Taken From "The Egoist: An Individualist Review." Formerly The New Freewoman.
No. 1. Vol. I. Thursday, January 1st, 1914.
THERE is a game children formerly used to play which was a sort of Black Magic adapted for the nursery. The juvenile mystificator gathers his audience-of babes-and proceeds something like this: "Think of a number, double it, halve it, add-say- - nine, subtract five, take away the number first thought of" and the clairvoyant triumphantly announces the accurate result-four. It was Mr. Steven Byington's* way of treating the relationship of men to things which dug from our memory this
*See Correspondence: THE NEW FREEWOMAN December 1sth.
forgotten infantile amusement. His elaborate, meticulously careful arguments-"notably cautious" as he himself would say-on human affairs seem to us to be shaped precisely on this plan. He sets out to deal with men and things and from the discussion he abstracts-men. He accuses us of dealing with abstractions: and we do make it our business to deal with an abstraction which Mr. Byington has committed. He has abstracted from his discussion on men and things-men. From a situation which turns on human temper, he abstracts the temper. The difficulties arising out of the inequalities of human capacity he turns into a question of mathematics, as in the matter of interest.
The solemn disputations concerning interest, labour and capital could not exist were not their existence protected by this sort of unconscious verbal trick: the practice of which is not limited to Mr. Byington but is in quite general use. On the face of it, it is left to be presumed that the discussion is on human affairs: then immediately the discussion is cut off from all things human. The incalculable human temper is accepted as given-a stable quantity. The fact that it varies, grows, and springs up apparently out of nothing on impulse: all that is ignored. It is indicated by a fixed number or a definite quantity: and it is neither, and an elaborate pile of argument is built up on these false fixed quantities, whose accuracy can be judged as Mr. Byington says of calculations as to the accuracy of the principle of interest, "like any other mathematical problem." If the "worker" forgets the role assigned to him and behaves like a human being instead of a mathematical quantity and hits someone-or goes on strike, the discussionists "revise their estimates"-there has been a "slight inaccuracy:" then results will be "valuable" when they get the "given quantities" more precisely! It is a process calculated to make one feel very tired.
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It is mainly due to those persons of splendid loquacity but of small sense, the political economists, that we have these absurd static concepts to which has been accorded the absolute quality of real entities -Labour, Capital, Interest, with their initial capitals and fictitious problems. Relative in themselves, their so-called problems are the old human problems which make the drama of life-initiative and shiftlessness, audacity and timidity. The economists whose bias and sympathy is towards initiative and audacity would reduce shiftlessness and timidity to a system: make it permanent and rigid like a mathematical sequence, the better to be worked upon. Those whose leanings are towards the timid and shiftless would make audacity and wilfulness into an intolerable crime. So the "problems" for the discussionists vacillate between the oracles of a pseudo science and the impassioned outbursts of melodrama. It is not a question whether discussionists are talking of concrete things while we speak of abstract; nor whether we have a leaning for the dynamic in things while they like static and dynamic mixed. It is a question, in our opinion, whether writers on these subjects know what they are talking about at all. Persons who talked of lightning as though it were cotton-wool we should say didn't: and persons who speak of the inter relations of individuals in terms applicable to the fixed quantities of mathematics we should say like wise did not. "Labour unrest" (another piece of slang on its way to become a settled idea; is a matter of temper: not of social arrangement. The poor will cease to be poor when they refuse to be: the downtrodden will disappear when they decide to stand up: the hungry will have bread when they take it. What will happen after is a matter for chance and circumstance, but the single audacity even, will have served its moment, and its effects will not easily be obliterated. One thing is certain: that in the event of the Dublin strikers helping themselves to bread (which is the action Mr. Byington criticises) so many consequences would have defined themselves in Dublin that the situation which ultimately would have to be considered by merchants with grain to sell in Chicago, would be very different from that of starving-men supplying themselves with food merely. The difference would represent that which exists between life and mathematics. The second can be calculated and foretold: the first is to be taken in faith, and the event, however it befals, to be met with spirit-the most concrete thing we know, as Mr. Byington will allow: more concrete than boots or statistics.
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How subtly human temper has been undermined by accepting concepts as realities is made clear by the manner in which the discussionists have dealt with a matter like "interest." As Mr. Byington himself uses "interest" as his illustration he will be ready to accept it in illustration of ours.
