There has,indeed,been a good deal of fraud,and many practices at which 'a person of delicate conscience'might scruple.(158)This is a gentle adumbration of the view of some recent Socialists.Is not capital,they would say,precisely the product of fraud,and stained through and through by cheating?If Mill was far from the doctrine of Marx,and did not hold that capital was a mere name for the process of exploitation,he admitted at least that there was no such thing as justice in the actual industrial order.Wealth clearly represents something very different from a reward given in proportion to industry.In the first place,it is inherited,and Mill,as I have said,proposed therefore to limit inheritances;and,in the next place,nobody can suppose that a poor man who grows rich,even by purely honourable means,gets a prize proportioned to his virtue or to his utility;while,finally,the poor man certainly does not start on equal terms with his richer rival.He that hath not may not lose that which he hath;but he has small chances of climbing the ladder,and if he climbs,his success means devotion to his private interest.(159)Mill's abandonment of the wage-fund,again,involved the acceptance of the 'tacit conspiracy.'The poverty of the mass is not due to a 'law of nature';and therefore it is due,partly at least,to the combination of capitalists,which enables them to bring their power to bear in keeping down the rate of wages to an indefinite extent.
The social injustice against which he protests exists under a system in which the laws are substantially equal.They no longer recognise class distinctions explicitly;they have ceased to forbid combinations or to fix the rate of wages;the paternal theory of government is gone,as he says,for ever,and the old relation of protector and protected supplanted by a system of equality before the law.(160)And yet monstrous inequalities and therefore injustices remain.What is the inference?Here we have the real inconsistency or,at least,failure to reconcile completely two diverging principles.Mill and all his disciples place their hopes in 'co-operation.'Co-operation can,they think,be reconciled with the 'liberty'which they regarded both as desirable in itself and as equivalent to the absence of law.
Co-operation,on this showing,implies first absolute freedom to join or to leave the co-operative body.The individual joins with other individuals,but does not sacrifice his individuality.The relation is still,so to speak,'external,'and the various associations compete with each other as fully and unreservedly as the component individuals.And yet there is an obvious difficulty.Co-operation must involve a loss of 'liberty,'though the loss may be compensated.If I co-operate,I undertake obligations,enforcible by law,though not originally imposed by law.Mill throws out the conjecture that the choice between Socialism and individualism will 'depend mainly on one consideration,viz.which of the two systems is consistent with the greatest amount of human liberty and spontaneity.'(161)Now all association limits action in fact.When great companies take up an industrial function of any kind,they put a stress upon the individual,not necessarily the less forcible because not legally imposed.A great railway,for example,soon destroys other private enterprises,and makes itself practically necessary.It is equally governed by a body in which most individual shareholders exercise as little influence as though they were appointed by the state.As the industrial machinery,human or material,is developed,it becomes as much a part of social order as if it were created by the legislature.The point upon which Mill insists,that all associations must be 'voluntary,'then becomes insignificant.I may be legally at liberty to stand aside;but,in fact,they become imperative conditions of life.
That is to say,that the distinction drawn by the old individualism between the state institutions and those created by private action ceases to have the old significance.When a society once develops an elaborate and complex structure,it becomes almost pedantic to draw a profound distinction between a system which is practically indispensable and one which is legally imperative.
I will not inquire further whether Mill's position could be made logically coherent.One thing is pretty clear.If his views had been actually adopted;if the state educated,nationalised the land,supported the poor,restrained marriage,regulated labour where individual competition failed,and used its power to equalise wealth,it would very soon adopt state Socialism,and lose sight of Mill's reservations.Mill,as I believe,had been quite right when he insisted on the vast importance of stimulating the sense of individual responsibility.That is,and must always be,one essential moment of the argument.His misfortune was,that having absorbed an absolute system in his youth,and accepting its claims to scientific validity,he was unable when he saw its defects to see the true line (if any one yet sees the true line)of conciliation.His doctrine,therefore,contained fragments of opposite and inconsistent dogmas.While fancying that he was developing the individualist theories,he adopted not only Socialism,but even a version of Socialism open to the objections on which he sometimes forcibly insisted.Mill and the Socialist are both individualists;only the Socialist makes right precede fact,and Mill would make fact precede right.
Every individual,says the Socialist,has a right to support;the consequences of granting the right must be left to Providence.
