A history of socialism
Date: 2024-07-09T00:00:00+00:00
Keywords: Socialism -- History; Communism -- History

The Project Gutenberg eBook of A history of socialism

This ebook is for the use of anyone anywhere in the United States and most other parts of the world at no cost and with almost no restrictions whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included with this ebook or online at www.gutenberg.org. If you are not located in the United States, you will have to check the laws of the country where you are located before using this eBook.

Title: A history of socialism

Author: Thomas Kirkup

Release date: July 9, 2024 [eBook #73997]

Language: English

Original publication: London: Adam and Charles Black

Credits: Sean, an independent e-book maker in Canada (ttd ali at yahoo com)

*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK A HISTORY OF SOCIALISM ***

A

HISTORY OF SOCIALISM

BY

THOMAS KIRKUP

FOURTH EDITION, REVISED AND ENLARGED

LONDON

ADAM AND CHARLES BLACK

1909

First Edition, | published | October 1892
Second Edition, | ” | January 1900
Third Edition, | ” | November 1906
Fourth Edition, | ” | February 1909

TABLE OF CONTENTS

Preface | v
Chapter I: Introduction | 1
Chapter II: Early French Socialism | 22
Chapter III: French Socialism of 1848 | 41
Chapter IV: Early English Socialism | 58
Chapter V: Ferdinand Lassalle | 73
Chapter VI: Rodbertus | 123
Chapter VII: Karl Marx | 130
Chapter VIII: The International | 168
Chapter IX: The German Social Democracy | 197
Chapter X: Anarchism | 237
Chapter XI: The Purified Socialism | 273
Chapter XII: Socialism and the Evolution Theory | 294
Chapter XIII: Recent Progress of Socialism | 311
Chapter XIV: Tendencies Towards Socialism | 345
Chapter XV: The Prevalent Socialism | 363
Chapter XVI: Conclusion | 395
Appendix | 421
Index | 429

PREFACE

The aim of the present book is twofold: to set forth the leading phases of the historic socialism, and to attempt a criticism and interpretation of the movement as a whole. In this edition the changes in the history are concerned chiefly with the revival of the International, which, since the Stuttgart Congress in 1907, may be regarded as an accomplished fact.

I have made it no part of my plan to dwell on details. The interest and significance of the history of socialism will be found, not in its details and accidents, but in the development of its cardinal principles, which I have endeavoured to trace. Readers desirous of detail must be referred to the writings of the various socialists, or to works that treat of special phases of the movement. Yet I hope that the statement of the leading theories is sufficiently clear and adequate to enable the reader to form his own judgment of the highly controversial matters involved in the history of socialism. I may add that in every case my account is drawn from an extensive study of the sources. These sources I have given both in the text and in footnotes. For the more recent development of the subject, however, the material is derived from such a multitude of books, pamphlets, periodicals, and journals, as well as from personal inquiry and observation, that it has not been found practicable to indicate them.

But the purely historical part of such a work is far from being the most difficult. The real difficulty begins when we attempt to form a clear conception of the meaning and significance of the socialistic movement, to indicate its place in history, and the issues to which it is tending. In the concluding chapters I have made such an attempt. The good reader who takes the trouble to go so far through my book can accept my contribution to a hard problem for what it is worth. He may at least feel assured that it is no hasty and ill-considered effort which is placed before him. The present volume grew out of the articles on socialism published in the ninth edition of the Encyclopædia Britannica. The views advocated there were first set forth in my Inquiry into Socialism, published in 1887. In this edition of the History they have in some points received such expansion and modification as time and repeated, self-criticism have suggested. I beg particularly to invite the attention of the reader to the last two chapters, in which the present position of socialism and its relation to some contemporary questions, such as those of Empire, are set forth.

To all thoughtful and discerning men it should now be clear that the solution of the social question is the great task which has been laid upon the present epoch in the history of the world. Socialism grew to be a very important question during the nineteenth century; in all probability it will be the supreme question of the twentieth. No higher felicity can befall any man than to have thrown a real light on the greatest problem of his time; and to have utterly failed is no disgrace. In such a cause it is an honour even to have done efficient work as a navvy or hodman.

For help with the notes on the recent progress of socialism I wish to express special obligations to Mr. H. W. Lee, secretary of the Social Democratic Party, to Mr. J. R. Macdonald, M.P., secretary of the Labour Party, and to Mr. E. R. Pease, secretary of the Fabian Society.

London, February 1909.

A HISTORY OF SOCIALISM

INTRODUCTION

Though much has been said and written about socialism for many years, it still remains a questionable name which awakens in the mind of the reader doubt, perplexity, and contradiction.

But there can be no question that it is a growing power throughout the world. It is hardly an exaggeration to say that the most intelligent and the best organised working-men of all civilised countries are passing over to it. The opinions which are being accepted by the foremost of the working-classes to-day will in all probability have the same attraction for their less advanced brethren to-morrow. It is a subject, however, which concerns all classes, and it is forcing to the front a wide group of problems which are every day becoming more urgent.

In view of this there is only one right and safe course; we should seek to know the truth about socialism. The discontent which tends to disturbance and revolution can be removed only by satisfying the legitimate needs and aspirations of those who suffer.

We all know that the propaganda of socialism has been attended with intemperate and violent language, with wild opinions which are often inconsistent with the first principles of social order, with revolutionary outbreaks leading to bloodshed, desolation and long-continued unrest and suspicion. These things are greatly to be deplored. But we shall be wise if we regard them as symptoms of wide-spread and deep-seated social disease. The best way to cure such disease is to study and remove the causes of it. No physician will have any success in combating a malady if he content himself with suppressing its symptoms.

For the study of socialism two things are essential on the part of the reader—good-will and the open mind. Socialism has at least a most powerful provisional claim on our good-will, that it professes to represent the cause of the sufferers in the world’s long agony, of the working-classes, of women, and of the down-trodden nations and races. If it can make any solid contribution in such a far-reaching cause it has the strongest right to be heard.

Need we say that no new movement like socialism can be understood or appreciated without some measure of the open mind? In the course of history it has been proved over and over again that established ideas and institutions are not always in the right in every respect, and that novel opinions, though presented in extravagant and intemperate language, are not always entirely wrong. Even the most prejudiced reader will do well to consider that a cause which now numbers millions of intelligent adherents, for which men have died and gladly suffered imprisonment and privation of every kind, may contain elements of truth and of well-justified hope for the future.

Above all things, it is essential to remember that socialism is not a stereotyped system of dogma. It is a movement which springs out of a vast and only partially shapen reality. It is therefore living and liable to change. It has a history on which we can look back; but it is above all things a force of the present and the future, and its influence in the future for good or evil will depend on how we the men of the present relate ourselves to it.

On the one hand, it would be a great wrong if we encouraged vain and delusive expectations; but it would be a wrong even greater, on the other hand, if from whim or prejudice or pessimism we did anything that might be an obstacle to truth and progress. In a subject so momentous the only right course is to eschew passion and prejudice, and to follow truth with goodwill and an open mind.

The word ‘socialism’ appears to have been first used in The Poor Man’s Guardian in 1833. In 1835, a society, which received the grandiloquent name of the Association of all Classes of all Nations, was founded under the auspices of Robert Owen; and the words socialist and socialism became current during the discussions which arose in connection with it.[1] As Owen and his school had no esteem for the political reform of the time, and laid all emphasis on the necessity of social improvement and reconstruction, it is obvious how the name came to be recognised as suitable and distinctive. The term was soon afterwards borrowed from England, as he himself tells us, by a distinguished French writer, Reybaud, in his well-known work the Réformateurs modernes, in which he discussed the theories of Saint-Simon, Fourier, and Owen. Through Reybaud it soon gained wide currency on the Continent, and is now the accepted world-historic name for one of the most remarkable movements of the nineteenth century.

The name was thus first applied in England to Owen’s theory of social reconstruction, and in France to those also of Saint-Simon and Fourier. The best usage has always connected it with the views of these men, and with the cognate opinions which have since appeared. But the word is used with a great variety of meaning, not only in popular speech and by politicians, but even by economists and learned critics of socialism. There is a growing tendency to regard as socialistic any interference with property undertaken by society on behalf of the poor, the limitation of the principle of laissez-faire in favour of the suffering classes, radical social reform which disturbs the present system of private property as regulated by free competition. It is probable enough that the word will be permanently used to express the change in practice and opinion indicated by these phrases, as a general name for the strong reaction that has now set in against the overstrained individualism and one-sided freedom which date from the end of the eighteenth century. The application is neither precise nor accurate; but it is use and wont that determine the meaning of words, and this seems to be the tendency of use and wont.

Even economic writers differ greatly in the meaning they attach to the word. As socialism has been most powerful and most studied on the Continent, it may be interesting to compare the definitions given by some leading French and German economists. The great German economist Roscher defines it as including ‘those tendencies which demand a greater regard for the common weal than consists with human nature.’[2] Adolf Held says that ‘we may define as socialistic every tendency which demands the subordination of the individual will to the community.’[3] Janet more precisely defines it as follows: ‘We call socialism every doctrine which teaches that the State has a right to correct the inequality of wealth which exists among men, and to legally establish the balance by taking from those who have too much in order to give to those who have not enough, and that in a permanent manner, and not in such and such a particular case—a famine, for instance, a public calamity, etc.’[4] Laveleye explains it thus: ‘In the first place, every socialistic doctrine aims at introducing greater equality in social conditions; and in the second place, at realising those reforms by the law or the State.’[5] Von Scheel simply defines it as the ‘economic philosophy of the suffering classes.’[6]

Of all these definitions it can only be said that they more or less faithfully reflect current opinion as to the nature of socialism. They are either too vague or they are misleading, and they quite fail to bring out the clear and strongly marked characteristics that distinguish the phenomena to which the name of socialism is properly applied. To say that socialism exacts a greater regard for the common weal than is compatible with human nature is to pass sentence on the movement, not to define it. In all ages of the world, and under all forms and tendencies of government and of social evolution, the will of the individual has been subordinated to the will of society, often unduly so.

It is also most misleading to speak as if socialism must proceed from the State as we know it. The early socialism proceeded from private effort and experiment. A great deal of the most notorious socialism of the present day aims not only at subverting the existing State in every form, but all the existing political and social institutions. The most powerful and most philosophic, that of Karl Marx, aimed at superseding the existing Governments by a vast international combination of the workers of all nations, without distinction of creed, colour, or nationality.

Still more objectionable, however, is the tendency not unfrequently shown to identify socialism with a violent and lawless revolutionary spirit. As sometimes used, ‘socialism’ means nothing more nor less than the most modern form of the revolutionary spirit with a suggestion of anarchy and dynamite. This is to confound the essence of the movement with an accidental feature more or less common to all great innovations. Every new thing of any moment, whether good or evil, has its revolutionary stage, in which it disturbs and upsets the accepted beliefs and institutions. The Protestant Reformation was for more than a century and a half the occasion of civil and international trouble and bloodshed. The suppression of American slavery could not be effected without a tremendous civil war. There was a time when the opinions comprehended under the name of ‘liberalism’ had to fight to the death for toleration; and representative government was at one time a revolutionary innovation. The fact that a movement is revolutionary generally implies only that it is new, that it is disposed to exert itself by strong methods, and is calculated to make great changes. It is an unhappy feature of most great changes that they have been attended with the exercise of force, but that is because the powers in possession have generally attempted to suppress them by the exercise of force.

In point of fact socialism is one of the most elastic and protean phenomena of history, varying according to the time and circumstances in which it appears, and with the character and opinions and institutions of the people who adopt it. Such a movement cannot be condemned or approved en bloc. Most of the current formulæ to which it has been referred for praise or censure are totally erroneous and misleading. Yet in the midst of the various theories that go by the name of ‘socialism’ there is a kernel of principle that is common to them all. That principle is of an economic nature, and is most clear and precise.

The central aim of socialism is to terminate the divorce of the workers from the natural sources of subsistence and of culture. The socialist theory is based on the historical assertion that the course of social evolution for centuries has gradually been to exclude the producing classes from the possession of land and capital, and to establish a new subjection, the subjection of workers who have nothing to depend on but precarious wage-labour. Socialists maintain that the present system (in which land and capital are the property of private individuals freely struggling for increase of wealth) leads inevitably to social and economic anarchy, to the degradation of the working man and his family, to the growth of vice and idleness among the wealthy classes and their dependants, to bad and inartistic workmanship, to insecurity, waste, and starvation; and that it is tending more and more to separate society into two classes, wealthy millionaires confronted with an enormous mass of proletarians, the issue out of which must either be socialism or social ruin. To avoid all these evils and to secure a more equitable distribution of the means and appliances of happiness, socialists propose that land and capital, which are the requisites of labour and the sources of all wealth and culture, should be placed under social ownership and control.

In thus maintaining that society should assume the management of industry and secure an equitable distribution of its fruits, socialists are agreed; but on the most important points of detail they differ very greatly. They differ as to the form society will take in carrying out the socialist programme, as to the relation of local bodies to the central government, and whether there is to be any central government, or any government at all in the ordinary sense of the word; as to the influence of the national idea in the society of the future, etc. They differ also as to what should be regarded as an ‘equitable’ system of distribution. The school of Saint-Simon advocated a social hierarchy, in which every man should be placed according to his capacity and rewarded according to his works. In the communities of Fourier the minimum of subsistence was to be guaranteed to each out of the common gain, the remainder to be divided between labour, capital, and talent—five-twelfths going to the first, four-twelfths to the second and three-twelfths to the third. At the revolution of 1848 Louis Blanc proposed that remuneration should be equal for all members of his social workshops. In the programme drawn up by the united Social Democrats of Germany (Gotha, 1875) it was provided that all shall enjoy the results of labour according to their reasonable wants, all of course being bound to work.

It is needless to say also that the theories of socialism have been held in connection with the most varying opinions in philosophy and religion. A great deal of the historic socialism has been regarded as a necessary implicate of idealism. The prevailing socialism of the day is in large part based on the frankest and most outspoken revolutionary materialism. On the other hand, many socialists hold that their system is a necessary outcome of Christianity, that socialism and Christianity are essential the one to the other; and it should be said that the ethics of socialism are closely akin to the ethics of Christianity, if not identical with them.

Still, it should be insisted that the basis of socialism is economic, involving a fundamental change in the relation of labour to land and capital—a change which will largely affect production, and will entirely revolutionise the existing system of distribution. But, while its basis is economic, socialism implies and carries with it a change in the political, ethical, technical, and artistic arrangements and institutions of society, which would constitute a revolution greater than has ever taken place in human history, greater than the transition from the ancient to the mediæval world, or from the latter to the existing order of society.

In the first place, such a change generally assumes as its political complement the most thoroughly democratic organisation of society. The early socialism of Owen and Saint-Simon was marked by not a little of the autocratic spirit; but the tendency of the present socialism is more and more to ally itself with the most advanced democracy. Socialism, in fact, claims to be the economic complement of democracy, maintaining that without a fundamental economic change political privilege has neither meaning nor value.

In the second place, socialism naturally goes with an unselfish or altruistic system of ethics. The most characteristic feature of the old societies was the exploitation of the weak by the strong under the systems of slavery, serfdom, and wage-labour. Under the socialistic régime it is the privilege and duty of the strong and talented to use their superior force and richer endowments in the service of their fellow-men without distinction of class, or nation, or creed. Whatever our opinion may be of the wisdom or practicability of their theories, history proves that socialists have been ready to sacrifice wealth, social position, and life itself, for the cause which they have adopted.

In the third place, socialists maintain that, under their system and no other, can the highest excellence and beauty be realised in industrial production and in art; whereas under the present system beauty and thoroughness are alike sacrificed to cheapness, which is a necessity of successful competition.

Lastly, the socialists refuse to admit that individual happiness or freedom or character would be sacrificed under the social arrangements they propose. They believe that under the present system a free and harmonious development of individual capacity and happiness is possible only for the privileged minority, and that socialism alone can open up a fair opportunity for all. They believe, in short, that there is no opposition whatever between socialism and individuality rightly understood, that these two are complements the one of the other, that in socialism alone may every individual have hope of free development and a full realisation of himself.

Having shown how wide a social revolution is implied in the socialistic scheme of reconstruction, we may now state (1) that the economic basis of the prevalent socialism is a collectivism which excludes private possession of land and capital, and places them under social ownership in some form or other. In the words of Schäffle, ‘the Alpha and Omega of socialism is the transformation of private competing capital into a united collective capital.’[7] Adolf Wagner’s more elaborate definition of it[8] is entirely in agreement with that of Schäffle. Such a system, while insisting on collective capital, is quite consistent with private property in other forms, and with perfect freedom in the use of one’s own share in the equitable distribution of the produce of the associated labour. A thorough-going socialism demands that this principle should be applied to the capital and production of the whole world; only then can it attain to supreme and perfect realisation. But a sober-minded socialism will admit that the various intermediate stages in which the principle finds a partial application are so far a true and real development of the socialistic idea.

Even the best definitions, however, are only of secondary importance; and while we believe that those we have just mentioned give an accurate account of the prevailing socialism, they are arbitrary, abstract, and otherwise open to objection. As we have already seen, the system of Fourier admitted of private capital under social control. The absolute views of the subject now current are due to the excessive love of system characteristic of German thought, and are not consistent either with history or human nature.

