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Outspoken Essays by William Ralph Inge

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Besides these defects, the democracy has ethical standards of its own,
which differ widely from those of the educated classes. Among the poor,
'generosity ranks far before justice, sympathy before truth, love before
chastity, a pliant and obliging disposition before a rigidly honest one.
In brief, the less admixture of intellect required for the practice of
any virtue, the higher it stands in popular estimation.[3] In this
country, at any rate, democracy means a victory of sentiment over
reason. Some may prefer the softer type of character, and may hope that
it will make civilisation more humane and compassionate than it has been
in the past. Unfortunately, experience shows that none is so cruel as
the disillusioned sentimentalist. He thinks that he can break or ignore
nature's laws with impunity; and then, when he finds that nature has no
sentiment, he rages like a mad dog, and combines with his theoretical
objection to capital punishment a lust to murder all who disagree with
him. This is the genesis of Jacobinism and Bolshevism.

But whether we think that the bad in democracy predominates over the
good, or the good over the bad, a question which I shall not attempt to
decide, the popular balderdash about it corresponds to no real
conviction. The upper class has never believed in it; the middle class
has the strongest reasons to hate and fear it. But how about the lower
class, in whose interests the whole machine is supposed to have been set
going? The working man has no respect for either democracy or liberty.
His whole interest is in transferring the wealth of the minority to his
own pocket. There was a time when he thought that universal suffrage
would get for him what he desires; but he has lost all faith in
constitutional methods. To levy blackmail on the community, under
threats of civil war, seems to him a more expeditious way of gaining his
object. Monopolies are to be established by pitiless coercion of those
who wish to keep their freedom. The trade unions are large capitalists;
they are well able to start factories for themselves and work them for
their own exclusive profit. But they find it more profitable to hold the
nation to ransom by blockading the supply of the necessaries of life.
The new labourer despises productivity for the same reason that the old
robber barons did: it is less trouble to take money than to make it. The
most outspoken popular leaders no longer conceal their contempt for and
rejection of democracy. The socialists perceive the irreconcilable
contradiction between the two ideas,[4] and they are right. Democracy
postulates community of interest or loyal patriotism. When these are
absent it cannot long exist. Syndicalism, which seems to be growing, is
the antipodes of socialism, but, like socialism, it can make no terms
with democracy. 'If syndicalism triumphs,' says its chief prophet Sorel,
'the parliamentary regime, so dear to the intellectuals, will be at an
end.' 'The syndicalist has a contempt for the vulgar idea of democracy;
the vast unconscious mass is not to be taken into account when the
minority wishes to act so as to benefit it.'[5] 'The effect of political
majorities,' says Mr. Levine, 'is to hinder advance,' Accordingly,
political methods are rejected with contempt. The anarchists go one step
further. Bakunin proclaims that 'we reject all legislation, all
authority, and all influence, even when it has proceeded from universal
suffrage.' These powerful movements, opposed as they are to each other,
agree in spurning the very idea of democracy, which Lord Morley defines
as government by public opinion, and which may be defined with more
precision as direct government by the votes of the majority among the
adult members of a nation. Even a political philosopher like Mr. Lowes
Dickinson says, 'For my part, I am no democrat.'

Who then are the friends of this _curieux fetiche_, as Quinet called
democracy? It appears to have none, though it has been the subject of
fatuous laudation ever since the time of Rousseau. The Americans burn
incense before it, but they are themselves ruled by the Boss and the
Trust.

The attempt to justify the labour movement as a legitimate development
of the old democratic Liberalism is futile. Freedom to form
combinations is no doubt a logical application of _laisser faire_; and
the anarchic possibilities latent in _laisser faire_ have been made
plain in the anti-democratic movements of labour. But Liberalism rested
on a too favourable estimate of human nature and on a belief in the law
of progress. As there is no law of progress, and as civilised society is
being destroyed by the evil passions of men, Liberalism is, for the
time, quite discredited. It would also be true to say that there is a
fundamental contradiction between the two dogmas of Liberalism. These
were, that unlimited competition is stimulating to the competitors and
good for the country, and that every individual is an end, not a means.
Both are anarchical; but the first logically issues in individualistic
anarchy, the last in communistic anarchy. The economic and the ethical
theory of Liberalism cannot be harmonised. The result--cruel competition
tempered by an artificial process of counter-selection in favour of the
unfittest--was by no means satisfactory. But it was better than what we
are now threatened with.

