The existence of our blond bare-footed friend was evidence enough
that in a modern Utopia a man will be free to be just as idle or
uselessly busy as it pleases him, after he has earned the minimum
wage. He must do that, of course, to pay for his keep, to pay his
assurance tax against ill-health or old age, and any charge or debt
paternity may have brought upon him. The World State of the modern
Utopist is no state of moral compulsions. If, for example, under the
restricted Utopian scheme of inheritance, a man inherited sufficient
money to release him from the need to toil, he would be free to go
where he pleased and do what he liked. A certain proportion of men
at ease is good for the world; work as a moral obligation is the
morality of slaves, and so long as no one is overworked there is no
need to worry because some few are underworked. Utopia does not
exist as a solace for envy. From leisure, in a good moral and
intellectual atmosphere, come experiments, come philosophy and the
new departures.
In any modern Utopia there must be many leisurely people. We are all
too obsessed in the real world by the strenuous ideal, by the idea
that the vehement incessant fool is the only righteous man. Nothing
done in a hurry, nothing done under strain, is really well done. A
State where all are working hard, where none go to and fro, easily
and freely, loses touch with the purpose of freedom.
But inherited independence will be the rarest and least permanent of
Utopian facts, for the most part that wider freedom will have to be
earned, and the inducements to men and women to raise their personal
value far above the minimum wage will be very great indeed. Thereby
will come privacies, more space in which to live, liberty to go
everywhere and do no end of things, the power and freedom to
initiate interesting enterprises and assist and co-operate with
interesting people, and indeed all the best things of life. The
modern Utopia will give a universal security indeed, and exercise
the minimum of compulsions to toil, but it will offer some acutely
desirable prizes. The aim of all these devices, the minimum wage,
the standard of life, provision for all the feeble and unemployed
and so forth, is not to rob life of incentives but to change their
nature, to make life not less energetic, but less panic-stricken and
violent and base, to shift the incidence of the struggle for
existence from our lower to our higher emotions, so to anticipate
and neutralise the motives of the cowardly and bestial, that the
ambitious and energetic imagination which is man's finest quality
may become the incentive and determining factor in survival.
Section 5
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
Reviews
Reviews
No reviews yet
Be the first to share your thoughts on this work.
Elsewhere in the archive
Join the Discussion
Join the discussion
Sign in to leave a comment or review.
Sign InorCreate an account