CHAPTER VIII.

SOCIALISM AND ARISTOCRACY.

§ 1. How far Mr. Ruskin is a Socialist. § 2. Acceptance of many distinctive economic doctrines of Social Democracy. § 3. Limitations of his economic Socialism. § 4. Leanings to Christian Socialism. § 5. An enemy of Liberalism and Democracy. § 6. Affinities with J. S. Mill and Mazzini. § 7. The natural and inherent "slavery" of the masses. § 8. Reliance on the moral initiative of the classes. § 9. Is Mr. Ruskin's policy of moral appeal efficacious? § 10. The need of organic social action. § 11. Moralising the employer. § 12. Moralising the consumer. § 13. The individual solution proved to be untenable. § 14. Irreverence not essential to Democracy. § 15. Absolute equality not essential to Democracy. § 16. The rational interpretation of Democracy.

§1. WHAT is Mr. Ruskin's proper place among Social Reformers? In attempting to answer this question, it will be most convenient to begin by asking another. In what sense is Mr. Ruskin a Socialist? Having already collected much evidence upon this head, it is only necessary to focus it by a judgment which shall bear in mind the different grades of loose meaning attached to the term Socialism. Considered as a philosophic term, Socialism is best taken to imply an organic view of social life, which accords to society a unity not constituted of the mere addition of its individual members, but contained in a common end or purpose, which determines and imposes the activities of these individual

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members. In this sense Mr. Ruskin is a pronounced Socialist, enforcing his theory by analogies constantly drawn from the conscious organic life of animals, and ignoring those points of defect or difference which some philosophic Socialists admit, in comparing the organised structure of political and industrial society with human life in the individual man.

But even in theoretic discussions Socialism commonly means more than a bare adhesion to some organic view of social life. It implies at least a tendency to favour increased social activity in politics and industry, either through the instrumentality of the state or by voluntary co-operation for common ends. Now Mr. Ruskin distinctly favours the largest substitution of public for private enterprise, and a public superintendence and control of the details of individual life by the state. "Live openly" is not merely an ethical precept binding upon the individual good citizen, but a public interest to be enforced by public provision. Such freedom as is granted to individuals to hold and till land, to make and sell goods of any kind, proceeds from the positive, as distinct from the tacit, consent of society. Large sections of industrial work are to be directly ordered and managed by state officials. The guild system, though in some places treated as a voluntary co-operative movement, is in effect to be a public institution;1 and though provisional liberty is granted to buy and sell goods produced under free competitive conditions, this is evidently regarded as an imperfection which would disappear with the fuller growth of the sense of commonalty.

In this general economic sense, as approving the 1 Time and Tide, § 3.

increased ownership and control of industry by the state, Mr. Ruskin, then, will also rank as Socialist. But how far is his teaching to be identified with that of the movement commonly described as Socialist, and in particular with the large continental organisation which has assumed that name?

1

There are many close points of resemblance in social criticism. The general humanitarian revolt against the misery and the social injustice implied by poverty, the corrupting influences of luxury, and the base origin of riches has never been so eloquently voiced by any other "agitator." His insistence that "large fortunes cannot honestly be made by the work of any one man's hands or head," always implying the "discovery of some method of taxing the labor of others," 2 his contemptuous repudiation of charity as a substitute for justice, his demand that property shall be set upon a sound basis both of origin and use, are agitating doctrines which Mr. Ruskin never shrinks from driving to their logical conclusions. The plainest and most fearless statement of the case is in a letter to the Pall Mall Gazette in 1873, which contains the words: "These are the facts. The laborious poor produce the means of life by their labour. Rich persons possess themselves by various expedients of a right to dispense these means. of life,' and keeping as much means as they want of it for themselves, dispense the rest, usually only in return for more labour from the poor, expended in producing various delights for the rich dispenser."

§ 2. But Mr. Ruskin comes even nearer to continental

1 Time and Tide, § 81.

8 Fors, iii. 411, Letter lxx.

2 Munera Pulveris, § 139.

4 Arrows of the Chace, ii. 100.

Socialism on its economic side. Three of the most distinctive demands of Social Democrats are: First, the abolition of "the competitive system" of industry under private control for profit, and the substitution of publicly organised industry for use; second, the abolition of rent and interest; third, the establishment of a labour-basis of exchange. Now Mr. Ruskin's acceptance of these fundamental planks of the Socialist platform is well-nigh complete. That powerful chapter in "Unto this Last," entitled "The Roots of Honour," is nothing but a splendid moral pleading for the abolition of "profit" as an industrial motive, and the adoption of social service in its place; and this principle was at once the earliest, the most constant, and the most consistent of his social teachings. His rejection, alike on moral and utilitarian grounds, of rent and interest, has already been subject of comment. His demands in this regard may be concisely summed up in the language of "Fors:"1 « That the usurer's trade will be abolished utterly; that the employer will be paid justly for his superintendence, but not for his capital; and the landlord paid for his superintendence of the cultivation of land, when he is able to direct it wisely.”

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Not only is Mr. Ruskin a Socialist in his criticism of competition and profitmongers: he also adopts the corner-stone of the constructive economic theory of Marx and his followers, quantity of labour as the basis of exchange for commodities. Equity can only consist in giving time for time, strength for strength, and skill for skill."2 It is true that, when he is upon his guard, he insists upon qualitative differences of labour 1 Letter lx. (iii. 226). 2 Unto this Last, p. 83.

as grounds for differential remuneration, but in his more abstract treatment of exchange value and prices he often adopts 2 labour-time as his standard, using language very similar to that which we find in the Socialist bible, "Das Capital," and utterly ignoring the influence of "utility," which receives so much attention from most modern economists.

The "right to labour," and the correspondent duty of the state to furnish work and wages in public workshops to all unemployed persons, are fully admitted in the preface to "Unto this Last," where he insists "that any man, or woman, or boy, or girl out of employment, should be at once admitted at the nearest government school, and set to such work as it appeared, on trial, they were fit for, at a fixed rate of wages determinable every year;"3 compulsion of the most stringent order being applied in the case of shirkers or confirmed idlers.

All these are crucial points, which place Mr. Ruskin's teaching in close sympathy with the tenets of revolutionary Socialism.

§3. There are, however, certain important limitations to his economic Socialism. His treatment of the whole land question sometimes brings him near to those individualists who look to peasant proprietorship as the economic basis of a healthy society. Possession of land by an occupying owner with inheritance and even the maintenance of primogeniture are the principles he lays down in "Fors."4 It is true that the quantity of land to be held is to be limited by capacity to use it, and the king and the state overseers are to exercise a general

1 E. g. Unto this Last, p. 94.

2 E.g. Munera Pulveris, §§ 63, 64. P. xviii.

Letter lxxxix.