in Chapter XX. "Some Socialist Views on Money, Banks, and Banking.' These and many other dangerous experiments could easily be undertaken by needy demagogues with fantastic ideas, if the supervision of municipalities by the national Government were abolished. Therefore the Independent Labour Party passed at the last Annual Conference the following resolution: "That this Conference urges the Labour party in Parliament to secure the extension of power to municipalities, enabling them to undertake trading and the development of existing municipal concerns, without the sanction of the Local Government Board, and to use any profits accruing from same in such manner as may be decided by the municipality, without the necessity of promoting Parliamentry Bills."? No administration can continue for long a financial and general policy of waste and pillage, such as that followed by the Socialist municipalities of Great Britain, without diminishing not merely private wealth but also the national wealth. The British Socialists seem determined to do all they can to destroy as fast as possible the accumulated wealth of the country and its productive power. 1 See p. 281 ff. * Independent Labour Party Report, Annual Conference, 1907, p. 50. CHAPTER XVIII SOCIALISM AND AGRICULTURE In one of his books Mr. Blatchford gives prominence to the following statement contained in Prince Kropotkin's book, "Fields, Factories, and Workshops": "If the soil of the United Kingdom were cultivated only as it was thirty-five years ago, 24,000,000 people could live on home-grown food. If the cultivable soil of the United Kingdom were cultivated as the soil is cultivated on the average in Belgium, the United Kingdom would have food for at least 37,000,000 inhabitants. If the population of this country came to be doubled, all that would be required for producing food for 80,000,000 inhabitants would be to cultivate the soil as it is now cultivated in the best farms of this country, in Lombardy, and in Flanders." Commenting on this statement Mr. Blatchford says: "Why, indeed, should we not be able to raise 29,000,000 quarters of wheat? We have plenty of land. Other European countries can produce, and do produce, their own food. Take the example of Belgium. In Belgium the people produce their own food. Yet their soil is not better than ours, and their country is more densely populated, the figures being: Great Britain per square mile, 378 persons; Belgium per square mile, 544 persons. Suppose wheat will cost us 2s. a quarter more to grow it than to buy it. On the 23,000,000 quarters we now import we should be saving 2,000,000l. a year. Is that a very high price to pay for security against defeat by starvation in time of war?" 1 Many Socialists very wisely demand that everything possible should be done to bring about a revival of our agriculture. They point to the agricultural prosperity of Belgium, France, and Germany, and they would be quite ready to sanction the re-introduction of Protection, as will be seen in Chapter XXI. Nevertheless they absolutely and unconditionally oppose the creation of a class of peasant proprietors, although the intensive agriculture of France, Belgium, and Germany is founded upon the system of peasant proprietorship, and although general experience, both in Europe and on other continents, has proved the great superiority of peasant proprietors over large farmers in intensive culture. "No Socialist desires to see the land of the country divided among small peasant freeholders, though this is still the ideal professed by many statesmen of advanced' views." 2 "Socialism is hostile to small properties.' "3 Socialists pretend to be opposed to the creation of peasant proprietors either on scientific grounds or for ethical reasons. "As a matter of economic evolution, small properties will have to go. But viewed from an ethical standpoint, surely nothing has been more conducive to the development of the worst side of human nature-of hatred, malice, and all uncharitableness' than the system of small properties." "If England were cut up into small allotments, the general state would be harder and leaner than before." 5 "Would Socialists take away the land from the landlords and let it out in little plots? No. Because that would make a lot of little proprietors as selfish as the landlords."6 "Divide Blatchford, Britain for the British, pp. 111, 112. 2 Socialism True and False, p. 18. 1 Ibid. the land into small allotments and very soon the cunning and rapacious would acquire' the estates of other men, and so we should come back to the present state of chaos. In fact, the parcelling out of the land means putting back the clock of civilisation about one thousand years. The real reason which prompts Socialists to oppose by all means the creation of peasant proprietors is to be found neither in the realm of political economy nor in that of abstract ethics, but in that of party politics. The peasant proprietor, like every sensible owner of property, is hostile to Socialism. "The peasant has nothing else in the world but his farm, and that is one of the reasons why it is so very difficult to win him over to our cause. He is, indeed, one of the last bulwarks of private property." 2 The philosopher of British Socialism frankly confesses: "On the Continent the peasant proprietor, who may now be reckoned as part of the petite bourgeoisie, just as the large landlord with us may be reckoned as part of the big capitalist class, is a potent factor in retarding the process of Socialisation." 3 The experience of Socialists in Germany, AustriaHungary, France, Belgium, Holland, Denmark, and Switzerland shows that Socialism finds practically no adherents among the land-owning peasants. At the German Reichstag elections of 1903, for instance, the Social-Democrats received almost 60 per cent. of the votes in the large towns as compared with less than 20 per cent. of the votes in the country. Of the latter, the vast majority was given by artisans and landless rural labourers. The peasant, like every property-owner, is an enemy of fantastic schemes of confiscation and of general plunder lavishly embellished with promises of 'Blatchford, The Pope's Socialism, p. 9. Utopia. Therefore Social-Democrats will rather see the countryside of Great Britain turned into a wilderness than see it peopled by peasants. Desperately anxious lest the Government of Sir Henry Campbell-Bannerman should create a British peasantry, the Socialist press opposed the creation of a British peasantry as unscientific and certain to lead to disaster. The people were told in countless articles that peasant proprietorship had proved a failure everywhere. Under the heading "The Small-Holding Fraud" the "Social-Democrat" showed the true motive of the Socialist agitation by expressing the hope that "The Government will assuredly fail in their attempt to erect a peasant proprietary barrier against the rising proletariat "1_Has the Socialist outcry against creating peasant proprietors influenced Sir Henry Campbell-Bannerman's Government in its land-settlement policy? Did Sir Henry Campbell-Bannerman wish to satisfy the Socialists by rather creating small leaseholders than small freehold farmers? The positive proposals of Socialists for bringing about a revival of agriculture are frankly Utopian. Their proposals can of course not be practical, because they object to the present agricultural arrangements of Great Britain and to those prevailing on the continent of Europe. Many Socialists desire the towns to control and resettle the country. "The towns should claim the right of dictating to England the way in which the land should be put to profit. The great majority of the classes nearest the land, squires and farmers and parsons, are disqualified respectively by self-interest, by religious prejudice that scruples at anything that may lead to the mental enfranchisement of the poor, and by sheer sluggishness of intellect joined to a blind selfishness without parallel in any class of English society. The Social-Democrat, November 1907. |