Confessions of an Economic Heretic/Chapter 8
CHAPTER VIII
THE GREAT WAR AND ITS AFTERMATH
This at any rate was the situation up to the Great War when stronger divergencies of thought and feeling impaired the solidarity of membership in the groups with which I had contacts. The War was, indeed, a disrupting influence in every organization and movement with which I was associated. Most of these were by name or character democratic, pacifist, anti-Imperialist, and the War was an acid test for all such professions. Several of the active leaders in the pacifist movement, H. W. Perris (one of my closest friends for many years), J. R. Green, Victor Fisher, and Maddison, leaders in the peace movement, became strong supporters of a war policy, which would justify itself from their pacifist standpoint as “a war to end war.” But this “peace” policy was an interesting psychological disclosure. Peace is in itself a negative conception, and perfect peace, like complete security, can have little positive emotional appeal. But when a minority group of pacifists is organized against war, it becomes a combative body, conducts “campaigns”; and its leaders are by natural selection “fighting men.” This was the case with the men I have mentioned. Their. natural pugnacity had helped them to leadership, and when the War came on it swept aside their pacifism and carried them forward into the wider field of conflict. But the Peace Movement in the years before the War suffered from another defect, in common with other aspects of the Democratic Movement. There was no real belief in the possibility of any early large-scale war, or in such a collapse of democracy as followed. The long period of peace in Western Europe, the steady progress of popular self-government in all civilized countries, had fastened these achievements upon our minds as permanent testimonials to rationalism and ethics in the field of politics. This confidence in peaceful democracy as an accepted principle of political evolution became (as we now see) a source of weakness when a sudden challenge was presented. Pacifists were disconcerted by the discovery that the sort of peace in which they believed was unreal, just as later on democrats found themselves compelled for the first time to doubt the accepted methods of democracy.
In the pre-War period I, like others, found myself living in this atmosphere of illusion. It was not merely a popular illusion, it held the minds of the thoughtful minorities seriously concerned in politics.
Several members of the Nation group belonged also to a somewhat larger body known as the Rainbow Circle, which met monthly for free political and economic discussions. This title had no symbolic significance. Formed originally inside the National Liberal Club by Mr. Murray MacDonald, Mr. W. M. Crook, and one or two other active radicals, it soon adjourned to the Rainbow Tavern in Fleet Street for its gatherings. After a year or two, owing, I believe, to shortcoming in its consumption of the more profitable forms of drink, it left this tavern and availed itself of the generous hospitality of Mr. (later Sir) Richard Stapley, who placed at its disposal a large room in his private residence, together with post-prandial amenities. Here for some twenty years I enjoyed the advantage of discussions carried on in an atmosphere of complete freedom, by politicians, journalists, civil servants, lawyers, clergymen, mostly men of conspicuous ability and extending from orthodox Liberals in the House of Commons to members of the Fabian Society and even the Social Democratic Federation. Among the most regular attendants were men of such diverse attachments as J. M. Robertson, Herbert Burrows, G. P. Gooch, Herbert Samuel, J. R. MacDonald, the Rev. A. L. Lilley, Russell Rea, Sydney Olivier, William Clarke, Percy Alden, Murray MacDonald, W. P. Reeves. Though several members of the Circle were Socialists, one or two revolutionists, the general atmosphere of complacency, to which I have alluded, enabled us to conduct our debates even on matters of high moment with good temper and reasonable argument.
Here again the War came as a disturbing revelation. Though no open breach in our good relations occurred, it became difficult for such anti-war men as Ramsay MacDonald and Herbert Burrows to discuss matters of immediate moment with passionate ex-peace men like J. M. Robertson and W. P. Reeves. While the Circle was carried on for many years longer, it never quite recovered its early equanimity, and though fed by much younger blood did not develop the earlier sense of camaraderie. The belief in man as a rational and thoughtful being was shaken almost to destruction by the War, and all societies and organizations based upon this belief suffered accordingly.
It may come to be recognized that amid all the material and moral havoc which the War brought about, it performed one extremely salutary though disconcerting lesson, or perhaps two related lessons. Formerly we thought of civilized man as 80 per cent rational. We have now halved the percentage.
