No, there is no other way; and only by the general
abandonment of our present commercial and capitalist
system will the plague of war be stayed.[23]
[23] When these hundreds and hundreds of thousands
of men return home after the war is over, do we expect
them to go meekly back to the idiotic slavery of dingy
offices and dirty workshops? If we do I trust
that we shall be disappointed. These men who have
fought so nobly for their land, and who have tasted,
even under the most trying conditions, something of
the largeness and gladness of a free open-air life,
will, I hope, refuse to knuckle down again to the
old commercialism. Now at last arises the opportunity
for our outworn Civilization to make a fresh start.
Now comes the chance to establish great self-supporting
Colonies in our own countrysides and co-operative
concerns where real Goods may be manufactured and
Agriculture carried on in free and glad and healthy
industry.
COMMERCIAL PROSPERITY THE PROSPERITY OF A CLASS
The economics of the statement that “commercial
prosperity means little more than the prosperity of
a class"[24] may be roughly indicated by the
following considerations: International trade
means division of labour among the nations. There
is certainly a gain in such division, a margin of
advantage in production; and that gain, that margin,
is secured by the trading class. That is all.
Let us take an example, and to simplify the problem
let us leave out of account those exotic products—like
tea or rubber or raw cotton—which can
only be produced in one of the exchanging countries.
Let us take the case of Germany and England, both
producing cutlery and both producing cloth. There
is no reason why each country should not produce both
articles exclusively for its own use; and as a matter
of fact for a long time they did so. But presently
it was found that the cost of production of certain
kinds of cutlery was less in Germany, and the cost
of production of certain kinds of cloth less in England.
Merchants and dealers came in and effected the exchange,
and so an intertrade has sprung up. The effect
of this on the workers in England is simply to transfer
a certain amount of employment from the cutlery trade
to the cloth trade, and on the workers in Germany
to transfer an equal amount from the cloth trade to
the cutlery trade. This may mean dislocation of
industry; but the actual number of persons employed
or of wages received in both countries may in such
a case remain just the same as before. There
is nothing in the mere fact of exchange to alter those
figures. There is, however, a gain, there is
a marginal advantage, in the exchange; and that is
collared by the merchants and dealers. It is,
in fact, in order to secure this margin that
the merchant class arises. This is, of course,
