Question

They have increased the comforts of the middle classes. But they have not yet begun to effect those great changes in human destiny, which it is in their nature and in their futurity to accomplish. Only when, in addition to just institutions, the increase of mankind shall be under the deliberate guidance of judicious foresight, can the con- quests made from the powers of nature by the intellect and energy of scientific discoverers become the common property of the species, and the means of improving and elevating the universal lot.

Book IV, Chapter VII On the Probable Futurity of the Labouring Classes

1. . . . When I speak, either in this place or elsewhere, of “the labour- ing classes,” or of labourers as a “class,” I use those phrases in com- pliance with custom, and as descriptive of an existing, but by no means a necessary or permanent, state of social relations. I do not recognize as either just or salutary, a state of society in which there is any “class” which is not labouring; any human beings exempt from bearing their share of the necessary labours of human life, except those unable to labour, or who have fairly earned rest by previous toil. So long, however, as the great social evil exists of a non-labouring class, labourers also constitute a class, and may be spoken of, though only provisionally, in that character.

Considered in its moral and social aspect, the state of the labour- ing people has latterly been a subject of much more speculation and discussion than formerly; and the opinion that it is not now what it ought to be has become very general. The suggestions which have been promulgated, and the controversies which have been excited, on detached points rather than on the foundations of the subject, have put in evidence the existence of two conflicting theories, respecting the social position desirable for manual labourers. The one may be called the theory of dependence and protection, the other that of self-dependence.

According to the former theory, the lot of the poor, in all things which affect them collectively, should be regulated for them, not by them. They should not be required or encouraged to think for them- selves, or give to their own reflection or forecast an influential voice in the determination of their destiny. It is supposed to be the duty of the higher classes to think for them, and to take the responsibility of their lot, as the commander and officers of an army take that of the

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soldiers composing it. . . . The relation between rich and poor, according to this theory (a theory also applied to the relation between men and women), should be only partly authoritative; it should be amiable, moral, and sentimental: affectionate tutelage on the one side, respectful and grateful deference on the other. The rich should be in loco parentis to the poor, guiding and restraining them like chil- dren. Of spontaneous action on their part, there should be no need. They should be called on for nothing but to do their day’s work, and to be moral and religious. Their morality and religion should be pro- vided for them by their superiors, who should see them properly taught it, and should do all that is necessary to ensure their being, in return for labour and attachment, properly fed, clothed, housed, spir- itually edified, and innocently amused.

This is the ideal of the future, in the minds of those whose dissat- isfaction with the Present assumes the form of affection and regret towards the Past. Like other ideals, it exercises an unconscious influ- ence on the opinions and sentiments of numbers who never con- sciously guide themselves by any ideal. It has also this in common with other ideals, that it has never been historically realized. It makes its appeal to our imaginative sympathies in the character of a restora- tion of the good times of our forefathers. But no times can be point- ed out in which the higher classes of this or any other country per- formed a part even distantly resembling the one assigned to them in this theory. It is an idealization, grounded on the conduct and char- acter of here and there an individual. All privileged and powerful classes, as such, have used their power in the interest of their own self- ishness, and have indulged their self-importance in despising, and not in lovingly caring for, those who were, in their estimation, degrad- ed by being under the necessity of working for their benefit. I do not affirm that what has always been must always be, or that human improvement has no tendency to correct the intensely selfish fillings engendered by power; but though the evil may be lessened, it cannot be eradicated until the power itself is withdrawn. This, at least, seems to me undeniable, that long before the superior classes could be suf- ficiently improved to govern in the tutelary manner supposed, the inferior classes would be too much improved to be so governed.

I am quite sensible of all that is seductive in the picture of socie- ty which this theory presents. . . . As the idea is essentially repulsive of a society only held together by the relations and feelings arising out of pecuniary interests, so there is something naturally attractive in a form of society abounding in strong personal attachments and disinterested self-devotion. Of such feelings, it must be admitted that