(2) Socialism is both a theory of social evolution and a working force in the history of the nineteenth century. The teaching of some eminent socialists, such as Rodbertus, may be regarded as a prophecy concerning the social development of the future rather than as a subject of agitation. In their view socialism is the next stage in the evolution of society, destined after many generations to supersede capitalism, as capitalism displaced feudalism, and feudalism succeeded to slavery. Even the majority of the most active socialists consider the question as still in the stage of agitation and propaganda, their present task being that of enlightening the masses until the consummation of the present social development, and the declared bankruptcy of the present social order, shall have delivered the world into their hands. Socialism, therefore, is for the most part a theory affecting the future, more or less remote, and has only to a limited degree gained a real and practical footing in the life of our time. Yet it should not be forgotten that its doctrines have most powerfully affected all the ablest recent economic writers of Germany, and have even considerably modified German legislation. Its influence is rapidly growing among the lower and also among the most advanced classes in almost every country dominated by European culture, following the development of capitalism, of which it is not merely the negation, but in a far wider and more real sense is also the goal.

(3) In its doctrinal aspects socialism is most interesting as a criticism of the present economic order, of what socialists call the capitalistic system, with which the existing land system is connected. Under the present economic order land and capital (the material and instruments without which industry is impossible) are the property of a class employing a class of wage-labourers handicapped by their exclusion from land and capital. Competition is the general rule by which the share of the members of those classes in the fruits of production is determined. Against this system critical socialism is a reasoned protest; and it is at issue also with the prevailing political economy, in so far as it assumes or maintains the permanence or righteousness of this economic order. Of the economic optimism implied in the historic doctrine of laissez-faire, socialism is an uncompromising rejection.

(4) Socialism is usually regarded as a phase of the struggle for the emancipation of labour, for the complete participation of the working classes in the material, intellectual, and spiritual inheritance of the human race. This is certainly the most substantial and most prominent part of the socialist programme, the working classes being the most numerous and the worst sufferers from the present régime. This view, however, is rather one-sided, for socialism claims not less to be in the interest of the small capitalist gradually crushed by the competition of the larger, and in the interest also of the large capitalist, whose position is endangered by the vastness and unwieldiness of his success, and by the world-wide economic anarchy from which even the greatest are not secure. Still, it is the deliverance of the working class that stands in the front of every socialistic theory; and, though the initiative in socialist speculation and action has usually come from men belonging to the middle and upper classes, yet it is to the workmen that they generally appeal.

While recognising the great confusion in the use of the word ‘socialism,’ we have treated it as properly a phenomenon of the nineteenth century, beginning in France with Saint-Simon and Fourier, in England with Robert Owen, and most powerfully represented at the present day by the school of Karl Marx. As we have seen, however, there are definitions of the word which would give it a wider range of meaning and a more ancient beginning, compared with which capitalism is but of yesterday; which would, in fact, make it as old as human society itself. In the early stages of human development, when the tribe or the village community was the social unit, the subordination of the individual to the society in which he dwelt was the rule, and common property was the prevalent form. In the development of the idea of property, especially as regards land, three successive historical stages are broadly recognised—common property and common enjoyment of it, common property and private enjoyment, private property and private enjoyment. The last form did not attain to full expression till the end of the eighteenth century, when the principle of individual freedom, which was really a reaction against privileged restriction, was proclaimed as a positive axiom of government and of economics. The free individual struggle for wealth, and for the social advantages dependent on wealth, is a comparatively recent thing.

At all periods of history the State has reserved to itself the right to interpose in the arrangements of property—sometimes in favour of the poor, as in the case of the English poor law, which may thus be regarded as a socialistic measure. Moreover, all through history revolts in favour of the rearrangement of property have been very frequent. From the beginning there have existed misery and discontent, the contemplation of which has called forth schemes of an ideal society in the noblest and most sympathetic minds. Of these are the Utopias of Plato and Thomas More, advocating a systematic communism. And in the societies of the Catholic Church we have a permanent example of common property and a common enjoyment of it.

How are we to distinguish the socialism of the nineteenth century from these old-world phenomena, and especially from the communism which has played so great a part in history? To this query it is not difficult to give a clear and precise answer from the socialist point of view. Socialism is a stage in the evolution of society which could not arrive till the conditions necessary to it had been established. Of these, one most essential condition was the development of the great industrialism which, after a long period of preparation and gradual growth, began to reach its culminating point with the inventions and technical improvements, with the application of steam and the rise of the factory system, in England towards the end of the eighteenth century. Under this system industry was organised into a vast social operation, and was thus already so far socialised; but it was a system that was exploited by the individual owner of the capital at his own pleasure and for his own behoof. Under the pressure of the competition of the large industry, the small capitalist is gradually crushed out, and the working producers become wage-labourers organised and drilled in immense factories and workshops. The development of this system still continues, and is enveloping the whole world. Such is the industrial revolution.

Parallel with this a revolution in the world of ideas, equally great and equally necessary to the rise of socialism, has taken place. This change of thought, which made its world-historic announcement in the French Revolution, made reason the supreme judge, and had freedom for its great practical watchword. It was represented in the economic sphere by the school of Adam Smith. Socialism was an outcome of it too, and first of all in Saint-Simon and his school professed to give the positive and constructive corrective to a negative movement which did not see that it was merely negative and therefore temporary. In other words, Saint-Simon may be said to aim at nothing less than the completion of the work of Voltaire, Rousseau, and Adam Smith.

Thus socialism professes to be the legitimate child of two great revolutions,—of the industrial revolution which began to establish itself in England towards the end of the eighteenth century, and of the parallel revolution in thought which about the same time found most prominent expression in France. Robert Owen worked chiefly under the influence of the former; Saint-Simon and Fourier grew up under the latter. The conspiracy of Babeuf, which took place in 1796, shortly after the French Revolution, is properly to be regarded as a crude revolutionary communism not essentially different from the rude efforts in communism made in earlier periods of history. With Saint-Simon and Owen historic socialism really begins, and is no longer an isolated fact, but has had a continuous and widening development, the succession of socialistic teaching and propaganda being taken up by one country after another throughout the civilised world.

We have seen, then, that the rise of socialism as a new and reasoned theory of society was relative to the industrial revolution and to the ideas proclaimed in the French Revolution, prominent among which, besides the much emphasised idea of freedom and the less easily realised ideals of equality and fraternity, was the conception of the worth and dignity of labour. Though Owen was most largely influenced by the former and Saint-Simon and Fourier by the latter, it is certain that all three were greatly affected by both the new movements. The motive power in Owen’s career was the philanthropy and humanitarianism of the eighteenth century. He had grown up in the midst of the industrial revolution; he was one of the most successful pioneers in the improvement of the cotton manufacture. No one could be more deeply conscious of the enormous abuses of the factory system; and no one better knew the wonderful services that might be rendered by technical improvement if only it were made subordinate to human well-being. In the career of Owen we see the new spirit of the eighteenth century seeking to bring the mechanism of the new industrial system under the direction of a nobler principle, in which the good of all should be the great and sole aim.

The position of Saint-Simon was considerably different, yet akin. As Owen had before his eyes the evils of a young but gigantic industrialism, Saint-Simon contemplated the hoary abuses of an idle and privileged feudalism, fearfully shaken no doubt by the Revolution, but still strong in Europe, and in France, as elsewhere, powerfully revived during the period after Waterloo. Saint-Simon saw that a new world, an industrial world resting on labour, had arisen, while the old feudal and theological world—fainéant courtiers and a clergy steeped in ignorance—still ruled. All this array of parasites, who had no longer any useful function to perform for society, Saint-Simon sought to replace by the industrial chiefs and scientific leaders as the real working heads of the French people. Only, he expected that these exceptionally gifted men, instead of exploiting the labour of others, should control an industrial France for the general good.

Neither Owen nor Saint-Simon was revolutionary in the ordinary sense. Owen was most anxious that the English and other Governments should adopt his projects of socialistic reform. Leading statesmen and royal personages befriended him. He had no faith in the political reforms of 1832; he reckoned the political side of chartism as of no account, and he preferred socialistic experiment under autocratic guidance until the workmen should be trained to rule themselves. The same autocratic tendency was very pronounced in Saint-Simon and his school. His first appeal was to Louis XVIII. He wished to supersede the feudal aristocracy by a working aristocracy of merit. His school claim to have been the first to warn the Governments of Europe of the rise of revolutionary socialism. In short, the early socialism arose during the reaction consequent on the wars of the French Revolution, and was influenced by the political tendencies of the time.

The beginning of socialism may be dated from 1817, the year when Owen laid his scheme for a socialistic community before the committee of the House of Commons on the poor law, the year also that the speculations of Saint-Simon definitely took a socialistic direction. The outlines of the history of socialism are very simple. Till 1850 there was a double movement in France and England. In the former country, after Saint-Simon and Fourier the movement was represented chiefly by Proudhon and Louis Blanc. In England, after Owen the movement was taken up by the body of Christian socialists associated with Maurice and Kingsley.

During the next stage in the development of socialism we see the influence chiefly of German and also Russian thinkers, but it is generally international both in its principles and sympathies. The prevalent socialism found its first expression in the manifesto of the Communist Party published in 1848. The same views were elaborated by Marx in his Kapital (1867), and have in later times been consolidated and modified by many writers in many lands, in the programmes of national parties and in the resolutions of international congresses.

In this Introduction we have tried to give a preliminary conception of our subject, and we shall now proceed to present the leading views of the men who have taken the chief part in originating and guiding the socialist movement.

[1]

Holyoake, History of Co-operation, vol. i. p. 210, ed. 1875.

[2]

Quoted by Adolf Held, Sozialismus, Sozialdemokratie und Sozialpolitik, p. 30.

[3]

Ibid. p. 29.

[4]

Les origines du socialisme contemporain, p. 67.

[5]

Le socialisme contemporain, p. iv.

[6]

Schönberg’s Handbuch der pol. Oekonomie, art. ‘Socialism.’

[7]

Quintessenz des Socialismus, p. 12.

[8]

Lehrbuch der pol. Oekonomie, Grundlegung, p. 174.

CHAPTER II

EARLY FRENCH SOCIALISM

SAINT-SIMON

The founders of the early socialism grew up under the influence of the too-confident optimism which characterised the early stages of the French Revolution of 1789. They had an excessive faith in the possibilities of human progress and perfectibility; they knew little of the true laws of social evolution—in fact, did not sufficiently recognise those aspects of life which Darwinism has brought out so clearly. These faults the early socialists shared with many other thinkers of the time in which they lived.

Comte Henri de Saint-Simon, the founder of French socialism, was born at Paris in 1760. He belonged to a younger branch of the family of the celebrated duke of that name. His education, he tells us, was directed by d’Alembert. At the age of nineteen he went as volunteer to assist the American colonies in their revolt against Britain.

From his youth Saint-Simon felt the promptings of an eager ambition. His valet had orders to awake him every morning with the words, ‘Remember, monsieur le comte, that you have great things to do’; and his ancestor Charlemagne appeared to him in a dream, foretelling a remarkable future for him. Among his early schemes was one to unite the Atlantic and the Pacific by a canal, and another to construct a canal from Madrid to the sea.

He took no part of any importance in the French Revolution, but amassed a little fortune by land speculation—not on his own account, however, as he said, but to facilitate his future projects. Accordingly, when he was nearly forty years of age he went through a varied course of study and experiment, in order to enlarge and clarify his view of things. One of these experiments was an unhappy marriage, which after a year’s duration was dissolved by the mutual consent of the parties. Another result of his experiments was that he found himself completely impoverished, and lived in penury for the remainder of his life.

The first of his numerous writings, Lettres d’un Habitant de Genève, appeared in 1803; but his early works were mostly scientific and political. It was not till 1817 that he began, in a treatise entitled L’Industrie, to propound his socialistic views, which he further developed in L’Organisateur (1819), Du Système industrial (1821), Catéchisme des Industriels (1823). The last and most important expression of his views is the Nouveau Christianisme (1825).

For many years before his death in 1825 Saint-Simon had been reduced to the greatest straits. He was obliged to accept a laborious post for a salary of £40 a year, to live on the generosity of a former valet, and finally to solicit a small pension from his family. In 1823 he attempted suicide in despair. It was not till very late in his career that he attached to himself a few ardent disciples.

As a thinker Saint-Simon was entirely deficient in system, clearness, and consecutive strength. His writings are largely made up of a few ideas continually repeated. But his speculations are always ingenious and original; and he has unquestionably exercised great influence on modern thought, both as the historic founder of French socialism and as suggesting much of what was afterwards elaborated into Comtism.

Apart from the details of his socialistic teaching, with which we need not concern ourselves, we find that the ideas of Saint-Simon with regard to the reconstruction of society are very simple. His opinions were conditioned by the French Revolution and by the feudal and military system still prevalent in France. In opposition to the destructive liberalism of the Revolution he insisted on the necessity of a new and positive reorganisation of society. So far was he from advocating social revolt that he appealed to Louis XVIII. to inaugurate the new order of things. In opposition, however, to the feudal and military system, the former aspect of which had been strengthened by the Restoration, he advocated an arrangement by which the industrial chiefs should control society. In place of the Mediæval Church, the spiritual direction of society should fall to the men of science. What Saint-Simon desired, therefore, was an industrialist State directed by modern science. The men who are best fitted to organise society for productive labour are entitled to bear rule in it.

The social aim is to produce things useful to life; the final end of social activity is ‘the exploitation of the globe by association.’ The contrast between labour and capital, so much emphasised by later socialism, is not present to Saint-Simon, but it is assumed that the industrial chiefs, to whom the control of production is to be committed, shall rule in the interest of society. Later on, the cause of the poor receives greater attention, till in his greatest work, The New Christianity, it becomes the central point of his teaching, and takes the form of a religion. It was this religious development of his teaching that occasioned his final quarrel with Comte.

Previous to the publication of the Nouveau Christianisme Saint-Simon had not concerned himself with theology. Here he starts from a belief in God, and his object in the treatise is to reduce Christianity to its simple and essential elements. He does this by clearing it of the dogmas and other excrescences and defects that have gathered round both the Catholic and Protestant forms of it, which he subjects to a searching and ingenious criticism. The moral doctrine will by the new faith be considered the most important; the divine element in Christianity is contained in the precept that men should act towards one another as brethren. ‘The new Christian organisation will deduce the temporal institutions as well as the spiritual from the principle that all men should act towards one another as brethren.’ Expressing the same idea in modern language, Saint-Simon propounds as the comprehensive formula of the new Christianity this precept: ‘The whole of society ought to strive towards the amelioration of the moral and physical existence of the poorest class; society ought to organise itself in the way best adapted for attaining this end.’ This principle became the watchword of the entire school of Saint-Simon; for them it was alike the essence of religion and the programme of social reform.

During his lifetime the views of Saint-Simon had little influence, and he left only a very few devoted disciples, who continued to advocate the doctrines of their master, whom they revered as a prophet. An important departure was made in 1828 by Bazard, who gave a ‘complete exposition of the Saint-Simonian faith’ in a long course of lectures in the Rue Taranne at Paris. In 1830 Bazard and Enfantin were acknowledged as the heads of the school; and the fermentation caused by the revolution of July of the same year brought the whole movement prominently before the attention of France. Early next year the school obtained possession of the Globe through Pierre Leroux, who had joined the party, which now numbered some of the ablest and most promising young men of France, many of the pupils of the École Polytechnique having caught its enthusiasm. The members formed themselves into an association arranged in three grades, and constituting a society or family, which lived out of a common purse in the Rue Monsigny.

Before long, however, dissensions began to arise in the sect. Bazard, a man of logical and more solid temperament, could no longer work in harmony with Enfantin, who desired to establish an arrogant and fantastic sacerdotalism, with lax notions as to marriage and the relations of the sexes. After a time Bazard seceded, and many of the strongest supporters followed his example. A series of extravagant entertainments given by the society during the winter of 1832 reduced its financial resources and greatly discredited it in character. They finally removed to Menilmontant, to a property of Enfantin, where they lived in a communistic society, distinguished by a peculiar dress. Shortly afterwards the chiefs were tried and condemned for proceedings prejudicial to the social order; and the sect was entirely broken up in 1832. Many of its members became famous as engineers, economists, and men of business. The idea of constructing the Suez Canal, as carried out by Lesseps, proceeded from the school.

In the school of Saint-Simon we find a great advance both in the breadth and firmness with which the vague and confused views of the master are developed; and this progress is due chiefly to Bazard. In the philosophy of history they recognise epochs of two kinds, the critical or negative, and the organic or constructive. The former, in which philosophy is the dominating force, is characterised by war, egotism, and anarchy; the latter, which is controlled by religion, is marked by the spirit of obedience, devotion, association. The two spirits of antagonism and association are the two great social principles, and on the degree of prevalence of the two depends the character of an epoch. The spirit of association, however, tends more and more to prevail over its opponent, extending from the family to the city, from the city to the nation, and from the nation to the federation. This principle of association is to be the keynote of the social development of the future. Hitherto the law of humanity has been the ‘exploitation of man by man’ in its three stages—slavery, serfdom, the proletariat; in the future the aim must be ‘the exploitation of the globe by man associated to man.’

Under the present system the industrial chief still exploits the proletariat, the members of which, though nominally free, must accept his terms under pain of starvation. This state of things is consolidated by the law of inheritance, whereby the instruments of production, which are private property, and all the attendant social advantages, are transmitted without regard to personal merit. The social disadvantages being also transmitted, misery becomes hereditary. The only remedy for this is the abolition of the law of inheritance, and the union of all the instruments of labour in a social fund, which shall be exploited by association. Society thus becomes sole proprietor, entrusting to social groups or social functionaries the management of the various properties. The right of succession is transferred from the family to the State.

