An Inquiry into the Nature of Peace and the Terms of Its Perpetuation

Antecedently it seems highly probable that the received rights of ownership and disposal of property, particularly of investment, will come up for advisement and revision so soon as a settled state of peace is achieved. And there should seem to be little doubt but this revision would go toward, or at least aim at the curtailment or abrogation of these rights; very much after the fashion in which the analogous vested rights of feudalism and the dynastic monarchy have been revised and in great part curtailed or abrogated in the advanced democratic countries. Not much can confidently be said as to the details of such a prospective revision of legal rights, but the analogy of that procedure by which these other vested rights have been reduced to a manageable disability, suggests that the method in the present case also would be by way of curtailment, abrogation and elimination. Here again, as in analogous movements of disuse and disestablishment, there would doubtless be much conservative apprehension as to the procuring of a competent substitute for the supplanted methods of doing what is no longer desirable to be done; but here as elsewhere, in a like conjuncture, the practicable way out would presumably be found to lie along the line of simple disuse and disallowance of class prerogative. Taken at its face value, without unavoidable prejudice out of the past, this question of a substitute to replace the current exploitation of the industrial arts for private gain by capitalistic sabotage is not altogether above a suspicion of drollery.

Yet it is not to be overlooked that private enterprise on the basis of private ownership is the familiar and accepted method of conducting industrial affairs, and that it has the sanction of immemorial usage, in the eyes of the common man, and that it is reenforced with the urgency of life and death in the apprehension of the kept classes. It should accordingly be a possible outcome of such a peace as would put away international dissension, that the division of classes would come on in a new form, between those who stand on their ancient rights of exploitation and mastery, and those who are unwilling longer to submit. And it is quite within the possibilities of the case that the division of opinion on these matters might presently shift back to the old familiar ground of international hostilities; undertaken partly to put down civil disturbances in given countries, partly by the more archaic, or conservative, peoples to safeguard the institutions of the received law and order against inroads from the side of the iconoclastic ones.

In the apprehension of those who are speaking for peace between the nations and planning for its realisation, the outlook is that of a return to, or a continuance of, the state of things before the great war came on, with peace and national security added, or with the danger of war eliminated. Nothing appreciable in the way of consequent innovation, certainly nothing of a serious character, is contemplated as being among the necessary consequences of such a move into peace and security. National integrity and autonomy are to be preserved on the received lines, and international division and discrimination is to be managed as before, and with the accustomed incidents of punctilio and pecuniary equilibration. Internationally speaking, there is to dawn an era of diplomacy without afterthought, whatever that might conceivably mean.

There is much in the present situation that speaks for such an arrangement, particularly as an initial phase of the perpetual peace that is aimed at, whatever excursive variations might befall presently, in the course of years. The war experience in the belligerent countries and the alarm that has disturbed the neutral nations have visibly raised the pitch of patriotic solidarity in all these countries; and patriotism greatly favors the conservation of established use and wont; more particularly is it favorable to the established powers and policies of the national government. The patriotic spirit is not a spirit of innovation. The chances of survival, and indeed of stabilisation, for the accepted use and wont and for the traditional distinctions of class and prescriptive rights, should therefore seem favorable, at any rate in the first instance.

Presuming, therefore, as the spokesmen of such a peace-compact are singularly ready to presume, that the era of peace and good-will which they have in view is to be of a piece with the most tranquil decades of the recent past, only more of the same kind, it becomes a question of immediate interest to the common man, as well as to all students of human culture, how the common man is to fare under this régime of law and order,—the mass of the population whose place it is to do what is to be done, and thereby to carry forward the civilisation of these pacific nations. It may not be out of place to recall, by way of parenthesis, that it is here taken for granted as a matter of course that all governmental establishments are necessarily conservative in all their dealings with this heritage of culture, except so far as they may be reactionary. Their office is the stabilisation of archaic institutions, the measure of archaism varying from one to another.

With due stabilisation and with a sagacious administration of the established scheme of law and order, the common man should find himself working under conditions and to results of the familiar kind; but with the difference that, while legal usage and legal precedent remain unchanged, the state of the industrial arts can confidently be expected to continue its advance in the same general direction as before, while the population increases after the familiar fashion, and the investing business community pursues its accustomed quest of competitive gain and competitive spending in the familiar spirit and with cumulatively augmented means. Stabilisation of the received law and order will not touch these matters; and for the present it is assumed that these matters will not derange the received law and order. The assumption may seem a violent one to the students of human culture, but it is a simple matter of course to the statesmen.

