The Forerunner Part 15

We are told, on the authority of the Greatest Sociologist, that it is more blessed to give than to receive.

So patent and commonplace a fact as this ought to meet with general acceptance. Anyone can see that it is so, by a little study or by less practice. To give implies having. You must be in possession before you can give. To receive implies wanting, at its best--to receive what you do not want is distinctly unpleasant. To have is more blessed than to want. Of course it is.

To give gratifies several natural feelings; the mother-instinct of supplying needs, the pride of superior power and the generosity; and, if you are a sordid soul, the desire to "lay up treasure in heaven" or, as the Buddhists frankly put it--to "acquire merit."

None of these pleasures pertain to receiving. There is a certain humiliation about it always, a childish sense of dependence and inferiority. Only children can continuously receive without degradation; and as soon as they begin to realize life at all they delight to give as we all do. "Let me help!" says the child, and plans birthday presents for mama as eagerly as he hopes for them himself.

The instinct of giving is the pressure of the surplus; the natural outgo of humanity, its fruit. We are not mere receptacles, we are productive engines, of immense capacity; and, having produced, we must distribute the product. To give, naturally, is to shed, to bear fruit; a healthy and pleasurable process.

What has confused us so long on this subject? Why have we been so blind to this glaring truth that we have stultified our giving instinct and made of it an abnormal process called "Charity," or a much restricted pleasure only used in families or at Christmas time?

Two things have combined to prevent our easy acceptance of this visible truth; one the time-honored custom of "sacrifice," and the other our ignorance of social economics.

Sacrificing is not giving. That black remnant of lowest savagery dates back to the time when a pursuing beast was placated by the surrender of something, or somebody; and a conqueror bought off by tribute. The medicine man made play with this race habit, and gross idols were soothed and placated by sacrifices--on which the medicine man lived.

Always the best and finest were taken naturally by the hungry beast; as naturally by the greedy conqueror; and not unnaturally by the dependent priesthood. Sacrificing is a forced surrender with personal hope as the reason. It is not giving.

Our economic ignorance and confusion is partly based on this same old period of cruelty and darkness. Labor was extorted as the price of life; and the fruits of labor taken by force through warring centuries.

A guarded and grudging system of exchange gradually developed; the robbing instinct slowly simmering down to legally limited extortion; but each party surrendering his goods reluctantly, and only with the purpose of gaining more than he lost. Here also is the basic spirit of sacrifice--to get something now or in the far future--always the trading spirit at the bottom. Selling is not giving.

The real basis of giving is motherhood; and that is merely the orderly expression of life's progressive force. Living forms must increase--spread--grow--improve. The biological channel for this force is through mother-love; and, later, father-love. The sociological channel is in the pouring flood of productive activity, which fills the world with human fruit--the million things we make and do.

This ceaseless output is not dragged out of us as a sacrifice, it is not produced by want and hunger and the grasping spirit of exchange. It is the natural expression of social energy; blossoming in every form of art, stirring the brain to ceaseless action, filling the world with the rich fruit of human handiwork.

Having produced, we must distribute--we must discharge, we must _give._

To be human is to be a producer, to make, to do, to have some output either in goods or services whereby the sum of welfare is increased. To have this productive energy and to use it normally, is to give. Not to have it, not to use it, is not to be human--to be a minus quant.i.ty; to live parasitically on the labor of others--to receive.

It is more blessed to give than to receive.

STEPS

I was a slave, because I could not see That work for one another is our law; I hated law. I work? I would be free!

Therefore the heavy law laid hands on me And I was forced to work in slavery-- Until I saw.

I was a hireling, for I could not see That work was natural as the breath I drew, Natural? I would not work without the fee!

So nature laid her heavy hands on me And I was forced by fear of poverty-- Until I knew.

Now I am free. Life is new-seen, recast To work is to enjoy, to love, to live!

The shame and pain of slavery are past, Dishonor and extortion follow fast, I am not owned, nor hired, full-born at last, My power I give.

WHY WE HONESTLY FEAR SOCIALISM

A peaceable elderly Englishman of a bald and scholarly aspect, inquired, following a lecture on Socialism, "Will the speaker state in one sentence what Socialism is?" He wore an air of mild gentlemanly triumph; apparently imagining that he had demanded the impossible.

But the speaker, seeming unconscious of any difficulty replied, "Certainly; Socialism is the public owners.h.i.+p of all natural monopolies and the means of production."

