Part 11 (1/2)

[Footnote 20: _Servile State_, p. 49.]

CHAPTER XI

THE REFORMER

It is impossible, unfortunately, in so brief a summary of Mr. Belloc's views, even to suggest with what force of argument and wealth of example he supports the thesis of _The Servile State_. What that thesis is it may be well to state in full. Mr. Belloc says that _The Servile State_ was 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.[21]

Now, the reader who has followed the brief summary of the preceding chapter cannot fail to arrive at a consideration of apparently cardinal importance. Even if he be convinced--as we are convinced--that the servile state is actually upon us, he will yet feel that a people still politically free will never allow what is to-day but a young growth to attain its full stature. The English people, he will argue, hold their own destiny in their own hand. We already possess all but manhood suffrage; and, until that power is taken from us, which it could never be without a fierce struggle, we possess a weapon with which any and every attempt to re-introduce the servile status can successfully be resisted.

A man reasoning thus should ask himself two questions: first, does the proletariat object to the re-introduction of the servile status, provided it brings with it security and sufficiency? second, does the enjoyment of a wide suffrage connote the power of self-government?

These are questions which every intelligent man must be able to answer for himself, and, if he answer them honestly, his answers, we think, will agree with those Mr. Belloc has given. In _The Servile State_ he affirms what we all know to be the fact, that the English proletariat of to-day would not merely fail to reject the servile status, but would welcome it. He puts the matter in this way:

If you were to approach those millions of families now living at a wage with the proposal for the contract of service for life, guaranteeing them employment at what each regarded as his usual full wage, how many would refuse?

Such a contract would, of course, involve a loss of freedom; a life contract of the kind is, to be accurate, no contract at all. It is the negation of contract and the acceptation of status.[22]

Every thinking man knows that the number to reject such a proposal would be insignificant.

If, then, the great ma.s.s of the English people, the majority, that is, of the voters, is prepared to welcome rather than to reject the re-introduction of slavery, the possession or non-possession of the power to reject it appears immaterial.

Let us suppose, however, an extreme case. Let us suppose an attempt to reduce the wage-earners to slavery without guaranteeing them sufficiency and security. There are many amiable maniacs who would be willing to support such an attempt, though we cannot believe that their efforts would be rewarded with success. They would be rewarded with revolution.

This is a point upon which too great insistence cannot be laid. Such an attempt, if it were ever made, would produce a revolution: it would not be quashed in a General Election or by any other form of const.i.tutional procedure, because, as a fact, the English people have no const.i.tutional power.

Ultimately, of course, the power of government can only rest with the majority of the people, but in practice that power is often taken from them. It has been taken from the English people.

These, then, are the two great simple truths which underlie Mr. Belloc's whole att.i.tude towards the public affairs of the England of to-day:

First, we are economically unfree.

Second, we are politically unfree.[23]

The causes of the existence of the first condition are a.n.a.lysed, as we have seen, in _The Servile State_; the causes of the second are a.n.a.lysed in _The Party System_.

With the prime truths of this book every man possessing but the most elementary knowledge of political science and const.i.tutional history is familiar. They were proved by Bagehot many years ago, and no observant man of average intelligence can fail to realize them for himself to-day.

Briefly, they are these. The representative system existing in England, which was meant to be an organ of democracy, is actually an engine of oligarchy. ”Instead of the executive being controlled by the representative a.s.sembly, it controls it. Instead of the demands of the people being expressed for them by their representatives, the matters discussed by the representatives are settled, not by the people, not even by themselves, but by the very body which it is the business of the representative a.s.sembly to check and control.”

These truths are to-day common knowledge. We all know that the power of government does not reside in practice with the people, but with some body which remains for most of us undefined. It is the peculiar service of the authors of _The Party System_ to have defined that body for us and to have exposed its nature and composition. Bagehot referred to this body as the Cabinet; in _The Party System_ it is shown that this body is really composed of the members of the two Front Benches, which form ”one close oligarchical corporation, admission to which is only to be gained by the consent of those who have already secured places therein.” The greater number, and by far the most important members, of this corporation enter by right of relations.h.i.+p, and these family ties are not confined to the separate sides of the House. They unite the Ministerial with the Opposition Front Bench as closely as they unite Ministers and ex-Ministers to each other. There is thus formed a governing group which has attained absolute control over the procedure of the House of Commons. It can settle how much time shall be given to the discussion of any subject, and therefore, in effect, determine whether any particular measure shall have a chance of pa.s.sing into law.

It can also settle what subjects may be discussed and what may be said on those subjects. Further, this group has at its disposal large funds which are secretly subscribed and secretly disbursed, and, by the use of these funds, as well as by other means, it is able to control elections and decide to a considerable extent who shall be the representatives of the people.

Can this system be mended? Is any reform possible within the system itself? As long ago as 1899, in the first important book he published, Mr. Belloc wrote these words:

... the _Mandat Imperatif_, the brutal and decisive weapon of the democrats, the binding by an oath of all delegates, the mechanical responsibility against which Burke had pleaded at Bristol, which the American const.i.tution vainly attempted to exclude in its princ.i.p.al election, and which must in the near future be the method of our final reforms.