On the Probable Futurity of the Labouring Classes 193

the relation of protector and protected has hitherto been the richest source. The strongest attachments of human beings in general are towards the things or the persons that stand between them and some dreaded evil. Hence, in an age of lawless violence and insecurity, and general hardness and roughness of manners, in which life is beset with dangers and sufferings at every step . . . a generous giving of protection, and a grateful receiving of it, are the strongest ties which connect human beings; the feelings arising from that relation are their warmest feelings; all the enthusiasm and tenderness of the most sensitive natures gather round it; loyalty on the one part and chivalry on the other are principles exalted into passions. I do not desire to depreciate these qualities. The error lies in not perceiving that these virtues and sentiments . . . can no longer have this beauti- ful and endearing character where there are no longer any serious dangers from which to protect. What is there in the present state of society to make it natural that human beings, of ordinary strength and courage, should glow with the warmest gratitude and devotion in return for protection? The laws protect them, wherever the laws do not criminally fail in their duty. To be under the power of some- one, instead of being, as formerly, the sole condition of safety, is now, speaking generally, the only situation which exposes to grievous wrong. The so-called protectors are now the only persons against whom, in any ordinary circumstances, protection is needed. The brutality and tyranny with which every police report is filled are those of husbands to wives, of parents to children. That the law does not prevent these atrocities, that it is only now making a first timid attempt to repress and punish them, is no matter of necessity, but the deep disgrace of those by whom the laws are made and administered. No man or woman who either possesses or is able to earn an inde- pendent livelihood, requires any other protection than that which the law could and ought to give. This being the case, it argues great ignorance of human nature to continue taking for granted that rela- tions founded on protection must always subsist, and not to see that the assumption of the part of protector, and of the power which belongs to it, without any of the necessities which justify it, must engender feelings opposite to loyalty.

Of the working men, at least in the more advanced countries of Europe, it may be pronounced certain that the patriarchal or pater- nal system of government is one to which they will not again be sub- ject. That question was decided when they were taught to read, and allowed access to newspapers and political tracts; when dissenting preachers were suffered to go among them, and appeal to their facul-

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ties and feelings in opposition to the creeds professed and counte- nanced by their superiors; when they were brought together in num- bers, to work socially under the same roof; when railways enabled them to shift from place to place, and change their patrons and employers as easily as their coats; when they were encouraged to seek a share in the government, by means of the electoral franchise. The working classes have taken their interests into their own hands, and are perpetually showing that they think the interests of their employ- ers not identical with their own, but opposite to them. . . .

2. . . . The poor have come out of leading-strings, and cannot any longer be governed or treated like children. To their own qualities must now be commended the care of their destiny. Modern nations will have to learn the lesson that the well-being of a people must exist by means of the justice and self-government . . . of the individual cit- izens. . . . Whatever advice, exhortation, or guidance is held out to the labouring classes, must henceforth be tendered to them as equals, and accepted by them with their eyes open. The prospect of the future depends on the degree in which they can be made rational beings.

There is no reason to believe that prospect other than hopeful. The progress indeed has hitherto been, and still is, slow. But there is a spontaneous education going on in the minds of the multitude. . . . The instruction obtained from newspapers and political tracts may not be the most solid kind of instruction, but it is an immense improvement upon none at all. . . . [T]here is reason to hope that great improvements . . . in . . . school education will be effected by the exertions either of government or of individuals, and that the progress of the mass of the people in mental cultivation, and in the virtues which are dependent on it, will take place more rapidly. . . .

From this increase of intelligence, several effects may be confi- dently anticipated. First: that they will become even less willing than at present to be led and governed, and directed into the way they should go, by the mere authority and prestige of superiors. If they have not now, still less will they have hereafter, any deferential awe or religious principle of obedience, holding them in mental subjec- tion to a class above them. The theory of dependence and protection will be more and more intolerable to them, and they will require that their conduct and condition shall be essentially self-governed. It is, at the same time, quite possible that they may demand, in many cases, the intervention of the legislature in their affairs, and the regulation by law of various things which concern them, often under very mis- taken ideas of their interest. Still, it is their own will, their own ideas and suggestions, to which they will demand that effect should be

On the Probable Futurity of the Labouring Classes 195

given, and not rules laid down for them by other people. It is quite consistent with this that they should feel respect for superiority of intellect and knowledge, and defer much to the opinions, on any sub- ject, of those whom they think well acquainted with it. Such defer- ence is deeply grounded in human nature; but they will judge for themselves of the persons who are and are not entitled to it.