That the labour movement is economically rotten it is easy to prove. In
the words of Professor Hearnshaw, 'the government has ceased to govern
in the world of labour, and has been compelled, instead of governing, to
bribe, to cajole, to beg, to grovel. It has purchased brief truces at
the cost of increasing levies of Danegeld drawn from the diminishing
resources of the patient community. It has embarked on a course of
payment of blackmail which must end either in national bankruptcy or in
the social revolution which the anarchists seek.' The powerful
trade-unions are now plundering both the owners of their 'plant,' and
the general public. It is easy to show that their members already get
much more than their share of the national wealth. Professor Bowley[6]
has estimated that an equal division of the national income would give
about L160 a year to each family, free of taxes. But even this estimate,
discouraging as it is, seems not to allow sufficiently for the fact that
under the present system much of the income of the richer classes is
counted twice or three times over. Abolish large incomes, and jewels,
pictures, wines, furs, special and rare skill like that of the operating
surgeon and fashionable portrait painter, lose all or most of their
money value. All the large professional incomes, except those of the low
comedian and his like, are made out of the rich, and are counted at
least twice for income-tax. It is certain that a large part of the
national income could not be 'redistributed,' and that in the attempt to
do so credit would be destroyed and wealth would melt like a snow man.
The miners, therefore, are not seeking justice; they are blackmailing
rich and poor alike by their monopoly of one of the necessaries of life.
And now they strike against paying income-tax!

It is not necessary or just to bring railing accusations against any
class as a body. Power is always abused, and in this case there is much
honest ignorance, stimulated by agitators who are seldom honest. In a
recent number of the _Edinburgh Review_ Sir Lynden Macassey speaks of
the widespread, almost universal, fallacies to which the hand-worker has
fallen a victim. They believe that all their aspirations can be
satisfied out of present-day profits and production. They believe that
in restricting output they are performing a moral duty to their class.
They do not believe that the prosperity of the country depends upon its
production, and are opposed to all labour-saving devices. They refuse
co-operation because they desire the continuance of the class-war. Such
perversity would seem hardly credible if it were not attested by
overwhelming evidence. The Government remedy is first to create
unemployment and then to endow it--the shortest and maddest road to ruin
since the downfall of the Roman Empire.

We may have a faint hope that some of these fallacies will be abandoned
by the workmen when their destructive results can no longer be
concealed. But sentimentalism seems to be incurable. It erects
irrationality into an act of religious faith, gives free rein to the
emotion of pity, and thinks that it is imitating the Good Samaritan by
robbing the Priest and Levite for the benefit of the man by the
road-side. The sentimentalist shows a bitter hatred against those who
wish to cure an evil by removing its causes. A good example is the
language of writers like Mr. Chesterton about eugenics and population.
If social maladies were treated scientifically, the trade of the
emotional rhetorician would be gone.

We have seen that democracy--the rule of majorities--has been
discredited and abandoned in action, though officially we all bow down
before it. Another popular delusion is that the chief change in the last
fifty years has been a conversion of the world from individualism to
socialism. In the language of the Christian socialists, who wish to
combine the militant spirit and organisation of medieval Catholicism
with a bid for the popular vote, we have 'rediscovered the Corporate
Idea.' But if we take socialism, not in the narrower sense of
collectivism, which would be an economic experiment, but in the wider
sense of a keen consciousness of the solidarity of the community as an
organic whole, there is very little truth in the commonly held notion
that we have become more socialistic. It is easy to see how the idea has
arisen. It became necessary to find some theoretical justification for
raising taxes, no longer for national needs, but for the benefit of the
class which imposed them; and this justification was found in the theory
that all wealth belongs to 'the State,' and may be justly divided up as
'the State'--that is to say, the majority of the voters--may determine.
Whenever the question arises of voting new doles to the dominant section
of the people at the expense of the minority, our new political
philosophers profess themselves fervent socialists. But true socialism,
which is almost synonymous with patriotism, is as conspicuously absent
in those who call themselves socialists as it is strong in those who
repudiate the title. This paradox can be easily proved. The most
socialistic enterprise in which a nation ever engages is a great war. A
nation at war is conscious of its corporate unity and its common
interests, as it is at no other time. The nation then calls upon every
citizen to surrender all his personal rights and to offer his life and
limbs in the service of the community. And what has been the record of
the 'socialists' in the struggle for national existence in which we have
been engaged? In the years preceding the war they ridiculed the idea
that the country was in danger of being attacked, and used all their
power to prevent us from preparing against attack. They steadily opposed
the teaching of patriotism in the schools. When the war began, they
prevented the Government from introducing compulsory service until our
French Allies, who were left to bear the brunt, were on the point of
collapse; they, in very many cases, refused to serve themselves, thereby
avowing that, as far as they were concerned, they were willing to see
their country conquered by a horde of cruel barbarians; and they nearly
handed over our armies to destruction by fomenting strikes at the most
critical periods of the war. This attitude cannot be accounted for by
any conscientious objection to violence, which is in fact their
favourite weapon, except against the enemies of their country. Their
socialism is, in truth, individualism run mad; it is the very antithesis
to the consciousness of organic unity in a nation, which is the
spiritual basis of socialism. In this sense, the nation as a whole has
shown a fine socialistic temper; but the disgraceful exception has been
the socialist party. The intense and perverted individualism of the
so-called socialist is shown in another way. Whatever liberties a State
may permit to its citizens, it is certain that no nation can be in a
healthy condition unless the government keeps in its own hands the keys
of birth and of death. The State has the right of the farmer to decide
how many cows should be allowed to graze upon ten acres of grass; the
right of the forester to decide how many square feet are required for
each tree in a wood. It has also the right and the duty of the gardener
to pull up noxious weeds in his flower-beds. But the socialist
vehemently repudiates both these rights. Being an ultra-individualist,
he is in favour of _laisser faire_, where _laisser faire_ is most
indefensible and most disastrous.

