CHAPTER XLVIX

COMPETITION AND CO-OPERATION

(Discusses the relation of the adult to society, and the part which selfishness and unselfishness play in the development of social life.)

Pondering the subject of this chapter, I went for a stroll in the country, and seating myself in a lonely place, became lost in thought; when suddenly my eye was caught by something_moving. On the bare, hot, gray sand lay a creature that I could see when it moved and could not see when it was still, for it was exactly the color of the ground, and fitted the ground tightly, being flat, and having its edges scalloped so that they mingled with the dust. It was a lizard, covered with heavy scales, and with sharp horns to make it unattractive eating. At the slightest motion from me it vanished into a heap of stones, so quickly that my eye could scarcely follow it.

This creature, you perceive, is in its actions and its very form an expression of terror; terror of devouring enemies, of jackals that pounce and hawks that swoop, and also of the hot desert air that seeks to dry out its few precious drops of moisture. Practically all the energies of this creature are concentrated upon the securing of its own individual survival. To be sure, it will mate, but the process will be quick, and the eggs will be left for the sun to hatch out, and the baby lizards will shift for themselves-that is to say, they will be incarnations of terror from the moment they open their eyes to the light.

The jackal seeks to pounce upon the lizard, and so inspires terror in the lizard; but when you watch the jackal you find that it exhibits terror toward more powerful foes. You find that the hawk, which swoops upon the lizard, is equally quick to swoop away when it comes upon a man with a gun. This preying and being preyed upon, this mixture of cruelty and terror, is a conspicuous fact of nature; if you go into any orthodox school or college in America today, you will be taught that it is nature's most fundamental law, and governs all living things. If you should take a course in polit

ical economy under a respectable professor, you would find him explaining that such cruelty-terror applies equally in human affairs; it is the basis of all economic science, and the effort to escape from it is like the effort to lift yourself by your boot-straps.

The professor calls this cruelty-terror by the name "competition"; and he creates for his own purposes an abstract being whom he names "the economic man,' a creature who acts according to this law, and exists under these conditions. One of the professor's formulas is the so-called "Malthusian law," that population presses always upon the limits of subsistence. Another is "the law of diminishing returns of agriculture," that you can get only so much product out of a certain piece of land, no matter how much labor and capital you put into it. Another is Ricardo's "iron law of wages,' that wages cannot rise above the cost of living. Another is embodied in the formula of Adam Smith, that "Competition is the life of trade." The professor enunciates these "laws," coldly and impersonally, as becomes the scientist; but if you go into the world of business, you find them set forth cynically, in scores of maxims and witticisms: "Dog eat dog," "the devil take the hindmost," "business is business," "do others or they will do you."

Evidently, however, there is something in man which rebels against these "natural" laws. In our present society man has set aside six days in the week in which to live under them, and one day in the week in which to preach an entirely different and contradictory code that of Christian ethics, which bids you "love your neighbor," and "do unto others as you would they should do unto you." Between these Sunday teachings and the week-day teachings there is eternal conflict, and one who takes pleasure in ridiculing his fellow men can find endless opportunity here. The Sunday preachers are forbidden to interfere with the affairs of the other six days; that is called "dragging politics into the pulpit." On the other hand, incredible as it may seem, there are professors of the week-day doctrine who call themselves Christians, and believe in the Sunday doctrine, too. They manage this by putting the Sunday doctrine off into a future world; that is, we are to pounce upon one another and devour one another under the "iron laws" of economics so long as we live on earth, but in the next world we shall play on golden harps and have

nothing to do but love one another. If anybody is so foolish as to apply the Sermon on the Mount to present-day affairs, we regard him as a harmless crank; if he persists, and sets out to teach others, we call him a Communist or a Pacifist, and put him in jail for ten or twenty years.

In the Book of the Mind, I have referred to Kropotkin's "Mutual Aid as a Factor in Evolution," which I regard as one of the epoch-making books of our time. Kropotkin clearly proves that competition is not the only law of nature, it is everywhere modified by co-operation, and in the great majority of cases co-operation plays a larger part in the relations of living creatures than competition. There is no creature in existence which is entirely selfish; in the nature of the case such a creature could not exist-save in the imaginations of teachers of special privilege. If a species is to survive, some portion of the energies of the individual must go into reproduction; and steadily, as life advances, we find the amount of this sacrifice increasing. The higher the type of the creature, the longer is the period of infancy, and the greater the sacrifice of the parent for the young. Likewise, most creatures make the discovery that by staying together in herds or groups, and learning to co-operate instead of competing among themselves, they increase their chances of survival. You find birds that live in flocks, and other birds, like hawks and owls and eagles, that are solitary; and you find the co-operating birds a thousand times as numerous -that is to say, a thousand times as successful in the struggle for survival. You find that all man's brain power has been a social product; the supremacy he has won over nature has depended upon one thing and one alone-the fact that he has managed to become different from the "economic man," that product of the imagination of the defenders of privilege.

