XVI. Control and Liberty

CHAPTER XVI CONTROL AND LIBERTY WHILE we all want liberty, we are all subject to con trol, whether it be the control of natural forces or some artificial control under which we have allowed ourselves to come. iThe ambition to command, to order, to boss, to control is a very laudable ambition and is part of th<e nature of that large minority who are really re sponsible for keeping things going and making life interesting for the rest. It does not follow that everyone who wants to command is capable of doing so, nor does it follow that at any given time those in command are the ideal persons for the job. It is, however, very important that students of economics, sociology and politics should give the closest study to the problem of command, and strive to discover the systernor the social arrangement which will en sure that the power to command tends to concentrate into the hands of those who have passed some test of ability and shown themselves to possess some of the necessary qualifications.

There is nothing wrong about the desire to boss or to control, although it is generally accompanied by a certain amount of conceit, but a good strong character requires a modicum of conceit, just as a good savoury needs a sprinkling of pepper. A cer tain amount of greediness is essential to the making of a good appetite, and, as long as the greediness is thoroughly subordinated to other considerations, no objection can properly be taken to it. Most of us believe that we can do some things 1: 85 186 The Return to Laisser Faire rather better than the other fellow. It may be true or untrue, but that luakes no difference and does not alter our belief. Either the husband or the wife in every married pair looks upon the other as utterly devoid of wisdom and common-sense in the matter of poking the fire; or how many women are there who are satisfied with the skill of other women in the matter of holding a baby? Similarly, every good officeboy has his own plans for improving the busil1ess when the present head has gone to his funeral or disappeared in some other way. U nder neath th~ actions and thoughts of most of us is the very laudable and proper desire to command, or desire to have the opportunity of doing things in some other, and as we think, better way. There is thus constituted a big natural check upon the indiscretions of those who possess responsibility and a big natural source from which vacancies in com mand can always be filled.

There are great dangers in command. That, again, is a natural thing, which will remain with us whatever economic or political system we devise. No Act of Parliament, no political arrangement, can put into the brains of those at the top the exact amount of wisdom that is required at any given time and in any given circumstances. History is full of the mistakes of bad bosses from Pharaohs to Kaisers. Indeed, there would be very little interest in his tory apart from these mistakes. The people who succeed in getting along for a generation or two without blunders in high quarters have a very good Control and Liberty 187 time while they live, but make no mark in history and leave no material for the historian. The most dangerous and objectionable sort of command is that which relies upon force. AIl\vho dominated and ruled the ancients and the barbarians maintained their position by virtue of their personal strength or because of the strength of the army or the party which adhered to them. Command which relies upon force is quite irresponsible and as we now" know, or as we imagine ourselves to know, is altogether objectionable.

It is only in the last couple of centuries that modern civilisation has developed the ideal way of selecting rulers, commanders, chiefs and bosses. Notwithstanding all the criticism that is day by day levelled against the capitalist system, it is un doubtedly true that capitalism does, on the whole, provide industry and commerce with the best people that are available at any moment for the pur pose of leading and bossing. The capitalist boss is, with few exceptions, entirely free from the objec tion to which the older boss was liable, the objection of having force at the back of him. It is, of course, true that here and there, now and again, some mil lionaire or combination of moneyed people will, for a brief spell, get such a command of some market as to give them all the advantages of force and power; but most of my readers will not make the mistake of confounding the antics of some multi-millionaire with the workings of the capitalist system, which comprises every little shopkeeper and every little maker of anything the world over.

188 The Return to LaisserFaire Under capitalism, or as I prefer to call it In dividualism, a man can only secure control of some industrial enterprise by giving satisfaction to others, and can only hold that control so long as he con tinues to give that satisfaction. He is under, the strict necessity of satisfying his customers all the time and, were it not for the false labour position created by the politicians, he would be under the same necessity all the time of giving like satisfac tion to those who work for him. The American business man certainly has to give every bit as much thought to satisfying his workers as he does to satis fying his customers. Capitalism has another advantage over the old fashioned way of selecting controllers on account of their strength· or their ability to enlist force in their service. Instead of revolutions and assassinations, which were at one time the only means through which a change of control could be secured, capital ism has a bankruptcy court, and every year 8,000 capitalist bosses are put down from their seats· be cause they have failed to give that satisfaction to others which alone could qualify them to remain in the market. Their property, their machinery and their trade have passed over to others, and so the business of governing material things is constantly passing from the hands of the incompetent.

It is thus easy to see that Socialism, in its theory that it will substitute other schemes for the market orthe money test, is really an endeavour to get back to the irresponsibility and the dangers of force. No Socialist has ever yet ventured an opinion as to Controt and Liberty 189 what is to happen under this precious system to the man who, having been put into a position of com mand, proves unworthy of that position. This is really one of the biggest difficulties that we all have to face, and a difficulty which has never yet been faced by any Socialist writer. Most of us can call to mind some acquaintance of ours who is in a posi tion of command and who is quite unfitted to hold that position. It may be some young man who has succeeded to a business built up by his father, or it may be some engineer or surveyor or clerk in the employment of a public authority. In both cases the work done to the order of these people is unsatis factory work, and the public loses some advantage which it would possess if sensible and suitable people were in these posts.