To this piping time of peace the nearest analogues in history would seem to be the Roman peace, say, of the days of the Antonines, and passably the British peace of the Victorian era. Changes in the scheme of law and order supervened in both of these instances, but the changes were, after all, neither unconscionably large nor were they of a subversive nature. The scheme of law and order, indeed, appears in neither instance to have changed so far as the altered circumstances would seem to have called for. To the common man the Roman peace appears to have been a peace by submission, not widely different from what the case of China has latterly brought to the appreciation of students. The Victorian peace, which can be appreciated more in detail, was of a more genial character, as regards the fortunes of the common man. It started from a reasonably low level of hardship and de facto iniquity, and was occupied with many prudent endeavours to improve the lot of the unblest majority; but it is to be admitted that these prudent endeavours never caught up with the march of circumstances. Not that these prudent measures of amelioration were nugatory, but it is clear that they were not an altogether effectual corrective of the changes going on; they were, in effect, systematically so far in arrears as always to leave an uncovered margin of discontent with current conditions. It is a fact of history that very appreciable sections of the populace were approaching an attitude of revolt against what they considered to be intolerable conditions when that era closed. Much of what kept them within bounds, that is to say within legal bounds, was their continued loyalty to the nation; which was greatly, and for the purpose needfully, reenforced by a lively fear of warlike aggression from without. Now, under the projected pax orbis terrarum all fear of invasion, it is hopefully believed, will be removed; and with the disappearance of this fear should also disappear the drag of national loyalty on the counsels of the underbred.

If this British peace of the nineteenth century is to be taken as a significant indication of what may be looked for under a régime of peace at large, with due allowance for what is obviously necessary to be allowed for, then what is held in promise would appear to be an era of unexampled commercial prosperity, of investment and business enterprise on a scale hitherto not experienced. These developments will bring their necessary consequences affecting the life of the community, and some of the consequences it should be possible to foresee. The circumstances conditioning this prospective era of peace and prosperity will necessarily differ from the corresponding circumstances that conditioned the Victorian peace, and many of these points of difference it is also possible to forecast in outline with a fair degree of confidence. It is in the main these economic factors going to condition the civilisation of the promised future that will have to be depended on to give the cue to any student interested in the prospective unfolding of events.

The scheme of law and order governing all modern nations, both in the conduct of their domestic affairs and in their national policies, is in its controlling elements the scheme worked out through British (and French) experience in the eighteenth century and earlier, as revised and further accommodated in the nineteenth century. Other peoples, particularly the Dutch, have of course had their part in the derivation and development of this modern scheme of institutional principles, but it has after all been a minor part; so that the scheme at large would not differ very materially, if indeed it should differ sensibly, from what it is, even if the contribution of these others had not been had. The backward nations, as e.g., Germany, Russia, Spain, etc., have of course contributed substantially nothing but retardation and maladjustment to this modern scheme of civil life; whatever may be due to students resident in those countries, in the way of scholarly formulation. This nineteenth century scheme it is proposed to carry over into the new era; and the responsible spokesmen of the projected new order appear to contemplate no provision touching this scheme of law and order, beyond the keeping of it intact in all substantial respects.

When and in so far as the projected peace at large takes effect, international interests will necessarily fall somewhat into the background, as being no longer a matter of precarious equilibration, with heavy penalties in the balance; and diplomacy will consequently become even more of a make-believe than today—something after the fashion of a game of bluff played with irredeemable "chips." Commercial, that is to say business, enterprise will consequently come in for a more undivided attention and be carried on under conditions of greater security and of more comprehensive trade relations. The population of the pacified world may be expected to go on increasing somewhat as in the recent past; in which connection it is to be remarked that not more than one-half, presumably something less than one-half, of the available agricultural resources have been turned to account for the civilised world hitherto. The state of the industrial arts, including means of transport and communication, may be expected to develop farther in the same general direction as before, assuming always that peace conditions continue to hold. Popular intelligence, as it is called,—more properly popular education,—may be expected to suffer a further advance; necessarily so, since it is a necessary condition of any effectual advance in the industrial arts,—every appreciable technological advance presumes, as a requisite to its working-out in industry, an augmented state of information and of logical facility in the workmen under whose hands it is to take effect.

