People in this world, like men on a waterlogged vessel with a small supply of food, are placed by God or by Nature so that they must spare the food and unceasingly exert themselves to avoid a calamity. Every stoppage of that work by any of us, every consumption by us of the work of others, that is not necessary for the common aim, is ruinous for ourselves and for our fellow-men.
How has it happened that the majority of the educated people of our time, without themselves labouring, calmly consume other people’s labours which are necessary for the maintenance of life, and consider that to do so is quite natural and reasonable?
To free ourselves from the toil proper and natural to all and to lay it on others without considering ourselves traitors and thieves, only two assumptions are possible: first, that we-those who do not share in the common toil-are beings distinct from the working people and have a special function in society, like the drones or queen bees that have a different function from working bees; and secondly, that what we, who are freed from the struggle for life, are doing for the others is so useful for all men that it certainly compensates for the harm we do by making their burden heavier.
In former times people who exploited the labour of others asserted, first that they were a special breed, and secondly that they were specially appointed by God to care for the welfare of the others, that is to govern them and teach them, and so they assured others, and often themselves believed, that what they were doing was more necessary and important for the people than was the labour they consumed. And that justification sufficed as long as people doubted neither the direct intervention of the Divinity in human affairs nor the distinction between different breeds. But with the coming of Christianity and the consciousness of the equality and unity of all men that flows from it, this justification could no longer be presented in that form. It was no longer possible to assert that people are born of different breeds and distinctions and with different functions, and the old justification, though still maintained by some people, was gradually abolished and now hardly exists.
The justification of the difference between various human breeds has disappeared, but the fact of the emancipation of self from toil and the consumption of the labour of others by those who have power to do so, remains as before, and new justifications for the existing fact have continually been devised, so that even without acknowledging a special breed of people it should seem right for those who can manage it to exempt themselves from labour.
Very many such justifications have been devised. Strange as it may appear, the chief occupation of the activity that at a particular period was called science-the thing that constituted the ruling tendency of science-was, and still continues to be, the discovery of such justifications. That was the aim of the activity of the theological and of the juridical sciences, it was the aim of so-called philosophy, and it has latterly become (strange as
this appears to contemporaries who employ this justification) the aim of present-day experimental science.
All the theological subtlety that tried to prove that a certain church is the only true successor of Christ and that therefore it alone has full and unlimited power over the people’s souls and even over their bodies has that for its chief aim.
The juridical sciences: political, criminal, civil, ,and international law, all have that one purpose; most philosophic theories, especially the Hegelian theory that so long prevailed, with its assertion that whatever exists is reasonable and that the State is a form necessary for the perfecting of personality, have solely that aim.
A very inferior English publicist, whose other works have all been forgotten and acknowledged to be insignificant among the insignificant, writes a treatise on population in which he invents a pseudo-law about the increase of population disproportionately to the increase in means of subsistence. He sets out his pseudo-law in baseless mathematical formulae and publishes it to the world.
From the levity and lack of talent of this work one would expect it not to attract anyone’s attention and to be forgotten like all the same author’s subsequent writings; but what happened was just the opposite. The publicist who wrote that treatise at once became a scientific authority, and remained so for nearly half a century. Malthus! Malthus’s theory-the law of the increase of population in geometrical, and of the means of subsistence in arithmetical, progression, and of the natural and rational methods of limiting population, all became scientific, indubitable truths, which were not verified but were employed as axioms from which to deduce further conclusions. That was how learned, educated-people behaved; and among the masses of idle people there was respectful faith in the great law discovered by Malthus.
Why did this happen? These seem to be scientific deductions which have nothing in common with the instincts of the herd.
But that only appears so to one who believes that science is something self-existent, like the Church, which is not subject to error; and not simply the thoughts of weak and erring men who just for importance’ sake call their thoughts and words ‘science’.
It was only necessary to make practical deductions from the theory of Malthus to see that that theory was a very human one with very definite aims.
The deductions that flowed directly from that theory were as follows: the wretched condition of the working people is not due to cruelty, egotism, or lack of understanding, on the part of the rich and powerful, but is what it is by an immutable law not dependent on man, and if anyone is to blame for it, it is the hungry workmen themselves: why have they been so stupid as to be born when they know they will have nothing to eat? And so the rich and powerful classes are not to blame for anything and may quietly continue to live as before.
And this deduction was so valuable for the crowd of idle people, that all the learned people overlooked the lack of proof, the incorrectness, and the completely arbitrary nature of this proposition, and the crowd of educated, that is to say idle, people, scenting what these propositions led to, enthusiastically acclaimed it, stamped it with the seal of truth, that is of science, and made much of it for half a century.
The positivist philosophy of Comte and the I doctrine deduced from it that humanity is an organism, and Darwin’s doctrine of a law of the struggle for existence that is supposed to govern life, with the differentiation of various breeds of people which follows from it, and the anthropology, biology, and sociology of which people are now so fond-all have the same aim. These have all become favourite sciences because they serve to justify the way in which people free themselves from the human obligation to labour, while consuming the fruits of other people’s labour.
All these theories, as is always the case, are first formulated in the secret sanctuaries of the priests, and are diffused among the masses in indefinite, obscure expressions, and are so adopted by them. As in olden times all the theological subtleties justifying the violence committed by the Church and the State remained the special knowledge of the priests, while among the masses readymade conclusions circulated that were accepted on faith, to the effect that the power of the kings, the priests, and the nobles, was sacred; so later on the philosophic and juridical subtleties of so called science were the possession of the priests of science, while among the masses only conclusions accepted on faith were current, to the effect that the organization of society should be such as it is, and that it cannot be otherwise.
And so now, it is only in the sanctuaries of the priests of science that the laws of life and the evolution of organisms are analysed, while among the masses conclusions are accepted on faith, to the effect that the division of labour is a law confirmed by science and that things should be so: some should work and die of hunger, while others must everlastingly make holiday; and that just this very perdition of some and banqueting of others is an indubitable law of human life to which we ought to submit.
The current justification of this idleness among the mass of the so-called educated people, with their various activities, from railway officials to writers and artists, is now this:
We people who have emancipated ourselves from the duty common to humanity of taking part in the struggle for existence, are serving progress and thereby render service to the whole of society which compensates for all the harm we do to people by consuming their labour.
That reasoning appears to men of our time quite unlike that by which people who did not work used to justify themselves formerly; just as the reasoning of the Roman emperors and citizens that without them the cultured world would perish, seemed to them quite apart from the reasoning of the Egyptians and the Persians, and just as similar reasoning seemed to the medieval knights and clergy
