In the complex structure of the modern community there are two groups or strata or pockets in which the impulse of social obligation, the gregarious sense of a common welfare, is at its lowest; one of these is the class of the Resentful Employee, the class of people who, without explanation, adequate preparation or any chance, have been shoved at an early age into uncongenial work and never given a chance to escape, and the other is the class of people with small fixed incomes or with small salaries earnt by routine work, or half independent people practising some minor artistic or literary craft, who have led uneventful, irresponsible lives from their youth up, and never came at any point into relations of service to the state.This latter class was more difficult to define than the former--because it is more various within itself.My French friends wanted to talk of the "Psychology of the Rentier." I was for such untranslatable phrases as the "Genteel Whig," or the "Donnish Liberal." But Ilit up an Italian--he is a Milanese manufacturer--with "these Florentine English who would keep Italy in a glass case." "Iknow," he said.Before I go on to expand this congenial theme, let me deal first with the Resentful Employee, who is a much more considerable, and to me a much more sympathetic, figure in European affairs.I began life myself as a Resentful Employee.
By the extremest good luck I have got my mind and spirit out of the distortions of that cramping beginning, but I can still recall even the anger of those old days.
He becomes an employee between thirteen and fifteen; he is made to do work he does not like for no other purpose that he can see except the profit and glory of a fortunate person called his employer, behind whom stand church and state blessing and upholding the relationship.He is not allowed to feel that he has any share whatever in the employer's business, or that any end is served but the employer's profit.He cannot see that the employer acknowledges any duty to the state.Neither church nor state seems to insist that the employer has any public function.
At no point does the employee come into a clear relationship of mutual obligation with the state.There does not seem to be any way out for the employee from a life spent in this subordinate, toilsome relationship.He feels put upon and cheated out of life.He is without honour.If he is a person of ability or stubborn temper he struggles out of his position; if he is a kindly and generous person he blames his "luck" and does his work and lives his life as cheerfully as possible--and so live the bulk of our amazing European workers; if he is a being of great magnanimity he is content to serve for the ultimate good of the race; if he has imagination, he says, "Things will not always be like this," and becomes a socialist or a guild socialist, and tries to educate the employer to a sense of reciprocal duty; but if he is too human for any of these things, then he begins to despise and hate the employer and the system that made him.He wants to hurt them.Upon that hate it is easy to trade.
A certain section of what is called the Socialist press and the Socialist literature in Europe is no doubt great-minded; it seeks to carve a better world out of the present.But much of it is socialist only in name.Its spirit is Anarchistic.Its real burthen is not construction but grievance; it tells the bitter tale of the employee, it feeds and organises his malice, it schemes annoyance and injury for the hated employer.The state and the order of the world is confounded with the capitalist.
Before the war the popular so-called socialist press reeked with the cant of rebellion, the cant of any sort of rebellion."I'm a rebel," was the silly boast of the young disciple."Spoil something, set fire to something," was held to be the proper text for any girl or lad of spirit.And this blind discontent carried on into the war.While on the one hand a great rush of men poured into the army saying, "Thank God! we can serve our country at last instead of some beastly profiteer," a sourer remnant, blind to the greater issues of the war, clung to the reasonless proposition, "the state is only for the Capitalist.
This war is got up by Capitalists.Whatever has to be done--/we are rebels./"
Such a typical paper as the British /Labour Leader/, for example, may be read in vain, number after number, for any sound and sincere constructive proposal.It is a prolonged scream of extreme individualism, a monotonous repetition of incoherent discontent with authority, with direction, with union, with the European effort.It wants to do nothing.It just wants effort to stop--even at the price of German victory.If the whole fabric of society in western Europe were to be handed over to those pseudo-socialists to-morrow, to be administered for the common good, they would fly the task in terror.They would make excuses and refuse the undertaking.They do not want the world to go right.The very idea of the world going right does not exist in their minds.They are embodied discontent and hatred, making trouble, and that is all they are.They want to be "rebels"--to be admired as "rebels".
That is the true psychology of the Resentful Employee.He is a de-socialised man.His sense of the State has been destroyed.
The Resentful Employees are the outcome of our social injustices.