Of the prescriptive rights carried over into the new era, under the received law and order, the rights of ownership alone may be expected to have any material significance for the routine of workday life; the other personal rights that once seemed urgent will for everyday purposes have passed into a state of half-forgotten matter-of-course. As now, but in an accentuated degree, the rights of ownership will, in effect, coincide and coalesce with the rights of investment and business management. The market—that is to say the rule of the price-system in all matters of production and livelihood—may be expected to gain in volume and inclusiveness; so that virtually all matters of industry and livelihood will turn on questions of market price, even beyond the degree in which that proposition holds today. The progressive extension and consolidation of investments, corporate solidarity, and business management may be expected to go forward on the accustomed lines, as illustrated by the course of things during the past few decades. Market conditions should accordingly, in a progressively increased degree, fall under the legitimate discretionary control of businessmen, or syndicates of businessmen, who have the disposal of large blocks of invested wealth,—"big business," as it is called, should reasonably be expected to grow bigger and to exercise an increasingly more unhampered control of market conditions, including the money market and the labor market.

With such improvements in the industrial arts as may fairly be expected to come forward, and with the possible enhancement of industrial efficiency which should follow from a larger scale of organisation, a wider reach of transport and communication, and an increased population,—with these increasing advantages on the side of productive industry, the per-capita product as well as the total product should be increased in a notable degree, and the conditions of life should possibly become notably easier and more attractive, or at least more conducive to efficiency and personal comfort, for all concerned. Such would be the first and unguarded inference to be drawn from the premises of the case as they offer themselves in the large; and something of that kind is apparently what floats before the prophetic vision of the advocates of a league of nations for the maintenance of peace at large. These premises, and the inferences so drawn from them, may be further fortified and amplified in the same sense on considering that certain very material economies also become practicable, and should take effect "in the absence of disturbing causes," on the establishment of such a peace at large. It will of course occur to all thoughtful persons that armaments must be reduced, perhaps to a minimum, and that the cost of these things, in point of expenditures as well as of man-power spent in the service, would consequently fall off in a corresponding measure. So also, as slight further reflection will show, would the cost of the civil service presumably fall off very appreciably; more particularly the cost of this service per unit of service rendered. Some such climax of felicities might be looked for by hopeful persons, in the absence of disturbing causes.

Under the new dispensation the standard of living, that is to say the standard of expenditure, would reasonably be expected to advance in a very appreciable degree, at least among the wealthy and well-to-do; and by pressure of imitative necessity a like effect would doubtless also be had among the undistinguished mass. It is not a question of the standard of living considered as a matter of the subsistence minimum, or even a standard of habitually prevalent creature comfort, particularly not among the wealthy and well-to-do. These latter classes have long since left all question of material comfort behind in their accepted standards of living and in the continued advance of these standards. For these classes who are often spoken of euphemistically as being "in easy circumstances," it is altogether a question of a standard of reputable expenditure, to be observed on pain of lost self-respect and of lost reputation at large. As has been remarked in an earlier passage, wants of this kind are indefinitely extensible. So that some doubt may well be entertained as to whether the higher productive efficiency spoken of will necessarily make the way of life easier, in view of this need of a higher standard of expenditure, even when due account is taken of the many economies which the new dispensation is expected to make practicable.

One of the effects to be looked for would apparently be an increased pressure on the part of aspiring men to get into some line of business enterprise; since it is only in business, as contrasted with the industrial occupations, that anyone can hope to find the relatively large income required for such an expensive manner of life as will bring any degree of content to aspirants for pecuniary good repute. So it should follow that the number of businessmen and business concerns would increase up to the limit of what the traffic could support, and that the competition between these rival, and in a sense over-numerous, concerns would push the costs of competition to the like limit. In this respect the situation would be of much the same character as what it now is, with the difference that the limit of competitive expenditures would be rather higher than at present, to answer to the greater available margin of product that could be devoted to this use; and that the competing concerns would be somewhat more numerous, or at least that the aggregate expenditure on competitive enterprise would be somewhat larger; as, e.g., costs of advertising, salesmanship, strategic litigation, procuration of legislative and municipal grants and connivance, and the like.

It is always conceivable, though it may scarcely seem probable, that these incidents of increased pressure of competition in business traffic might eventually take up all the slack, and leave no net margin of product over what is available under the less favorable conditions of industry that prevail today; more particularly when this increased competition for business gains is backed by an increased pressure of competitive spending for purposes of a reputable appearance. All this applies in retail trade and in such lines of industry and public service as partakes of the nature of retail trade, in the respect that salesmanship and the costs of salesmanship enter into their case in an appreciable measure; this is an extensive field, it is true, and incontinently growing more extensive with the later changes in the customary methods of marketing products; but it is by no means anything like the whole domain of industrial business, and by no means a field in which business is carried on without interference of a higher control from outside its own immediate limits.