The school of Saint-Simon insists strongly on the claims of merit; they advocate a social hierarchy in which each man shall be placed according to his capacity and rewarded according to his works. This is, indeed, a most special and pronounced feature of the Saint-Simon Socialism, whose theory of government is a kind of spiritual or scientific autocracy, culminating in the fantastic sacerdotalism of Enfantin.

With regard to the family and the relation of the sexes, the school of Saint-Simon advocated the complete emancipation of woman and her entire equality with man. The ‘social individual’ is man and woman, who are associated in the triple function of religion, the State, and the family. In its official declarations the school maintained the sanctity of the Christian law of marriage. On this point Enfantin fell into a prurient and fantastic latitudinarianism, which made the school a scandal to France, but many of the most prominent members besides Bazard refused to follow him.

Connected with the last-mentioned doctrines was their famous theory of the ‘rehabilitation of the flesh,’ deduced from the philosophic theory of the school, which was a species of pantheism, though they repudiated the name. On this theory they rejected the dualism so much emphasised by Catholic Christianity in its penances and mortifications, and held that the body should be restored to its due place of honour. It is a vague principle, of which the ethical character depends on the interpretation; and it was variously interpreted in the school of Saint-Simon. It was certainly immoral as held by Enfantin, by whom it was developed into a kind of sensual mysticism, a system of free love with a religious sanction.[1]

The good and bad aspects of the Saint-Simon socialism are too obvious to require elucidation. The antagonism between the old economic order and the new had only begun to declare itself. The extent and violence of the disease were not yet apparent: both diagnosis and remedy were superficial and premature. Such deep-seated organic disorder was not to be conjured away by the waving of a magic wand. The movement was all too utopian and extravagant in much of its activity. The most prominent portion of the school attacked social order in its essential point—the family morality—adopting the worst features of a fantastic, arrogant, and prurient sacerdotalism, and parading them in the face of Europe. Thus it happened that a school which attracted so many of the most brilliant and promising young men of France, which was so striking and original in its criticism of the existing condition of things, which was so strong in the spirit of initiative, and was in many ways so noble, unselfish, and aspiring, sank amidst the laughter and indignation of a scandalised society.

[1]

An excellent edition of the works of Saint-Simon and Enfantin was begun by survivors of the sect in (Paris) 1865, and now numbers forty vols. See Reybaud, Études sur les réformateurs modernes (7th edition, Paris 1864); Janet, Saint-Simon et le Saint-Simonisme (Paris, 1878); A. J. Booth, Saint-Simon and Saint-Simonism (London, 1871).

FOURIER

Considered as a purely literary and speculative product, the socialism of Fourier was prior to those both of Owen and Saint-Simon. Fourier’s first work, Théorie des Quatre Movements, was published as early as 1808. His system, however, scarcely attracted any attention and exercised no influence till the movements originated by Owen and Saint-Simon had begun to decline.

The socialism of Fourier is in many respects fundamentally different from that of Saint-Simon; in the two schools, in fact, we find the two opposing types of socialism which have continued to prevail ever since. Saint-Simonism represented the principle of authority, of centralisation; while Fourier made all possible provision for local and individual freedom. With Saint-Simonism the State is the starting-point, the normal and dominant power; in Fourier the like position is held by a local body, corresponding to the commune, which he called the Phalange. In the system of Fourier the phalange holds the supreme and central place, other organisation in comparison with it being secondary and subordinate.

The deviser of the phalange, François Marie Charles Fourier[1] was a very remarkable man. He was born at Besançon in 1772, and received from his father, a prosperous draper, an excellent education at the academy of his native town. The boy excelled in the studies of the school, and regretfully abandoned them for a business career, which he followed in various towns of France. As a commercial traveller in Holland and Germany he enlarged his experience of men and things. From his father Fourier inherited a sum of about £3000, with which he started business at Lyons, but he lost all he had in the siege of that city by the Jacobins during the Reign of Terror, was thrown into prison, and narrowly escaped the guillotine. On his release he joined the army for two years, and then returned to his old way of life.

At a very early age Fourier had his attention called to the defects of the prevalent commercial system. When only five years old he had been punished for speaking the truth about certain goods in his father’s shop; and at the age of twenty-seven he had at Marseilles to superintend the destruction of an immense quantity of rice held for higher prices during a scarcity of food till it had become unfit for use. The conviction grew within him that a system which involved such abuses and immoralities must be radically evil. Feeling that it was his mission to find a remedy for it, he spent his life in the discovery, elucidation, and propagation of a better order; and he brought to his task a self-denial and singleness of purpose which have seldom been surpassed. For the last ten years of his life he waited in his apartments at noon every day for the wealthy capitalist who should supply the means for the realisation of his schemes. The tangible success obtained by his system was very slight. His works found few readers and still fewer disciples.

It was chiefly after the decline of the Saint-Simon movement that he gained a hearing and a little, success. A small group of enthusiastic adherents gathered round him; a journal was started for the propagation of his views; and in 1832 an attempt was made on lands near Versailles to establish a phalange, which, however, proved a total failure. In 1837 Fourier passed away from a world that showed little inclination to listen to his teaching. A singular altruism was in his character blended with the most sanguine confidence in the possibilities of human progress. Perhaps the weakest point in his teaching was that he so greatly underestimated the strength of the unregenerate residuum in human nature. His own life was a model of simplicity, integrity, kindliness, and disinterested devotion to what he deemed the highest aims.

The social system of Fourier was, we need not say, the central point in his speculations. But as his social system was moulded and coloured by his peculiar views on theology, cosmogony, and psychology, we must give some account of those aspects of his teaching. In theology Fourier inclined, though not decidedly, to what is called pantheism; the pantheistic conception of the world which underlay the Saint-Simon theory of the ‘rehabilitation of the flesh’ may be said to form the basis also of the social ethics and arrangements of Fourier. Along with this he held a natural optimism of the most radical and comprehensive character. God has done all things well, only man has misunderstood and thwarted His benevolent purposes. God pervades everything as a universal attraction. Whereas Newton discovered that the law of attraction governs one movement of the world, Fourier shows that it is universal, ruling the world in all its movements, which are four—material, organic, intellectual, and social. It is the same law of attraction which pervades all things, from the cosmic harmony of the stars down to the puny life of the minutest insect, and which would reign also in the human soul and in human society, if the intentions of the Creator were understood. In the elucidation of his system Fourier’s aim simply is to interpret the intentions of the Creator. He regards his philosophy, not as ingenious guesses or speculations, but as discoveries plainly traceable from a few first principles; discoveries in no way doubtful, but the fruit of clear insight into the divine law.

The cosmogony of Fourier is the most fantastic part of a fantastic system. But as he did not consider his views in this department an essential part of his system, we need not dwell upon them. He believed that the world is to exist for eighty thousand years, forty thousand years of progress being followed by forty thousand years of decline. As yet it has not reached the adult stage, having lasted only seven thousand years. The present stage of the world is civilisation, which Fourier uses as a comprehensive term for everything artificial and corrupt, the result of perverted human institutions, themselves due to the fact that we have for five thousand years misunderstood the intentions of the Creator. The head and front of this misunderstanding consists in our pronouncing passions to be bad that are simply natural; and there is but one way of redressing it—to give a free and healthy and complete development to our passions.

This leads us to the psychology of Fourier. He recognised twelve radical passions connected with three points of attraction. Five are sensitive (tending to enjoyment)—sight, hearing, taste, smell, and touch. Four are affective (tending to groups)—love, friendship, ambition, and familism or paternity. The meaning and function of these are obvious enough. The remaining three, the alternating, emulative, and composite (which he calls passions rectrices, and which tend to series or to unity), are more special to Fourier. Of the three the first is connected with the need of variety; the second leads to intrigue and jealousy; the third, full of intoxication and abandonment, is born of the combination of several pleasures of the senses and of the soul enjoyed simultaneously. The passions of the first two classes are so far controlled by the passions rectrices, and especially by the composite passion; but even the passions rectrices obviously contain elements of discord and war. All, however, are ultimately harmonised by a great social passion, which Fourier calls Unitéisme. Out of the free play of all the passions harmony is evolved, like white out of the combination of the colours.

The speedy passage from social chaos to universal harmony contemplated by Fourier can, as we have seen, be accomplished only by one method, by giving to the human passions their natural development. For this end, a complete break with civilisation must be made. We must have new social arrangements suitable to human nature and in harmony with the intentions of the Creator. These Fourier provides in the phalange. In its normal form the phalange was to consist of four hundred families or eighteen hundred persons, living on a square league of land, self-contained and self-sufficing for the most part, and combining within itself the means for the free development of the most varied likings and capacities. It was an institution in which agriculture, industry, the appliances and opportunities of enjoyment, and generally of the widest and freest human development, are combined, the interests of individual freedom and of common union being reconciled in a way hitherto unknown and unimagined.

While the phalange is the social unit, the individuals composing it will arrange themselves in groups of seven or nine persons; from twenty-four to thirty-two groups form a series, and these unite to form a phalange—all according to principles of attraction, of free elective affinity. The dwelling of the phalange was the phalanstère, a vast, beautiful, and commodious structure, where life could be arranged to suit every one, common or solitary, according to preference; but under such conditions there would be neither excuse nor motive for the selfish seclusion, isolation, and suspicion so prevalent in civilisation.

In such an institution it is obvious that government under the form of compulsion and restraint would be reduced to a minimum. The officials of the phalange would be elected. The phalange, itself was an experiment on a local scale, which could easily be made, and once successfully made would lead to world-wide imitation. They would freely group themselves into wider combinations with elected chiefs, and the phalanges of the whole world would form a great federation with a single elected chief, resident at Constantinople, which would be the universal capital.

In all the arrangements of the phalange the principle of free attraction would be observed. Love would be free. Free unions should be formed, which could be dissolved, or which might grow into permanent marriage.

The labour of the phalange would be conducted on scientific methods; but it would, above all things, be made attractive, by consulting the likings and capacities of the members, by frequent change of occupation, by recourse to the principle of emulation in individuals, groups, and series. On the principle that men and women are eager for the greatest exertion, if only they like it, Fourier bases his theory that all labour can be made attractive by appealing to appropriate motives in human nature. Obviously, also, what is now the most disgusting labour could be more effectually performed by machinery.

The product of labour was to be distributed in the following manner:—Out of the common gain of the phalange a very comfortable minimum was assured to every member. Of the remainder, five-twelfths went to labour, four-twelfths to capital, and three-twelfths to talent. In the phalange, individual capital existed, and inequality of talent was not only admitted, but insisted upon and utilised. In the actual distribution the phalange treated with individuals. With regard to the remuneration of individuals under the head of capital no difficulty could be felt, as a normal rate of interest would be given on the advances made. Individual talent would be rewarded in accordance with the services rendered in the management of the phalange, the place of each being determined by election. Labour would be remunerated on a principle entirely different from the present. Hard and common or necessary work should be best paid; useful work should come next, and pleasant work last of all. In any case the reward of labour would be so great that every one would have the opportunity of becoming a capitalist.

One of the most notable results of the phalange treating with each member individually is, that the economic independence of women would be assured. Even the child of five would have its own share in the produce.

The system of Fourier may fairly be described as one of the most ingenious and elaborate Utopias ever devised by the human brain. But in many cardinal points it has been constructed in complete contradiction to all that experience and science have taught us of human nature and the laws of social evolution. He particularly underestimates the force of human egotism. From the beginning progress has consisted essentially in the hard and strenuous repression of the beast within the man, whereas Fourier would give it free rein. This applies to his system as a whole, and especially to his theories on marriage. Instead of supplying a sudden passage from social chaos to universal harmony, his system would, after entirely subverting such order as we have, only bring us back to social chaos.

Yet his works are full of suggestion and instruction, and will long repay the study of the social economist. His criticisms of the existing system, of its waste, anarchy, and immorality, are ingenious, searching, and often most convincing. In his positive proposals, too, are to be found some of the most sagacious and far-reaching forecasts of the future landmarks of human progress. Most noteworthy are the guarantees he devised for individual and local freedom. The phalange was on the one hand large enough to secure all the benefits of a scientific industry and of a varied common life; on the other it provides against the evils of centralisation, of State despotism, of false patriotism and national jealousy. Fourier has forecast the part to be played in the social and political development of the future by the local body, whether we call it commune, parish, or municipality. The fact that he has given it a fantastic name, and surrounded it with many fantastic conditions, should not hinder us from recognising his great sagacity and originality.

The freedom of the individual and of the minority is, moreover, protected against the possible tyranny of the phalange by the existence, under reasonable limits and under social control, of individual capital. This individual capital, further, is perfectly mobile; that is, the possessor of it, if he thinks fit to migrate or go on travel, may remove his capital, and find a welcome for his labour, talent, and investments in any part of the world. Such arrangements of Fourier may suggest a much-needed lesson to many of the contemporary adherents of ‘scientific socialism.’

While, therefore, we believe that Fourier’s system was as a whole entirely utopian, he has with great sagacity drawn the outlines of much of our political and social progress; and while we believe that the full development of human passions as recommended by him would soon reduce us to social chaos, a time may come in our ethical and rational growth when a widening freedom may be permitted and exercised, not by casting off moral law, but by the perfect assimilation of it.

[1]

Fourier’s complete works (6 vols., Paris, 1840-46; new ed. 1870). The most eminent expounder of Fourierism was Victor Considérant, Destinée sociale; Gatti de Gammont’s Fourier et son système is an excellent summary.

CHAPTER III

FRENCH SOCIALISM OF 1848

The year 1830 was an important era in the history of socialism. During the fermentation of that time the activity of the Saint-Simon school came to a crisis, and the theories of Fourier had an opportunity of taking practical shape. But by far the greatest result for socialism of the revolutionary period of 1830 was the definite establishment of the contrast between the bourgeoisie and proletariat in France and England, the two countries that held the foremost place in the modern industrial, social, and political movement. Hitherto the men who were afterwards destined consciously to constitute those two classes had fought side by side against feudalism and the reaction. Through the restricted franchise introduced at this period in the two countries just mentioned the middle class had become the ruling power.

Excluded from political privileges and pressed by the weight of adverse economic, conditions, the proletariat now appeared as the revolutionary party. The first symptom in France of the altered state of things was the outbreak at Lyons in 1831, when the starving workmen rose to arms with the device, ‘Live working, or die fighting.’ Chartism was a larger phase of the same movement in England. The theories of Saint-Simon and Fourier had met with acceptance chiefly or entirely among the educated classes. Socialism now directly appealed to the working men.

In this chapter our concern is with the development of the new form of socialism in France. Paris, which had so long been the centre of revolutionary activity, was now, and particularly during the latter half of the reign of the bourgeois King, Louis Philippe, the seat of socialistic fermentation. In 1839 Louis Blanc published his Organisation du travail, and Cabet his Voyage en Icarie. In 1840 Proudhon brought out his book on property. Paris was the school to which youthful innovators went to learn the lesson of revolution. At this period she counted among her visitors Lassalle, the founder of the Social Democracy of Germany; Karl Marx, the chief of scientific international socialism; and Bakunin, the apostle of anarchism.

The socialistic speculation associated with the three men last mentioned was to have a far-reaching influence; but it did not attain to full development till a later period. The socialistic activity of Louis Blanc and Proudhon culminated during the revolution of 1848, and exercised considerable influence on the course of events in Paris at that time.

LOUIS BLANC

The socialism of Saint-Simon and Fourier was, as we have seen, largely imaginative and Utopian, and had only a very remote connection with the practical life of their time. With Louis Blanc the movement came into real contact with the national history of France. In Louis Blanc’s teaching the most conspicuous feature was that he demanded the democratic organisation of the State as preparatory to social reorganisation. His system, therefore, had a positive and practical basis, in so far as it allied itself to a dominant tendency in the existing State.

It is unnecessary here to recapitulate in detail the life of Louis Blanc. He was born in 1811 at Madrid, where his father was inspector-general of finance under Joseph during his uncertain tenure of the Spanish throne. At an early age he attained to eminence as a journalist in Paris, and in 1839 established the Revue du progrès, in which he first brought out his celebrated work on Socialism, the Organisation du travail. It was soon published in book form, and found a wide popularity among the workmen of France, who were captivated by the brilliancy of the style, the fervid eloquence with which it exposed existing abuses, and the simplicity and democratic fitness of the schemes for the regeneration of society which it advocated.

The greater part of the book is taken up with unsparing denunciations of the evils of competition, which, as common to Louis Blanc with other socialists, need not detain us. More interesting are the practical measures for their removal, proposed in his treatise.[1] Like the socialists that preceded him, L. Blanc cannot accept the views which teach a necessary antagonism between soul and body; we must aim at the harmonious development of both sides of our nature. The formula of progress is double in its unity: moral and material amelioration of the lot of all by the free co-operation of all, and their fraternal association.[2] He saw, however, that social reform could not be attained without political reform. The first is the end, the second is the means. It was not enough to discover the true methods for inaugurating the principle of association and for organising labour in accordance with the rules of reason, justice, and humanity. It was necessary to have political power on the side of social reform, political power resting on the Chambers, on the tribunals, and on the army: not to take it as an instrument was to meet it as an obstacle.

For these reasons he wished to see the State constituted on a thoroughly democratic basis, as the first condition of success. The emancipation of the proletarians was a question so difficult that it would require the whole force of the State for its solution. What is wanting to the working class are the instruments of labour; the function of Government is to furnish them. If we had to define what we consider the State to be, we should reply, ‘The State is the banker of the poor.’

