THOUGHTS ON THE TESTAMENT OF JOHN SCOTT HAXDANE 



system and the old liberal conception of the freedom of the worker 

 to sell his labour in the market for whatever wages, such contacts 

 are not classified. Whether they are beneficial or lethal does not 

 matter in capitalist society. Haldane might well have considered 

 this. 



But it was the direction of his thought. His good instinct was shown 

 as follows: — "It is not with scientific abstractions called 'labour' and 

 'capital' that British mining engineers have to work, but with their 

 fellow-countrymen, their own flesh and blood. These fellow-countrymen 

 will give loyal and efficient service, will face any danger, will forgive 

 real or imagined mistakes, and will take the rough with the smooth, 

 the bad times with the good; but what they will not tolerate is being 

 treated as if they were mere tools, to be cast aside without compunc- 

 tion." Haldane went on to speak of the comradeship which often 

 existed between all ranks in the First World War, and of the "com- 

 radeship taught in the Gospels." His good instinct was clearly in- 

 adequately backed by political insight. All the remedy he could 

 propose for the evil effects of his materialism was "effective and 

 sympathetic contact between the head management and the men 

 employed." No glimmering of an idea that there might be something 

 wrong about the basic relationship of master and man, of owner and 

 labourer. No suggestion that such relationships belong to the category 

 of exploitation, that productive machinery should not be in private 

 hands at all. No appreciation of the vast difference in material and 

 spiritual goods, advantages and privileges, which separates the mine- 

 owner from the pitman. So deeply engrained in a middle-class scholar 

 are the convictions of upbringing, the belief that classes are a natural 

 phenomenon as inevitable as the tides or the weather. And we see 

 how the natural instincts of so admirable a man as Haldane lead to a 

 philosophy quite suitable for fascism. His recommendation that direct 

 contact between master and man was the main need of our time is a 

 piece of mediaevalism, a retrograde step, an invitation to fascism 

 because it plainly conserves the stratification of classes. Back to the 

 master-craftsman and his journeymen subordinates. The air resounds 

 with such slogans. Back, said Sir Josiah Stamp (at a British Association 

 meeting) to a lesser production of goods and inventions.^ A halt 

 must be called to science. Back to the pre-war period, said the German 

 Nationalists. Back beyond the Renaissance, say Spann and the "German 



^ Qualified a good deal, it is true, in his later Science of Social Adjustment (London, 

 1937)- 



