XII

THE LIMITS OF 'DEMOCRACY'

AUGUST, 1920, then, saw the triumph of the 'direct action' theory-not merely its enthusiastic acceptance by representatives of the movement as a whole, but the definite statement by those leaders (such as Mr Thomas and Mr Clynes) who had previously held the opposite theory very strongly, of the doctrine that the industrial weapon may legitimately be used for political purposes. The change illustrates our contention that facts determine theory: it was the facts which forced the change. And it is in the light of facts that we ought to examine the opposite theory, the theory previously held by Mr Thomas and Mr Clynes-the theory that the strike ought to be kept as a weapon in industrial disputes only, and that the ballot-box is the final and sufficient instrument for the effecting of all necessary social and political changes.

That the combination of universal education-if you can call it education-with practically universal suffrage has met all the human needs of democracy; that, at our present stage of development, to talk of machine-guns and barricades is wanton and childish -these are no new sentiments. We hear them repeatedly now. We heard them repeatedly some thirty years ago. They were expressed with peculiar brilliance in Fabian Essays.1 They are no truer now and no less true than they were then. They ignore 1 Fabian Essays. First published in 1889.

now, as they ignored then, certain fundamental facts. They involve now, as they involved then, an acceptance of the simple Liberal doctrine of political democracy —which has not in practice proved either Liberal or democratic.

Let us clear the ground first of all by admitting that it is far better for people to be educated than not, and far better for them to have votes than not. To urge that the vote is not the only useful weapon is a very different thing from pretending that the vote is useless. Even Lenin has insisted on the value of Parliamentary action in English conditions.1

Education in a State based upon private capitalism will necessarily be, from the point of view of those who are excluded from the ownership of private capital, tainted and perverted; it will necessarily teach the wrong things, or teach the right things in the wrong way. It will necessarily keep its best for the favoured few.

Aristotle insisted that the test of a liberal education was to be useless-that is, to be its own use, to be an end in itself, and not merely a technical training for some ulterior utilitarian purpose. Newman and every

other educational teacher of the first rank have been found in agreement with Aristotle. Now, a liberal education in this sense is still rigidly confined to a few thousand of the population every year. The great bulk of the population still has its education cut short early in its 'teens, and has thereupon to turn at any rate the major portion of its time to wage-getting.

1 Letter to Miss Sylvia Pankhurst. Republished in pamphlet form by the B.S.P. Also his message to the Joint Provincial Committee for the Communist Party of Great Britain, published in the British Press on July 15th, 1920. Subsequently reinforced by his speech at the Third International at Moscow, August 2nd, 1920, and by the vote of that body in favour of Parliamentary action.

Nevertheless, when all has been said that can be said against the narrowness of education in this country and against the ridiculous limits imposed by Mr Fisher's capitalist colleagues on his honest attempt to improve it, the mere fact that the workers can read and write, and increasingly do so, is the vital thing. They do, at any rate, now know when there is a war being waged, directly or indirectly, by this country against Russia; and even the perversions of the Press do not conceal from them that war has never been declared.

But the perversions of the Press bring us to the second great bulwark of capitalist society.1

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To run a newspaper it is necessary to have command of great capital sums. Anybody who is sufficiently rich, and almost nobody who is not rich, can start a newspaper, and thereby purchase and manufacture public opinion. We have seen how, in the Railway Strike, practically the whole of the Press made statements at the beginning of the strike which the very statements of the same papers a few days later, at

1 Being a working journalist myself, and having many of my best friends among working journalists on papers of all political complexions, I am little likely to join in the general denunciation of 'the corrupt Press' if that charge is meant as a condemnation of journalists' morality. If it were legitimate to generalise about classes, I should hazard the generalisation that journalists, even in the pursuit of their profession, are more truthful and honourable than, say, business men or clergymen. But the point is that, within the present system, honesty is for most people an economic impossibility.

To turn from the writers to the proprietors-even the manufacture of opinion by the moneyed interests is not immoral according to the fundamental assumptions of capitalist society. Money gives control of everything else: why not of opinion? Is a man dishonest to use his money to spread the opinions that he holds? What other opinions can he be expected to spread? The central evil is that money should give control at all-it is the system.

Moreover, even at present, there are, within my own knowledge and experience, some papers whose policy is unaffected by any financial consideration or control whatever.

the end of the strike, acknowledged by contrast to have been false and misleading. This is one lurid instance, but there are a thousand instances every day. Is it likely that newspapers which can, under the influence of private capital, declare Mr Thomas to be an anarchist conspirator, are going to be more scrupulous about matters in which they are less likely to be immediately proved wrong?

Nor is the Press alone in this perversion: the churches are as bankrupt of all moral appeal as the newspapers. Every now and then there is a clamour about the empty churches; people wonder why what they call Christianity has lost its appeal. Christianity has not lost its appeal, but very few of us are allowed to hear even a whisper of the appeal of Christ. All the wealthy churches in the world are run on a financial basis with a system of financial awards for those religious teachers who compete with one another to preach smooth and comfortable things-a system which is the very negation of the teaching of Christ, and stands self-condemned by its own clumsy hypocrisy.

One may think what one likes about the use of violence, but clearly one may not think that violence is permissible 'for one's own ends and not for other people's. One may not say, as the churches officially and in the mass do say, that blood may be shed and killing done on a colossal scale in the interest of a nation, but that even the smallest show of violence is wicked when employed in the defence of an impoverished section of the nation against the richer sections. These contradictions are too open to be glossed over. When the Bolsheviks quote: 'Religion is the opium of the people,' they mean partly that organised religion, religion as a department of the State, with its bishops 1 Cf. George Lansbury, What I saw in Russia. 1920, p. 42.

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in huge palaces posing as the exponents of that law which bade the rich man sell all that he had and give to the poor, has been employed throughout the generations as a means of keeping the poor quiet and acquiescent in an unjust state of things; in short, of keeping the poor poor.

The Press is directly controlled, and education and the churches are indirectly, through political and social pressure, controlled, by private capitalists in the interests of the existing system. Mr Lloyd George has admittedly surpassed all his predecessors and rivals in the art of making friends with the Press. He reaped the fruits of this skill at the General Election of 1918.

He won the election partly because the Press which supported him told the people that the Kaiser was going to be hanged; which the people, owing to the past perversion of their mentality by Press and pulpit, were ready to think important, and glad to believe. The Kaiser was not going to be hanged.

Mr Lloyd George and the Press which supported him won the election partly by telling people that Germany was going to pay for the war. Germany was not going to pay for the war, because it could not; and everybody of even the most elementary education (in the true sense of education) was aware of it; but the partial and perverted education of the people had forbidden them to know these simple things.

Mr Lloyd George and the Press which supported him won the election partly by declaring that the success of Labour at the polls would be a triumph for Bolshevism. The British public had very little idea what Bolshevism was. Bolshevism had, by capitalist manipulation of the Press, been ridiculously misrepresented to the readers of the Press. And the limitation