Louis Blanc demanded that the democratic State should create industrial associations, which he called social workshops, and which were destined gradually and without shock to supersede individual workshops. The State would provide the means; it would draw up the rules for their constitution, and it would appoint the functionaries for the first year. But, once founded and set in movement, the social workshop would be self-supporting, self-acting, and self-governing. The workmen would choose their own directors and managers, they would themselves arrange the division of the profits, and would take measures to extend the enterprise commenced.

In such a system where would there be room for arbitrary rule or tyranny? The State would establish the social workshops, would pass laws for them, and supervise their execution for the good of all; but its rôle would end there. Is this, can this be tyranny? Thus the freedom of the industrial associations and of the individuals composing them would not only remain intact; it would have the solid support of the State. The intervention of a democratic Government on behalf of the people, whom it represented, would remove the misery, anarchy, and oppression necessarily attendant on the competitive system, and in place of the delusive liberty of laissez-faire, would establish a real and positive freedom.

With regard to the remuneration of talent and labour L. Blanc takes very high ground. ‘Genius,’ he said, ‘should assert its legitimate empire, not by the amount of the tribute which it will levy on society, but by the greatness of the services which it will render.’ This is no mere flourish of eloquence; it is to be the principle of remuneration in his association. Society could not, even if it would, repay the genius of a Newton; Newton had his just recompense in the joy of discovering the laws by which worlds are governed. Exceptional endowments must find development and a fitting reward in the exceptional services they render to society.

L. Blanc therefore believed in a hierarchy according to capacity; remuneration according to capacity he admitted in the earlier editions of his work, but only provisionally and as a concession to prevalent anti-social opinion. In the edition of 1848, the year when his theories attained for a time to historic importance, he had withdrawn this concession. ‘Though the false and anti-social education given to the present generation makes it difficult to find any other motive of emulation and encouragement than a higher salary, the wages will be equal, as the ideas and character of men will be changed by an absolutely new education.’[3] Private capitalists would be invited to join the associations, and would under fixed conditions receive interest for their advances; but as the collective capital increased, the opportunities for so placing individual capital would surely diminish. The tyranny of capital would, in fact, receive a mortal wound.

The revolution of 1848 was an important stage in the development of democracy. In ancient and also in mediæval times the democracy was associated with city life; the citizens personally appeared and spoke and voted in the Assemblies. The modern democracy has grown in large States, extending over wide territories, and the citizen can exercise political power only through elected representatives. Hence the importance of the franchise in modern politics. The evolution of the modern democracy has gone through a long succession of phases, beginning with the early growth of the English Parliament, and continued in the struggles of the Dutch against the Spaniards, in the English Revolutions of 1642 and 1688, in the American Revolution of 1776, and the French Revolution of 1789. In the early struggles, however, the mass of the people had no very great share. It was hardly till 1848 that the working class made its entrance on the stage of history—in Europe at least.

The revolutionary disturbances of 1848 affected nearly the whole of western and central Europe. It was a rising of the peoples against antiquated political forms and institutions; against the arrangements of the Treaty of Vienna, whereby Europe was partitioned according to the convenience of ruling houses; against irresponsible Governments, which took no account of the wishes of their subjects.

In France, the country with which we are now specially concerned, the revolution was a revolt of the people against a representative monarchy with a very restricted franchise. It was not a deeply-planned rising, and, indeed, was a surprise to those who wished it and accomplished it. Yet it marked a most important stage in the progress of the world, for, as a result of it, men for the first time saw the legislature of a great country established on principles of universal suffrage, and the cause of the working men recognised as a supreme duty of government.

Louis Blanc was the most prominent actor in what may be called the social-democratic side of the French Revolution of 1848. Through his influence with the working classes, and as representing their feelings and aspirations, he obtained a place in the Provisional Government. He was supported there by others like-minded with himself, including one working man, whose appearance in such a capacity was also a notable event in modern history. But though circumstances were so far favourable, he did not accomplish much. It cannot be said that his plans obtained a fair hearing or a fair trial. He was present in the Provisional Government as the pioneer of a new cause whose time had not yet come.

The schemes for social reconstruction which he contemplated were certainly not carried out in the national workshops of that year. From the report of the Commission of Inquiry into the subject, subsequently instituted by the French Government, and from the History of the National Workshops, written by their director, Emile Thomas, it is perfectly clear that the national workshops were simply a travesty of the proposals of Louis Blanc, established expressly to discredit them. They were a means of finding work for the motley proletariat thrown out of employment during the period of revolutionary disturbance, and those men were put to unproductive labour; whereas, of course, Louis Blanc contemplated nothing but productive work, and the men he proposed inviting to join his associations were to give guarantees of character. It was intended, too, by his opponents that the mob of workmen whom they employed in the so-called national workshops would be ready to assist their masters in the event of a struggle with the socialist party.

A number of private associations of a kind similar to those proposed by Louis Blanc were indeed subsidised by the Government. But of the whole sum voted for this end, which amounted to only £120,000, the greater part was applied to purposes quite foreign from the grant. It was not the intention of the moving spirits of the Government that they should succeed. Moreover, the months following the revolution of February were a period of industrial stagnation and insecurity, when any project of trade, either on the old or on the new lines, had little prospect of success. Under these circumstances, the fact that a few of the associations did prosper very fairly may be accepted as proof that the scheme of Louis Blanc had in it the elements of vitality. The history of the whole matter fully justifies the exclamation of Lassalle that ‘lying is a European power.’[4] It has been the subject of endless misrepresentation by writers who have taken no pains to verify the facts.

As one of the leaders during this difficult crisis, Louis Blanc had neither personal force nor enduring political influence sufficient to secure any solid success for his cause. He was an amiable, genial, and eloquent enthusiast, but without weight enough to be a controller of men on a wide scale. The Labour Conferences at the Luxembourg, over which he presided, ended also, as his opponents desired, without any tangible result.

The Assembly, elected on the principle of universal suffrage, which met in May, showed that the peasantry and the mass of the French people were not in accord with the working classes of Paris and of the industrial centres. It did not approve of the social-democratic activity urged by a section of the Provisional Government. The national workshops also were closed, and the proletariat of Paris rose in armed insurrection, which was overthrown by Cavaignac in the sanguinary days of June. Louis Blanc was in no way responsible for the revolt, which can be called socialistic only in the sense that the proletariat was engaged in it, the class of which socialism claims to be the special champion.

[1]

Organisation du travail. Fifth edition. 1848.

[2]

Preface to fifth edition, Organisation du travail.

[3]

Organisation du travail, p. 103.

[4]

Lassalle, Die französischen Nationalwerkstätten von 1848.

PROUDHON

Pierre Joseph Proudhon was born in 1809 at Besançon, France, the native place also of the socialist Fourier. His origin was of the humblest, his father being a brewer’s cooper, and the boy herded cows and did such other work as came in his way. But he was not entirely self-educated; at sixteen he entered the college of his native place, though his family was so poor that he could not procure the necessary books, and had to borrow them from his mates in order to copy the lessons. There is a story of the young Proudhon returning home laden with prizes, but to find that there was no dinner for him.

At nineteen he became a working compositor, and was afterwards promoted to be a corrector for the press, reading proofs of ecclesiastical works, and thereby acquiring a considerable knowledge of theology. In this way he also came to learn Hebrew, and to compare it with Greek, Latin, and French. It was the first proof of his intellectual audacity that on the strength of this he wrote an Essai de grammaire générale. As Proudhon knew nothing whatever of the true principles of philology, his treatise was of no value.

In 1838 he obtained the pension Suard, a bursary of 1500 francs a year for three years, for the encouragement of young men of promise, which was in the gift of the Academy of Besançon. Next year he wrote a treatise On the Utility of Keeping the Sunday, which contained the germs of his revolutionary ideas. About this time he went to Paris, where he lived a poor, ascetic, and studious life, making acquaintance, however, with the socialistic ideas which were then fermenting in the capital.

In 1840 he published his first work, Qu’est-ce que la propriété? (What is Property?) His famous answer to this question, La propriété c’est le vol (Property is theft), naturally did not please the academy of Besançon, and there was some talk of withdrawing his pension; but he held it for the regular period.[1]

For his third memoir on property, which took the shape of a letter to the Fourierist, M. Considérant, he was tried at Besançon, but was acquitted. In 1846 he published his greatest work, the Système des contradictions économiques, ou philosophie de la misère. For some time Proudhon carried on a small printing establishment at Besançon, but without success; and afterwards held a post as a kind of manager with a commercial firm at Lyons. In 1847 he left this employment, and finally settled in Paris, where he was now becoming celebrated as a leader of innovation.

He regretted the sudden outbreak of the revolution of February, because it found the social reformers unprepared; but he threw himself with ardour into the conflict of opinion, and soon gained a national notoriety. He was the moving spirit of the Représentant du Peuple and other journals, in which the most advanced theories were advocated in the strongest language; and as member of Assembly for the Seine department he brought forward his celebrated proposal for exacting an impost of one-third on interest and rent, which of course was rejected. His attempt to found a bank which should operate by granting gratuitous credit, was also a complete failure; of the five million francs which he required, only seventeen thousand were offered. The violence of his utterances led to an imprisonment at Paris for three years, during which he married a young working woman.

As Proudhon aimed at economic rather than political innovation, he had no special quarrel with the Second Empire, and he lived in comparative quiet under it till the publication of his work, De la justice dans la révolution et dans l’église (1858), in which he attacked the Church and other existing institutions with unusual fury. This time he fled to Brussels to escape imprisonment. On his return to France his health broke down, though he continued to write. He died at Passy in 1865.

Personally, Proudhon was one of the most remarkable figures of modern France. His life was marked by the severest simplicity and even puritanism; he was affectionate in his domestic relations, a most loyal friend, and strictly upright in conduct. He was strongly opposed to the prevailing French socialism of his time because of its utopianism and immorality; and, though he uttered all manner of wild paradox and vehement invective against the dominant ideas and institutions, he was remarkably free from feelings of personal hate. In all that he said and did he was the son of the people, who had not been broken to the usual social and academic discipline; hence his roughness, his one-sidedness, and his exaggerations. But he is always vigorous, and often brilliant and original.

It would obviously be impossible to reduce the ideas of such an irregular thinker to systematic form. In later years Proudhon himself confessed that ‘the great part of his publications formed only a work of dissection and ventilation, so to speak, by means of which he slowly makes his way towards a superior conception of political and economic laws.’ Yet the groundwork of his teaching is clear and firm; no one could insist with greater emphasis on the demonstrative character of economic principles as understood by himself. He strongly believed in the absolute truth of a few moral ideas, with which it was the aim of his teaching to mould and suffuse political economy. Of these fundamental ideas, justice, liberty, and equality were the chief. What he desiderated, for instance, in an ideal society was the most perfect equality of remuneration. It was his principle that service pays service, that a day’s labour balances a day’s labour—in other words, that the duration of labour is the just measure of value. He did not shrink from any of the consequences of this theory, for he would give the same remuneration to the worst mason as to a Phidias; but he looks forward also to a period in human development when the present inequality in the talent and capacity of men would be reduced to an inappreciable minimum.

From the great principle of service as the equivalent of service he derived his axiom that property is the right of aubaine. The aubain was a stranger not naturalised; and the right of aubaine was the right in virtue of which the Sovereign claimed the goods of such a stranger who had died in his territory. Property is a right of the same nature, with a like power of appropriation in the form of rent, interest, etc. It reaps without labour, consumes without producing, and enjoys without exertion.

Proudhon’s aim, therefore, was to realise a science of society resting on principles of justice, liberty, and equality thus understood; ‘a science, absolute, rigorous, based on the nature of man and of his faculties, and on their mutual relations; a science which we have not to invent, but to discover.’ But he saw clearly that such ideas, with their necessary accompaniments, could be realised only through a long and laborious process of social transformation. As we have said, he strongly detested the prurient immorality of the schools of Saint-Simon and Fourier. He attacked them not less bitterly for thinking that society could be changed off-hand by a ready-made and complete scheme of reform. It was ‘the most accursed lie,’ he said, ‘that could be offered to mankind.’

In social change he distinguishes between the transition and the perfection or achievement. With regard to the transition he advocated the progressive abolition of the right of aubaine, by reducing interest, rent, etc. For the goal he professed only to give the general principles; he had no ready-made scheme, no Utopia. The positive organisation of the new society in its details was a labour that would require fifty Montesquieus. The organisation he desired was one on collective principles, a free association which would take account of the division of labour, and which would maintain the personality both of the man and the citizen. With his strong and fervid feeling for human dignity and liberty, Proudhon could not have tolerated any theory of social change that did not give full scope for the free development of man. Connected with this was his famous paradox of anarchy, as the goal of the free development of society, by which he meant that through the ethical progress of men government should become unnecessary. Each man should be a law to himself. ‘Government of man by man in every form,’ he says, ‘is oppression. The highest perfection of society is found in the union of order and anarchy.’

Proudhon’s theory of property as the right of aubaine is substantially the same as the theory of capital held by Marx and most of the later socialists. Property and capital are defined and treated as the power of exploiting the labour of other men, of claiming the results of labour without giving an equivalent. Proudhon’s famous paradox, ‘Property is theft,’ is merely a trenchant expression of this general principle. As slavery is assassination inasmuch as it destroys all that is valuable and desirable in human personality, so property is theft inasmuch as it appropriates the value produced by the labour of others in the form of rent, interest, or profit without rendering an equivalent. For property Proudhon would substitute individual possession, the right of occupation being equal for all men.

With the bloodshed of the days of June French socialism ceased for a time to be a considerable force; and Paris, too, for a time lost its place as the great centre of innovation. The rising removed the most enterprising leaders of the workmen and quelled the spirit of the remainder, while the false prosperity of the Second Empire relieved their most urgent grievances. Under Napoleon III. there was consequently comparative quietness in France. Even the International had very little influence on French soil, though French working men had an important share in originating it.

[1]

A complete edition of Proudhon’s works, including his posthumous writings, was published at Paris, 1875. See P. J. Proudhon, sa vie et sa correspondance, by Sainte-Beuve (Paris, 1875), an admirable work, unhappily not completed; also Revue des Deux Mondes, Jan. 1866 and Feb. 1873.

CHAPTER IV

EARLY ENGLISH SOCIALISM

Compared with the parallel movement in France the early socialism of England had an uneventful history. In order to appreciate the significance of Robert Owen’s work it is necessary to recall some of the most important features of the social condition of the country in his time. The English worker had no fixed interest in the soil. He had no voice either in local or national government. He had little education or none at all. His dwelling was wretched in the extreme. The right even of combination was denied him till 1824. The wages of the agricultural labourer were miserably low.

The workman’s share in the benefits of the industrial revolution was doubtful. Great numbers of his class were reduced to utter poverty and ruin by the great changes consequent on the introduction of machinery; the tendency to readjustment was slow and continually disturbed by fresh change. The hours of work were mercilessly long. He had to compete against the labour of women, and of children brought frequently at the age of five or six from the workhouses. These children had to work the same long hours as the adults, and they were sometimes very cruelly treated by the overseers. Destitute as they so often were of parental protection and oversight, with both sexes huddled together under immoral and insanitary conditions, it was only natural that they should fall into the worst habits, and that their offspring should to such a lamentable degree be vicious, improvident, and physically degenerate.

In a country where the labourers had neither education nor political or social rights, and where the peasantry were practically landless serfs, the old English poor law was only a doubtful part of an evil system. All these permanent causes of mischief were aggravated by special causes connected with the cessation of the Napoleonic wars, which are well known. It was in such circumstances, when English pauperism had become a grave national question, that Owen first brought forward his scheme of socialism.

Robert Owen, philanthropist, and founder of English socialism, was born at the village of Newtown, Montgomeryshire, North Wales, in 1771.[1] His father had a small business in Newtown as saddler and ironmonger, and there young Owen received all his school education, which terminated at the age of nine. At ten he went to Stamford, where he served in a draper’s shop for three or four years, and, after a short experience of work in a London shop, removed to Manchester.

His success at Manchester was very rapid. When only nineteen years of age he became manager of a cotton-mill, in which five hundred people were employed, and by his administrative intelligence, energy, industry, and steadiness, soon made it one of the best establishments of the kind in Great Britain. In this factory Owen used the first bags of American Sea-Island cotton ever imported into the country; it was the first cotton obtained from the Southern States of America. Owen also made remarkable improvement in the quality of the cotton spun. Indeed there is no reason to doubt that at this early age he was the first cotton-spinner in England, a position entirely due to his own capacity and knowledge of the trade, as he had found the mill in no well-ordered condition and was left to organise it entirely on his own responsibility.

Owen had become manager and one of the partners of the Chorlton Twist Company at Manchester, when he made his first acquaintance with the scene of his future philanthropic efforts at New Lanark. During a visit to Glasgow he had fallen in love with the daughter of the proprietor of the New Lanark mills, Mr. Dale. Owen induced his partners to purchase New Lanark; and after his marriage with Miss Dale he settled there, in 1800, as manager and part owner of the mills. Encouraged by his great success in the management of cotton-factories in Manchester, he had already formed the intention of conducting New Lanark on higher principles than the current commercial ones.

The factory of New Lanark had been started in 1784 by Dale and Arkwright, the water-power afforded by the falls of the Clyde being the great attraction. Connected with the mills were about two thousand people, five hundred of whom were children, brought, most of them, at the age of five or six from the poorhouses and charities of Edinburgh and Glasgow. The children especially had been well treated by Dale, but the general condition of the people was very unsatisfactory. Many of them were the lowest of the population, the respectable country-people refusing to submit to the long hours and demoralising drudgery of the factories. Theft, drunkenness, and other vices were common; education and sanitation were alike neglected; most families lived only in one room.