But then the personal difficulty arises. In our civilised state we don't call a man a fool even when we believe him to be one; we just leave him alone; we.hope he may improve, and in any case we decide that a quiet life is better than a quarrel with a neigh bour. Thus it comes about that the fool in the public service or the fool· in a Socialised industry is almost entirely safe. The worst that can happen to him is that his superiors will look out for an op portunity of moving him on to some other depart ment so that he can practise his foolery without inconvenience to themselves. It is common know ledge that when some new Government department is opened every other Government department always showers upon it generous offers of help from people with whom they desire to dispense.

190 The Return to Laisser Faire But the son of a wealthy father in charge of a business, and incapable of controlling it, is in a verx different position. Nobody says a word to him; no body tells him he is a fool, but his customers quietly leave him. Two things, in fact, happen. Others more capable of commanding take his trade away, and he goes into the bankruptcy court. The process is automatic, regular and never fails. It provides the rest of us, the consumers, with the guarantee that all the time we have in charge of those services on which we depend for our material needs the best brains that are available to render them. 1'he mixing up of politics and industry, now such a very popular game, involves us in the necessity of sorting out afresh those questions which are really political questions and separating them from those . other matters which are economic problems. Politics is, of course, a game of force. The poli ticians are always able to enlist and use the force of the nation to carry through the decisions which they take; that must be so.

The old-fashioned despot was able himself to decide in which direction the force of the nation should be used. Now, with the blessing of democracy, the nation can take that decision for itself, but, as we have seen in previous chapters, the decision being taken, the nation must exercIse its authority or carry out its wish through the hands of bureaucrats. As some of the leading judicial authorities quite recently pointed out, one of the big mistakes at the moment is the modern habit of passing 0ver to bureaucrats not only the power to Control and Liberty put a decision into operation, but the power to take the decision itself. That habit of giving power to bureaucrats is most noticeable in those cases where politicians have seen fit to trespass into the realm of industry, production and economics. It is the more dangerous because, as we have seen above, there is not a shred of a safe guard in the shape of any test by which we can know whether the bureaucrat is giving satisfaction or not.

The bankruptcy test which keeps the field of business clear of the worst of the weeds of ineffi ciency imposes upon the business man the necessity of knowing a great deal about his business. Every business, however simple it may seem upon the surface to be, is full of intricate complications, technical and abstruse difficulties, and very few businesses are so easy as to require much less than a lifetime thoroughly to understand them. From the way some people talk it would seem as if any business could be run by anybody who has a bank account and the ability to smoke a cigar. I listened the other day to one of the most interesting twenty minute speeches that I remember from a man in the herring fishing trade. He told us how his father and his grandfather before him had devoted their lives to the problems associated with the simple herring, gave us some insight into the improvements that he was making and left me with the impression that three generations of close application and study were not sufficient to understand all there is to know about so simple a commodity and so simple a trade.

192 The Return to Laisser Faire And yet the politician or the bureaucrat will almost always profess to tell us everything there is to know about every trade there is. This is, of course, the leading characteristic of the Socialist politician. Take six names representing all the different sections of the Labour party: Oswald Mosley, Jack Jones, Saklatvala, Kenworthy, Lansbury and Maxton. Anyone of these six will presume to tell you, if you ask him, with certainty and confidence exactly what to do with coal, rubber, 'cotton, arms, taxes, health,employment, prayer books, currency and housing. It is almost certain that everyone of the six has made many speeches on everyone of these complicated questions, and it is absolutely certain that anyone of the six would, if given the chance, accept complete responsibility with full powers for controlling and arranging any of these matters and proceed to boss the rest of us without any check or safeguard or test of knowl edge, efficiency, or capability.

It is, in my judgment, a physical impossibility, within the space of one human life and with ,the limitations of one human brain, to know more than a fractional percentage of the knowledge required to grasp the ten or eleven problems that I have mentioned. If these matters are left under Indi vidualism to be handled by persons who, in the com petition of the market, will have to demonstrate their fitness to handle them, many little difficulties will arise by the way, but on the whole, and in the end, the public will· receive the best service . If, on the other hand, these questions are to be put into the Con/rot and Liberty 193 political machine to be settled by blatant ignora muses and to be subject to their control backed by political force, all hope of progress disappears, and the certainty of decay takes its place. It is surprising to me how even a patient public like our own tolerates the impertinence of politicians who. claim to know so much and to be so clever.