It would be easy to maintain that the organic idea was more potent, both
under medieval feudalism and under nineteenth-century industrialism,
than it is now. In former days, economic and social equality were not
even aimed at, because it was thought inevitable that in a social
organism there must be subordination and a hierarchy of functions.
Essentially, and in the sight of God, all are equal, or, rather, the
essential differences between man and man are absolutely independent of
social status. In a few years Lazarus may be in heaven and Dives in
hell. Beside this equality of moral opportunity and tremendous
inequality in self-chosen destiny, the status of master and servant
seemed of small importance; it was a temporary and trivial accident.
Accordingly, in feudal times, as to-day in really Catholic communities,
feelings of injustice and social bitterness were seldom aroused and
class differences take on a more genial colour. In spite of the
lawlessness and brutality of the Middle Ages it is probable that men
were happier then than they are now.

The French Revolution, which was a disintegrating solvent, pulverised
society, and was impotent to reconstruct it. Yet under the industrial
regime which followed it in this country, the nation was conscious of
its unity. The system was the best that could have been devised for
increasing the population and aggregate wealth of the country; and even
those who suffered most under it were not without pride in its results.
The ill-paid workman of the last century would have thought it a poor
thing to do a deliberately bad day's work.

I am not praising either the age of feudalism or the 'hungry forties' of
the nineteenth century. In the latter case especially the sacrifice
exacted from the poor was too great for the rather vulgar success of
which it was the condition. But to call that age the period of
individualism, and our own generation the period of socialism, is in my
opinion a profound mistake. In Germany, too, the real socialists are not
the 'Spartacist' scoundrels who have betrayed and ruined their country,
but the bureaucracy with their _Deutschland ueber Alles_. If I were a
little more of a socialist, I could almost admire them, in spite of all
their crimes.

The landed gentry (and in honesty I must add the endowed clergy) are a
survival of feudalism, as the capitalist is a survival of industrialism.
Both have to a large extent survived their functions. The mailclad
baron, round whose fortified castle the peasants and others gathered for
protection, has become the country gentleman, against whom the
indictment is not so much that his only pursuit is pleasure, as that his
only pleasure is pursuit. 'The rich man in his castle, the poor man at
his gate' were intelligible while the rich man protected the poor man
from being plundered and killed by marauders; but in our times nobody
wants a castle or to live under the shadow of a castle. The clerical
profession was a necessity when most people could neither read nor
write. But to-day our best prophets and preachers are laymen. As at
ancient Athens, in the time of Aristophanes, 'the young learn from the
schoolmaster, the mature from the poets.' Similarly, the captain of
industry cannot hold the same autocratic position as formerly, in view
of the growing intelligence and capacity of the workmen; and the
capitalist who is not a captain of industry is a debtor to the community
to an extent which he does not always realise. This class is becoming
painfully conscious of its vulnerability.

