Rotting Hill (12 page)

    “You are wrong in regarding this book in the way you do. Everybody
knows
that this next war will be an even greater crime than the last—though there is no war that
somebody
does not think he is going to get something out of.”

    “You
certainly
are correct about that!”

    “Yes. But although everyone except that
somebody
to whom I referred, loathes the prospect of this lunatic blood-bath-in-the-making, we go about averting it in a very half-hearted way.”

    “Have you heard of the Congress Against War?” he enquired. I did not say: “But that is partisan. That would not remove the causes of war—all it seeks to do is to secure immunity to an aggressor for all the ‘peaceful penetrations’, guerrilla wars, coups d’état, etcetera, that one of the parties wishes to indulge in”: instead of this I proceeded with my argument.

    “An influential minority in every nation, and in
this
nation at present a majority, are agreed that economic collectivism, in some form, is necessary, and certain very soon to be realized everywhere. Russia has such a system; in this country another variety is being developed. Mr. Truman’s ‘welfare state’ policy—his Fair Deal following on the New Deal—is a first step towards economic collectivism. It may be at some distance yet, but the G.O.P., the Republican elephant, is finished. Let me say that it would be hypocritical for a man like myself to express enthusiasm for multitudinous politics
tel quel.
But industrial conditions and the massive populations ensuing upon them impose such politics. The small world of Jefferson or Locke was more human (but do not quote me as pointing approvingly at its economics—only at its size!). But this monster is here—and socialism of some variety, as much in America as here, is the appropriate political technique.”

    At the mention of Mr. Truman a sardonic grin fixed itself on his face. I stopped and looked at him. “Go on?” he said.

    “As to an international political community, that is a subject upon which, unfortunately, the intelligent minority is divided. We will not talk about that. In this book,” and I placed my hand on the
Unesco
symposium, “human rights is described as the ‘king-pin’ among contemporary issues. I am sure that it is.
Unesco
has laid out side by side, as it were, the competing theories—for the U.S.S.R. as much as the U.S.A. is of opinion that human beings
do
possess ‘rights’. The quarrel is as to what kind of ‘rights’ are the essential ones.

    “These ‘rights’ are of two classes. One class we refer to as
political rights
—the other—the so-called ‘new rights’—are the
economic and social rights.

    “The first class, the Political Rights, are the traditional rights familiar to Englishmen—those derived from the classical individualist conception of man, as a being inherently entitled to a number of rights.

    “These Western rights are the earlier—the best known of these rights and privileges are, of course, free speech, freedom of assembly, freedom of movement, freedom to work where and how you please, the protection given by the writ of
habeas corpus.
Those are the
Political
rights.

    “The socialist view is that these rights are empty. You may have heard the old French jingle:

    “
Liberté de ne rien faire

    
Egalité en misère

    and so on. It was a reactionary rhyme, directed against the slogans of the French Revolution. It exactly expresses, however, the present-day socialist criticism, directed against the same group of ‘rights’ as was the reactionary rhyme.

    “The second class of ‘rights’, the economic and social rights, are specifically socialist rights. They are the kind of which the Health Insurance Bills of Lloyd George and Bevan are a recognition. The right to be cared for when sick and when old, to be suitably born and buried: and then there is the right to a proper education, the right to full, adequately remunerated, employment. Such are the
economic and social rights
—the ‘newness’ of which Mr. Maritain, I think unsuccessfully, contests in his excellent introduction. Whether it has always been recognized that men are entitled to these advantages, or not, such recognition to the socially awakened mind of our day appears a minimum requirement—and the second class of ‘rights’ must, of course, be joined to the already existing political rights.

    “I agree with the Russian criticism, that political rights without economic and social rights are very imperfect. I agree with Dr. Johnson (the great lexicographer) that
habeas corpus
is the only one of the classical English ‘rights’ which,
by itself,
is worth boasting about (how he put it was that it was the only liberty possessed by the English not possessed by other nations. According to world standards there has always been a great deal of liberty in Europe). But…”

    I stopped for a moment and looked at my companion, and before he moved into the gap I continued.

    “… I hope you have followed what I have said—but I am bound to disagree with the communist philosophy when it implies or contends that
economic and social rights
are all that is required. No ‘rights’ are worth having
without political rights.
There is no right you could give me I would exchange for the right to speak freely and to move about freely. Remove these rights from me, which are called
political,
and I certainly should not be consoled by being tucked up in bed every night by a state-nurse, given perpetual employment; being examined weekly free of charge by a state-doctor and state-dentist, given state-pills and state-teeth, and finally by being buried in a state-grave. Those
by themselves
are slave-rights. The man who barters his liberty for a set of false teeth and a pair of rimless spectacles is a fool. In the slave days of the southern states of the U.S. all sensible slave-owners took good care of their slaves—saw that they came into the world without mishap, did not die if possible when they got ill, and that finally they were decently buried. In antiquity the Romans and the Greeks did not find it necessary to draw up a Bill of Rights of
that
sort: they cared for their slaves as a matter of course.

    “So that second class of rights
alone
I reject. And if these ‘new rights’ are to be regarded as
substitutes
for political rights, as apparently they are, let us not be taken in by the word ‘new’. Of course it is a
new
thing to call the care one naturally bestows upon a slave, or upon a horse or a dog, a right!”

    My travelling companion, who had been scornfully lolling back with a disdainful smile while I had, with prudent care, sorted out the
rights
and labelled them in their respective historical compartments for him, now had sat up and was practically baring his teeth. The dialectical torrent was seething behind his dental plate.

