Socialism: An Economic and Sociological Analysis
1. Migration and Differences in National Conditions
If trade were completely free, production would only take place under the most suitable conditions. Raw materials would be produced in those parts which, taking everything into account, would yield the highest product. Manufacture would be localized where the transport charges, including those necessary to place the commodities in the hands of the ultimate consumer, were at a minimum. As labour settles around the centres of production, the geographical distribution of population would necessarily adapt itself to the natural conditions of production.
Natural conditions, however, are unchanging only in a stationary economic system. The forces of change are continually transforming them. In a changing economy men migrate continually from the places where conditions are less favourable to places where they are more favourable for production. Under Capitalism the stress of competition tends to direct labour and capital to the most suitable places. In a closed socialist community the same result would have to be achieved by administrative decree. In both cases the principle would be the same: men would have to go where the conditions of life were most favourable.1
These migrations have the closest bearing upon the condition of the different nations. They cause citizens of one nation, the natural conditions of which are less favourable, to move into the territory of other nations more favourably endowed. If the conditions under which migration takes place are such that the immigrants are assimilated to their new surroundings then the nation from which they came is, to that extent, weakened in numbers. If they are such that the immigrants preserve their nationality in their new home — still more if they assimilate the original inhabitants — then the nation receiving them will find immigration a menace to its national position.
To be a member of a national minority involves multitudinous political disadvantages.2 The wider the functions of the political authority the more burdensome are these disadvantages. They are smallest in the state which is founded upon purely liberal principles. They are greatest in the state which is founded upon Socialism. The more they are felt, the greater become the efforts of each nation to protect its members from the fate of belonging to a national minority. To wax in numbers, to be a majority in rich and extensive territories these become highly desirable political aims. But this is nothing but Imperialism.3 In the last decades of the nineteenth century, and the first decades of the twentieth, the favourite weapons of Imperialism were commercial weapons—protective tariffs, prohibitions of imports, premiums on exports, freight discriminations, and the like. Less attention was paid to the use of another powerful imperialistic weapon — limitations on emigration and immigration. This is becoming more significant now. The ultima ratio of imperialism is, however, war. Beside war, all other weapons that it may use appear merely insufficient auxiliaries.
Nothing justifies us in assuming that under Socialism the disadvantages of belonging to a national minority would be diminished. On the contrary. The more the individual depended on the State — the more importance political decisions had for the life of the individual — the more would the national minority feel the political impotence to which it was condemned.
But when we are considering migration under Socialism we need not give special attention to the friction which would arise therefrom between nations. For under Socialism there must arise, even between members of one and the same nation, points of difference which make the division of the surface of the earth — which is a matter of indifference to Liberalism —a problem of cardinal importance.