There are, therefore, irrational survivals in our social order; and
though it may be proved that they are not a severe burden on the
community, it is natural that popular bitterness and discontent should
fasten upon them and exaggerate their evil results. It cannot be
disputed that this bitterness and discontent were becoming very acute in
the years before the war. An increasing number of persons saw no meaning
and no value in our civilisation. This feeling was common in all
classes, including the so-called leisured class; and was so strong that
many welcomed with joy the clear call to a plain duty, though it was the
duty of facing all the horrors of war. What is the cause of this
discontent? There are few more important questions for us to answer.

Those who find the cause in the existence of the survivals which we have
mentioned are certainly mistaken. It is no new thing that there should
be a small class more or less parasitic on the community. The whole
number of persons who pay income-tax on L5000 a year and upwards is
only 13,000 out of 46 millions, and their wealth, if it could be divided
up, would make no appreciable difference to the working man. The
wage-earners are better off than they have ever been before in our
history, and the danger of revolution comes not from the poor, but from
the privileged artisans who already have incomes above the family
average. We must look elsewhere for an explanation of social unrest. If
we consider what are the chief centres of discontent throughout the
civilised world, we shall find that they are the great aggregations of
population in wealthy industrial countries. Social unrest is a disease
of town-life. Wherever the conditions which create the great modern city
exist, we find revolutionary agitation. It has spread to Barcelona, to
Buenos Ayres, and to Osaka, in the wake of the factory. The inhabitants
of the large town do not envy the countryman and would not change with
him. But, unknown to themselves, they are leading an unnatural life, cut
off from the kindly and wholesome influences of nature, surrounded by
vulgarity and ugliness, with no traditions, no loyalties, no culture,
and no religion. We seldom reflect on the strangeness of the fact that
the modern working-man has few or no superstitions. At other times the
masses have evolved for themselves some picturesque nature-religion,
some pious ancestor-worship, some cult of saints or heroes, some stories
of fairies, ghosts, or demons, and a mass of quaint superstitions,
genial or frightening. The modern town-dweller has no God and no Devil;
he lives without awe, without admiration, without fear. Whatever we may
think about these beliefs, it is not natural for men and women to be
without them. The life of the town artisan who works in a factory is a
life to which the human organism has not adapted itself; it is an
unwholesome and unnatural condition. Hence, probably, comes the
_malaise_ which makes him think that any radical change must be for the
better.

Whatever the cause of the disease may be (and I do not pretend that the
conditions of urban life are an adequate explanation) the malady is
there, and will probably prove fatal to our civilisation. I have given
my views on this subject in the essay called _The Future of the English
Race._ And yet there is a remedy within the reach of all if we would
only try it.

The essence of the Christian revelation is the proclamation of a
standard of absolute values, which contradicts at every point the
estimates of good and evil current in 'the world.' It is not necessary,
in such an essay as this, to write out the Beatitudes, or the very
numerous passages in the Gospels and Epistles in which the same lessons
are enforced. It is not necessary to remind the reader that in
Christianity all the paraphernalia of life are valued very lightly; that
all the good and all the evil which exalt or defile a man have their
seat within him, in his own character; that we are sent into the world
to suffer and to conquer suffering; that it is more blessed to give than
to receive; that love is the great revealer of the mysteries of life;
that we have here no continuing city, and must therefore set our
affections and lay up our treasures in heaven; that the things that are
seen are temporal, and the things that are not seen are eternal. This is
the Christian religion. It is a form of idealism; and idealism means a
belief in absolute or spiritual values.

When applied to human life, it introduces, as it were, a new currency,
which demonetises the old; or gives us a new scale of prices, in which
the cheapest things are the dearest, and the dearest the cheapest. The
world's standards are quantitative; those of Christianity are
qualitative. And being qualitative, spiritual goods are unlimited in
amount; they are increased by being shared; and we rob nobody by taking
them.

Secularists ask impatiently what Christianity has done or proposes to do
to make mankind happier, by which they mean more comfortable. The answer
is (to put it in a form intelligible to the questioner) that
Christianity increases the wealth of the world by creating new values.
Wealth depends on human valuation. For example, if women were
sufficiently well educated not to care about diamonds, the Kimberley
mines would pay no dividends, and the rents in Park Lane would go down.
The prices of paintings by old masters would decline if millionaires
preferred to collect another kind of scalps to decorate their wigwams.
Bookmakers and company-promoters live on the widespread passion for
acquiring money without working for it. It is hardly possible to
estimate the increase of real wealth, and the stoppage of waste, which
would result from the adoption of a rational, still more of a Christian,
valuation of the good things of life. I have dealt with this subject in
the essay on _The Indictment against Christianity_, and have emphasised
the importance of taking into consideration, in all economic questions,
the _human costs_ of production, the factors which make work pleasant or
irksome, and especially the moral condition of the worker. Good-will
diminishes the toll which labour takes of the labourer; envy and hatred
vastly increase it while they diminish its product. It is, of course,
impossible that the worker should not resent having to devote his life
to making what is useless or mischievous, and to ministering to the
irrational wastefulness of luxury. Christianity, in condemning the
selfish and irresponsible use of money, seeks to remove one of the chief
causes of social bitterness. Senseless extravagance is the best friend
of revolution.