3. It appears to me impossible but that the increase of intelligence, of education, and of the love of independence among the working classes, must be attended with a corresponding growth of the good sense which manifests itself in provident habits of conduct; and that population, therefore, will bear a gradually diminishing ratio to cap- ital and employment. This most desirable result would be much accelerated by another change, which lies in the direct line of the best tendencies of the time; the opening of industrial occupations freely to both sexes. The same reasons which make it no longer nec- essary that the poor should depend on the rich, make it equally unnecessary that women should depend on men; and the least which justice requires is that law and custom should not enforce depend- ence (when the correlative protection has become superfluous) by ordaining that a woman, who does not happen to have a provision by inheritance, shall have scarcely any means open to her of gaining a livelihood, except as a wife and mother. Let women who prefer that occupation adopt it; but that there should be no option, no other car- rière possible for the great majority of women, except in the humbler departments of life, is a flagrant social injustice. The ideas and insti- tutions by which the accident of sex is made the groundwork of an inequality of legal rights, and a forced dissimilarity of social func- tions, must ere long be recognized as the greatest hindrance to moral, social, and even intellectual improvement. On the present occasion, I shall only indicate, among the probable consequences of the indus- trial and social independence of women, a great diminution of the evil of over-population. It is by devoting one-half of the human species to that exclusive function, by making it fill the entire life of one sex and interweave itself with almost all the objects of the other, that the animal instinct in question is nursed into the disproportion- ate preponderance which it has hitherto exercised in human life.

4. . . . In the present stage of human progress, when ideas of equality are daily spreading more widely among the poorer classes, and can no longer be checked by anything short of the entire sup- pression of printed discussion and even of freedom of speech, it is not to be expected that the division of the human race into two hereditary classes, employers and employed, can be permanently

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maintained. The relation is nearly as unsatisfactory to the payer of wages as to the receiver. If the rich regard the poor as, by a kind of natural law, their servants and dependents, the rich, in their turn, are regarded as a mere prey and pasture for the poor; the subject of demands and expectations wholly indefinite, increasing in extent with every concession made to them. The total absence of regard for justice or fairness in the relations between the two, is as marked on the side of the employed as on that of the employers. We look in vain among the working classes in general for the just pride which will choose to give good work for good wages; for the most part, their sole endeavour is to receive as much, and return as little in the shape of service, as possible. It will sooner or later become insupportable to the employing classes, to live in close and hourly contact with per- sons whose interests and feelings are in hostility to them. Capitalists are almost as much interested as labourers in placing the operations of industry on such a footing, that those who labour for them may feel the same interest in the work, which is felt by those who labour on their own account.

The opinion expressed in a former part of this treatise, respecting small landed properties and peasant proprietors, may have made the reader anticipate that a wide diffusion of property in land is the resource on which I rely for exempting at least the agricultural labourers from exclusive dependence on labour for hire. Such, how- ever, is not my opinion. . . .

[A] people who have once adopted the large system of production, either in manufactures or in agriculture, are not likely to recede from it; and when population is kept in due proportion to the means of support, it is not desirable that they should. Labour is unquestionably more productive on the system of large industrial enterprises; the pro- duce, if not greater absolutely, is greater in proportion to the labour employed: the same number of persons can be supported equally well with less toil and greater leisure; which will be wholly an advan- tage, as soon as civilization and improvement have so far advanced that what is a benefit to the whole shall be a benefit to each individ- ual composing it. And in the moral aspect of the question, which is still more important than the economical, something better should be aimed at as the goal of industrial improvement, than to disperse mankind over the earth in single families, each ruled internally, as families now are, by a patriarchal despot, and having scarcely any community of interest, or necessary mental communion, with other human beings. The domination of the head of the family over the other members, in this state of things, is absolute; while the effect on

