The proletarian mind feels every incentive to spending what it earns and no incentive to saving, just as it has no direct incentive to work save for the necessity of keeping alive: and livelihood which is, in social justice, no more than his due. Is not the product of his own choice and effort, but is doled out to him by another.
His ideal can only be to get as much as possible for as little effort as possible. In pursuing that ideal his capitalist master set him the example; for the owners who in a capitalist state (that is, a proletarian society) are a privileged minority. They live by profit and by obtaining as much as possible for as little effort as possible—often with no effort beyond the gambler’s effort.
The proletarian mind is not conscious of duties to the commonwealth, save, still, in one particular, that of patriotism; and even that is growing weaker with the proletariat as proletarian conditions grow weaker with the proletariat as proletarian conditions grow more hopelessly permanent.
Far worse spiritual consequences follow. The proletarian mind loses the sense of home. For a proletariat has no roots. It drifts from place to place. Its habitation is “the labor market.” It inherits nothing and has no hope of handing on anything to posterity. To tell the plain truth, the proletarian mind despairs. So do the minds of its masters, for the evil we do others bears fruit in ourselves.
The proletarian mind cannot but fall into hatred of its oppressor and that hatred is enhanced by the contempt of which it feels itself to be unjustly the victim.
In such a mood how is it possible for men to enjoy leisure, to keep their sense of beauty and to exercise the Arts? The whole thing is inhuman.
Meanwhile the privileged owners live in dread of falling into the proletarian condition. That catastrophe lies before them on every occasion and this dread affects especially those who think wrongfully to benefit by the suffering of their fellow men.
The proletarian mind easily adheres to the profession of democracy. It will acclaim leaders who talk of democracy. But it is incapable of democratic action. It has forgotten what it was to be free. That is why modern industrial capitalism, as it is called (but we know that its true name is “proletarianism”) more and more in one country after another accepts a despot and under whatever name the despot is labeled looks to it for salvation from its misery.
There has never been such a mood before in the history of the world and of it nature it cannot endure, but in passing it may breed something worse still. Never before has there been a social system based upon destitution combined with political freedom; upon free citizens lacking economic freedom.
Note particularly that the worst feature in the whole affair is the lack of human bonds. To a man who has not experience of anything but the modern social injustice and who is filled with bitterness, the strength and value of a human bond, of loyalty, affection, neighborly custom between the poorer and the wealthier man can mean nothing. But to those who have experience of such human bonds, they mean everything.
It is not too late now to attempt a restoration of the old loyalties and personal contacts and long domestic familiarity which humanized and modified and made tolerable the older inequalities among men. When we come to speak of restoring better things we shall not begin by taking the proletarian mind for granted, we shall rather begin by aiming at destroying that mind and substituting for it conditions of economic freedom and the free mind of the free man.
~Hilaire Belloc: The Way Out, excerpt from Chap. 10.
