Political Works

"It may help to waken dreamers, to guide lost wanderers, to convince skeptics, to re-assure the hopeful; it may serve the uses of Statesmen and Philosophers, and interest the general reader; but it is most desirable that it should increase the charity of all those who may please to examine it, when they see that it was for Humanity, in nearly all instances, that these things were done."

"At one time, sanguine in anticipating brilliant results from Communism, I imagined mankind better than they are, and that they would speedily practise those principles which I considered so true. But the experience of years is now upon me; I have mingled with 'the world,' seen stern reality, and now am anxious to do as much as in me lies, to make known to the many thousands who look for a 'better state' than this on earth as well as in heaven, the amount (as it were at a glance) of the labors which have been and are now being performed in this country to realize that 'better state'."

"We have reason to believe that he [A. J. McDonald] spent most of his time from his arrival in this country in 1842 till his death in 1854, in pilgrimages to every Community, and even to every grave of a Community, that he could hear of, far and near. He had done his work when he died. His collection is nearly exhaustive in the extent of its survey. Very few Associations of any note are overlooked. And he evidently considered it ready for the press ; for most of his memoirs are endorsed with the word "Complete," and with some methodical directions to the printer. He had even provided the illustrations promised in his circular."

"I have reason to believe from long experience among social reformers, that such a work is needed, and will be both useful and interesting. It will serve as a guide to all future experiments, showing what has already been done; like a light-house, pointing to the rocks on which so many have been wrecked, or to the haven in which the few have found rest. It will give facts and statistics to be depended upon, gathered from the most authentic sources, and forming a collection of interesting narratives. It will show the errors of enthusiasts, and the triumphs of the cool-thinking; the disappointments of the sanguine, and the dear-bought experience of many social adventurers. It will give mankind an idea of the labor of body and mind that has been expended to realize a better state of society; to substitute a social and cooperative state for a competitive one; a system of harmony, for one of discord."

"He [A. J. McDonald] was indeed the "Old Mortality" of Socialism, wandering from grave to grave, patiently deciphering the epitaphs of defunct "Phalanxes." We learned from him that he was a Scotchman by birth, and a printer by trade ; that he was an admirer and disciple of Owen, and came from the "old country" some ten years before, partly to see and follow the fortunes of his master's experiments in Socialism: but finding Owenism in ruins and Fourierism going to ruin, he took upon himself the task of making a book, that should give future generations the benefit of the lessons taught by these attempts and failures. His own attempt was a failure. He gathered a huge mass of materials, wrote his preface, and then died in New York of the cholera."

"The disasters of Owenism and Fourierism have not been in vain; the successes of the Shakers and Rappites have not been set before us for nothing. We may hope to learn something from every experiment."

"This country has been from the beginning, and especially for the last forty years, a laboratory in which Socialisms of all kinds have been experimenting."

"A bad teacher will aim at imposing his opinion, and turning out a set of pupils all of whom will give the same definite answer on a doubtful point. Mr. Bernard Shaw is said to hold that Troilus and Cressida is the best of Shakespeare's plays. Although I disagree with this opinion, I should welcome it in a pupil as a sign of individuality; but most teachers would not tolerate such a heterodox view. Not only teachers, but all commonplace persons in authority, desire in their subordinates that kind of uniformity which makes their actions easily predictable and never inconvenient. The result is that they crush initiative and individuality when they can, and when they cannot, they quarrel with it."

"The best life is the one in which the creative impulses play the largest part and the possessive impulses the smallest."

"Political ideals must be based upon ideals for the individual life. The aim of politics should be to make the lives of individuals as good as possible."

"He will see that this spirit embodies not only the highest morality, but also the truest wisdom, and the only road by which the nations, torn and bleeding with the wounds which scientific madness has inflicted, can emerge into a life where growth is possible and joy is not banished at the frenzied call of unreal and fictitious duties. Deeds inspired by hate are not duties, whatever pain and self-sacrifice they may involve. Life and hope for the world are to be found only in the deeds of love."

"Apart from trade, the interests of nations coincide in all that makes what we call civilization. Inventions and discoveries bring benefit to all. The progress of science is a matter of equal concern to the whole civilized world. Whether a man of science is an Englishman, a Frenchman, or a German is a matter of no real importance. His discoveries are open to all, and nothing but intelligence is required in order to profit by them. The whole world of art and literature and learning is international; what is done in one country is not done for that country, but for mankind. If we ask ourselves what are the things that raise mankind above the brutes, what are the things that make us think the human race more valuable than any species of animals, we shall find that none of them are things in which any one nation can have exclusive property, but all are things in which the whole world can share. Those who have any care for these things, those who wish to see mankind fruitful in the work which men alone can do, will take little account of national boundaries, and have little care to what state a man happens to owe allegiance."