On the Probable Futurity of the Labouring Classes 197

his own mind tends towards concentration of all interests in the fam- ily, considered as an expansion of self, and absorption of all passions in that of exclusive possession, of all cares in those of preservation and acquisition. As a step out of the merely animal state into the human, out of reckless abandonment to brute instincts into pruden- tial foresight and self-government, this moral condition may be seen without displeasure. But if public spirit, generous sentiments, or true justice and equality are desired, association, not isolation, of interests, is the school in which these excellences are nurtured. The aim of improvement should be not solely to place human beings in a con- dition in which they will be able to do without one another, but to enable them to work with or for one another in relations not involv- ing dependence. Hitherto there has been no alternative for those who lived by their labour, but that of labouring either each for him- self alone, or for a master. But the civilizing and improving influ- ences of association, and the efficiency and economy of production on a large scale, may be obtained without dividing the producers into two parties with hostile interests and feelings, the many who do the work being mere servants under the command of the one who sup- plies the funds, and having no interest of their own in the enterprise except to earn their wages with as little labour as possible. The spec- ulations and discussions of the last fifty years, and the events of the last thirty, are abundantly conclusive on this point. . . . [T]he relation of masters and work-people will be gradually superseded by partner- ship, in one of two forms: in some cases, association of the labourers with the capitalist; in others, and perhaps finally in all, association of labourers among themselves.

5. The first of these forms of association has long been practiced, not indeed as a rule, but as an exception. In several departments of industry, there are already cases in which everyone who contributes to the work, either by labour or by pecuniary resources, has a part- ner’s interest in it, proportional to the value of his contribution. It is already a common practice to remunerate those in whom peculiar trust is reposed, by means of a percentage on the profits; and cases exist in which the principle is, with excellent success, carried down to the class of mere manual labourers. . . .

Mr. Babbage,2 who also gives an account of this system, observes that the payment to the crews of whaling ships is governed by a sim-

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2 [Mill cites Babbage’s Economy of Machinery and Manufactures, 3rd ed., chapter 26.]

ilar principle; and that “the profits arising from fishing with nets on the south coast of England are thus divided: one-half the produce belongs to the owner of the boat and net; the other half is divided in equal portions between the persons using it, who are also bound to assist in repairing the net when required.” Mr. Babbage has the great merit of having pointed out the practicability, and the advantage, of extending the principle to manufacturing industry generally. . . .

6. The form of association, however, which if mankind continues to improve, must be expected in the end to predominate, is not that which can exist between a capitalist as chief and work-people with- out a voice in the management, but the association of the labourers themselves on terms of equality, collectively owning the capital with which they carry on their operations, and working under managers elected and removable by themselves. So long as this idea remained in a state of theory, in the writings of Owen or of Louis Blanc, it may have appeared, to the common modes of judgment, incapable of being realized, and not likely to be tried, unless by seizing on the existing capital and confiscating it for the benefit of the labourers; which is even now imagined by many persons, and pretended by more, both in England and on the Continent, to be the meaning and purpose of Socialism. But there is a capacity of exertion and self- denial in the masses of mankind, which is never known but on the rare occasions on which it is appealed to in the name of some great idea or elevated sentiment. Such an appeal was made by the French Revolution of 1848. For the first time, it then seemed to the intelli- gent and generous of the working classes of a great nation, that they had obtained a government who sincerely desired the freedom and dignity of the many, and who did not look upon it as their natural and legitimate state to be instruments of production, worked for the ben- efit of the possessors of capital. Under this encouragement, the ideas sown by Socialist writers of an emancipation of labour to be effected by means of association, throve and fructified; and many working people came to the resolution, not only that they would work for one another, instead of working for a master tradesman or manufacturer, but that they would also free themselves, at whatever cost of labour or privation, from the necessity of paying, out of the produce of their industry, a heavy tribute for the use of capital; that they would extin- guish this tax, not by robbing the capitalists of what they or their predecessors had acquired by labour and preserved by economy, but by honestly acquiring capital for themselves. If only a few operatives had attempted this arduous task, or if, while many attempted it, a few only had succeeded, their success might have been deemed to fur-

On the Probable Futurity of the Labouring Classes 199

nish no argument for their system as a permanent mode of industri- al organization. But, excluding all the instances of failure, there exist, or existed a short time ago, upwards of a hundred successful, and many eminently prosperous, associations of operatives in Paris alone, besides a considerable number in the departments. . . .

The capital of most of the associations was originally confined to the few tools belonging to the founders, and the small sums which could be collected from their savings, or which were lent to them by other workpeople as poor as themselves. In some cases, however, loans of capital were made to them by the republican government; but the associations which obtained these advances, or at least which obtained them before they had already achieved success, are, it appears, in general by no means the most prosperous. The most strik- ing instances of prosperity are in the case of those who have had noth- ing to rely on but their own slender means and the small loans of fel- low workmen, and who lived on bread and water while they devoted the whole surplus of their gains to the formation of a capital. . . .