Again, it has, I think, been a misfortune that terms like rationalism and free-thought have been so tightly annexed by opponents of orthodox religion.[1] For it is evident that the same medley of traditional emotionalism and magical beliefs which composes the sentiment of religious orthodoxy is present in the creeds and sentiments of political and economic orthodoxy. In politics Monarchy remains a divine institution, endowed, as the recent ceremony of the Coronation testifies, with a sanctity and mysticism designed to remove it from rational assessment. Divine right and supernatural authority, though no longer openly claimed, still lurk in the ceremonial of the anointment and the sacramental rite. But this spirit of sanctity is by no means confined to Monarchy. The glorification of the nation and the empire, as illustrated in school ceremonial and teaching, and in political meetings, does not differ, save in degree, from the cruder practices of Nazism and Fascism. The sacred emotionalism, poured out before the image of an empire bound in close solidarity by a common language, common interests and sympathies, can only be produced by keeping out of view the racial, linguistic, and other conflicts of interest visible in each of our dominions, in most of our colonies, and especially in the country that gives us our chief claim to magnitude of area and population, India.
Turning from politics to economics and the class distinctions connected with grades of income, can it be questioned that property and the legal ways of acquisition are kept from close rational scrutiny by a traditional and well-cultivated regard for “rights”? Any political changes which can be presented as an invasion of the “rights” of property have a flavour of wickedness about them. Any abolition of class distinctions connected with reputable modes of earning incomes carries at least a presumption of wrong-doing. The differences of manner, bearing, speech, between the gentry and the common people, are still accepted and valued as genuine contributions to the varied interests of national life. These differences have declined in intensity of feeling from eighteenth-century ruralism to modern urbanity, but they remain strongly marked even in the blending of large city life. Though the sentiment of “worship” only remains for royalty, various grades of “reverence” still attach to the upper classes; gentility and respectability are qualities retaining some emotional value.
This refusal to apply clear reasoning to unveil the defects of political and economic institutions, and the social respectabilities and class distinctions associated with them, is in some measure due to the stubborn objection of “rationalists” to apply to property, income, profit, and other economic concepts the same relentless logic they apply to religious concepts. Few of them have gone so far as to explore the measure of truth which underlies Marx’s assertion that religion is the dope of capitalism.
While, then, the ethical movement is founded upon the conviction that morality is independent of theology, goodness having a directly human origin and appeal, the willingness to apply moral tests to social institutions, especially to economic practices, has not been a generally accepted usage. The tendency has been to use ethics as an emotional substitute for religion rather than as a general guide to social and personal conduct. There is, however, in recent times a disposition among the younger members of ethical societies, and to a less extent among “rationalists,” to bring their ethics and their rationalism to bear upon problems of social progress. Social-economic equality is becoming an accepted end for ethical agitation,[2] and though the publications of the rationalist Press show little disposition to apply to social problems the fuller rationalism of Thomas Paine, Godwin, and Robert Owen, an increasing number of its leaders devote their main energy to the propagation of reforms in economic, political, and educational fields. Rationalism and free-thinking are thus gradually broadening out into instruments for bringing clear consciousness into processes of social evolution. Practical experience of the difficulties attending this process made me aware of the strength of conservatism in resisting the new demands for social justice and a reasonable economic order. For if the course of events has been such as I describe among those who profess reason and justice for their guides, what can be expected from those who regard the traditional ways of acquiring and using property, and the economic system engaged in these processes, as part of the order of nature and outside the bounds of rational inquiry? But while most members of the possessing and ruling classes thus accept their property and power as needing no defence, the more intelligent minority, who fear encroachments from the workers as trade unionists and citizens inflamed by Socialist propaganda, are grateful for the reasoned protection provided by academic and Press “defenders of the faith.”
Notes edit
- ↑ It is true that the formal definition adopted by the Rationalist Press Association provides a wider field for Rationalism. “Rationalism may be defined as the mental attitude which unreservedly accepts the supremacy of reason and aims at establishing a system of philosophy and ethics verifiable by experience and independent of all arbitrary assumptions of authority.” But there has been no attempt to establish any code of social or political ethics or to assert independence of authority in the economic field. The contents of the Literary Guide (the organ of the Rationalist Press) contain articles upon philosophical and literary topics but avoid any serious attention to Socialism, Communism, or Democracy in its economic bearing.
- ↑ The Society to Promote Human Equality is a recent vigorous outcome of the ethical movement, receiving its chief support from Mr. R. Arnold Price and other active Ethicists.