"The wage system has made people believe that what a man needs is work. This, of course, is absurd. What he needs is the goods produced by work, and the less work involved in making a given amount of goods, the better. But owing to our economic system, every economy in methods of production enables employers to dismiss some of their employees, and to cause destitution, where a better system would produce only an increase of wages or a diminution in the hours of work without any corresponding diminution of wages."

"National pride might be on the whole beneficent, if it took the direction of emulation in the things that are important to civilization. If we prided ourselves upon our poets, our men of science, or the justice and humanity of our social system, we might find in national pride a stimulus to useful endeavors. But such matters play a very small part. National pride, as it exists now, is almost exclusively concerned with power and dominion, with the extent of territory that a nation owns, and with its capacity for enforcing its will against the opposition of other nations. In this it is reinforced by group morality. To nine citizens out of ten it seems self-evident, whenever the will of their own nation clashes with that of another, that their own nation must be in the right. Even if it were not in the right on the particular issue, yet it stands in general for so much nobler ideals than those represented by the other nation to the dispute, that any increase in its power is bound to be for the good of mankind. Since all nations equally believe this of themselves, all are equally ready to insist upon the victory of their own side in any dispute in which they believe that they have a good hope of victory. While this temper persists, the hope of international cooperation must remain dim."

"So long as men are free to indulge their predatory instincts, some men or groups of men will take advantage of this freedom for oppression and robbery."

"From childhood upward, everything is done to make the minds of men and women conventional and sterile. And if, by misadventure, some spark of imagination remains, its unfortunate possessor is considered unsound and dangerous, worthy only of contempt in time of peace and of prison or a traitor's death in time of war. Yet such men are known to have been in the past the chief benefactors of mankind, and are the very men who receive most honor as soon as they are safely dead."

"The instinct of conventionality, horror of uncertainty, and vested interests, all militate against the acceptance of a new idea."

"The mere possession of power tends to produce a love of power, which is a very dangerous motive, because the only sure proof of power consists in preventing others from doing what they wish to do. The essential theory of democracy is the diffusion of power among the whole people, so that the evils produced by one man's possession of great power shall be obviated. But the diffusion of power through democracy is only effective when the voters take an interest in the question involved. When the question does not interest them, they do not attempt to control the administration, and all actual power passes into the hands of officials."

"The tyranny of the employer, which at present robs the greater part of most men's lives of all liberty and all initiative, is unavoidable so long as the employer retains the right of dismissal with consequent loss of pay. This right is supposed to be essential in order that men may have an incentive to work thoroughly. But as men grow more civilized, incentives based on hope become increasingly preferable to those that are based on fear. It would be far better that men should be rewarded for working well than that they should be punished for working badly."

"It is not, as a rule, by means of useful inventions, or of any other action which increases the general wealth of the community, that men amass fortunes; it is much more often by skill in exploiting or circumventing others."

"War is recognized as an evil by an immense majority in every civilized country; but this recognition does not prevent war."

"Few men seem to realize how many of the evils from which we suffer are wholly unnecessary, and that they could be abolished by a united effort within a few years. If a majority in every civilized country so desired, we could, within twenty years, abolish all abject poverty, quite half the illness in the world, the whole economic slavery which binds down nine tenths of our population; we could fill the world with beauty and joy, and secure the reign of universal peace. It is only because men are apathetic that this is not achieved, only because imagination is sluggish, and what always has been is regarded as what always must be. With good-will, generosity, intelligence, these things could be brought about."

"It is a sad evidence of the weariness mankind has suffered from excessive toil that his heavens have usually been places where nothing ever happened or changed. Fatigue produces the illusion that only rest is needed for happiness; but when men have rested for a time, boredom drives them to renewed activity."

"Without effort and change, human life cannot remain good. It is not a finished Utopia that we ought to desire, but a world where imagination and hope are alive and active."

"So far as it lies in a man's own power, his life will realize its best possibilities if it has three things: creative rather than possessive impulses, reverence for others, and respect for the fundamental impulse in himself."

"Every creative impulse is shadowed by a possessive impulse; even the aspirant to saintliness may be jealous of the more successful saint."

"A large part of the best brains of the country are in the civil service, where the condition of their employment is silence about the evils which cannot be concealed from them. A Nonconformist minister loses his livelihood if his views displease his congregation; a member of Parliament loses his seat if he is not sufficiently supple or sufficiently stupid to follow or share all the turns and twists of public opinion. In every walk of life, independence of mind is punished by failure, more and more as economic organizations grow larger and more rigid."