It is only in politics, and especially in Socialism, that one gets this bumptious and pretentious ignor ance. Outside the realm of politics men of posi tion make no such claims to skill and wisdom. No one, for instance, has ever heard Sir Oliver Lodge on Currency, Mr. St. John Ervine on Cotton Problems, Sir WilliamOrpen on the Prayer Book, the Governor of the Bank of England on Health, Mr. Charles Chaplin on Coal, or Miss Sybil Thorn dike on Rubber, and yet all these people are as well qualified to express opinions on these questions as Mr. Oswald Mosley or Mr. Wheatley. Every one of these persons I have named will go down to history for some definite contribution to human thought and progress, and will be known to genera tions which will never hear of our current poli ticians. Politics may be defined as "the application of force to the expressed will of the nation," a defini tion which rules out politics as an agency through which any of our material needs can be supplied, because, as we have seen, force cannot give us those safeguards and 'those guarantees of proficiency which can only be secured through competition and individual freedom. Those who desire to satisfy 13 194 The Return to LaisserFaire their ambition to, -command through politics are as much to be respected as any others who also desire t<;>command, but they must exercise their desires in fields to which political methods are applicable.

,Those· who entertain the desire to command in material and, economic things must submit them selves to the. more severe and more certain tests of the market. One of the most sinister and dangerous recent developments of this mistaken ,notion that political force can be applied to economic problems is to be found in the Church, where one can see the ruinous result of political action at its worst and the political idea in its most objectionable form. The parson is by nature and by right a sentimentalist, and no one would have him otherwise. Two or three weeks ago in' connection with Industrial Sunday some ,thousands, of sermons were preached by well meaning parsons, a very large number of them fail ing to understand their responsibilities and, echoing the stupidities of Socialist politics. IThe parson being, a sentimentalist accepts very readily the first and the basic Socialist lie that riches are the cause of poverty, or that in any general scheme of things' riches can be used to alleviate poverty. It is, of course, perfectly true that a few rich people here and there by giving £'S notes to a few poor people here and there can alleviate suffering and make life more tolerable for the few poor people. But that is only. possible in this limited way, and it is pro foundly untrue to suppose that any general trans ference of riches from the wealthy to the poor can Control and Liberty 195 ever be made or that any such action can ever be attempted without increasing poverty and enlarging our difficulties.

The parson accepts the Socialist lie very natur-. ally because it is his duty to preach against the abuse of riches, but he overlooks the fact that riches can be abused in the hands of the State just as well as in the hands of the private owner. If the parsons as a whole could be made to understand that it is their duty to preach wisdom to the rich, always remembering that wealth and riches are the essential foundation of economic health, Industrial Sunday would be indeed a blessing to the nation, but the churches must be careful that they do not fall into the error of seeking favour with the mob and borrowing the envy, malice and hatred which is the stock in trade of the Socialist. I heard a parson on the wireless preaching about wages and complaining that somebody's wages were only 28/- a week. He claimed, and as I think claimed rightly, that no wage less than £3 for a man with a family was adequate in these times. But this good man simply did not begin to understand what he was talking about. His whole mind was working in terl1)s of money. It never dawned upon him that poverty is 'the absence of things, and that the only cure for poverty is to make more things~ Such poverty as exists amongst us exists because the things that would remove it are non-existent, and no fundamental difference would be made to the situation if the pockets of every pauper in the land 196 The Return to Laisser Faire were stuffed full of the bits· of paper which we call money.

I have heard many parsons rail at landlords. In every case, although, of course, my experience is limited, these sermons were built upon the assump tion that all the tenants were angels. Here is another suggestion .which I would make in extension of the charge against the Church of accepting too readily everything they hear from the Socialist politician. Nobody can deny that some proportion, if not a large proportion, of the slum and housing problem is due to the inability of most people to keep any sort of house at all. I don't know how many days in the year most parsons give over to preaching sermons with Martha as a text, but if a little of the thought which· is turned into invective against landlords were devoted to the study and exposition of the methods of Martha, a very big step forward would be taken to the solution of the housing problem. There is yet another way of arguing this vital question of the application of political .power to economic questions, and it seems to me a very con clusive way of showing the futility of the method as a whole. Whenever political power is applied to an economic problem, it always produces the op posite to the result desired. That may be thought by some to be too sweeping a statement, but I have yet to discover a case where any other result has developed. In connection with employment, the Ministry of Labour is established to find us jobs, and remains with us to look after unemploy'ment.

Control and Liberty 197 In connection with housing, a Ministry is given powers to build us houses, with the result, as my readers have already seen, that the personnel of the building trade has been halved, and the building owner, the building investor, the building promoter, have completely disappeared. The application of political power to the mining industry, the earliest and the favourite plaything of Parliament, has brought disaster which is patent to all. We have yet to experience the full inconveniences which are developing amongst us on account of the interference of the politicians in the matter of our food, but we, the best-fed nation in the world, are in grave danger of dropping down the scale owing to the antics of the Food Council. The endeavours of Government to get into shipping are a standing proof of the inherent impossibility of the idea of a nationalised industry, all of which brings us back to the inescapable conclusion that political control must be confined to political purposes, and that our material well-being, our economic health, our wealth-making, must be left to the free play of economic forces, through which alone the public can secure any guarantee of service or supply.