This simple definition is advanced to start with, that we may know what we are talking about. This is the essence of Socialism--public owners.h.i.+p of public things; the real point at issue being "What things are public?"

The vast majority of us do not yet understand this easy and clear definition; and no wonder; for the Socialists themselves are for the most part so lost in grief over the sufferings of the poor and in rage over the misbehavior of the rich, that they find it hard to speak gently. Most of us, having but vague ideas of Socialism, fear it on several grounds, some of them easily removable as mere mistakes; others requiring careful treatment.

The mistakes are these:

ERROR I. "Socialism will abolish private property."

ANSWER. Quite wrong. It will do no such thing. You are thinking of Communism. The early Communists, like the early Christians, held all things in common, but Socialism urges no such doctrine. It does, however, restrict our definition of what is private property; just as was done when human slavery was abolished.

Slavery was once universal, and still exists In many countries. It was held legal and honest to personally own human beings--they were property. In our great civil contest of half a century since, the north--from a southern point of view--confiscated property when the slaves were freed. But from the northern point of view the slave was not property at all. This is a very vivid instance of change of opinion on property rights. Such "rights" are wholly of our own making; and change from age to age.

Parents once held property rights in children and men "owned" their wives; they could be punished, imprisoned, sold--even killed, at will of the owner. The larger public sense has long since said, "Women and children are not private property."

Laws about property are not G.o.d's laws; not Nature's laws; they are just rules and regulations people make from time to time according to their standards of justice. There is nothing novel in proposing to change them--they have often been changed. There is nothing immoral or dangerous in changing them; it is constantly done in all legislatures, in varying degree, as when private estates are "condemned" for public use.

Socialism advances the idea that private property rights do not legitimately apply to public necessities like coal, water, oil and land.

As a matter of fact we do not really "own" land now--we only rent it of the government, calling our rent "taxes." If we do not pay our rent the government gets it again, like any other owner.

The utmost restriction of private property under Socialism leaves us still every article of personal use and pleasure. One may still "own"

land by paying the government for it as now; with such taxation, however, as would make it very expensive to own too much! One may own one's house and all that is in it; one's clothes and tools and decorations; one's horses, carriages and automobiles; one's flying machines--presently. All "personal property" remains in our personal hands.

But no man or group of men could own the country's coal and decide how much the public can have, and what we must pay for it. Private holding of public property would be abolished.

ERROR 2. Socialism would reduce us all to a dead level.

ANSWER. Quite wrong. Eating at the same table in the same family does not reduce brothers and sisters to the same level; some remain far smarter and stronger than others. By a wiser system of education we may greatly increase the difference in people--Socialism would not hinder it. A higher average level of income--which is what Socialism ensures, will give people a chance to differ more than they do now. Our machine-like educational system, long hours of labor, specialized monotony of mill work, and "the iron law of wages" do tend to reduce us to a dead level. Socialism does not.

ERROR 3. Socialists are atheists.

ANSWER. How anyone can say this when they know of the immense organization of Christian Socialists is amazing; but then it is always amazing to see how queerly people think. Some Socialists are atheists.

So are some monarchists and some republicans. A Socialist may be an atheist, or a homeopathist, or a Holy Roller--it has nothing to do with Socialism.

ERROR 4. Socialists are immoral.

ANSWER. Again--some are; but so are some other people. The immorality of which we hear most in the papers is by no means that of Socialists; but of most prominent capitalists.

ERROR 5. Socialism is unnatural--you must "alter human nature" before it would be possible.

ANSWER. This is a very common position, based like most of the foregoing, on lack of understanding. It a.s.sumes that Socialism requires a state of sublime unselfishness and mutual deference, in which all men are willing to work for nothing. But why a.s.sume this? It is no product of Socialism. Our socialistic public parks and libraries do not presuppose that people shall be angels. They may tend to make them such, but the progress is not rapid enough to alarm us. In regard to this particular error we should learn that Socialism is not a totally new and different scheme of things; but a gradual and legitimate extension of previous tendencies. Human nature is socialistic--and is progressively extending socialism.

ERROR 5. Socialism will pay every one alike and so destroy the incentive of personal ambition.

ANSWER. This idea of equal payment is not Socialism. Some socialists hold it--more do not. The essential idea of public owners.h.i.+p and management of public property does not include this notion of equal payment.

ERROR 7. Socialism will destroy compet.i.tion. Compet.i.tion, most of us believe, "is the life of trade;" in other words we are supposed to work, not merely to get something for ourselves, but to get ahead of other people.