    “One moment!” I cried, holding up my hand. “There is one piece in this book to which I would like to draw your attention—pages one hundred and fifty-one, two and three, the name of the writer is John Somerville.” I picked up the book. “He points out that the primary emphasis of the Western democratic tradition has so far been on political rights, whereas ‘the primary Soviet emphasis so far has been on social rights’. Listen. It is those words
so far
that are the saving words. And Dr. Somerville on the next page writes, ‘Our hope should be that Soviet society, as it grows, will extend its conception of human rights more and more to the political sphere, and that Western society will extend its conception of human rights more and more to the social sphere.’ And he gives excellent reasons for believing that this hope will be realized in the case of the Soviet. As to the West, in this country we are far advanced in the procuring of economic and social rights to match our political rights, and other nations will follow suit. So where is the conflict? Must we regard the state of development of Communist Russia as eternally fixed? As we rapidly develop, will not Russia develop too—as it has already, up to and beyond the 1936 Constitution? Cannot the Russians, if they are sincere, allow us a little time to draw level with them in one category of human rights, to develop our collectivist economy, though upon our own lines: and should we take it for granted that their citizens will
always
be as politically unfree as at present they are? What will be the motive for this war anyway that is being so busily prepared? Will it be the old motives, disputes about territory, about markets, about power? Is it not possible to reconcile Eastern and Western democracy?”

    My fellow traveller to Oxford as I stopped burst in with angry impetuosity.

    “Where your pretty plan of kissing and making friends breaks down is right at the start. You are wrong from the word go about the ‘new rights’. They
are
new. Russian democracy postulates a totally different conception of human life. It is a totally new civilization—a Russian communist’s nervous system, his entire cerebration, is upon a different plane to that of a Western democrat. It is impossible to compare, even, Western and Soviet ways of feeling—they are unrelated upon any level. It would be no use speaking to a contemporary Russian about
rights
in the Soviet being defective in the Western sense—he would not understand what
rights
of our sort mean. A Russian would have no use whatever for political rights. Why should he? The Western conception of political ‘rights’ and civil liberties came into being to enable the capitalist to do what he liked, freely and without interference, with the worker and with the coloured ‘native’. Political rights gave him a free hand, that is what
liberty
means in the Western sense. ‘Free enterprise’ is freedom to exploit.

    “Charles I of England deserved what he got—but it was not the people who executed him for his crimes, it was as big criminals as himself. The Merchant Adventurers and other seventeenth century monopolists plotted to get him put out of the way—out of
their
way. They also rigged the building up of a code of defensive ‘rights’ behind which to operate. Political freedom is individualist freedom. The Russian does not want to be an
individual.
No thank you! the Russian would say. I don’t want to have the ‘right’ to be an individual and to
starve.
I wish to be an integral social being. The socialist organization of the national economy produces a new kind of individual, one who ceases to be an individual in your sense, so I should not know what to do with the anarchic liberties of
your
individuals. That’s what the Russian would say! Our liberation from capitalist slavery, he’d say, that is
my
liberty—the abolition of private ownership of the instruments and means of production has put me beyond the need of your protections. My body is part of the socialist body, what can
habeas corpus
mean to me? That was invented to protect an individualist against a King. There are no Kings and no individuals of that sort in Soviet Russia. Your ‘hope’, my dear sir, of a ‘development’, as you call it, of the communist philosophy towards individualism, and its corresponding ‘rights’, makes me laugh. I’m sorry.”

    “Thank you,” I said, “for explaining my error so fully.”

    “Not at all.”

    “You talk as Boris Tchechko writes,” I told him amiably.

    “That’s an insult!” he expostulated. “P’raps you don’t know it but that’s an insult! Tchechko’s an agent of the U.S. government. I have never read such dirty tripe as his. That
would
be the kind of phoney
expert
they would get to explain the ‘Russian point of view’ to people.”

    “I know nothing about that.”

    “I hope you don’t. Yes, it’s a
very good book.
A
very
good book! Good for whom?”

    “If what you say is true, it is unfortunate. But such criticism of the experts selected does not affect what I was saying. Such a publication is of great value unless you wish to banish reason from the scene altogether. To know what a war would be
about
is of some importance.

    “Irreconcilable ideologies, sooner or later, would attack one another. But when I look around me, in this country, and see a socialist state being rapidly built up, the leaders of which are by no means fundamentally opposed to Soviet Russia—even inclined to imitate it—then I cannot for the life of me see why England should go to war with Russia, or Russia with England, except for
imperialist
reasons. And what would socialism be doing with imperialism? That is a horrible perversion. In the past it has been inherently and essentially international—from my standpoint that has been its strongest card. The moment it ceases to be international, it becomes national-socialism—a most perverse theory of the state.”

    “You have forgotten the U.S.!”—with a sour smile he reminded me. “You didn’t mention that!”

    “No, I have not forgotten it at all. The New Deal, and now the Fair Deal is killing capitalism in the U.S. slowly but surely. The United States will not go communist. Why should it? There is a danger that
this
country may. Unfortunately in England socialism has taken over a ruined society, drifting towards conditions of want and helplessness, which makes the problem more like that confronting Lenin than it would have been possible to believe twenty years ago. What we must fear here is that although the English people acquire those economic and social rights which were not there before, they may in the process
lose
the political rights, without which the economic and social rights are a fraud.”

    “We must
fear,
must we…” he was beginning, when a tall man considerably his junior stuck his head in at the door.