Hobson, ‘Society’ and Ruskin
Hobson had to accept that there were problems in meshing the needs of the individual and of society in what would remain in large measure a capitalist system. Machinery might lighten toil, and the conditions of work and pay in socialised industries would be much improved in the New Liberal welfare state, but it would still be the case that large numbers of people would be condemned to work which could offer little direct satisfaction.
Also, since Hobson admitted that human beings varied greatly in natural abilities, equality was impossible. Equality of opportunity, encouraged by better education, would make it easier for many more people to attain qualifications for skilled and professional work. This would reduce differentials in pay dramatically and Hobson once claimed that, given equal opportunities, there was no reason why the pay of a bricklayer should be less than a doctor's. But usually he admitted the need for differential pay and also confessed that if people with rare skills in high demand insisted on demanding what the Fabians called ‘rents of ability' then society would have to pay them. It was also the case, Hobson believed, that ‘brainworkers' had greater consumption needs than mere manual workers and had to be paid more (Hobson 1914, 167-70). Shavian equality was not acceptable in a New Liberal world (Collini 1979, 134-6).So, given that the lust for material things was so strong, how would people become reconciled to participating in this new society in which inequalities were reduced but not removed and much work was still unpleasant? Ruskin had assumed a return to a more hierarchical and deferential society in which status differences and unequal life chances were naturally accepted; but this was clearly hopelessly out of date and conflicted with the liberal tradition Hobson inherited. Morris - as Hobson rather sharply observed (Hobson 1904, 306-7) - had wished the problem away, rather than solved it, by assuming an anarchic equality and a community from which machinery was largely removed.
The problems of inequality and the class divisions and conflicts to which it gave rise had, of course, exercised liberal thinkers long before Hobson. What Green, Mill and Spencer had hoped to see was the spontaneous growth of what was called ‘altruism', an increasing consciousness of the interdependence of society which, it was assumed, would induce people to behave with greater awareness of the social benefits and consequences of their actions and modify their behaviour accordingly (Collini 1991, esp. ch. 2). Hobson took this line of thinking much further by postulating that society was an organism with a life of its own, independent of the individuals who composed it, and that the individuals within society would lead fulfilling lives the more they could recognise that. At this juncture, Hobson developed the notion that society was an organism to a point where few of his liberal colleagues could follow him (Hobhouse 1964, 68). There is also a strong possibility that, in moving so far in this direction, he was, whether consciously or not, still under Ruskin's influence.
Hobson admitted that the ‘growing recognition on the part of individual workers, that the structure of society establishes a strong community of interests, will no doubt supply some incentive to each to do his fair share to the necessary work'. But that might not be sufficient to rouse ‘the selfishness or sluggishness of feebler personalities'. Then in a passage which shows the influence of both Ruskin's argument that the prestige of different occupations should be measured by the extent to which they served a social cause rather than pursue gain and of Hobson's own brand of evolutionary Idealism, he claimed that ‘the social will means more than the addition of separately stimulated individual wills’ and went on to claim that it would in future inspire an ‘esprit de corps, a corporate spirit of service capable... of evoking an enormous volume of united effort’ and ‘stimulating those that are weaker and raising them to a decent level of effort, reducing dissension, and importing conscious unity of action into the complex processes of cooperation’ (Hobson 1914, 302-3).
Hobson applied this reasoning directly to the mechanised industries which would be socialised in the new commonwealth.
Here he was thinking along the same lines as Ruskin when the latter argued that, to be regarded as honourable men, capitalists would have to show the same devotion to the public good as the military and other professions were capable of (Ruskin XVII, 36-9). Hobson went further, claiming that what was merely routine or dull or distasteful from the standpoint of the mere individual might be full of ‘interest and variety’ to Society conceived as an entity in itself. ‘Once we accept the view of Society not as a mere set of social institutions, or a network of relations, but as a collective personality, the great routine industrial processes become the vital functions of this collective being, interesting to that being alike in their performance and their product’ (Hobson 1914, 306).Individuals were to Society as individual cells were to the human body. The whole was greater than the parts: but, Hobson pointed out, it was only at this stage of evolution, when mind was becoming conscious of itself, that it was possible to grasp the significance of that. He believed that it was because people now had an inkling of this wider social will that they were willing to accept limitations on their own activities when they recognised that they were motivated by selfishness. Once it was realised that Society ‘has a unity and a life of its own... the so-called sacrifices we are called upon to make for the larger life will be considered no longer encroachments on but enlargements of our personality’. And it was vital that people should come to recognise Society in this way because this is ‘the spirit of social reform’. Reform would be an impossibility if Society were thought of as merely an abstraction. ‘For an abstraction is incapable of calling forth our reverence, regard and love. And until we attribute to Society such a form and degree of “personality” as can evoke in us those interests and emotions which personality alone can win, the social will not be able to perform great works’ (Hobson 1914, 309).
How does this square with Hobson’s repeated insistence, derived from both Ruskin and his liberal predecessors, on the need for individuality of imaginative and artistic expression in the unfolding social drama? There is no doubt that Hobson thought that free expression was a necessary part of social progress and he frequently worried, for example, that the municipal provision of libraries and other amenities, however generally desirable, might inhibit individual effort. He was also concerned to argue that, as social reform took place, the share of publicly directed enterprise in total output would not increase. However, there can be no doubt that Hobson promoted the idea of individuality of expression and enterprise not for its own sake but because it was conducive to the healthy growth of his ideal society. He remained adamant that the ‘rights and interests of society are paramount: they override all claims of individuals to liberties which contravene them' (Hobson 1914, 303-4).
Hobson's liberal Hegelianism may seem very remote from Ruskin's own view of organic society, but the kind of super-entity that Hobson described here may actually have been influenced by Ruskin's vision of the elite-run state. For that, ultimately, owed its moral authority to the fact that its source of power and inspiration was a Christian God who, while granting mankind a high degree of creative freedom, also demanded worship, obedience and humility as the price of that freedom. It is in that context that Ruskin considered how society might view the low-grade, even humiliating, tasks that had to be done even in his new moral world. For, if undertaken in a certain spirit, ‘such work might be the holiest of all'. And he called on men and women to live by the Christianity they professed and to ‘adopt some disagreeable and despised, but thoroughly useful, trade' for the sake of the community (Ruskin XVII, 407). From that perspective, Hobson's ‘Society' was the secular and evolutionary equivalent of Ruskin's Christian commonwealth.
2.5