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State is preparation for large-scale homicide. It is loyalty to this
organisation for death that causes men to endure the totalitarian
State, and to risk the destruction of home and children and our
whole civilisation rather than submit to alien rule. Individual
psychology and governmental organisation have effected a tragic
synthesis, from which we and our children must suffer if we
continue powerless to find an issue except through disaster.
14
COMPETITION
The nineteenth century, which was keenly aware of the dan-
gers of arbitrary power, had a favourite device for avoiding
them, namely competition. The evils of monopoly were still
familiar from tradition. The Stuarts, and even Elizabeth, granted
profitable monopolies to courtiers, the objection to which was
one of the causes of the Civil War. In feudal times, it was
common for lords of the manor to insist upon grain being
ground in their mills. Continental monarchies, before 1848,
abounded in semi-feudal restrictions on freedom of competi-
tion. These restrictions were made, not in the interest of either
producers or consumers, but for the benefit of monarchs and
landowners. In eighteenth-century England, on the contrary,
many restrictions survived which were inconvenient both to
landowners and to capitalists for example, laws as to min-
imum wages, and prohibition of the enclosure of common
lands. In England, therefore, until the Corn Law question, land-
owners and capitalists, on the whole, agreed in advocating
laissez-faire.
competition 175
All that was most vigorous in Europe was in favour, also, of
free competition in matters of opinion. From 1815 to 1848,
Church and State, over the whole of the Continent, were united
in opposing the ideas of the French Revolution. The censor-
ship, throughout Germany and Austria, was at once severe and
ridiculous. Heine made fun of it in a chapter consisting of the
following words:
The German Censors . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
. . . . . . . idiots. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
In France and Italy, the Napoleonic legend, as well as admir-
ation of the Revolution, was the object of governmental suppres-
sion. In Spain and the States of the Church, all liberal thought,
even the mildest, was forbidden; the Pope s government still
officially believed in sorcery. The principle of nationality was
not allowed to be advocated in Italy, Germany, or Austria-
Hungary. And everywhere reaction was associated with oppos-
ition to the interests of commerce, with maintenance of feudal
rights as against the rural population, and with the support of
foolish kings and an idle nobility. In these circumstances, laissez-
faire was the natural expression of energies that were hampered in
their legitimate activities.
The freedoms desired by Liberals were achieved in America
in the moment of winning independence; in England, in the
period from 1824 to 1846; in France in 1871; in Germany by
stages from 1848 to 1918; in Italy in the Risorgimento; and even
in Russia, for a moment, in the February Revolution. But the
result was not quite what Liberals had intended; in industry,
it bore more resemblance to the hostile prophecies of Marx.
America, with the longest Liberal tradition, was the first to enter
the state of trusts, i.e. of monopolies not granted by the State,
like those of earlier times, but resulting from the natural
176 competition
operation of competition. American liberalism was outraged,
but impotent, and industrial development in other countries
gradually followed the lead given by Rockefeller. It was dis-
covered that competition, unless artificially maintained, brings
about its own extinction by leading to the complete victory of
someone among the competitors.
This, however, is not true of all forms of competition. It is
true, broadly speaking, where increase in the size of an organisa-
tion means increase of efficiency. There remain, therefore, two
questions: first, in what kinds of cases is competition technically
wasteful? Secondly, in what cases is it desirable on non-technical
grounds?
Technical considerations, broadly speaking, have led to an
increase in the optimum size of organisations suitable for deal-
ing with a given matter. In the seventeenth century, roads were
dealt with by parishes; now, they are controlled by County
Councils largely financed and supervised nationally. Electricity
can be best utilised by an authority controlling a considerable
area, particularly where there is some important source of
power, such as Niagara. Irrigation may demand a work like the
Aswan dam, of which the expense is prohibitive unless the area
controlled is very large. The economies of large-scale production
depend upon control of a market sufficient to absorb an
enormous output. And so on.
There are other directions in which the advantages of large
areas have not yet been fully utilised. Elementary education
might be enlivened and improved by government educational
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