"The administrative systems obtaining in a society which has nationalized its foundation industries will... be as various as in one that resigns them to private ownership. ...when the question of ownership has been settled the question of administration remains for solution."

"Nationalization, which means public ownership, is compatible with several different types of management... The problem is... of a familiar, though difficult, order. It is one of constitution-making."

"The merits of nationalization do not stand or fall with the efficiency or inefficiency of existing state departments as administrators of industry."

"Joint administration of the shareholders' property by a body representing shareholders and workmen is impossible, because there is no purpose in common between them. For the only purpose which could unite all persons engaged in industry, and overrule their particular and divergent interests, is the provision of service. And the object of shareholders, the whole significance and métier of industry to them, is not the provision of service but the provision of dividends."

"The master builder, who owns the capital used, can be included, not qua capitalist, but qua builder, if he surrenders some of the rights of ownership."

"Had the movement against the control of production by property taken place before the rise of limited companies, in which ownership is separated from management, the transition to the organization of industry as a profession might also have taken place, as the employers and workmen in the building trade propose that it should, by limiting the rights of private ownership without abolishing it."

""Capital" is not to "employ labour." Labour, which includes managerial labour, is to employ capital; and to employ it at the cheapest rate at which, in the circumstances of the trade, it can be got."

"As long as the private ownership of industrial capital remains, the object of reformers should be to attenuate its influence by insisting that it shall be paid not more than a rate of interest fixed in advance, and that it should carry with it no right of control."

"The ingenuity of financiers long ago devised methods of grading stock... All are property, but not all carry proprietary rights of the same degree."

"Ownership is not a right, but a bundle of rights, and it is possible to strip them off piecemeal as well as to strike them off simultaneously. The ownership of capital involves..., three main claims; the right to interest as the price of capital, the right to profits, and the right to control, in virtue of which managers and workmen are the servants of shareholders."

"Nationalization is a means to an end, not an end in itself. Properly conceived its object is... to remove the dead hand of private ownership, when the private owner has ceased to perform any positive function."

""Nationalization"... which is sometimes advanced as the only method of extinguishing proprietary rights, is merely one species of a considerable genus. ...there are some industries... in which nationalization is not necessary... and... when other methods are possible, other methods should be used."

"There are, in theory, five ways by which the control of industry by the agents of private property-owners can be terminated. They may be expropriated without compensation. They may voluntarily surrender it. They may be frozen out by action on the part of the working personnel, which itself undertakes such functions... Their proprietary interest may be limited or attenuated to such a degree that they become mere rentiers... but who receive no profits and bear no responsibility for the organization of industry. They may be bought out."

"Since capital is a thing, which ought to be used to help industry... it ought... to be employed on the cheapest terms possible. ...those who own it should no more control production than a man who lets a house controls the meals which shall be cooked in the kitchen"

"What is the purpose for which capital is used, what is its function... it is not an end but a means to an end, and... its function is to serve and assist the labour of human beings, [it is] not the function of human beings to serve those who happen to own it."

"A State which, in the name of peace, should make the concerted cessation of work a legal offence would be guilty of a... betrayal of freedom. It would be solving the conflict of rights between those who own and those who work by abolishing the rights of those who work."

"One way of solving the problem of the conflict of rights in industry is not to base rights on functions, as we propose, but to base them on force. It is to re-establish in some veiled and decorous form the institution of slavery, by making labour compulsory. In nearly all countries, a concerted refusal to work has been made, at one time or another, a criminal offence."

"While an equilibrium between worker and manager is possible, because both are workers, that which it is sought to establish between worker and owner is not. Their proposals may be excellent: but it is not evident why they are where they are, or how, since they do not contribute to production, they come to be putting forward proposals at all. As long as they are in territory where they have no business to be, their excellence as individuals will be overlooked."

"If men have no common goal it is no wonder that they should fall out by the way, nor are they likely to be reconciled by a redistribution of their provisions."

"What gives unity to any activity, what alone can reconcile the conflicting claims of the different groups engaged in it, is the purpose for which it is carried on."

"When men have gone so far as to talk as though their idols have come to life, it is time that some one broke them. Labour consists of persons, capital of things. The only use of things is to be applied to the service of persons. The business of persons is to see that they are there to use, and that no more than need be is paid for using them."

"The only significance of these clichés is that their repetition tends to muffle their inanity, even to the point of persuading sensible men that capital "employs" labour, much as our pagan ancestors imagined that the other pieces of wood and iron, which they deified in their day, sent their crops and won their battles."

"To deplore "ill-feeling" or to advocate "harmony" between "labour and capital" is as rational as to lament the bitterness between carpenters and hammers or to promote a mission for restoring amity between mankind and its boots."