The same admirable qualities by which the associations were car- ried through their early struggles, maintained them in their increas- ing prosperity. Their rules of discipline, instead of being more lax, are stricter than those of ordinary workshops; but being rules self- imposed, for the manifest good of the community, and not for the convenience of an employer regarded as having an opposite interest, they are far more scrupulously obeyed, and the voluntary obedience carries with it a sense of personal worth and dignity. With wonderful rapidity, the associated workpeople have learnt to correct those of the ideas they set out with which are in opposition to the teaching of rea- son and experience. Almost all the associations, at first, excluded piece-work, and gave equal wages whether the work done was more or less. Almost all have abandoned this system, and after allowing to everyone a fixed minimum, sufficient for subsistence, they apportion all further remuneration according to the work done: most of them even dividing the profits at the end of the year, in the same propor- tion as the earnings.

It is the declared principle of most of these associations that they do not exist for the mere private benefit of the individual members, but for the promotion of the co-operative cause. With every exten- sion, therefore, of their business, they take in additional members, not (when they remain faithful to their original plan) to receive wages from them as hired labourers, but to enter at once into the full bene- fits of the association, without being required to bring anything in except their labour: the only condition imposed is that of receiving,

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during a few years, a smaller share in the annual division of profits, as some equivalent for the sacrifices of the founders. When members quit the association, which they are always at liberty to do, they carry none of the capital with them: it remains an indivisible property, of which the members, for the time being, have the use, but not the arbitrary disposal; by the stipulations of most of the contracts, even if the association breaks up, the capital cannot be divided, but must be devoted entire to some work of beneficence or of public utility. A fixed, and generally a considerable, proportion of the annual profits is not shared among the members, but added to the capital of the asso- ciation, or devoted to the repayment of advances previously made to it; another portion is set aside to provide for the sick and disabled, and another to form a fund for extending the practice of association, or aiding other associations in their need. The managers are paid, like other members, for the time which is occupied in management, usu- ally at the rate of the highest paid labour; but the rule is adhered to, that the exercise of power shall never be an occasion of profit. . . .

The vitality of these associations must indeed be great, to have enabled about twenty of them to survive not only the anti-socialist reaction, which for the time discredited all attempts to enable workpeople to be their own employers—not only the tracasseries of the police, and the hostile policy of the government since the usurpa- tion—but in addition to these obstacles, all the difficulties arising from the trying condition of financial and commercial affairs from 1854 to 1858. Of the prosperity attained by some of them even while passing through this difficult period, I have given examples which must be conclusive to all minds as to the brilliant future reserved for the principle of co-operation. . . .

It is hardly possible to take any but a hopeful view of the prospects of mankind when, in two leading countries of the world, the obscure depths of society contain simple working men whose integrity, good sense, self-command, and honourable confidence in one another, have enabled them to carry these noble experiments to the triumphant issue which the facts recorded in the preceding pages attest.3

From the progressive advance of the co-operative movement, a great increase may be looked for even in the aggregate productive- ness of industry. . . .

On the Probable Futurity of the Labouring Classes 201

3 [Ed.—I have omitted the many specific examples described by Mill.]

[C]o-operation tends . . . to increase the productiveness of labour . . . by placing the labourers, as a mass, in a relation to their work which would make it their principle and their interest—at present it is neither—to do the utmost, instead of the least possible, in exchange for their remuneration. It is scarcely possible to rate too highly this material benefit, which yet is as nothing compared with the moral revolution in society that would accompany it: the healing of the standing feud between capital and labour; the transformation of human life, from a conflict of classes struggling for opposite inter- ests, to a friendly rivalry in the pursuit of a good common to all; the elevation of the dignity of labour; a new sense of security and inde- pendence in the labouring class; and the conversion of each human being’s daily occupation into a school of the social sympathies and the practical intelligence.

Such is the noble idea which the promoters of Co-operation should have before them. But to attain, in any degree, these objects, it is indispensable that all, and not some only, of those who do the work should be identified in interest with the prosperity of the under- taking. . . .

