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The Pamphlet Collection of Sir Robert Stout: Volume 86

Constitutional Socialism

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Constitutional Socialism.

Dear Mr. Brown,

Your letter will be answered at length when I have more time. For the moment these few pages will explain that which is essential. I have no mandate from any one, and am simply giving you the personal reasons of my conversion to Socialism.

Economically speaking, we suffer from five main evils:
A.—When a more powerful machine is invented, the same amount of work is done with fewer hands, and many families are thus thrown out of employment.
B.—The large operators in Commerce, Agriculture, and Industry are gradually ruining the smaller ones, and the benefit of cheapness thus conferred on the public by these large operators is very slight indeed, compared with the tremendous harm done to society. If this evil goes on for a few generations longer, nearly all the wealth in each country will be owned by a few gigantic millionaires some of whom are already making over £500,000 a year, and nearly all the middle classes will be precipitated into poverty.
C.—We often produce more goods of one sort than we can sell, owing to disorder of production, and thus create alternate and painful periods of overwork and stoppage of work.
D & E.—Under-payment and waste of labour, which two evils prevent the production and sale of a far greater quantity of goods than we produce to-day, besides preventing an immense increase of health, leisure? education, progress and morality.

The above evils A, B, C, D, E, are not the result of the eternal and unchangeable laws of nature, but of the bad laws and arrangements of men, by which we make a wrong use of the instruments of production, especially land and machinery. Socialism proves that by a more perfect organisation of these instruments we could get rid of the evils A, B, C, D, E, thus producing and consuming far more wealth, and having at least half the day for healthy amusements and mental improvements, besides other advantages, intellectual and moral.

In this short space, it is impossible to go into every detail or to refute all objections; but I will say enough to prove the case, and to show that objections are the result of either ignorance or malice.

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Socialism proves that in order to do away with the evils A,B,C,D,E and to produce the immense material and moral benefits already mentioned, it is absolutely necessary that the instruments of production should become national propetry, the salaries remaining private property. Socialism also proves that as long as these instruments are private property, it is impossible to get rid of these evils. There is no need to confiscate the instruments of production. The owners could easily be compensated* by a gradual sinking fund, as when the State buys a railway, owing to the far greater amount of wealth which could be produced and sold, if the instruments of production were properly organised. Moreover, this compensation would be far cheaper than the losses and delays of a violent revolution, and the public would be converted to Socialism much faster, if there were no risk attaching to their conversion, and if it were simply a question of sending the right men to Parliament, and of taking the necessary legal measures to prevent these men from breaking their electoral promises. A really democratic State would thus be formed, consisting of a Central Government and Municipal Administrations, i.e., a State compelled to promote the interests of all workers, manual and intellectual, and not merely the interests of a few rich, chiefly idlers, and this State must not be confounded with the anti-democratic States, Monarchies, or sham Republics, hitherto in existence.

Before proving the above, let us clearly understand the difference between national and private property. If the factories belonged to the nation, the managers and manual workers would not be allowed to divide the building and machines among themselves, but they could spend or save or bequeath their salaries just as they pleased. One man might spend more on clothing, another more on food or dwelling, and so on. Thus the factories would be national property, and the salaries private property. It is therefore nonsense to say that Socialism destroys private property, or that all Socialists must wear the same pattern of clothes or live in the same kind of houses. Now, to prove that the evils of A,B,C,D,E cannot be got rid of, as long as the instruments of production are private property, but that they can be got rid of, and very great advantages realised besides if they become national property; in other words, to prove that:
1.Socialism is reasonable in theory.
2.Socialism is possible in practice.
3.Socialism is just.

* The great economist, J. S. Mill, states that nearly all capital is the result not of thrift, but of unjust conquest or unjust laws, therefore compensation is not recommended because it is just, but because it is expedient. Even those socialists who are opposed to compensation, would give good pensions to all old or infirm people, pensions many times greater than the present wretched workhouse allowances.