Bastiat, Henry George and Mr. Byington think interest "right," and it would be a rash person who would say it was "wrong," for it is as wrong as it is right, as right as it is wrong: wrong and right having no meaning save in the sense of accuracy, and accuracy applied to the "principle" of interest is pointless. The man who can extort interest is smart or fortunate; the man who has to pay it is unlucky or an inferior. It makes no difference when borrowing at an interest is erected into a system so that the exertions of the labouring world are set in motion financed with interest-paying money: the character of the operation is not changed. The workers,-stupid and heavy, are without gumption and the "capitalist" is smart enough to know it, and makes use of them for his own benefit. Right and wrong have no relation to either side. As long as the procedure can be put through it is "right": when it can be so no longer, both parties will naively come to the conclusion that it is wrong. We will not bore our readers with the solemn, meticulously scrupulous pyramid of proof which Bastiat and Henry George pile up to attest the righteousness of "interest." It will be enough to quote their more salient points:
"One carpenter, James, at the expense of ten days' labour, makes himself a plane, which will last in use for 290 of the 300 working days of the year. William, another carpenter, proposes to borrow the plane for a year, offering to give back at the end of that time, when the plane will be worn out, a new plane equally as good. James objects to lending the plane on these terms, urging that if he merely gets back a plane he will have nothing to compensate him for the loss of the advantage which the use of the plane during the year would give him. William, admitting this, agrees not merely to return a plane, but, in addition, to give James a new plank. The agreement is carried out to mutual satisfaction. The plane is used up during the year, but at the end of the year, James receives as good a one, and a plank in addition. He lends the new plane again and again, until finally it passes into the hands of his son, ' who still continues to lend it,' receiving a plank each time. This plank, which represents interest, is said to be a natural and equitable remuneration, as by giving it in return for the use of the plane, William ' obtains the power which exists in the tool to increase the productiveness of labour,' and is no worse off than he would have been had he not borrowed the plane; while James obtains no more than he would have had if he had retained and used the plane instead of lending it."
Oh weary William! Bastiat thinks the "rightfulness" of his action needs explaining and he explains it in the grand manner. We think William best explains himself! Not so Henry George. He works up William's propensity for borrowing planes and giving planks exceedingly well, and finds that irrepressible plank-giving arises not from "the power which exists in tools to increase the productiveness of labour" as per the weighty conclusion of Bastiat, but from "the power of increase which the reproductive forces of nature give to capital." "Interest" is not an arbitrary, but a natural thing: ... the result ... of laws of the universe which underlie Society. It is therefore just." (No less!)
"If I plant and care for a tree until it comes to maturity, I receive, in its fruit, interest upon the capital I have thus accumulated-that is, the labour I have expended. If I raise a cow, the milk which she yields me morning and evening is not merely the reward of the labour then exerted; but interest upon the capital which my labour, expended in-raising her, has accumulated in the cow."
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Accumulated in the cow! Milk! Misdirected nourishment of offspring the "interest"-taker has probably already come to the conclusion it is "right" to assimilate as veal. How naturally the constant repetition of a trick played on a slow-tempered beast has established itself! It is illustrative of a "law of the universe" even-therefore just. This really satisfyingly clever trick has been repeated so often that the victim appears to be as convinced of its "right"-ness as we who play it. What is the bovine "look" expressive of save the inner assent to the miscarrying process-to the proposition "Born to fill the milk-pail: born to be milked." And the true "worker" expression-if one notices it-is a replica of the bovine one. It says, "Born to be worked; born to make planks; born to be financed; born to be organised, domesticated, fed, stalled, stimulated to work unduly until working is a necessity: a seeker of work searching for the hand that will drain away the stimulated working energy. There is no mistaking the serving expression: dumb with its craving for the treatment which will enable it to offer of its best.
But let us not malign the born "worker" nor yet the cow. Cows to be sure are little sensitive even to touch, little resentful of "handling" as would be a thoroughbred mare, a doe, a tigress with cubs; but even among cows there can be "unrest."