Under the most favourable supposition, it will be desirable, and perhaps for a considerable length of time, that individual capitalists, associating their work-people in the profits, should coexist with even those co-operative societies which are faithful to the co-operative principle. Unity of authority makes many things possible, which could not or would not be undertaken subject to the chance of divid- ed councils or changes in the management. A private capitalist, exempt from the control of a body, if he is a person of capacity, is con- siderably more likely than almost any association to run judicious risks, and originate costly improvements. Co-operative societies may be depended on for adopting improvements after they have been test- ed by success, but individuals are more likely to commence things previously untried. Even in ordinary business, the competition of capable persons who, in the event of failure, are to have all the loss, and in the case of success, the greater part of the gain, will be very useful in keeping the managers of co-operative societies up to the due pitch of activity and vigilance.

When, however, co-operative societies shall have sufficiently mul- tiplied, it is not probable that any but the least valuable work-people will any longer consent to work all their lives for wages merely; both private capitalists and associations will gradually find it necessary to make the entire body of labourers participants in profits. Eventually, and in perhaps a less remote future than may be supposed, we may,

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through the co-operative principle, see our way to a change in socie- ty, which would combine the freedom and independence of the indi- vidual with the moral, intellectual, and economical advantages of aggregate production; and which, without violence or spoliation, or even any sudden disturbance of existing habits and expectations, would realize, at least in the industrial department, the best aspira- tions of the democratic spirit, by putting an end to the division of society into the industrious and the idle, and effacing all social dis- tinctions but those fairly earned by personal services and exertions. Associations like those which we have described, by the very process of their success, are a course of education in those moral and active qualities by which alone success can be either deserved or attained. As associations multiplied, they would tend more and more to absorb all work-people, except those who have too little understanding, or too little virtue, to be capable of learning to act on any other system than that of narrow selfishness. As this change proceeded, owners of capital would gradually find it to their advantage, instead of main- taining the struggle of the old system with work-people of only the worst description, to lend their capital to the associations; to do this at a diminishing rate of interest, and at last, perhaps, even to exchange their capital for terminable annuities. In this or some such mode, the existing accumulations of capital might honestly, and by a kind of spontaneous process, become in the end the joint property of all who participate in their productive employment: a transformation which, thus effected, (and assuming, of course, that both sexes partic- ipate equally in the rights and in the government of the association) would be the nearest approach to social justice, and the most benefi- cial ordering of industrial affairs for the universal good, which it is possible at present to foresee.

7. I agree, then, with the Socialist writers in their conception of the form which industrial operations tend to assume in the advance of improvement; and I entirely share their opinion that the time is ripe for commencing this transformation, and that it should, by all just and effectual means, be aided and encouraged. But while I agree and sympathize with Socialists in this practical portion of their aims, I utterly dissent from the most conspicuous and vehement part of their teaching, their declamations against competition. . . . They for- get that wherever competition is not, monopoly is; and that monop- oly, in all its forms, is the taxation of the industrious for the support of indolence, if not of plunder. They forget, too, that with the excep- tion of competition among labourers, all other competition is for the benefit of the labourers, by cheapening the articles they consume;

On the Probable Futurity of the Labouring Classes 203

that competition even in the labour market is a source not of low but of high wages, wherever the competition for labour exceeds the com- petition of labour, as in America, in the colonies, and in the skilled trades; and never could be a cause of low wages, save by the over- stocking of the labour market through the too great numbers of the labourers’ families; while, if the supply of labourers is excessive, not even Socialism can prevent their remuneration from being low. Besides, if association were universal, there would be no competition between labourer and labourer; and that between association and association would be for the benefit of the consumers—that is, of the associations; of the industrious classes generally.

I do not pretend that there are no inconveniences in competition, or that the moral objections urged against it by Socialist writers, as a source of jealousy and hostility among those engaged in the same occupation, are altogether groundless. But if competition has its evils, it prevents greater evils. . . . It is the common error of Socialists to overlook the natural indolence of mankind; their tendency to be passive, to be the slaves of habit, to persist indefinitely in a course once chosen. Let them once attain any state of existence which they consider tolerable, and the danger to be apprehended is that they will thenceforth stagnate; will not exert themselves to improve, and by let- ting their faculties rust, will lose even the energy required to preserve them from deterioration. Competition may not be the best conceiv- able stimulus, but it is at present a necessary one, and no one can foresee the time when it will not be indispensable to progress. . . .

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