Council of Ten, it is most improbable that it would ever have sunk to its present position of impotence and insignificance in the legislature of the country, or could have sunk so quickly. And, in this respect, the peers of England seem traditionally to have been incapable of the most elementary measures for their self-preservation. Severity in punishing those of their class who failed in noblesse oblige, and ruthlessness in ejecting from it any who brought discredit upon the class as a whole, or who failed even to reach a necessarily high standard of service and conduct, would undoubtedly have served the aristocracy of England in very good stead, and for the lack of a body that could exercise either, they have sunk to the level of mere titled capitalists. Within the Church, the legal and the medical professions, and in such services as the Army and the Navy, we find tribunals in existence for checking or eliminating undesirable elements in the system, and we find these tribunals consisting not of a state-paid judge and a jury, but of members of the body concerned; because they know best how the prestige and power of their corporation are to be maintained. Difficult, therefore, as the problem will undoubtedly be, it nevertheless seems to me inevitable that, if personal wealth, in the sense of free private ownership of property beyond physical and professional needs, is to be maintained as an institution, the wealthy themselves, who are those chiefly concerned about maintaining its prestige and power, will have to constitute the tribunal entrusted with exercising the disciplinary functions within the order. And since it must be either this, or Communism, it seems ridiculous to argue that the thing is not practicable. It is as practicable as anything is practicable that is really and earnestly desired. In any case, it cannot be argued that it is any less practicable than the
- p. 45 -
Council of Ten. It needs only courage and determination. If, however, the rich approach the matter with the firm, middle-class resolve of having nothing whatsoever to do with any undertaking that promises to be in the least bit unpleasant, if they feel themselves constitutionally and mentally incapable of ruling out of their order, by their own deliberate act, a man or woman who was yesterday playing golf with them, or hunting with them, simply because perchance he or she is such a pleasant person and has not been guilty of a sexual crime, or anything really shameful from the sex-phobia standpoint, then it seems to me that their case is hopeless, and they can only do what the Lords did during the nineteenth century — await their gradual demise with calm and resignation. If, on the other hand, they appreciate the gravity of the alternative, and the inevitability of its advent should matters be allowed to drift, it seems as if there were yet time to save the institution of private property, more particularly as those who undertake this task will have the whole world of small possessors, down to the man whose only wealth is a gold watch, to support them. So much for the tribunal. As regards the circumstances which will call for an examination of any claim to proprietary right, and the lines along which such an examination should be prosecuted, this is a matter of a new organization and new values. Almost all that can be said about it has already been said in the previous section. In the first place, in order to functionalize the wealthy once more, it will be necessary to decentralize much of the present government administration, and also to suppress a number of public services now financed and administered from one centre. All normal transfers of property brought about by death or gift
- p. 46 -
will also have to be subject to examination by the competent tribunal, irrespective of whether the previous owner had or had not maintained the standards of his order. A transvaluation of values would quickly follow any such changes; but a transvaluation of values as a first step would also very greatly expedite them, and among the values to be transvalued — really a simple matter in these days of the Press and the wireless, when few know how constantly their values are being transvalued for them — are chiefly those relating to wealth and its prestige. From being honourable only as an end in itself, wealth should become honourable merely as a means. From being only a quantitative distinction, it should become a qualitative one. From being a path merely to pleasure and ostentation, it should become a path to responsibility and difficulty. And, finally, from being a weapon for eccentricity and unrelatedness, it should become an instrument of order, normality, and relatedness. Again, in regard to these reforms and changes, to argue that they are impracticable is to be blind to what is already taking place at the present moment. If we are now able to record innumerable examples of disintegration as having recently taken place not only in the constitution of the Empire, but also in that of Great Britain itself, this means that a natural, unconscious, uncontrolled and haphazard process of decentralization is already in operation merely as the result of a policy of drift. It only requires a policy of conscious, deliberate and thoughtful control, therefore, to turn this process of disintegration, or haphazard decentralization, into one of conscious and ordered decentralization. Nor would a new principle be introduced by the suggested examination of all normal transfers of property, seeing that the machinery for acquiring
- p. 47 -
the information is already working, and the incidence of death duties already acts (indiscriminately it is true) in diverting a large proportion of wealth thus normally transferred from the legatee intended by the testator to some other destination not intended by the testator. The examination of wealthy people suspected of having failed to attain to the required standards, or proved to have thus failed, would introduce an apparently new principle; but this, too, is anticipated by innumerable customs and practices that have operated in the past, and still continue to operate in certain parts of the world, relating especially to the conditions of efficiency imposed on certain owners of agricultural land.1 In regard to the transvaluation of values also, we can see the machinery for effecting this at work every day, and can appreciate its results in a thousand and one changes in purely standardized opinions. It would be unreasonable, therefore, to argue that a transvaluation of values is impracticable. All that is needed is to get conscious and ordered control of the machinery available for the purpose, instead of leaving it, as it is left to-day, to the mercy of every chance influence and power that happens for a moment to turn the wheels. It cannot be said that the human material in youth and brains is lacking for carrying through these reforms and making a success of them, if, that is to say, their success is really regarded as important; for I know of a political movement already on foot,
1 A practice not unlike the forcible transfer of property suggested here also existed in ancient Athens. If a man felt he had been unjustifiably called upon to take a liturgy, he could appeal and suggest a richer man as a substitute. If the latter refused to undertake the obligation, the first man could challenge him to change fortunes, implying that with the substitute's fortune he would be in a position to shoulder the burden.
- p. 48 -
which is undoubtedly committed to decentralization as opposed to disintegration, and to the conscious and deliberate transvaluation of values as opposed to the haphazard transformation of standardized opinion which is now practised by Fleet Street, the films, the wireless and modern literature. It is idle, therefore, for the possessors of wealth to-day any longer to cry "Impossible!" to recommendations of this nature, even if the present recommendations prove unacceptable. Nor can they indefinitely put off the day, hoping merely to prolong the status quo until at least the end of their own or their children's generation. For the danger is imminent, and the alternative policy of Communism and high taxation, is already so firmly entrenched that time can only help to establish it. If private property as an institution is worth saving at all, if the advantages it presents are as great as I have claimed, and if there is such a thing as the sanctity of private property which is to be found in the conditions I have described, then it seems to me that unless those who are in possession of wealth to-day are cynical enough to cry, "Après nous le déluge!" and unless they are too listless or masochistic to care what happens to them, they will be bound, in order to save the institution and their class, to purge both of the foulness they undoubtedly contain, and to set up some kind of machinery that will prevent them from becoming polluted in the future.