It is evident that both competition and co-operation are necessary to every individual, and the health of the individual and of the race lies in the proper combination of the two. If a creature were wholly unselfish-if it made no effort to look after its own individual welfare-it would be exterminated before it had a chance to reproduce. If, on the other hand, it cannot learn to co-operate, its progeny stand less chance of survival against creatures which have learned this important lesson. We have a nation of a 110,000,000 people, who have learned to co-operate to a certain limited extent.

Some of us realize how vastly the happiness of these millions might be increased by a further extension of co-operation; but we find ourselves opposed by the professors of privilege -and we wish that these gentlemen would go out and join the lizards of the desert sands or the sharks of the sea, creatures which really practice the system of "laissez faire" which the professors teach.

The plain truth is that we cannot make a formula out of either competition or co-operation. We cannot settle any problem of economics, of business or legislation, by proclaiming, for example, that "Competition is the life of trade." Competition may just as well turn out to be the death of trade; it depends entirely upon the kind of competition, and the stage of trade development to which it is applied. In the early eighteenth century, when that formula of Adam Smith was written, competition was observed to keep down prices and provide stimulus to enterprise, and so to further abundant production. But the time came when the machinery for producing goods was in excess, not merely of the needs of the country, but of the available foreign markets, and then suddenly the large-scale manufacturers made the discovery that competition was the death of trade to them. They proceeded, as a matter of practical common sense, and without consulting their college professors, to abolish competition by forming trusts. We passed laws forbidding them to do this, but they simply refused to obey the laws. In the United States they have made good their refusal for thirty-five years, and in the end have secured the blessing of the Supreme Court upon their course.

So now we have co-operation in large-scale production and marketing. It is known by various names, "pools," "syndicates," "price-fixing," "gentlemen's agreements." It is a blessing for those who co-operate, but it proves to be the death of those who labor, and also of those who consume, and we see these also compelled to combine, forming labor unions and consumers' societies. Each side to the quarrel insists that the other side is committing a crime in refusing to compete, and our whole social life is rent with dissensions over this issue. Manifestly, we need to clear our minds of dead doctrines; to think out clearly just what we mean by competition, and what by co-operation, and what is the proper balance between the two.

I have been at pains in this book to provide a basis for the deciding of such questions. It is a practical problem, the fostering of human life and the furthering of its development. We cannot lay down any fixed rule; we have to study the facts of each case separately. We shall say, this kind of competition is right, because it helps to protect human life and to develop its powers. We shall say, this other kind of competition is wrong because it has the opposite effect, We shall say, perhaps, that some kind was right fifty years ago, or even ten years ago, because it then had certain effects; but meantime some factor has changed, and it is now having a different effect, and therefore ought to be abolished.

There has never been any kind of human competition which men did not judge and modify in that way; there is no field of human activity in which ethical codes do not condemn certain practices as unfair. The average Englishman considers it proper that two men who get into a dispute shall pull off their coats, and settle the question at issue by pummeling each other's noses. But let one of these men strike his opponent in the groin, or let him kick his shins, and instantly there will be a howl of execration. Likewise, an Anglo-Saxon man who fights with the fists has a loathing for a Sicilian or Greek or other Mediterranean man who will pull a knife. That kind of competition is barred among our breeds; and also the kind which consists of using poisons, or of starting slanders against your opponent.

If you look back through history, you find many forms of competition which were once eminently respectable, but now have been outlawed. There was a time, for example, when the distinction we draw between piracy and sea-war was wholly unknown. The ships of the Vikings would go out and raid the ships and seaports of other peoples, and carry off booty and captives, and the men who did that were sung as heroes of the nation. The British sea-captains of the time. of Queen Elizabeth-Drake, Frobisher, and the rest of them -are portrayed in our school books as valiant and hardy men, and the British colonies were built on the basis of their activities; yet, according to the sea laws in force today, they were pirates. We regard a cannibal race with abhorrence; yet there was a time when all the vigorous races of men were cannibals, and the habit of eating your enemies in