It was this population, thus committed to his care, which Owen now set himself to elevate and ameliorate. He greatly improved their houses, and by the unsparing and benevolent exertion of his personal influence trained them to habits of order, cleanliness, and thrift. He opened a store, where the people could buy goods of the soundest quality at little more than cost price; and the sale of drink was placed under the strictest supervision. His greatest success, however, was in the education of the young, to which he devoted special attention. He was the founder of infant schools in Great Britain; and, though he was anticipated by Continental reformers, he seems to have been led to institute them by his own views of what education ought to be, and without hint from abroad.

In all these plans Owen obtained the most gratifying success. Though at first regarded with suspicion as a stranger, he soon won the confidence of his people. The mills continued to prosper commercially, but it is needless to say that some of Owen’s schemes involved considerable expense, which was displeasing to his partners. Wearied at last of the restrictions imposed on him by men who wished to conduct the business on the ordinary principles, Owen, in 1813, formed a new firm, whose members, content with 5 per cent of return for their capital, would be ready to give freer scope to his philanthropy. In this firm Jeremy Bentham and the well-known Quaker, William Allen, were partners.

In the same year Owen first appeared as an author of essays, in which he expounded the principles on which his system of educational philanthropy was based. From an early age he had lost all belief in the prevailing forms of religion, and had thought out a creed for himself, which he considered an entirely new and original discovery. The chief points in this philosophy were that man’s character is made not by him but for him; that it has been formed by circumstances over which he had no control; that he is not a proper subject either of praise or blame—these principles leading up to the practical conclusion that the great secret in the right formation of man’s character is to place him under the proper influences, physical, moral, and social, from his earliest years. These principles, of the irresponsibility of man and of the effect of early influences, are the keynote of Owen’s whole system of education and social amelioration. As we have said, they are embodied in his first work, A New View of Society; or, Essays on the Principle of the Formation of the Human Character, the first of these essays (there are four in all) being published in 1813. It is needless to say that Owen’s new views theoretically belong to a very old system of philosophy, and that his originality is to be found only in his benevolent application of them.

For the next few years Owen’s work at New Lanark continued to have a national and even a European significance. His schemes for the education of his workpeople attained to something like completion on the opening of the institution at New Lanark in 1816. He was a zealous supporter of the factory legislation resulting in the Act of 1819, which, however, greatly disappointed him. He had interviews and communications with the leading members of Government, including the Premier, Lord Liverpool, and with many of the rulers and leading statesmen of the Continent. New Lanark itself became a much-frequented place of pilgrimage for social reformers, statesmen, and royal personages, amongst whom was Nicholas, afterwards Emperor of Russia. According to the unanimous testimony of all who visited it, the results achieved by Owen were singularly good. The manners of the children, brought up under his system, were beautifully graceful, genial, and unconstrained; health, plenty, and contentment prevailed; drunkenness was almost unknown, and illegitimacy was extremely rare. The most perfect good-feeling subsisted between Owen and his workpeople; all the operations of the mill proceeded with the utmost smoothness and regularity; and the business still enjoyed great prosperity.

Hitherto Owen’s work had been that of a philanthropist, whose great distinction was the originality and unwearying unselfishness of his methods. His first departure in socialism took place in 1817, and was embodied in a report communicated to the Committee of the House of Commons on the Poor Law. The general misery and stagnation of trade consequent on the termination of the great war were engrossing the attention of the country. After clearly tracing the special causes connected with the war which had led to such a deplorable state of things, Owen pointed out that the permanent cause of distress was to be found in the competition of human labour with machinery, and that the only effective remedy was the united action of men, and the subordination of machinery. His proposals for the treatment of pauperism were based on these principles.

He recommended that communities of about twelve hundred persons should be settled on spaces of land of from 1000 to 1500 acres, all living in one large building in the form of a square, with public kitchen and mess-rooms. Each family should have its own private apartments, and the entire care of the children till the age of three, after which they should be brought up by the community, their parents having access to them at meals and all other proper times. These communities might be established by individuals, by parishes, by counties, or by the State; in every case there should be effective supervision by duly qualified persons. Work, and the enjoyment of its results, should be in common.

The size of his community was no doubt partly suggested by his village of New Lanark; and he soon proceeded to advocate such a scheme as the best form for the reorganisation of society in general. In its fully developed form—and it cannot be said to have changed much during Owen’s lifetime—it was as follows. He considered an association of from 500 to 3000 as the fit number for a good working community. While mainly agricultural, it should possess all the best machinery, should offer every variety of employment, and should, as far as possible, be self-contained. In other words, his communities were intended to be self-dependent units, which should provide the best education and the constant exercise of unselfish intelligence, should unite the advantages of town and country life, and should correct the monotonous activity of the factory with the freest variety of occupation, while utilising all the latest improvements in industrial technique. ‘As these townships,’ as he also called them, ‘should increase in number, unions of them federatively united shall be formed in circles of tens, hundreds, and thousands,’ till they should embrace the whole world in one great republic with a common interest.

His plans for the cure of pauperism were received with great favour. The Times and the Morning Post, and many of the leading men of the country, countenanced them; one of his most steadfast friends was the Duke of Kent, father of Queen Victoria. He had indeed gained the ear of the country, and had the prospect before him of a great career as a social reformer, when he went out of his way at a large meeting in London to declare his hostility to all the received forms of religion. After this defiance to the religious sentiment of the country, Owen’s theories were in the popular mind associated with infidelity, and were henceforward suspected and discredited.

Owen’s own confidence, however, remained unshaken, and he was anxious that his scheme for establishing a community should be tested. At last, in 1825, such an experiment was attempted under the direction of his disciple, Abram Combe, at Orbiston, near Glasgow; and in the same year Owen himself commenced another at New Harmony, in Indiana, America. After a trial of about two years both failed completely. Neither of them was a pauper experiment; but it must be said that the members were of the most motley description, many worthy people of the highest aims being mixed with vagrants, adventurers, and crotchety wrong-headed enthusiasts.

After a long period of friction with William Allen and some of his other partners, Owen resigned all connection with New Lanark in 1828. On his return from America he made London the centre of his activity. Most of his means having been sunk in the New Harmony experiment, he was no longer a flourishing capitalist, but the head of a vigorous propaganda, in which socialism and secularism were combined. One of the most interesting features of the movement at this period was the establishment in 1832 of an equitable labour exchange system, in which exchange was effected by means of labour notes, the usual means of exchange and the usual middlemen being alike superseded. The word ‘socialism’ first became current in the discussions of the Association of all Classes of all Nations, formed by Owen in 1835.

During these years also his secularistic teaching gained such influence among the working classes as to give occasion, in 1839, for the statement in the Westminster Review that his principles were the actual creed of a great portion of them. His views on marriage, which were certainly lax, gave just ground for offence. At this period some more communistic experiments were made, of which the most important were that at Ralahine, in the county of Clare, Ireland, and that at Tytherly, in Hampshire. It is admitted that the former, which was established in 1839, was a remarkable success for three and a half years, till the proprietor, who had granted the use of the land, having ruined himself by gambling, was obliged to sell out. Tytherly, begun in 1839, was an absolute failure. By 1846 the only permanent result of Owen’s agitation, so zealously carried on by public meetings, pamphlets, periodicals, and occasional treatises, was the co-operative movement, and for the time even that seemed to have utterly collapsed. In his later years Owen became a firm believer in spiritualism. He died in 1858 at his native town at the age of eighty-seven.

The causes of Owen’s failure in establishing his communities are obvious enough. Apart from the difficulties inherent in socialism, he injured the social cause by going out of his way to attack the historic religions and the accepted views on marriage, by his tediousness, quixotry, and over-confidence, by refusing to see that for the mass of men measures of transition from an old to a new system must be adopted. If he had been truer to his earlier methods and retained the autocratic guidance of his experiments, the chances of success would have been greater. Above all, Owen had too great faith in human nature, and he did not understand the laws of social evolution. His great doctrine of the influence of circumstances in the formation of character was only a very crude way of expressing the law of social continuity so much emphasised by recent socialism. He thought that he could break the chain of continuity, and as by magic create a new set of circumstances, which would forthwith produce a new generation of rational and unselfish men. The time was too strong for him, and the current of English history swept past him.

Even a very brief account of Owen, however, would be incomplete without indicating his relation to Malthus. Against Malthus he showed that the wealth of the country had, in consequence of mechanical improvement, increased out of all proportion to the population. The problem, therefore, was not to restrict population, but to institute rational social arrangements and to secure a fair distribution of wealth. Whenever the number of inhabitants in any of his communities increased beyond the maximum, new ones should be created, until they should extend over the whole world. There would be no fear of over-population for a long time to come. Its evils were then felt in Ireland and other countries; but that condition of things was owing to the total want of the most ordinary common sense on the part of the blinded authorities of the world. The period would probably never arrive when the earth would be full; but, if it should, the human race would be good, intelligent, and rational, and would know much better than the present irrational generation how to provide for the occurrence. Such was Owen’s socialistic treatment of the population problem.

Robert Owen was essentially a pioneer, whose work and influence it would be unjust to measure by their tangible results. Apart from his socialistic theories, it should, nevertheless, be remembered that he was one of the foremost and most energetic promoters of many movements of acknowledged and enduring usefulness. He was the founder of infant schools in England; he was the first to introduce reasonably short hours into factory labour, and zealously promoted factory legislation—one of the most needed and most beneficial reforms of the century; and he was the real founder of the co-operative movement. In general education, in sanitary reform, and in his sound and humanitarian views of common life, he was far in advance of his time. Like Fourier, also, he did the great service of calling attention to the advantages which might be obtained in the social development of the future from the reorganisation of the commune, or self-governing local group of workers.

Still, he had many serious faults; all that was quixotic, crude, and superficial in his views became more prominent in his later years, and by the extravagance of his advocacy of them he did vital injury to the cause he had at heart. In his personal character he was without reproach—frank, benevolent, and straightforward to a fault; and he pursued the altruistic schemes in which he spent all his means with more earnestness than most men devote to the accumulation of a fortune.

In England the reform of 1832 had the same effect as the revolution of July (1830) in France: it brought the middle class into power, and by the exclusion of the workmen emphasised their existence as a separate class. The discontent of the workmen now found expression in Chartism. As is obvious from the contents of the Charter, Chartism was most prominently a demand for political reform; but both in its origin and in its ultimate aim the movement was more essentially economic. As regards the study of socialism, the interest of this movement lies greatly in the fact that in its organs the doctrine of ‘surplus value,’ afterwards elaborated by Marx as the basis of his system, is broadly and emphatically enunciated. While the worker produces all the wealth, he is obliged to content himself with the meagre share necessary to support his existence, and the surplus goes to the capitalist, who, with the king, the priests, lords, esquires, and gentlemen, lives upon the labour of the working man (Poor Man’s Guardian, 1835).

After the downfall of Owenism began the Christian socialist movement in England (1848-52), of which the leaders were Maurice, Kingsley, and Mr. Ludlow. The abortive Chartist demonstration of April 1848 excited in Maurice and his friends the deepest sympathy with the sufferings of the English working class—a feeling which was intensified by the revelations regarding ‘London Labour and the London Poor’ published in the Morning Chronicle in 1849. Mr. Ludlow, who had in France become acquainted with the theories of Fourier, was the economist of the movement, and it was with him that the idea originated of starting co-operative associations.

In Politics for the People, in the Christian Socialist, in the pulpit and on the platform, and in Yeast and Alton Locke, well-known novels of Kingsley, the representatives of the movement exposed the evils of the competitive system, carried on an unsparing warfare against the Manchester School, and maintained that socialism, rightly understood, was only Christianity applied to social reform. Their labours in insisting on ethical and spiritual principles as the true bonds of society, in promoting associations, and in diffusing a knowledge of co-operation, were largely beneficial. In the north of England they joined hands with the co-operative movement inaugurated by the Rochdale pioneers in 1844 under the influence of Owenism. Productive co-operation made very little progress, but co-operative distribution soon proved a great success.

[1]

Of R. Owen’s numerous works in exposition of his system, the most important are the New View of Society; the Report communicated to the Committee on the Poor Law; the Book of the New Moral World; and Revolution in the Mind and Practice of the Human Race. See Life of Robert Owen written by himself, London, 1857, and Threading my Way, Twenty-seven Years of Autobiography, by Robert Dale Owen, his son, London, 1874. There are also Lives of Owen by A. J. Booth (London, 1869), W. L. Sargant (London, 1860), and F. Podmore (London, 1906). For works of a more general character see G. J. Holyoake, History of Co-operation in England, London, 1875; Adolf Held, Zwei Bücher zur socialen Geschichte Englands, Leipsic, 1881.

CHAPTER V

FERDINAND LASSALLE

I. Life

In 1852 the twofold socialist movement in France and England had come to an end, leaving no visible result of any importance. From that date the most prominent leaders of socialism have been German and Russian.

German socialists also played a part in the revolution of 1848 and in the years that preceded it; but as the work that makes their names really historical was not performed till a later period, we have postponed the consideration of it till now, when we can treat it as a whole. The most conspicuous chiefs of German socialism have been Karl Marx, Friedrich Engels, Lassalle, and Rodbertus. Of these, Lassalle[1] was the first to make his mark in history as the originator of the Social Democratic movement in Germany.

Ferdinand Lassalle was born at Breslau in 1825.

Like Karl Marx, the chief of international socialism, he was of Jewish extraction. His father, a prosperous merchant in Breslau, intended Ferdinand for a business career, and with this view sent him to the commercial school at Leipsic; but the boy, having no liking for that kind of life, got himself transferred to the university, first at Breslau, and afterwards at Berlin. His favourite studies were philology and philosophy; he became an ardent Hegelian, and in politics was one of the most advanced. Having completed his university studies in 1845, he began to write a work on Heracleitus from the Hegelian point of view; but it was soon interrupted by more stirring interests, and did not see the light for many years.

From the Rhine country, where he settled for a time, he went to Paris, and made the acquaintance of his great compatriot Heine, who conceived for him the deepest sympathy and admiration. In the letter of introduction to Varnhagen von Ense, which the poet gave Lassalle when he returned to Berlin, there is a striking portrait of the future agitator. Heine speaks of his friend Lassalle as a young man of the most remarkable endowments, in whom the widest knowledge, the greatest acuteness, and the richest gifts of expression are combined with an energy and practical ability which excite his astonishment; but adds, in his half-mocking way, that he is a genuine son of the new era, without even the pretence of modesty or self-denial, who will assert and enjoy himself in the world of realities. At Berlin, Lassalle became a favourite in some of the most distinguished circles; even the veteran Humboldt was fascinated by him, and used to call him the Wunderkind.

Here it was also, early in 1846, that he met the lady with whom his life was to be associated in so striking a way, the Countess Hatzfeldt. She had been separated from her husband for many years, and was at feud with him on questions of property and the custody of their children. With characteristic energy Lassalle adopted the cause of the countess, whom he believed to have been outrageously wronged, made a special study of law, and, after bringing the case before thirty-six tribunals, reduced the powerful count to a compromise on terms most favourable to his client.

The process, which lasted eight years, gave rise to not a little scandal, especially that of the Cassettengeschichte. This ‘affair of the casket’ arose out of an attempt by the countess’s friends to get possession of a bond for a large life-annuity settled by the count on his mistress, a Baroness Meyendorf, to the prejudice of the countess and her children. At the instigation of Lassalle, two of his comrades succeeded in carrying off a casket, which was supposed to contain the document in question (but which really contained her jewels), from the baroness’s room at a hotel in Cologne. They were prosecuted for theft, one of them being condemned to six months’ imprisonment. Lassalle himself was accused of moral complicity, but was acquitted on appeal.

His intimate relations with the countess, which continued till the end, certainly did not tend to improve Lassalle’s position in German society. Rightly or wrongly, people had an unfavourable impression of him, as of an adventurer. Here we can but say that he claimed to act from the noblest motives; in the individual lot and suffering of the countess he saw the social misery of the time reflected, and his assertion of her cause was a moral insurrection against it. While the case was pending, he gave the countess a share of his allowance from his father; and after it was won, he received according to agreement, from the now ample resources of the lady, an annual income of four thousand thalers (£600). Added to his own private means, this sum placed the finances of Lassalle on a sure footing for the rest of his life. His conduct was a mixture of chivalry and business, which every one must judge for himself. It was certainly not in accordance with the conventionalities, but for these Lassalle never entertained much respect.

In 1848 Lassalle attached himself to the group of men, Karl Marx, Engels, Freiligrath, and others, who in the Rhine country represented the socialistic and extreme democratic side of the revolution, and whose organ was the New Rhenish Gazette. But the activity of Lassalle was only local and subordinate. He was, however, condemned to six months’ imprisonment for resisting the authorities at Dusseldorf. On that occasion Lassalle prepared the first of those speeches which made so great an impression on the men of his time; but it was not delivered. It contains the first important statement of his social and political opinions. ‘I will always joyfully confess,’ he said, ‘that from inner conviction I am a decided adherent of the Social Democratic republic.’

Till 1858 Lassalle resided mostly in the Rhine country, prosecuting the suit of his friend the countess, and afterwards completing his work on Heracleitus, which was published in that year. He was not allowed to live in Berlin because of his connection with the disturbances of 1848. In 1859 he returned to the capital disguised as a carter, and finally, through the influence of Humboldt with the king, received permission to remain.