There was a cow-of authenticated tradition-who went definitely into revolt, struck for better conditions, demanded-like the workers-some of the "better" things of life. She was unmistakeably better-class and yearned for the wider culture: she had the aesthetic sense. She blankly refused to give up her milk-the accumulated interest-unless there was music during the draining process: not any music: one song and one singer. Only for "How beautiful upon the mountains" was she prepared to negotiate. (What would you think of that, Mr. Murphy?) She was successful and twice a day the melody was forthcoming, and the "interest" poured forth. We knew the singer, but not alas! that very superior cow: she had already been translated to a higher sphere, but as Mr. Byington, who, we gather, has a respect for English trade unionism, will be glad to know, has since returned to Great Britain as a spirit specially dedicated to the task of inspiring the words and actions of Trade Union Leaders; a sphere of usefulness for which she is peculiarly fitted, having but so recently passed through the soul-stress of a domesticated worker's agitation. With psychic intuitiveness she feels what her fellow-servers on the human plane need.
It is worth while noting for the benefit of those who are interested in the curious in human nature that the soul of this cow actively engaged in its insoi-rational duties has been photographed. At the recent conference of delegates in the Memorial Hall to consider the Dublin strike, at the outset of the proceedings a man with a camera saw the soul of the afore said cow descending upon the leaders who adorned the platform. They were just about to break forth into the anthem "How beautiful upon the mountains," their faces already wearing the expression of contented bliss, when the man with the camera snap shotted them, and produced a picture which should last not for a day but for all time. Should our American friends doubt, this masterpiece may be seen in an issue of the "Daily News" of that date or the following. The stranger seen sitting in the rear of the picture biting his finger-nails and ill at ease in this barn-yard is Mr. Larkin. He looks a wild man out of place among these happy domesticated brethren. And so he was, he having a tale to tell-could he but have found the words for it-which was other than that of those who seek to make servitude comfortable.
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Mr. Larkin is supposed to have been discredited by this gathering of Trade Union delegates. It is a great mistake in our opinion. The congress was the redeeming stroke of luck which enabled him to cancel out the brotherly-love slush of his missionary journey. In his great meetings he tried to convert audiences which while not having a fraction of his spirit had the phrases which could have voiced it far handier, and he talked down to what he considered his audiences' level; and he placed it a little too low. At the congress he was on the defensive and had to show the real quality: a fact for which those who do not care to see vital power smothered by the sheer mass of the stupid cannot be too grateful.
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The recent strikes show signs of breaking up-- failures rather more than less. And failures, we ask Mr. Byington to allow, because the "Strike" has been erected into an idea instead of being kept in its proper place as the name of a simple action of a negative kind. A "strike" connotes nothing beyond stopping work. Workmen do it regularly every night, only then, not being lured away from common sense by conceptual high-falutin-ness, they call it unceremoniously "knocking-off." They do not speak of that, in awed tones or debate its "rightness" and "wrongness," or talk of "conducting" it in a manner which is "mature" and representative of the "survival of the fittest." It is the idealisation of a simple act which in the "strike " makes men talk and act as though they were bewitched. "To conduct_ a strike"! One might as well "conduct" a sleep or a pause. It is not the "strike" which the strikers' opponents are at all likely to fear. It is its termination by definite action. It is inaction which has killed the recent "strike" efforts. What form the requisite definite action should take the strikers must judge for themselves. They know best what they stand in need of to make their defiance effectual.
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The suggestion that the present Government imprisoned Larkin and then released him because they were afraid of him, while they allowed Sir Edward Carson to remain at large because they were totally unconcerned regarding him, is too grotesque to warrant any comment beyond the mere statement that the correct interpretation is precisely the opposite. It is depressing to think that sensible people give so acquiescent an ear to interpretations of news issued by a commercialised press. Its news may be tolerably accurate, but its opinions are discredited in advance. In connection, however, Mr. Byington might note an item of news: although for months arms have been imported into Ulster to such an extent that now the gentlemanly "rebels" are amply supplied, the proclamation prohibiting the importation of firearms into Ireland was not issued until the "Citizen Army" in Dublin took to daily drilling. It shows at least that the Government understands that the Dublin ragamuffins might be dangerous- under certain conditions. "Government" is as sensitive as a barometer to the sort of pressure which is capable of affecting itself.
Mr. Byington on "ideas" we regretfully leave until a later issue, as also our hoary wrangle with Mr. Tucker concerning Proudhon's "style."
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At a meeting of shareholders of THE NEW FREE WOMAN LTD. called to discuss the advisability of changing the title of "The New Freewoman" to "The Egoist" held at Oakley House, Bloomsbury Street, London, W.C., on Dec. 23rd, a unanimous vote was given in favour of the change. From this issue on, "The New Freewoman" will be referred to as THE EGOIST.