligionists. It is a plain piece of historical fact which anyone can verify for himself, and which many do not regard as an advantage, but as a disadvantage inflicted upon humanity by the advent of this religion. Whether the servile institution be a good or a bad thing, it did, as a matter of fact, slowly disappear as Catholic civilisation developed; and it has, as a matter of fact, slowly begun to return where Catholic civilisation has receded.

Nor have I said that the goal of a completely free distributive state was ever reached. I have said that it was in process of formation when the disruption of our united European civilisation in the sixteenth century arrested its development and slowly produced, in this country especially, capitalism in its stead.

Again, examples of state regulation and of state or municipal economic enterprise increasing rapidly among us obviously do not affect my argument. Unless or until these are based upon a policy of confiscation they are no more an example of socialism than the explosion of gunpowder is an example of warfare. They are no more “socialistic efforts” or “beginnings” or “experiments in socialism” than fireworks at the Crystal Palace are “military” efforts or “beginnings” or “experiments in militarism.” Socialism would indeed involve such regulations and such municipal enterprise just as war involves the explosion of gunpowder; but they do not form its essence at all. Its essence consists in vesting in trust with the politicians what is now private property. When municipal and state enterprise accompanied by municipal and state regulation is based upon loans instead of confiscation, nay, loans devised to avoid confiscation, it is a negation of socialism; and I have shown that attempts to mask the capitalist character of such operations by the machinery of sinking funds and the rest are logically worthless. You cannot “buy out” capitalism.

I need not point out what steps have been taken, even in the very short time since this book first appeared, in the direction which it is intended to explain. We already have wages boards in one great industry; we shall shortly have them in more. We already have the registration of the proletariat with name, address, movement from place to place, nature of illness when illness is incurred, supposed or real “malingering,” indulgence in this or that vice (such as drink), domestic habits, nature of employment, and all the rest of it very nearly complete, and imposed by the wealthier classes who are the actual gatherers of the Poll Tax upon which this registration is based. We have through the labour exchanges a system which will soon be equally complete and by which every member of the proletariat will ultimately be similarly registered as a worker, his tendencies to rebellion against capital known and their frequency set down, how far he is willing to serve capitalism, whether and when he has refused service, and if so where and why.

The reader will be interested to note amid the accidents and reactions of the years immediately before us the slow perfection of this system: registration and control of the proletariat, with its necessary and fatal approach towards the term of compulsory labour. But I think in justice to my book I should point out to that same reader the meaning of its concluding pages. No change in European society arrives at completion unless it is universal throughout Europe. Capitalism is not thus universal; it is developed in very different degrees in different parts of Europe; the advent of servitude is therefore a probability differing in degree with different portions of European society. It is evident that the example of economic freedom elsewhere may in the future transform, and will certainly limit, such sections of European life as are drifting towards the reestablishment of slavery. But the tendency to the reestablishment of slavery as a necessary development of capitalism is patent wherever capitalism has power, and nowhere more than in this country.

This book is written to maintain and prove the following truth:—

That our free modern society in which the means of production are owned by a few being necessarily in unstable equilibrium, it is tending to reach a condition of stable equilibrium by the establishment of compulsory labour legally enforcible upon those who do not own the means of production for the advantage of those who do. With this principle of compulsion applied against the non-owners there must also come a difference in their status; and in the eyes of society and of its positive law men will be divided into two sets: the first economically free and politically free, possessed of the means of production, and securely confirmed in that possession; the second economically unfree and politically unfree, but at first secured by their very lack of freedom in certain necessaries of life and in a minimum of well-being beneath which they shall not fall.

Society having reached such a condition would be released from its present internal strains and would have taken on a form which would be stable: that is, capable of being indefinitely prolonged without change. In it would be resolved the various factors of instability which increasingly disturb that form of society called “capitalist,” and men would be satisfied to accept, and to continue in, such a settlement.

To such a stable society I shall give, for reasons which will be described in the next section, the title of The Servile State.

I shall not undertake to judge whether this approaching organisation of our modern society be good or evil. I shall concern myself only with showing the necessary tendency towards it which has long existed and the recent social provisions which show that it has actually begun.

This new state will be acceptable to those who desire consciously or by implication the reestablishment among us of a difference of status between possessor and non-possessor: it will be distasteful to those who regard such a distinction with ill favour or with dread.

My business will not be to enter into the discussion between these two types of modern thinkers, but to point out to each and to both that that which the one favours and the other would fly is upon them.

I shall prove my thesis in particular from the case of the industrial society of Great Britain, including that small, alien, and exceptional corner of Ireland, which suffers or enjoys industrial conditions today.

I shall divide the matter thus:—

1. I shall lay down certain definitions.

2. Next, I shall describe the institution of slavery and The Servile State of which it is the basis, as these were in the ancient world.

I shall then:

3. Sketch very briefly the process whereby that age-long institution of slavery was slowly dissolved during the Christian centuries, and whereby the resulting medieval system, based upon highly divided property in the means of production, was

4. wrecked in certain areas of Europe as it approached completion, and had substituted for it, in practice though not in legal theory, a society based upon capitalism.

5. Next, I shall show how capitalism was of its nature unstable, because its social realities were in conflict with all existing or possible systems of law, and because its effects in denying sufficiency and security were intolerable to men; how being thus unstable, it consequently presented a problem which demanded a solution: to wit, the establishment of some stable form of society whose law and social practice should correspond, and whose economic results, by providing sufficiency and security, should be tolerable to human nature.

6. I shall next present the only three possible solutions:—

   1. Collectivism, or the placing of the means of production in the hands of the political officers of the community.

   2. Property, or the reestablishment of a distributive state in which the mass of citizens should severally own the means of production.

   3. Slavery, or a servile state in which those who do not own the means of production shall be legally compelled to work for those who do, and shall receive in exchange a security of livelihood.

   Now, seeing the distaste which the remains of our long Christian tradition has bred in us for directly advocating the third solution and boldly supporting the reestablishment of slavery, the first two alone are open to reformers: (1) a reaction towards a condition of well-divided property or the “distributive state”; (2) an attempt to achieve the ideal “collectivist state.”

   It can easily be shown that this second solution appeals most naturally and easily to a society already capitalist on account of the difficulty which such a society has to discover the energy, the will, and the vision requisite for the first solution.

7. I shall next proceed to show how the pursuit of this ideal collectivist state which is bred of capitalism leads men acting upon a capitalist society not towards the collectivist state nor anything like it, but to that third utterly different thing—the “servile state.”

   To this eighth section I shall add an appendix showing how the attempt to achieve collectivism gradually by public purchase is based upon an illusion.

8. Recognising that theoretical argument of this kind, though intellectually convincing, is not sufficient to the establishment of my thesis, I shall conclude by giving examples from modern English legislation, which examples prove that the servile state is actually upon us.

Such is the scheme I design for this book.