In the same year he published a remarkable pamphlet on The Italian War and the Mission of Prussia, in which he came forward to warn his countrymen against going to the rescue of Austria in her war with France. He argued that if France drove Austria out of Italy she might annex Savoy, but could not prevent the restoration of Italian unity under Victor Emmanuel. France was doing the work of Germany by weakening Austria, the great cause of German disunion and weakness; Prussia should form an alliance with France in order to drive out Austria and make herself supreme in Germany. After their realisation by Bismarck, these ideas have become sufficiently commonplace; but they were nowise obvious when thus published by Lassalle. In this, as in other matters, he showed that he possessed both the insight and foresight of a statesman.

In the course of the Hatzfeldt suit Lassalle had acquired no little knowledge of law, which proved serviceable to him in the great work, System of Acquired Rights, published in 1861. The book professes to be, and in a great measure is, an application of the historical method to legal ideas and institutions; but it is largely dominated also by abstract conceptions, which are not really drawn from history, but read into it. The results of his investigation are sufficiently revolutionary; in the legal sphere they go even farther than his socialistic writings in the economic and political. But with one important exception he made no attempt to base his socialistic agitation on his System of Acquired Rights; it simply remained a learned work.

Hitherto Lassalle had been known only as the author of two learned works, and as connected with one of the most extraordinary lawsuits of the nineteenth century, which had become a widespread scandal. Now began the brief activity which was to give him an historical significance. His revolutionary activity in 1848, though only a short phase in his career, was not an accident; it represented a permanent feature of his character. In him the student and the man of action were combined in a notable manner, but the craving for effective action was eminently strong. The revolutionary and the active elements in his strangely mixed nature had for want of an opportunity been for many years in abeyance.

A rare opportunity had at last come for asserting his old convictions. In the struggle between the Prussian Government and the Opposition he saw an opportunity for vindicating a great cause, that of the working men, which would outflank the Liberalism of the middle classes, and might command the sympathy and respect of the Government. But his political programme was entirely subordinate to the social, that of bettering the condition of the working classes; and he believed that as their champion he might have such influence in the Prussian State as to determine it on entering on a great career of social amelioration.

The social activity of Lassalle dates from the year 1862. It was a time of new life in Germany. The forces destined to transform the Germany of Hegel into the Germany of Bismarck were preparing. The time for the restoration and unification of the Fatherland under the leadership of Prussia had come. The nation that had so long been foremost in philosophy and theory was to take a leading place in the practical walks of national life, in war and politics, and in the modern methods of industry. The man who died as first German Emperor of the new order ascended the throne of Prussia in 1861. Bismarck, whose mission it was to take the chief part in this great transformation, entered on the scene as Chief Minister of Prussia in the autumn of 1862. The Progressist party, that phase of German Liberalism which was to offer such bitter opposition both to Bismarck and Lassalle, came into existence in 1861.

For accomplishing this world-historic change the decisive factor was the Prussian army. The new rulers of Prussia clearly saw that for the success of their plans everything would depend on the efficiency of the army. But on the question of its reorganisation they came into conflict with the Liberals, who, failing to comprehend the policy of Bismarck, refused him the supplies necessary for realising ideals dear to every German patriot.

In the controversy so bitterly waged between the Prussian monarchy and the Liberals, Lassalle intervened. As might be expected, he was not a man to be bound by the formulas of Prussian Liberalism, and in a lecture, On the Nature of a Constitution, delivered early in 1862, he expounded views entirely at variance with them. In this lecture his aim was to show that a constitution is not a theory or a document written on paper; it is the expression of the strongest political forces of the time. The king, the nobility, the middle class, the working class, all these are forces in the polity of Prussia; but the strongest of all is the king, who possesses in the army a means of political power, which is organised, excellently disciplined, always at hand, and always ready to march. The army is the basis of the actual working constitution of Prussia. In the struggle against a Government resting on such a basis, verbal protests and compromises were of no avail.

In a second lecture, What Next?, Lassalle proceeded to maintain that there was only one method for effectually resisting the Government, to proclaim the facts of the political situation as they were, and then to retire from the Chamber. By remaining they only gave a false appearance of legality to the doings of the Government. If they withdrew it must yield, as in the present state of political opinion in Prussia and in civilised Europe no Government could exist in defiance of the wishes of the people.

In a pamphlet subsequently published under the title of Might and Right, Lassalle defended himself against the accusation that in these lectures he had subordinated the claims of Right to those of Force. He had, he said, not been expressing his own views of what ought to be; he had simply been elucidating facts in an historical way, he had only been explaining the real nature of the situation. He now went on to declare that no one in the Prussian State had any right to speak of Right but the old and genuine democracy. It had always cleaved to the Right, degrading itself by no compromise with power. With the democracy alone is Right, and with it alone will be Might.

We need not say that these utterances of Lassalle had no influence on the march of events. The rulers pushed on the reorganising of the army with supplies obtained without the consent of the Prussian Chambers, the Liberal members protesting in vain till the great victory over Austria in 1866 furnished an ample justification for the policy of Bismarck.

But their publication marked an important crisis in his own career, for they did not recommend him to the favourable consideration of the German Liberals with whom he had previously endeavoured to act. He and they never had much sympathy for one another. They were fettered by formulas as well as wanting in energy and initiative. On the other hand, his adventurous career; his temperament, which disposed him to rebel against the conventionalities and formulas generally; his loyalty to the extreme democracy of 1848, all brought him into disharmony with the current Liberalism of his time. They gave him no tokens of their confidence, and he chose a path of his own.

A more decisive step in a new direction was taken in 1862 by his lecture, The Working-Men’s Programme; On the special Connection of the Present Epoch of History with the Idea of the Working Class. The gist of this lecture was to show that we are now entering on a new era of history, of which the working class are the makers and representatives. It is a masterly performance, lucid in style, and scientific in method of treatment. Yet this did not save its author from the attentions of the Prussian police. Lassalle was brought to trial on the charge of exciting the poor against the rich, and in spite of an able defence, published under the title of Science and the Workers, he was condemned to four months’ imprisonment. But he appealed, and on the second hearing of the case made such an impression on the judges that the sentence was commuted into a fine of £15.

Such proceedings naturally brought Lassalle into prominence as the exponent of a new way of thinking on social and political subjects. A section of the working men were, like himself, discontented with the current German Liberalism. The old democracy of 1848 was beginning to awake from the apathy and lassitude consequent on the failures of that troubled period. Men imbued with the traditions and aspirations of such a time could not be satisfied with the half-hearted programme of the Progressists, who would not decide on adopting universal suffrage as part of their policy, yet wished to utilise the workmen for their own ends. A Liberalism which had not the courage to be frankly democratic, could only be a temporary and unsatisfactory phase of political development.

This discontent found expression at Leipsic, where a body of workmen, displeased with the Progressists, yet undecided as to any clear line of policy, had formed a Central Committee for the calling together of a Working Men’s Congress. With Lassalle, they had common ground in their discontent with the Progressists, and to him in 1863 they applied, in the hope that he might suggest a definite line of action. Lassalle replied in an Open Letter, with a political and social-economic programme, which, for lucidity and comprehensiveness of statement, left nothing to be desired. In the Working Men’s Programme, Lassalle had drawn the rough outlines of a new historic period, in which the interests of labour should be paramount; in the Open Letter he expounds the political, social, and economic principles which should guide the working men in inaugurating the new era. The Open Letter has well been called the Charter of German Socialism. It was the first historic act in a new stage of social development. We need not say that it marked the definite rupture of Lassalle with German Liberalism.

In the Open Letter the guiding principles of the Social Democratic agitation of Lassalle are given with absolute clearness and decision: that the working men should form an independent political party—one, however, in which the political programme should be entirely subordinated to the great social end of improving the condition of their class; that the schemes of Schulze-Delitzsch[2] for this end were inadequate; that the operation of the iron law of wages prevented any real improvement under the existing conditions; that productive associations, by which, the workmen should secure the full product of their labour, should be established by the State, founded on universal suffrage, and therefore truly representative of the people. The Leipsic Committee accepted the policy thus sketched, and invited him to address them in person. After hearing him the meeting voted in his favour by a majority of 1300 against 7.

A subsequent appearance at Frankfort-on-the-Main was even more flattering to Lassalle. In that as in most other towns of Germany the workmen were generally disposed to support Schulze and the Progressist party. Lassalle therefore had the hard task of conciliating and gaining a hearing from a hostile audience. His first speech, four hours in length, met at times with a stormy reception, and was frequently interrupted. Yet he gained the sympathy of his audience by his eloquence and the intrinsic interest of his matter, and the applause increased as he went on. When, two days afterwards, he addressed them a second time, the assembly voted for Lassalle by 400 to 40. It was really a great triumph. Like Napoleon, he had, he said, beaten the enemy with their own troops. On the following day he addressed a meeting at Mainz, where 700 workmen unanimously declared in his favour.

These successes seemed to justify Lassalle in taking the decisive step of his agitation—the foundation of the Universal German Working Men’s Association, which followed at Leipsic on May 23, 1863. Its programme was a simple one, containing only one point—universal suffrage. ‘Proceeding from the conviction that only through equal and direct universal suffrage[3] can a sufficient representation of the social interests of the German working class and a real removal of class antagonisms in society be realised, the Association pursues the aim, in a peaceful and legal way, especially by winning over public opinion, to work for the establishment of equal and direct universal suffrage.’

Hitherto Lassalle had been an isolated individual expressing on his own responsibility an opinion on the topics of the day. He was elected President, for five years, of the newly founded Association, and was therefore the head of a new movement. He had crossed the Rubicon, not without hesitation and misgiving.

In the summer of 1863 little was accomplished. The membership of the Association grew but slowly, and, according to his wont, Lassalle retired to the baths to recruit his health. In the autumn he renewed his agitation by a ‘review’ of his forces on the Rhine, where the workmen were most enthusiastic in his favour. But the severest crisis of his agitation befell during the winter of 1863-4. At this period his labours were almost more than human; he wrote his Bastiat-Schulze,[4] a considerable treatise, in about three months, defended himself before the courts both of Berlin and the Rhine in elaborate speeches, conducted the affairs of his Association in all their troublesome details, and often before stormy and hostile audiences gave a succession of addresses, the aim of which was the conquest of Berlin.

Lassalle’s Bastiat-Schulze, his largest economic work, bears all the marks of the haste and feverishness of the time that gave it birth. It contains passages in the worst possible taste; the coarseness and scurrility of his treatment of Schulze are absolutely unjustifiable. The book consists of barren and unprofitable controversy, interspersed with philosophic statements of his economic position, and even they are often crude, confused, and exaggerated. Controversy is usually the most unsatisfactory department of literature, and of the various forms of controversy that of Lassalle is the least to be desired, consisting as it so largely did of supercilious verbal and captious objection. The book as a whole is far below the level of the Working Men’s Programme and the Open Letter.

After all these labours little wonder that we find him writing, on the 14th of February: ‘I am tired to death, and strong as my constitution is, it is shaking to the core. My excitement is so great that I can no longer sleep at night; I toss about on my bed till five o’clock, and rise up with aching head, and entirely exhausted. I am overworked, overtasked, and overtired in the frightfullest degree; the mad effort, beside my other labours, to finish the Bastiat-Schulze in three months, the profound and painful disappointment, the cankering inner disgust, caused by the indifference and apathy of the working class taken as a whole—all has been too much even for me.’

Clearly the great agitator needed rest, and he decided to seek it, as usual, at the baths. But before he retired, he desired once more to refresh his weary soul in the sympathetic enthusiasm which he anticipated from his devoted adherents on the Rhine. Accordingly, on the 8th May 1864, Lassalle departed for the ‘glorious review of his army’ in the Rhine country. ‘He spoke,’ Mehring tells us, ‘on May 14th at Solingen, on the 15th at Barmen, on the 16th at Cologne, on the 18th at Wermelskirchen.’ His journey was like a royal progress or a triumphal procession, except that the joy of the people was perfectly spontaneous. Thousands of workmen received him with acclamations; crowds pressed upon him to shake hands with him, to exchange friendly greetings with him.

On the 22nd May, the first anniversary festival of the Universal Association, held at Ronsdorf, the enthusiasm reached its climax. Old and young, men and women, went forth to meet him as he approached the town; and he entered it through triumphal arches, under a deluge of flowers thrown from the hands of working girls, amidst jubilation indescribable. Writing to the Countess of Hatzfeldt about this time of the impression made on his mind by his reception on the Rhine, Lassalle says, ‘I had the feeling that such scenes must have been witnessed at the founding of new religions.’

The speech of Lassalle at Ronsdorf corresponded in character with the enthusiasm and exaltation of such a time and such an audience. The King of Prussia had recently listened with favour to the grievances of a deputation of Silesian weavers, and promised to help them out of his own purse. Von Ketteler, Bishop of Mainz, had published a short treatise, in which he expressed his agreement with Lassalle’s criticism of the existing economic system. As his manner was, Lassalle did not under-estimate the value of those expressions of opinion. ‘We have compelled,’ he declared, ‘the workmen, the people, the bishops, the king, to bear testimony to the truth of our principles.’

It would be easy to ridicule the enthusiasm for Lassalle entertained by those workmen on the Rhine, but it will be more profitable if we pause for a moment to realise the world-historic pathos of the scene. For the first time for many centuries we see the working men of Germany aroused from their hereditary degradation, apathy, and hopelessness. Change after change had passed in the higher sphere of politics. One conqueror after another had traversed these Rhine countries, but, whoever lost or won, it was the working man who had to pay with his sweat and toil and sorrow. He was the anvil on which the hammer of those iron times had fallen without mercy and without intermission. His doom it was to drudge, to be fleeced, to be drilled and marched off to fight battles in which he had no interest. Brief and fitful gleams of a wild and desperate hope had visited these poor people before, only to go out again in utter darkness; but now in a sky which had so long been black and dull with monotonous misery, the rays were discernible of approaching dawn, a shining light which would grow into a more perfect day. For in the process of history the time had come when the suffering which had so long been dumb should find a voice that would be heard over the world, should find an organisation that would compel the attention of rulers and all men.

Such a cause can be most effectually furthered by wise and sane leadership: yet it is also well when it is not too dependent on the guidance of those who seek to control it. The career of Lassalle always had its unpleasant features. He liked the passing effect too well. He was too fond of display and pleasure. In much that he did there is a note of exaggeration, bordering on insincerity. As his agitation proceeded, this feature of his character becomes more marked. Some of his addresses to the workmen remind us too forcibly of the bulletins of the first Napoleon. He was not always careful to have the firm ground of fact and reality beneath his feet. Many of his critics speak of the failure of his agitation; with no good reason, considering how short a time it had continued, hardly more than a year. Lassalle himself was greatly disappointed with the comparatively little success he had attained. He had not the patience to wait till the sure operation of truth and fact and the justice of the cause he fought for should bring him the reward it merited. On all these grounds we cannot consider the event which so unworthily closed his life as an accident; it was the melancholy outcome of the weaker elements in his strangely mixed character.

While posing as the spokesman of the poor, Lassalle was a man of decidedly fashionable and luxurious habits. His suppers were well known as among the most exquisite in Berlin. It was the most piquant feature of his life that he, one of the gilded youth, a connoisseur in wines, and a learned man to boot, had become agitator and the champion of the workers. In one of the literary and fashionable circles of Berlin he had met a young lady, a Fräulein von Dönniges, for whom he at once felt a passion which was ardently reciprocated. He met her again on the Rigi, in the summer of 1864, when they resolved to marry. She was a young lady of twenty, decidedly unconventional and original in character. It would appear from her own confession that she had not always respected the sacred German morality.

But she had for father a Bavarian diplomatist then resident in Geneva, who was angry beyond all bounds when he heard of the proposed match, and would have absolutely nothing to do with Lassalle. The lady was imprisoned in her own room, and soon, apparently under the influence of very questionable pressure, renounced Lassalle in favour of another admirer, a Wallachian, Count von Racowitza. Lassalle, who had resorted to every available means to gain his end, was now mad with rage, and sent a challenge both to the lady’s father and her betrothed, which was accepted by the latter. At the Carouge, a suburb of Geneva, the meeting took place on the morning of August 28, 1864. Lassalle was mortally wounded, and died on the 31st of the same month. In spite of such a foolish ending, his funeral was that of a martyr, and by many of his adherents he has since been regarded with feelings almost of religious devotion.

How the career of Lassalle might have shaped itself in the new Germany under the system of universal suffrage which was adopted only three years after his death, is an interesting subject of speculation. He could not have remained inactive, and he certainly would not have been hindered by doctrinaire scruples from playing an effective part, even though it were by some kind of alliance with the Government. His ambition and his energy were alike boundless. In the heyday of his passion for Fräulein von Dönniges his dream was to be installed as the President of the German Republic with her elevated by his side. As it was, his position at his death was rapidly becoming difficult and even untenable; he was involved in a net of prosecutions which were fast closing round him. He would soon have had no alternative but exile or a prolonged imprisonment.

