第56章 THE SOCIAL CHANGES IN PROGRESS(1)

1

"Nothing will be the same after the war." This is one of the consoling platitudes with which people cover over voids of thought.They utter it with an air of round-eyed profundity.

But to ask in reply, "Then how will things be different?" is in many cases to rouse great resentment.It is almost as rude as saying, "Was that thought of yours really a thought?"Let us in this chapter confine ourselves to the social-economic processes that are going on.So far as I am able to distinguish among the things that are being said in these matters, they may be classified out into groups that centre upon several typical questions.There is the question of "How to pay for the war?"There is the question of the behaviour of labour after the war.

"Will there be a Labour Truce or a violent labour struggle?"There is the question of the reconstruction of European industry after the war in the face of an America in a state of monetary and economic repletion through non-intervention.My present purpose in this chapter is a critical one; it is not to solve problems but to set out various currents of thought that are flowing through the general mind.Which current is likely to seize upon and carry human affairs with it, is not for our present speculation.

There seem to be two distinct ways of answering the first of the questions I have noted.They do not necessarily contradict each other.Of course the war is being largely paid for immediately out of the accumulated private wealth of the past.We are buying off the "hold-up" of the private owner upon the material and resources we need, and paying in paper money and war loans.This is not in itself an impoverishment of the community.The wealth of individuals is not the wealth of nations; the two things may easily be contradictory when the rich man's wealth consists of land or natural resources or franchises or privileges the use of which he reluctantly yields for high prices.The conversion of held-up land and material into workable and actively used material in exchange for national debt may be indeed a positive increase in the wealth of the community.And what is happening in all the belligerent countries is the taking over of more and more of the realities of wealth from private hands and, in exchange, the contracting of great masses of debt to private people.The nett tendency is towards the disappearance of a reality holding class and the destruction of realities in warfare, and the appearance of a vast /rentier/ class in its place.At the end of the war much material will be destroyed for evermore, transit, food production and industry will be everywhere enormously socialised, and the country will be liable to pay every year in interest, a sum of money exceeding the entire national expenditure before the war.From the point of view of the state, and disregarding material and moral damages, that annual interest is the annual instalment of the price to be paid for the war.

Now the interesting question arises whether these great belligerent states may go bankrupt, and if so to what extent.

States may go bankrupt to the private creditor without repudiating their debts or seeming to pay less to him.They can go bankrupt either by a depreciation of their currency or--without touching the gold standard--through a rise in prices.In the end both these things work out to the same end; the creditor gets so many loaves or pairs of boots or workman's hours of labour for his pound /less/ than he would have got under the previous conditions.One may imagine this process of price (and of course wages) increase going on to a limitless extent.Many people are inclined to look to such an increase in prices as a certain outcome of the war, and just so far as it goes, just so far will the burthen of the /rentier/ class, their call, tat is, for goods and services, be lightened.This expectation is very generally entertained, and I can see little reason against it.The intensely stupid or dishonest "labour" press, however, which in the interests of the common enemy misrepresents socialism and seeks to misguide labour in Great Britain, ignores these considerations, and positively holds out this prospect of rising prices as an alarming one to the more credulous and ignorant of its readers.

But now comes the second way of meeting the after-the-war obligations.This second way is by increasing the wealth of the state and by increasing the national production to such an extent that the payment of the /rentier/ class will not be an overwhelming burthen.Rising prices bilk the creditor.

Increased production will check the rise in prices and get him a real payment.The outlook for the national creditor seems to be that he will be partly bilked and partly paid; how far he will be bilked and how far depends almost entirely upon this possible increase in production; and there is consequently a very keen and quite unprecedented desire very widely diffused among intelligent and active people, holding War Loan scrip and the like, in all the belligerent countries, to see bold and hopeful schemes for state enrichment pushed forward.The movement towards socialism is receiving an impulse from a new and unexpected quarter, there is now a /rentier/ socialism, and it is interesting to note that while the London /Times/ is full of schemes of great state enterprises, for the exploitation of Colonial state lands, for the state purchase and wholesaling of food and many natural products, and for the syndication of shipping and the great staple industries into vast trusts into which not only the British but the French and Italian governments may enter as partners, the so-called socialist press of Great Britain is chiefly busy about the draughts in the cell of Mr.Fenner Brockway and the refusal of Private Scott Duckers to put on his khaki trousers./The New Statesman/ and the Fabian Society, however, display a wider intelligence.