The abuse poured upon 'the old political economy,' as it is called, is
only half deserved. As compared with the insane doctrines now in favour
with the working-man, the old political economy was sound and sensible.
Hard work, thrift, and economy in production are, in truth, as we used
to be told, the only ways to increase the national wealth, and the
contrary practices can only lead to economic ruin. There is not much
fault to find with the old economists so long as they recognised that
their science was an abstract science, which for its own purposes dealt
with an unreal abstraction--the 'economic man.' Every science is obliged
to isolate one aspect of reality in this way. But when political economy
was treated as a philosophy of life it began to be mischievous. A book
on 'the science of the stomach,' without knowledge of physiology or the
working of other organs, would not be of much use. Man has never been a
merely acquisitive being; for example, he is also a fighting and a
praying being. If our dominant motives were changed, the whole
conditions dealt with by political economy would change with them. There
have been civilisations in which the passion for accumulation was
comparatively weak; and notoriously there are many persons in whom it is
wholly absent. Devotion to art, to scientific investigation, and to
religion is strong enough, where it exists, to kill 'the economic man'
in human nature. A civilised nation honours its idealists, and
recognises the immense benefit which they confer on the community by
creating or revealing new and inexhaustible values; in an uncivilised
country they can hardly live. Ruskin and William Morris saw, and
doubtless exaggerated, the danger to which spiritual values were exposed
at the hands of the dominant economism. Our danger now is that neglect
of the simplest economic laws may plunge the nation into such misery
that the people will no longer be willing to support art, science,
learning, and philosophy. A large section of the labour party has the
same standard of values as the hated 'capitalist,' and detests those
whom it calls intellectuals and sky-pilots because they depreciate the
currency which their class, no less than the capitalist, believes to be
the only sound money.

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Roy Greenslade: Michael Wolff on Rupert Murdoch - he loves gossip
Articles published by guardian.co.uk Books

President Obama teams up with one of Marvel's greatest heroes, reports Alison Flood

Here's Michael Wolff, still doing the rounds promoting his Rupert Murdoch biography, The man who owns the news. This interview with Jon Stewart is fun. It starts off with Wolff saying: "You wanna start a rumour, tell Rupert. He's the biggest gossip I've ever met." And there's an amusing pay-off too. (Via Comedy Central/The E&P Pub)

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Murder One closing so did we commit this crime?

Barack Obama is teaming up with Spider-Man in a new comic from Marvel, which will see the future president exchanging a fist-bump with Peter Parker's alter ego.

The five-page story takes place in Washington DC on inauguration day, when one of Spidey's oldest enemies, the Chameleon, attempts to stop Obama's swearing-in ceremony. Fortunately, Peter Parker is covering the event as a photographer, and jumps in to save the day.

"Ya hear that, Chameleon? The president-elect here just appointed me ... secretary of shuttin' you up," Spider-Man says as he thwacks the Chameleon in the face. "I hope this doesn't ruin the inauguration for you," he tells Obama, as the Chameleon is led away by security officials. "Honestly, I'm more upset by the Chameleon's shockingly deficient understanding of the electoral process," Obama replies.

Spidey then cedes the limelight to Obama. "This is your day, after all, and I know it wouldn't look good to be seen palling around with me," he says, in a nod to Sarah Palin's comment that the then presidential candidate had been "palling around with terrorists".

The story, written by Zeb Wells and illustrated by Todd Nauck and Frank D'Armata, will appear as a bonus feature in Amazing Spider-Man 583, which goes on sale on 14 January.

"When we heard that president-elect Obama is a collector of Spider-Man comics, we knew that these two historic figures had to meet in our comics' Marvel Universe," said Marvel's editor-in-chief Joe Quesada. "A Spider-Man fan moving into the Oval Office is an event that must be commemorated in the pages of Amazing Spider-Man."

In October, graphic novel biographies of Obama and his then rival John McCain were published by IDW. April will see Michelle Obama appearing in the Female Force comic book series.

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