Lassalle was undoubtedly a man of the most extraordinary endowments. The reader of his works feels that he is in the presence of a mind of a very high order. Both in his works and in his life we find an exceptional combination of gifts, philosophic power, eloquence, enthusiasm, practical energy, a dominating force of will. Born of a cosmopolitan race, which has produced so many men little trammelled by the conventionalism of the old European societies, he was to a remarkable degree original and free from social prejudice; was one of the men in whom the spirit of daring initiative is to a remarkable degree active. He had in fact a revolutionary temperament, disciplined by the study of German philosophy, by the sense of the greatness of Prussia’s historic mission, and by a considerable measure of practical insight, for in this he was not by any means wanting. In Marx we see the same temperament, only in his case it was stronger, more solid, sell-restrained, matured by wider reflection, and especially by the study of the economic development of Europe, continued for a period of forty years.

But on the whole, Lassalle was a vis intemperata. He was deficient in sober-mindedness, self-control, and in that saving gift of common sense, without which the highest endowments may be unprofitable and even hurtful to their possessors and to the world. His ambitions were not pure; he had a histrionic as well as a revolutionary temperament; he was lacking also in self-respect; above all, he had not sufficient reverence for the great and sacred cause of which he had become the champion, a cause which is fitted to claim the highest motives, the purest ambitions, the most noble enthusiasms. His vanity, his want of self-restraint, his deficient sense of the seriousness of his mission as a Social Democratic leader, in these we see the failings that proved his undoing. Throughout the miserable intrigue in which he met his death a simple, straightforward sense of what was right and becoming would at once have saved him from ruin. Yet he was privileged to inaugurate a great movement. As the founder of the Social Democracy of Germany, he has earned a place on the roll of historic names. He possessed in a notable degree the originality, energy, and sympathy which fit a man to be the champion of a new cause.

We may go further and say that at that date Germany had only two men whose insight into the facts and tendencies of their time was in some real degree adequate to the occasion—Bismarck and Lassalle. The former represented a historic cause, which was ready for action, the regeneration and unification of Germany to be accomplished by the Prussian army. The cause which Lassalle brought to the front was at a very different stage of progress. The working men, its promoters and representatives, and Lassalle, its champion, had not attained to anything like clearness either as to the end to be gained or the means for accomplishing it. It was only at the crudest and most confused initial stage.

[1]

The most important works of Lassalle are mentioned in the text. See Georg Brandes, Ferdinand Lassalle; Franz Mehring, Die Deutsche Social-demokratie, ihre Geschichte und ihre Lehre; W. H. Dawson, German Socialism and Ferdinand Lassalle.

[2]

Schulze-Delitzsch was born in 1808 at Delitzsch, in Prussian Saxony, whence the second part of his name, to distinguish him from the many other people in Germany who bear the familiar name of Schulze. It was his great merit that he founded the co-operative movement in Germany on principles of self-help. He was a leading member of the Progressist party.

[3]

In contrast to the unequal and indirect system existing in Prussia, according to which the voters are on a property basis divided into three classes. The voters thus arranged choose bodies of electors, by whom the members for the Chamber are chosen.

[4]

Bastiat was the populariser in France of the orthodox Political Economy. Lassalle accused Schulze of being a mere echo of Bastiat’s superficial views, and therefore called him Bastiat-Schulze.

II. Theories of Lassalle

The socialistic position of Lassalle may generally be described as similar to that of Rodbertus and Karl Marx. He admits his indebtedness to both of those writers, but at the same time he cannot be regarded as a disciple of either of them. Lassalle himself was a thinker of great original power; he had his own way of conceiving and expressing the historic socialism.

Lassalle supplies the key to his general position in the preface to his Bastiat-Schulze, when, quoting from his System of Acquired Rights, he says: In social matters the world is confronted with the question, whether now when property in the direct utilisation of another man no longer exists, such property in his indirect exploitation should continue—that is, whether the free realisation and development of our labour-force should be the exclusive private property of the possessor of capital, and whether the employer as such, and apart from the remuneration of his intellectual labour, should be permitted to appropriate the result of other men’s labours.[1] This sentence, he says, contains the programme of a national-economic work, which he intended to write under the title, Outlines of a Scientific National Economy. In this sentence also, we need not say, the fundamental position of socialism is implied. He was about to carry out his project when the Leipsic Central Committee brought the question before him in a practical form. The agitation broke out and left him no leisure for such a work. But he had often lamented that the exposition of the theory had not preceded the practical agitation, and that a scientific basis had not been provided for it.

The Bastiat-Schulze was itself a controversial work, written to meet the needs of the hour. Lassalle has never given a full and systematic exposition of his socialistic theory. All his social-economic writings were published as the crises of his agitation seemed to demand. But, as he himself says, they compensate by the life and incisiveness of the polemical form of treatment for what they lose in systematic value. We may add that it is often a scientific gain, for in the career of Lassalle we see socialism confronted with fact, and thereby to a large extent saved from the absoluteness, abstractness, and deficient sense of reality which detract so much from the value of the works of Marx and Rodbertus. The excessive love of system so characteristic of German theorists may be as remote from historic reality and possibility as the utopian schemes of French socialists. It is, however, also a natural result of Lassalle’s mode of presentation that he is not always consistent with himself either on practical or theoretical questions, especially in his attitude towards the Prussian State.

On the whole, we can most clearly and comprehensively bring out the views of Lassalle if we follow the order in which they are presented in his three leading works, the Working Men’s Programme, the Open Letter, and the Bastiat-Schulze.

The central theme of the Working Men’s Programme is the vocation of the working class as the makers and representatives of a new era in the history of the world. We have seen that Lassalle’s System of Acquired Rights was an application of the historical method to legal ideas and institutions. In his social-economic writings we find the application of the same method to economic facts and institutions. The Working Men’s Programme is a brilliant example of the historical method, and indeed is a lucid review of the economic development of Europe, culminating in the working men’s State, the full-grown democracy.

In the mediæval world the owners of land controlled politics, the army, law, and taxation in their own interest, while labour was oppressed and despised. The present régime of the capitalist classes is due to a gradual process of development continued for centuries, and is the product of many forces which have acted and reacted on each other: the invention of the mariner’s compass and of gunpowder; abroad the discovery of America and of the sea-route to India; at home the overthrow of the feudal houses by a central government, which established a regular justice, security of property, and better means of communication. This was to be followed in time by the development of machinery, like the cotton-spinning machine of Arkwright, itself the living embodiment of the industrial and economic revolution, which was destined to produce a corresponding political change. The new machinery, the large industry, the division of labour, cheap goods, and the world-market—these were all parts of an organic whole. Production in mass made cheap goods possible; the cheapening of commodities called forth a wider market, and the wider market led to a still larger production.

The rulers of the industrial world, the capitalists, became the rulers also of the political; the French Revolution was merely a proclamation of a mighty fact which had already established itself in the most advanced portions of Europe. But the marvellous enthusiasm of the Revolution was kindled by the fact that its champions at the time represented the cause of humanity. Before long, however, it became manifest that the new rulers fought for the interests of a class, the bourgeoisie; and another class, that of the proletariat, or unpropertied workers, began to define itself in opposition to them. Like their predecessors, the bourgeoisie wielded the legal and political power for their own selfish ends. They made wealth the test and basis of political and social right; they established a restricted franchise; shackled the free expression of opinion by cautions and taxes on newspapers, and threw the burden of taxation on the working classes.

We have seen that the development of the middle class was a slow and gradual process, the complex result of a complex mass of forces. Considering that the special theme of the Working Men’s Programme is the historical function of the working class, it is certainly a most serious defect of Lassalle’s exposition that he says so little of the causes which have conditioned the development of the working class as the representatives of a new era. Their appearance on the pages of Lassalle as the supporters of a great rôle is far too sudden.

On the 24th of February 1848, he says, broke the first dawn of a new historical period. On that day in France a revolution broke out, which called a workman into the Provisional Government; which declared the aim of the State to be the improvement of the lot of the working class; and which proclaimed direct and universal suffrage, whereby every citizen who had attained the age of twenty-one should, without regard to property, have an equal share in all political activity. The working class were therefore destined to be the rulers and makers of a new society. But the rule of the working class had this enormous difference from other forms of class rule, that it admits of no special privilege.

We are all workers, in so far as we have the will in any way to make ourselves useful to the human society. The working class is therefore identical with the whole human race. Its cause is in truth the cause of entire humanity, its freedom is the freedom of humanity itself, its rule is the rule of all.

The formal means of realising this is direct universal suffrage, which is no magic wand, but which at least can rectify its own mistakes. It is the lance which heals the wounds itself has made. Under universal suffrage the legislature is the true mirror of the people that has chosen it, reflecting its defects, but its progress also, for which it affords unlimited expression and development.

The people must therefore always regard direct universal suffrage as its indispensable political weapon, as the most fundamental and weightiest of its demands. And we need not fear that they will abuse their power; for while the position and interests of the old privileged classes became inconsistent with the general progress of humanity, the mass of the people must know that their interests can be advanced only by promoting the good of their whole class. Even a very moderate sense of their own welfare must teach them that each individual can separately do very little to improve his condition. They can prevail only by union. Thus their personal interest, instead of being opposed to the movement of history, coincides with the development of the whole people and is in harmony with freedom, culture, and the highest ideas of our time.

This masterly treatise of Lassalle concludes with an appeal to the working class, in which we see the great agitator reach the high level of a pure and noble eloquence. Having shown at length that the working class are called to be the creators and representatives of a new historical era, he proceeds: ‘From what we have said there follows for all who belong to the working class the duty of an entirely new bearing.

‘Nothing is more suited to stamp on a class a worthy and deeply moral impress than the consciousness that it is called to be the ruling class, that it is appointed to raise its principle to be the principle of an entire epoch, to make its idea the ruling idea of the whole society, and so again to mould society after its own pattern. The high world-historic honour of this vocation must occupy all your thoughts. The vices of the oppressed, the idle amusements of the thoughtless, and the harmless frivolity of the unimportant beseem you no longer. Ye are the rock on which the church of the future should be built.’

Pity that in the miserable squabble which terminated his life he did not realise that the leader of the working class should also be inspired by a sense of the nobility of his calling.

This exposition of the vocation of the working class is closely connected with another notable feature of Lassalle’s teaching, his Theory of the State. Lassalle’s theory of the State differs entirely from that generally held by the Liberal school. The Liberal school hold that the function of the State consists simply in protecting the personal freedom and the property of the individual. This he scouts as a night-watchman’s idea, because it conceives the State under the image of a night-watchman, whose sole function it is to prevent robbery and burglary.

In opposition to this narrow idea of the State, Lassalle quotes approvingly the view of August Boeckh: ‘That we must widen our notion of the State so as to believe that the State is the institution in which the whole virtue of humanity should be realised.’

History, Lassalle tells us, is an incessant struggle with Nature, with the misery, ignorance, poverty, weakness, and unfreedom in which the human race was originally placed.[2] The progressive victory over this weakness, that is the development of the freedom which history depicts.

In this struggle, if the individual had been left to himself, he could have made no progress. The State it is which has the function to accomplish this development of freedom, this development of the human race in the way of freedom. The duty of the State is to enable the individual to reach a sum of culture, power, and freedom, which for individuals would be absolutely unattainable. The aim of the State is to bring human nature to positive unfolding and progressive development—in other words, to realise the chief end of man: it is the education and development of the human race in the way of freedom.

The State should be the complement of the individual. It must be ready to offer a helping hand, wherever and whenever individuals are unable to realise the happiness, freedom, and culture which befit a human being.

Save the State, that primitive vestal fire of culture, from the modern barbarians, he exclaims on another occasion.

To these political conceptions Lassalle is true throughout. It certainly is a nobler and more rational ideal of the State than the once prevalent Manchester theory. When we descend from theory to practice all obviously depends on what kind of State we have got, and on the circumstances and conditions under which it is called upon to act.

That the State should, through its various organs, support and develop individual effort, calling it forth, rendering it hopeful and effectual, never weakening the springs of it, but stimulating and completing it, is a position which most thinkers would now accept. And most will admit with regret that the existing State is too much a great taxing and fighting machine. The field of inquiry here opened up is a wide and tempting one, on which we cannot now enter. We are at present concerned with the fact that the State help contemplated by Lassalle was meant not only to leave the individual free, but to further him in the free realisation of himself.

The Iron Law of Wages may well be described as the key to Lassalle’s social-economic position. It holds the same prominent place in his system of thinking as the theory of surplus value does in that of Marx. Both, it may be added, are only different aspects of the same fact. Lassalle insists chiefly on the small share of the produce of labour which goes to the labourer; Marx traces the history of the share, called surplus value, which goes to the capitalist.

Lassalle’s most careful statement of the Iron Law, to which he frequently recurs in subsequent writings, is contained in his Open Letter (p. 13). ‘The Iron Economic Law, which, in existing circumstances, under the law of supply and demand for labour, determines the wage, is this: that the average wage always remains reduced to the necessary provision which, according to the customary standard of living, is required for subsistence and for propagation. This is the point about which the real wage continually oscillates, without ever being able long to rise above it or to fall below it. It cannot permanently rise above this average level, because in consequence of the easier and better condition of the workers there would be an increase of marriages and births among them, an increase of the working population and thereby of the supply of labour, which would bring the wage down to its previous level or even below it. On the other hand, the wage cannot permanently fall below this necessary subsistence, because then occur emigration, abstinence from marriage, and, lastly, a diminution of the number of workmen caused by their misery, which lessens the supply of labour, and therefore once more raises the wage to its previous rate.’

On a nearer consideration, Lassalle goes on to say, the effect of the Iron Law is as follows:—

‘From the produce of labour so much is taken and distributed among the workmen as is required for their subsistence.

‘The entire surplus of production falls to the capitalist. It is therefore a result of the Iron Law that the workman is necessarily excluded from the benefits of an increasing production, from the increased productivity of his own labour.’[3]

Such is Lassalle’s theory of the Iron Law of Wages. He accepts it as taught by Ricardo and the economists of the orthodox school in England, France, and Germany. We believe that his statement of it is substantially just and accurate; that it fairly reflects the economic science of his time, and, under the then prevailing economic conditions, may be described as a valid law.

Lassalle held that the customary standard of living and the operation of the law generally were subject to variation. Still it may reasonably be maintained that he has not sufficiently considered the fact that, like capital, the Iron Law of Wages is an historical category. He has not overlooked the fact, and could hardly do so, as the Iron Law is an implicate and result of the domination of capital. But his method of exposition is too much the controversial one, of pressing it as an argumentum ad hominem against his opponents in Germany, and, as usual, in controversy truth is liable to suffer. It may therefore be argued that under the competitive system as now existing, changes have occurred which render Lassalle’s theory of the Iron Law inaccurate and untenable. Even while the present system continues to prevail, the law may undergo very extensive modification through the progress of education and organisation among the workmen, and through the general advance of society in morality and enlightenment. The question of modification of the Iron Law is one of degree, and it may fairly be contended by critics of Lassalle that he has not recognised it to a sufficient degree.

On the other hand, it may also be rationally maintained that in so far as education and organisation prevail among the workmen, in so far does capitalism, with all its conditions and implicates, tend to be superseded. Trade Unions, Co-operative Societies, Factory Legislation, are all forms of the social control of economic processes, inconsistent with competitive economics. The more they gain ground, the more does capitalism tend to break up and disappear. From this higher point of view, we may fairly contend that considerations which have been urged as destructive of Lassalle’s argument are really symptoms of the decline of capitalism. The Iron Law is an inevitable result of the historical conditions contemplated by Lassalle. These conditions have changed, but the change means that capitalism is passing away. We are thus thrown back on the wider question, whether capitalism is disappearing, a question which it would at present be premature to discuss.

In any case the position of Lassalle is perfectly clear. He accepted the orthodox political economy in order to show that the inevitable operation of its laws left no hope for the working class; and that no remedy could be found except by abolishing the conditions in which those laws have their validity—in other words, by abolishing the present relations of labour and capital altogether. The great aim of his agitation was to bring forward a scheme which would strike at the root of the evil. The remedy for the evil condition of things connected with the Iron Law of Wages is to secure the workmen the full produce of their labour, by combining the functions of workmen and capitalists through the establishment of productive associations. The distinction between labourer and capitalist is thereby abolished. The workman becomes producer, and for remuneration receives the entire produce of his labour.

The associations founded by Schulze-Delitzsch, Lassalle went on to argue, would effect no substantial improvement in the condition of the working class. The unions for the supply of credit and raw materials do not benefit the working class as such, but only the small hand-workers. But hand-labour is an antiquated form of industry, which is destined to succumb before the large industry equipped with machinery and an adequate capital. To provide the hand-workers with the means of continuing their obsolete trades is only to prolong the agony of an assured defeat.

The consumers’ unions, or co-operative stores as we call them in England, also fail, because they do not help the workman at the point where he needs it most, as producers. Before the seller, as before the policeman, all men are equal; the only thing the seller cares for is that his customers are able to pay. In discussing the Iron Law, we saw that the workman must be helped as producer—that is, in securing a better share of his product. The consumers’ unions may indeed give a restricted and temporary relief. So long as the unions include only a limited number of workmen, they afford relief by cheapening the means of subsistence, inasmuch as they do not lower the general rate of wages. But in proportion as the unions embrace the entire working class and thereby cause a general cheapening of the means of subsistence, the Iron Law of Wages will take effect. For the average wage is only the expression in money of the customary means of subsistence. The average wage will fall in proportion to the general cheapening of the means of subsistence, and all the pains taken by the workmen in founding and conducting the consumers’ unions will be labour lost. They will only enable the workman to subsist on a smaller wage.

The only effectual way to improve the condition of the working class is through the free individual association of the workers, by its application and extension to the great industry. The working class must be its own capitalist.