All this generously large and highly expensive and profitable field of trade and of trade-like industry, in which the businessmen in charge deal somewhat directly with a large body of customers, is always subject to limitations imposed by the condition of the market; and the condition of the market is in part not under the control of these businessmen, but is also in part controlled by large concerns in the background; which in their turn are after all also not precisely free agents; in fact not much more so than their cousins in the retail trade, being confined in all their motions by the constraint of the price-system that dominates the whole and gathers them all in its impersonal and inexorable net.

There is a colloquial saying among businessmen, that they are not doing business for their health; which being interpreted means that they are doing business for a price. It is out of a discrepancy in price, between purchase and sale, or between transactions which come to the same result as purchase and sale, that the gains of business are drawn; and it is in terms of price that these gains are rated, amassed and funded. It is necessary, for a business concern to achieve a favorable balance in terms of price; and the larger the balance in terms of price the more successful the enterprise. Such a balance can not be achieved except by due regard to the conditions of the market, to the effect that dealings must not go on beyond what will yield a favorable balance in terms of price between income and outgo. As has already been remarked above, the prescriptive and indispensable recourse in all this conduct of business is sabotage, limitation of supply to bring a remunerative price result.

The new dispensation offers two new factors bearing on this businesslike need of a sagacious sabotage, or rather it brings a change of coefficients in two factors already familiar in business management: a greater need, for gainful business, of resorting to such limitation of traffic; and a greater facility of ways and means for enforcing the needed restriction. So, it is confidently to be expected that in the prospective piping time of peace the advance in the industrial arts will continue at an accelerated rate; which may confidently be expected to affect the practicable increased production of merchantable goods; from which it follows that it will act to depress the prices of these goods; from which it follows that if a profitable business is to be done in the conduct of productive industry a greater degree of continence than before will have to be exercised in order not to let prices fall to an unprofitable figure; that is to say, the permissible output must be held short of the productive capacity of such industry by a wider margin than before. On the other hand, it is well known out of the experience of the past few decades that a larger coalition of invested capital, controlling a larger proportion of the output, can more effectually limit the supply to a salutary maximum, such as will afford reasonable profits. And with the new dispensation affording a freer scope for business enterprise on conditions of greater security, larger coalitions than before are due to come into bearing. So that the means will be at hand competently to meet this more urgent need of a stricter limitation of the output, in spite of any increased productive capacity conferred on the industrial community by any conceivable advance in the industrial arts. The outcome to be looked for should apparently be such an effectual recourse to capitalistic sabotage as will neutralise any added advantage that might otherwise accrue to the community from its continued improvements in technology.

In spite of this singularly untoward conjuncture of circumstances to be looked for, there need be no serious apprehension that capitalistic sabotage, with a view to maintaining prices and the rate of profits, will go all the way, to the result indicated, at least not on the grounds so indicated alone. There is in the modern development of technology, and confidently to be counted on, a continued flow of new contrivances and expedients designed to supersede the old; and these are in fact successful, in greater or less measure, in finding their way into profitable use, on such terms as to displace older appliances, underbid them in the market, and render them obsolete or subject to recapitalisation on a lowered earning-capacity. So far as this unremitting flow of innovations has its effect, that is to say so far as it can not be hindered from having an effect, it acts to lower the effectual cost of products to the consumer. This effect is but a partial and somewhat uncertain one, but it is always to be counted in as a persistent factor, of uncertain magnitude, that will affect the results in the long run.

As has just been spoken of above, large coalitions of invested wealth are more competent to maintain, or if need be to advance, prices than smaller coalitions acting in severalty, or even when acting in collusion. This state of the case has been well illustrated by the very successful conduct of such large business organisations during the past few decades; successful, that is, in earning large returns on the investments engaged. Under the new dispensation, as has already been remarked, coalitions should reasonably be expected to grow to a larger size and achieve a greater efficiency for the same purpose.

The large gains of the large corporate coalitions are commonly ascribed by their promoters, and by sympathetic theoreticians of the ancient line, to economies of production made practicable by a larger scale of production; an explanation which is disingenuous only so far as it needs be. What is more visibly true on looking into the workings of these coalitions in detail is that they are enabled to maintain prices at a profitable, indeed at a strikingly profitable, level by such a control of the output as would be called sabotage if it were put in practice by interested workmen with a view to maintain wages. The effects of this sagacious sabotage become visible in the large earnings of these investments and the large gains which, now and again, accrue to their managers. Large fortunes commonly are of this derivation.