Doubts and Difficulties: Would Municipal Ownership be advantageous to the Realisation of Socialism? (1905)

The Doubts and Difficulties column from the August 1905 issue of the Socialist Standard

Would Municipal Ownership be advantageous to the Realisation of Socialism?

A batch of letters lie before me. The popularity of my articles is obvious from their most casual perusal. One thing, however, requires some little protest, I am prepared to answer in due rotation any question affecting Socialism, but I am not an encyclopaedia—yellow imperialist or otherwise—and I am not called upon to answer questions relating to the existence of beings of human shape and human intelligence in Mars; neither will I be permitted to offer suggestions anent the proper cultivation of the garden. My forte is not in either of these directions. Doubts and difficulties in the way of the acceptance of Socialist principles or in the way of their enunciation are welcome and will be dealt with.

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From the batch before me I select one which bears the insistent blue pencil mark of the Editor of the Socialist Standard. And here I may say that any weakness that may at any time be found in any of my articles is the result of his handiwork. He is a gentle being—a sheep in wolf’s clothing—but he has his own methods of securing attention to his behests. The letter is from “Ignoramicus,” who writes :—

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“Dear Economicus, ‘Doubts and Difficulties’ are good business. They make the crooked path straight. Your column resembles the capitalist system in that it contains the germ of its own destruction. This is a dark saying. Being interpreted it is as if to say that some day it will destroy itself by banishing all doubts and all difficulties. But that day is not yet. Here is, for example, the question of the relation of municipalism to Socialism ; the extent to which municipalism may be regarded as the John the Baptist of Socialism. John, you may remember, prepared the way of the Lord. Does municipalism do the same for Socialism? If not, why not? I suggest a few observations upon the limits of municipalism would be helpful. There are many doubts and considerable difficulties existent upon the subject. Please dispel the one and remove the other so that we may rejoice in the fulness of knowledge where to-day we ponder in perplexity.”

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And the Editor, his voice insistent as a curtain lecture, punctuates upon your letter, most ignorant one, “Economicus not to exceed two columns !”

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The Socialist claims for his Socialism that its advent as the basis of Society means inter alia the reorganisation of all industrial operations. The application of collective and combined effort to every sphere of industrial life with, at the same time, the elimination of all useless labour and the greatest economy of man’s activity consistent with the satisfaction of the greatest measure of his needs, must follow upon the realisation of Socialism.

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Of those industries some are essentially local, some national, and some international, and the mode of organisation will probably depend upon the actual conditions obtaining in the industry. The railways and the steamships of the Socialist regime will be organised upon an international basis, whilst the bakeries and local food supply will be, at first, municipal concerns. When the methods of transit are revolutionised by the electrification, mono-railification, etc., of the railways, and Manchester is two hours journey from London, these things will be altered.

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So, too, we must leave out of consideration the suggested devolution of our large towns, and the transmission of force from various river and tidal centres to be applied locally. The powers of man in the future over the forces of nature are not only unknown, but inconceivable to us. And it is these powers which determine man’s methods of satisfying his wants, and through his methods of satisfying his wants, the form of the society for the time being.

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We have then to take the capitalist society in which we live and the immediate trend of events in the direction of Socialism. We have then to recognise that the evolution of society from capitalism to Socialism affects every part of society, and that any municipal progress must have its influence upon national progress. But it follows that any causes obstructing national development must tend to obstruct municipal or local development.

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If we could dissociate the municipal from the national and collectivise all municipal concerns, we should have an entirely different set of circumstances to consider than we have existing in actuality. It might then be an interesting question whether such an extension of municipal enterprise would greatly benefit the working-class so long as the capitalist system obtained in factory, railroad, or mine. It is presumable that so long as the capitalist system obtained in those—the most staple industries in England—the wage of the worker would be determined by the average cost of his subsistence, and that his standard of subsistence would be kept at a very low level by the growing competition of his unemployed fellow workers.

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In the condition of things which obtains today the problem is different. Here we have the fact that municipal enterprise is limited to considerable extent, and that the conditions favourable in other directions to its extension are conditions not favourable to the working-class. In seeking for municipal control and ownership we find that it is not always the working-class who are most eager.

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The people who stand to benefit most by municipalism are usually the ground landlord and the capitalists who find in the economy brought into the public and other services a means of reducing their taxation, or of securing more than compensation for their taxation in a cheapening of transit of their goods. The municipalisation of the tramways has hastened the tendency of centralising the factories and warehouses in the centres of the cities and the creating of suburbs at the termini, with increased value of the land upon which the suburb is built.

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We see the landlords benefit not only in jerry-built suburbia, but in the creation of open spaces. Landlords have, indeed, been known to present the ground for a garden to the municipality to be laid out and maintained by the latter, while the house property facing this open space has gone up out of all proportion to the building-value of the gift. We have every admiration for the business capacity of the capitalist who makes profit even from his philanthropy.

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We find again that the Chambers of Commerce—the apotheosis of local capitalism—favour municipalism. The municipalising of the bakeries, or of the milk-shops, means a greater chance of pure bread and pure milk to those who are able to buy those commodities, and purer food means—the quantity remaining the same—increased efficiency. The worker becomes a more capable worker, a better wage-slave, a source of greater profit to the capitalist

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I am convinced then that the municipalisation of local services is desired more by capitalists and traders than it is by workers. That while perhaps ensuring purer food substances to the worker, it would not enhance his power of purchasing those substances, and would even do him harm, inasmuch as it made him a more efficient worker and enabled fewer of him to turn out the same quantiy of commodities, thus accentuating the unemployed evil.

Its educational value, upon which certain municipalists lay stress, is no greater than the educational value of the trust or the limited liability company. In each of the latter the worker by his co-operation turns out commodities for the market under the management of men of his own class, and the municipal worker would do nothing more. Such municipalised industry is as essentially capitalist as is the privately owned monopoly.

At the same time while municipalism is of no material advantage to the working-class in improving their position, the Socialist must needs point out the necessity of wresting all industries from the power of the capitalist. He must show that everywhere free competition developes into monopoly as its logical conclusion, and that monopoly can only cease when the whole of the powers of production belong to the whole of the people.

The men to whom an appeal to municipalise is made are the same men to whom an appeal is to be made to socialise. Any attempt to dissociate the industries which are local from those which are national is an attempt to divorce two parts of a question which are, so far as Socialist propaganda is concerned, necessarily united. Such attempts are reactionary. So also are the parties or organisations which make them.

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I trust that, so far as the space at my disposal would permit, I have made myself clear, and that the difficulties of my ignorant friend have flown. What is to be remembered is that Socialism must affect every phase of men’s lives, and every phase of methods whereby they maintain themselves in life. It is the frittering away of their powers in the advocacy of reforms which it is to the interest of opponents of Socialism to grant that we must attribute the comparative weakness of the forces of Socialism in this country. W. T. Stead in this month’s Review of Reviews complains of the scientist who displays more interest in the insects which infest the abdomen of a flea than in the vital interests which tell for the improvement of humanity. In the same way we have to complain of the men who, wishing to climb the four-feet wall which divides Socialism from Capitalism, commence by manufacturing a thirty-feet ladder.

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The best way to economise your efforts and make your work for Socialism most effective is to join THE SOCIALIST PARTY OF GREAT BRITAIN and work uncompromisingly towards the goal of the conscious and unconscious efforts of humanity. All desiring fuller information as to our Party should apply to our General Secretary, and any of my readers who may join it may expect a hearty welcome from that humblest (I had almost written ablest) of its members

Economicus.