The Problem of China

form of State Socialism, or what Lenin calls State Capitalism. They will keep a dossier of every student educated in colleges under American control, and will probably see to it that those who profess Socialist or Radical opinions shall get no posts. They will insist upon the standard of hypocrisy which led them to hound out Gorky when he visited the United States. They will destroy beauty and substitute tidiness. In short, they will insist upon China becoming as like as possible to "God's own country," except that it will not be allowed to keep the wealth generated by its industries. The Chinese have it in them to give to the world a new contribution to civilization as valuable as that which they gave in the past. This would be prevented by the domination of the Americans, because they believe their own civilization to be perfect. The ideal of capitalism, if it could be achieved, would be to destroy competition among capitalists by means of Trusts, but to keep alive competition among workers. To some extent Trade Unionism has succeeded in diminishing competition among wage-earners within the advanced industrial countries; but it has only intensified the conflict between workers of different races, particularly between the white and yellow races.[92] Under the existing economic system, the competition of cheap Asiatic labour in America, Canada or Australia might well be harmful to white labour in those countries. But under Socialism an influx of industrious, skilled workers in sparsely populated countries would be an obvious gain to everybody. Under Socialism, the immigration of any person who produces more than he or she consumes will be a gain to every other individual in the community, since it increases the wealth per head. But under capitalism, owing to competition for jobs, a worker who either produces much or consumes little is the natural enemy of the others; thus the system makes for inefficient work, and creates an opposition between the general interest and the individual interest of the wage-earner. The case of yellow labour in America and the British Dominions is one of the most unfortunate instances of the artificial conflicts of interest produced by the capitalist system. This whole question of Asiatic immigration, which is liable to cause trouble for centuries to come, can only be radically solved by Socialism, since Socialism alone can bring the private interests of workers in this matter into harmony with the interests of their nation and of the world. The concentration of the world's capital in a few nations, which, by means of it, are able to drain all other nations of their wealth, is obviously not a system by which permanent peace can be secured except through the complete subjection of the poorer nations. In the long run, China will see no reason to leave the profits of industry in the hands of foreigners. If, for the present, Russia is successfully starved into submission to foreign capital, Russia also will, when the time is ripe, attempt a new rebellion against the world-empire of finance. I cannot see, therefore, any establishment of a stable world-system as a result of the syndicate formed at Washington. On the contrary, we may expect that, when Asia has thoroughly assimilated our economic system, the Marxian class-war will break out in the form of a war between Asia and the West, with America as the protagonist of capitalism, and Russia as the champion of Asia and Socialism. In such a war, Asia would be fighting for freedom, but probably too late to preserve the distinctive civilizations which now make Asia valuable to the human family. Indeed, the war would probably be so devastating that no civilization of any sort would survive it. To sum up: the real government of the world is in the hands of the big financiers, except on questions which rouse passionate public interest. No doubt the exclusion of Asiatics from America and the Dominions is due to popular pressure, and is against the interests of big finance. But not many questions rouse so much popular feeling, and among them only a few are sufficiently simple to be incapable of misrepresentation in the interests of the capitalists. Even in such a case as Asiatic immigration, it is the capitalist system which causes the anti-social interests of wage-earners and makes them illiberal. The existing system makes each man's individual interest opposed, in some vital point, to the interest of the whole. And what applies to individuals applies also to nations; under the existing economic system, a nation's interest is seldom the same as that of the world at large, and then only by accident. International peace might conceivably be secured under the present system, but only by a combination of the strong to exploit the weak. Such a combination is being attempted as the outcome of Washington; but it can only diminish, in the long run, the little freedom now enjoyed by the weaker nations. The essential evil of the present system, as Socialists have pointed out over and over again, is production for profit instead of for use. A man or a company or a nation produces goods, not in order to consume them, but in order to sell them. Hence arise competition and exploitation and all the evils, both in internal labour problems and in international relations. The development of Chinese commerce by capitalistic methods means an increase, for the Chinese, in the prices of the things they export, which are also the things they chiefly consume, and the artificial stimulation of new needs for foreign goods, which places China at the mercy of those who supply these goods, destroys the existing contentment, and generates a feverish pursuit of purely material ends. In a socialistic world, production will be regulated by the same authority which represents the needs of the consumers, and the whole business of competitive buying and selling will cease. Until then, it is possible to have peace by submission to exploitation, or some degree of freedom by continual war, but it is not possible to have both peace and freedom. The success of the present American policy may, for a time, secure peace, but will certainly not secure freedom for the weaker nations, such as Chinese. Only international Socialism can secure both; and owing to the stimulation of revolt by capitalist oppression, even peace alone can never be secure until international Socialism is established throughout the world. FOOTNOTES: [86] The interests of England, apart from the question of India, are roughly the same as those of America. Broadly speaking, British interests are allied with American finance, as against the pacifistic and agrarian tendencies of the Middle West. [87] It is interesting to observe that, since the Washington Conference, the American Administration has used the naval ratio there agreed upon to induce Congress to consent to a larger expenditure on the navy than would otherwise have been sanctioned. Expenditure on the navy is unpopular in America, but by its parade of pacifism the Government has been enabled to extract the necessary money out of the pockets of reluctant taxpayers. See The Times' New York Correspondent's telegram in The Times of April 10, 1922; also April 17 and 22. [88] See Chamberlain, The Invention of a New Religion, published by the Rationalist Press Association. [89] See Murdoch, History of Japan, I. pp. 500 ff. [90] An excellent account of these is given in The Socialist and Labour Movement in Japan, by an American Sociologist, published by the Japan Chronicle. [91] Author of a book called If Japan and America Fight. [92] The attitude of white labour to that of Asia is illustrated by the following telegram which appeared in The Times for April 5, 1922, from its Melbourne correspondent: "A deputation of shipwrights and allied trades complained to Mr. Hughes, the Prime Minister, that four Commonwealth ships had been repaired at Antwerp instead of in Australia, and that two had been repaired in India by black labour receiving eight annas (8d.) a day. When the deputation reached the black labour allegation Mr. Hughes jumped from his chair and turned on his interviewers with, 'Black labour be damned. Go to blithering blazes. Don't talk to me about black labour.' Hurrying from the room, he pushed his way through the deputation...." I do not generally agree with Mr. Hughes, but on this occasion, deeply as I deplore his language, I find myself in agreement with his sentiments, assuming that the phrase "black labour be damned" is meant to confer a blessing.