Collectivism; Economic history; Great Britain -- Economic policy; Industrial policy; Social history; Socialism
A man has been compelled by law to put aside sums from his wages as
insurance against unemployment. But he is no longer the judge of how such
sums shall be used. They are not in his possession; they are not even in
the hands of some society which he can really control. They are in the
hands of a Government official. "Here is work offered you at twenty-five
shillings a week. If you do not take it you certainly shall not have a
right to the money you have been compelled to put aside. If you will take
it the sum shall still stand to your credit, and when next in my judgment
your unemployment is not due to your recalcitrance and refusal to labour, I
will permit you to have some of your money: not otherwise." Dovetailing in
with this machinery of compulsion is all that mass of registration and
docketing which is accumulating through the use of Labour Exchanges. Not
only will the Official have the power to enforce special contracts, or the
power to coerce individual men to labour under the threat of a fine, but he
will also have a series of _dossiers_ by which the record of each workman
can be established. No man, once so registered and known, can escape; and,
of the nature of the system, the numbers caught in the net must steadily
increase until the whole mass of labour is mapped out and controlled.
These are very powerful instruments of compulsion indeed. They already
exist. They are already a part of our laws.
Lastly, there is the obvious bludgeon of "compulsory arbitration": a
bludgeon so obvious that it is revolting even to our proletariat. Indeed, I
know of no civilised European state which has succumbed to so gross a
suggestion. For it is a frank admission of servitude at one step, and for
good and all, such as men of our culture are not yet prepared to
swallow.[11]
So much, then, for the first argument and the first form in which
compulsory labour is seen to be a direct and necessary consequence of
establishing a minimum wage and of scheduling employment to a scale.
* * * * *
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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