‘There is No Wealth But Life’

Extract

There was once a time when people who wanted to make the working life of the working man more tolerable called themselves socialists. Fourier was not concerned with industrial efficiency so much as with establishing conditions in which the worker could take a pride and pleasure in his work. Robert Owen at New Lanark was primarily concerned with improving the conditions under which his employees lived and worked, even though his expenditure on houses and schools for his workpeople may have reduced the output of his mills’ per unit costs; that is, reduced their efficiency. In his projected Villages of Co-operation he wanted to replace the plough not by the gyrotiller but by the spade because he considered that the settlement of as many people as possible on the land raised their ‘standard of living’ in the literal sense of the words even though it might not always lead to the largest possible output of consumption goods per man per hour. In later years William Morris and others reaffirmed the view that the primary purpose of socialism was not to produce the largest possible quantity of goods but to change the quality of the life of the nation, to place a full and satisfying life within the reach of all, to free the people from the narrow struggle for a living wage and teach them to value freedom and responsibility.