It is needless to multiply illustrations of this kind further; for my object is not to show that the state, as it exists at present, is necessarily inimical to private enterprise as a whole. It is not, for it has not the power to be. But the fact that even now, when its powers are so strictly limited and its points of direct contact with industrial enterprise are so few, tendencies of the kind develop themselves with such marked practical consequences is enough to show the reality and magnitude of the evils which would ensue if a body, which reflected on the one hand the opinions of the average many, and on the other the individual ability of a few, specially privileged and pledged to their own methods, were the sole controller of all manual labour whatsoever, the virtual owner of all the implements which exist at present, the sole determiner of the forms which such implements shall assume in the future, and also of the kinds and quantities of the consumable goods which the implements and the labourers together shall from day to day produce.
But the nature and scope of the effects which would be incident to any general absorption, such as that contemplated by socialists, of productive enterprise by the state, will be yet more clearly seen if we turn to a kind of production on which I have dwelt already, as affording the simplest and most luminous example possible of the respective parts played in the modern world by ordinary manual labour and the exceptional ability which directs it. This is the case of books, or of other printed publications. Many years ago the English radical Charles Bradlaugh urged in a debate with a then prominent socialist that under socialism no literary expression of free thought would be practicable, and I cannot do more than accentuate his lucid and unanswerable arguments. The state, being controller of all the implements of production, a private press would be as illegal as the dies used by a forger. Nobody could issue a book, a newspaper, or even a leaflet, unless the use of a state press were allowed him by the state authorities, together with the disposal of the labour of the requisite number of compositors. Now, it is clear that the state could not bind itself to put presses and compositors at the service of every one of its citizens who was anxious to see himself in print. There would have to be selection and rejection of some drastic kind. The state would have to act as universal publisher's reader. What would happen under these circumstances to purely imaginative literature we need not here inquire; but when the question was one of expressing controversial opinions as to science, religion, morals, and especially social politics, what would happen is evident. The state would be able to refuse, and it could not do otherwise than refuse, to print anything which expressed opinions out of harmony with those which were predominant among its own members. In so far as these members reflected the opinions of the majority, they would never publish an attack on errors which they themselves accepted as vital truths. In so far as they owed their positions to certain real or supposed superiorities they would never publish any criticism of their own methods by men whom they would necessarily regard as mischievous and mistaken inferiors. In short, whether the state acted in this matter as the ultra-superior person, or as the ultra-popular person, the result would be just the same. The focalised prejudices of the majority, or the privileged self-confidence of a certain select minority, would deprive independent thought in any other quarter of any means of expressing itself either by book or journal, and by thus depriving it of its voice would place it at an artificial disadvantage more effectual as a means of repression than the dungeons of the Inquisition itself. It would be checked as completely as the higher criticism of the Bible would have been if the only printer in the whole world were the Pope and the only publishing business were managed by the College of Cardinals.