But when the workmen on the one hand contemplate the enormous sums required for railways and factories, and on the other hand consider the emptiness of their own pockets, they may naturally ask where they are to obtain the capital needed for the great industry? The State alone can furnish it; and the State ought to furnish it, because it is, and always has been, the duty of the State to promote and facilitate the great progressive movements of civilisation. Productive association with State credit was the plan of Lassalle.[4]

The State had already in numerous instances guaranteed its credit for industrial undertakings by which the rich classes had benefited—canals, postal services, banks, agricultural improvements, and especially with regard to railways. No outcry of socialism or communism had been raised against this form of State help? Then why raise it when the greatest problem of modern civilisation was involved—the improvement of the lot of the working classes? Lassalle’s estimate was, that the loan of a hundred million thalers (£15,000,000) would be more than sufficient to bring the principle of association into full movement throughout the kingdom of Prussia.

Obviously the money required for the promotion of productive associations did not require to be actually paid by the Government; only the State guarantee for the loan was necessary. The State would see that proper rules for the associations should be made and observed by them. It would reserve to itself the rights of a creditor or sleeping partner. It would generally take care that the funds be put to their legitimate use. But its control would not pass beyond those reasonable limits: the associations would be free; they would be the voluntary act of the working men themselves. Above all, the State, thus supporting and controlling the associations, would be a democratic State, elected by universal suffrage, the organ of the workers, who form an overwhelming majority of every community.

But if we are to conceive the matter in the crudest way and consider the money as actually paid, wherein would the enormity of such a transaction consist? The State had spent hundreds of millions in war, to appease the wounded vanity of royal mistresses, to satisfy the lust of conquest of princes, to open up markets for the middle classes; yet when the deliverance of humanity is concerned the money cannot be procured!

Further, as he takes care to explain, Lassalle did not propose his scheme of productive associations as the solution of the social question. The solution of the social question would demand generations. He proposed his scheme as the means of transition, as the easiest and mildest means of transition.[5] It was the germ, the organic principle of an incessant development. Lassalle has indicated, though only in vague outline, how such an organic development of productive associations should proceed. They would begin in populous centres, in cases where the nature of the industry, and the voluntary inclination of the workmen to association, would facilitate their formation. Industries, which are mutually dependent and work into each other’s hands, would be united by a credit union; and there would further be an insurance union, embracing the different associations, which would reduce their losses to a minimum. The risks would be greatly lessened as a speculative industry constantly tending to anarchy, and all the evils of competition would be superseded by an organised industry; over-production would give place to production in advance. In this way the associations would grow until they embraced the entire industry of the country. And the general application of the principle would give an enormous advantage in international competition to the country adopting it, for it would be rational, systematic, and in every way more effective and economical.

The goal of the whole development, as conceived by Lassalle, was a collectivism of the same type as that contemplated by Marx and Rodbertus. ‘Division of labour,’ he says, ‘is really common labour, social combination for production. This, the real nature of production, needs only to be explicitly recognised. In the total production, therefore, it is merely requisite to abolish individual portions of capital, and to conduct the labour of society, which is already common, with the common capital of society, and to distribute the result of production among all who have contributed to it, in proportion to their performance.’[6]

In the controversial work against Schulze-Delitzsch, Lassalle has at greater length expounded his general position in opposition to the individualist theories of his opponents. He contends that progress has not proceeded from the individual; it has always proceeded from the community. In this connection he sums up briefly the history of social development.

The entire ancient world, and also the whole mediæval period down to the French Revolution of 1789, sought human solidarity and community in bondage or subjection.

The French Revolution of 1789, and the historical period controlled by it, rightly incensed at this subjection, sought freedom in the dissolution of all solidarity and community. Thereby, however, it gained, not freedom, but license. Because freedom without community is license.

The new, the present period, seeks solidarity in freedom.[7] He then proceeds in his theory of conjunctures to prove that, instead of each man being economically responsible for what he has done, each man is really responsible for what he has not done. The economic fate of the individual is determined by circumstances over which he has no control, or very little. What does Lassalle mean by a conjuncture? We can best understand it by reference to a great economic crisis which has occurred since his time. No better example of a conjuncture can be found than in the recent history of British agriculture. In 1876, agriculture, still the most important industry of the country, began to be seriously threatened by American competition. The crisis caused by the low prices due to this competition was greatly aggravated by bad seasons, such as that of 1879. The farmers, obliged to pay rent out of capital, were many of them ruined. In consequence of the diminished application of capital to land the opportunities of labour were greatly lessened. Rents could no longer be paid as formerly. All three classes directly concerned in English agriculture suffered fearfully, without any special individual responsibility in the matter. In Ireland, where the difficulty, great in itself, was intensified by the national idea, an economic crisis grew into a great political and imperial crisis. In the eyes of the impartial inquirer, who of all the millions of sufferers was personally responsible?

Such wide-spread disasters are common in recent economic history. They are a necessary result of a competitive system of industry. Lassalle is justly angry with the one-sided and ill-instructed economists that would hold the individual responsible for his fate in such a crisis. Statesmen little understand their duty who would leave their subjects without help in these times of distress. And it must always be a praiseworthy feature of socialism that it seeks to establish social control of these conjunctures as far as possible, and to minimise their disastrous effects by giving social support to those menaced by them.

The main burden of the Bastiat-Schulze is Lassalle’s account of capital and labour.

For Lassalle capital is a historic category, a product of historical circumstances, the rise of which we can trace, the disappearance of which, under altered circumstances, we can foresee.

In other words, capital is the name for a system of economic, social, and legal conditions, which are the result severally and collectively of a long and gradual process of historical development. The Bastiat-Schulze is an elucidation of these conditions. The following may be taken as a general statement of them:—

(1) The division of labour in connection with the large industry.

(2) A system of production for exchange in the great world-markets.

(3) Free competition.

(4) The instruments of labour, the property of a special class, who after paying

(5) A class of free labourers in accordance with the Iron Law of Wages, pocket the surplus value. Property consists not in the fruit of one’s own labour, but in the appropriation of that of others. Eigenthum ist Fremdthum geworden.[8]

In this way capital has become an independent, active, and self-generating power which oppresses its producer. Money makes money. The labour of the past, appropriated and capitalised, crushes the labour of the present. ‘The dead captures the living.’ ‘The instrument of labour, which has become independent, and has exchanged rôles with the workmen, which has degraded the living workmen to a dead instrument of labour, and has developed itself, the dead instrument of labour, into the living organ of production—that is capital.’[9] In such highly metaphorical language does Lassalle sum up his history of capital. We have already commented on that aspect of it, the Iron Law of Wages, which Lassalle has most emphasised. The whole subject is much more comprehensively treated in the Kapital of Karl Marx; therefore we need not dwell upon it further at present.

It will not be wrong, however, to say a word here about the use of the word capital, as current in the school of socialists to which Lassalle and Marx belong. It is not applied by them in its purely economic sense, as wealth utilised for further production: it is used as the name of the social and economic system in which the owners of capital are the dominant power. With them it is the economic factor as operating under the existing legal and social conditions, with all these conditions clinging to it. It would be much better to restrict the word to its proper economic use, and employ the new word capitalism as a fairly accurate name for the existing system.

The function of capital under all social systems and at all historical epochs is fundamentally the same; it is simply wealth used for the production of more wealth. But the historical, legal, and political conditions under which it is utilised vary indefinitely, as do also the technical forms in which it is embodied.

No real excuse can be offered for the ignorance or confusion of language of controversialists who maintain that the object of socialism is to abolish capital. So far from abolishing capital, socialists wish to make it still more effective for social well-being by placing it under social control. What they wish to abolish is the existing system, in which capital is under the control of a class. It would be a considerable gain in clearness if this system were always called capitalism.

We have already remarked upon Lassalle’s theory of the State, and his treatment of the Iron Law of Wages. Our further criticism of his social-economic position can best be brought out by reference to his controversy with Schulze-Delitzsch, the economic representative of German Liberalism.

In general it may be said that Lassalle meets the one-sided individualism of Schulze by a statement of the socialistic, theory, which is also one-sided and exaggerated. His view of the influence of the community as compared with that of the individual is the most prominent example of this. The only accurate social philosophy is one which gives due attention to both factors; both are of supreme importance, and either may fitly be the starting-point of investigation and discussion.

His theory of conjunctures is overstated. It is to a considerable degree well founded; in the great economic storms which sweep over the civilised world the fate of the individual is largely determined by conditions over which he has no control. Yet now as ever the homely virtues of industry, energy, sobriety, and prudence do materially determine the individual career.

For our present purpose, however, it is more important to consider Lassalle’s polemic against the practical proposals of his opponent. Lassalle contended that the unions for providing credit and raw material would benefit the hand-workers only, whereas hand-labour is destined to disappear before the large industry. But, we may ask, why should not such methods of mutual help be utilised for associations of working men even more than for isolated workers? These unions may be regarded as affording only a very partial and limited relief to the workmen, but why should the principle of association among workmen stop there?

The system of voluntary co-operation must begin somewhere; it began most naturally and reasonably with such unions, and it proceeds most naturally and reasonably along the line of least resistance to further development. In these unions the workmen have been acquiring the capital and experience necessary for further progress. No limit can be assigned to the possible evolution of the system. They are properly to be regarded as only the first beginnings of social control over the economic processes, the goal and consummation of which we find in socialism. If in the controversial struggle Lassalle had listened to the clear voice of science, he would have seen that, for his opponent as well as for himself, he must maintain that all social institutions are subject to and capable of development.

For the methods of Schulze it may be claimed that they do not provide a ready-made solution of the social question, but they are a beginning. For the associations of Schulze, not less than for those of Lassalle, we may contend that they supply the organic principle of an incessant development. In this way the workmen may attain to the complete management of their own industrial interests with their own joint capital. They may thus obtain for themselves the full product of their labour, in which case the objection of Lassalle, with regard to the increase of population, under the influence of the cheap provisions supplied by the stores, would no more apply to the scheme of Schulze than they would to his own. In both cases we are to suppose that the means of subsistence would be more abundant and more easily obtained; in both cases there might be the risk of a too rapidly increasing population. We may suppose that this increase of population would be met by a still greater increase in the product of labour, all going to the workers. But for the schemes of Schulze there would be this great advantage that, the capital and experience of the workers having been acquired by their own exertions, they would have all the superior training requisite for the solution of the population question, and all other questions, which can be obtained only from a long course of social discipline.

Lassalle would have done well to remember his own statement, that the only real point of difference between them was, that one believed in State help, and the other in ‘self help.’ And we may further ask, Do the two exclude each other?

In fact, the controversy, considered purely on its merits, was barren enough. Yet it led to profitable results, inasmuch as it directed the mind of Germany to the questions involved, and led to a more thorough discussion of them.

Better, however, than any argument which can be urged is the verdict of history on the merits of the question, as already pronounced during the period which has elapsed since the date of the controversy. In 1885, just twenty-one years after the bitter controversy between the two representatives of State help and self help, the societies established by Schulze in Germany alone possessed one hundred million thalers of capital of their own. It will be remembered that this is the amount of the loan required by Lassalle from the State to bring his productive associations into operation. If the workmen fail in productive association, it will not be, as Lassalle maintained, for want of capital. Productive association with State credit is therefore not the only way out of the wilderness.

Must we go further and say that Lassalle’s method of State help was not the right method at all? It is certain that the Government of Germany, though organised on the principle of universal suffrage, has not granted the credit demanded by Lassalle, and that his agitation in this matter has failed owing, it might be alleged, to his early death, and to the fact that since his time German socialism has prematurely moved on international, and even anti-national, lines, thus alienating from itself the sympathies of the Emperor and his Chancellor. We need not say how very improbable it is that the German Government would have guaranteed its credit, however submissive and conciliatory the attitude of the Social Democrats might have been. The Social Democrats themselves, though they gave a place to Lassalle’s scheme on the Gotha programme of 1875, seem now disposed to attach little or no importance to it. It does not appear in the Erfurt programme of the party, which was adopted in 1891. In short, Lassalle’s agitation has in the point immediately in question been a failure. At the same time, it would be absolutely incorrect to assert that experience has pronounced against his scheme, inasmuch as no Government has ever seriously taken it in hand.

Like many other pioneers, Lassalle has not accomplished what he intended, yet he has achieved great results. We cannot quite accept the dictum of Schiller, that the world’s history is the world’s judgment. We are not prepared to believe that all things that have succeeded were good, and all things that have failed were evil; or that things are good or evil only in so far as they succeed or fail. Still, we may well sum up the controversy between Lassalle and Schulze by stating that in 1885 the societies founded by the latter had in Germany a membership of 1,500,000 with a capital of £15,000,000, and at the election of 1890 the Social Democracy of Germany, originated by Lassalle, polled 1,427,000 votes. Both have done great things, which are destined to be greater still. In this, as in so many other instances, the course of history has not respected the narrow limits prescribed to it by controversialists.

We need not, however, insist further on the details of Lassalle’s controversy with Schulze-Delitzsch. Much more important is it to recall the leading aspects of his teaching. What Lassalle contemplated and contended for was a democracy in which the claims of Might and Right should be reconciled, a democracy of working men, guided by science, and through universal suffrage constituting a State which would rise to the high level of its function as representative and promoter of freedom, culture, morality, and progress in the fullest and deepest significance of those great ideas. Above all, this democracy was to be a social democracy, in which the political idea should be subordinate to the social; hence the duty of the State at least to initiate the solution of the social question by granting credit for productive associations. But this was only to be a beginning; the solution of the social question must be ardently worked out for generations until labour should be entirely emancipated.

With such an ideal, contrast the Prussian-German State as it actually is. The German State must still find its basis in the army and police, the most intelligent of the working class being in profound discontent. It is a fact worth considering by our economists and politicians, that the élite of the working men of probably the best educated and most thoughtful nation in the world have gone over to the Social Democratic party. Nor can the German or any other State devote itself heartily to the solution of the social question, for Europe is like a vast camp, in which science and finance are strained to the uttermost in order to devise and provide instruments for the destruction of our fellow-men. Of this state of things the young Emperor who ascended the throne in 1888 is only the too willing representative; but even if he were inclined, he would be powerless to prevent it, as its causes are too deeply rooted in human nature and in the present stage of social development to be removed by anything less than a profound change in the motives and conditions of life. The historical antecedents and geographical position of Germany are such that it must long continue to be a military State; and most other nations have hindrances of their own. Reformers must therefore wait long and strive earnestly before they can hope to see such an ideal as that of Lassalle realised. That the ideal was a noble one, and that the gratitude of all lovers of progress is due to him for his energetic and eloquent advocacy of it, notwithstanding certain unworthy passages in his career, few will deny.

[1]

Bastiat-Schulze, p. iii., Berlin 1878.

[2]

See Working Men’s Programme.

[3]

See Open Letter.

[4]

See Open Letter, passim.

[5]

See Bastiat-Schulze, p. 189.

[6]

Bastiat-Schulze, p. 188.

[7]

Bastiat-Schulze, p. 18.

[8]

Bastiat-Schulze, p. 186.

[9]

Ibid., p. 181.

CHAPTER VI

RODBERTUS

To those who identify socialism with the extreme revolutionary spirit, Rodbertus is naturally an enigma. Everything characteristic of Rodbertus is an express contradiction of their notion of a socialist. He was a Prussian lawyer and landowner, a quiet and cultured student, who disliked revolution and even agitation. It was a marked feature of his teaching also, that he meant the socialist development to proceed on national lines and under national control. Yet it is impossible to give any reasonable account of socialism that will exclude Rodbertus. Clearly the only right way out of the dilemma for those who are caught in it is to widen their conception of the subject; and Rodbertus will become perfectly clear and intelligible.

Karl Johann Rodbertus, by some considered to be the founder of scientific socialism, was born at Greifswald on 12th August 1805, his father being a professor at the university there. He studied law at Göttingen and Berlin, thereafter engaging in various legal occupations; and, after travelling for some time, he bought the estate of Jagetzow, in Pomerania, whence his name of Rodbertus-Jagetzow. In 1836 he settled on this estate, and henceforward devoted his life chiefly to economic and other learned studies, taking also some interest in local and provincial affairs.

After the revolution of March 1848 Rodbertus was elected member of the Prussian National Assembly, in which body he belonged to the Left Centre; and for fourteen days he filled the post of Minister of Public Worship and Education. He sat for Berlin in the Second Chamber of 1849, and moved the adoption of the Frankfort imperial constitution, which was carried. Then came the failure of the revolutionary movement in Prussia, as elsewhere in Europe, and Rodbertus retired into private life. When the system of dividing the Prussian electorate into three classes was adopted, Rodbertus recommended abstention from voting. His only subsequent appearance in public life was his candidature for the first North German Diet, in which he was defeated.

His correspondence with Lassalle was an interesting feature of his life. At one time Rodbertus had some intention of forming a social party with the help of the conservative socialist Rudolf Meyer and of Hasenclever, a prominent follower of Lassalle; but no progress was made in this. Rodbertus was neither disposed nor qualified to be an agitator, being a man of a calm and critical temperament, who believed that society could not be improved by violent changes, but by a long and gradual course of development. He warned the working men of Germany against connecting themselves with any political party, enjoining them to be a social party pure and simple. He died on 8th December 1875.

The general position of Rodbertus was ‘social, monarchical, and national.’ With his entire soul he held the purely economic part of the creed of the German Social Democratic party, yet he did not agree with their methods, and had no liking for the productive associations with State help of Lassalle. He regarded a socialistic republic as a possible thing, but he cordially accepted the monarchic institution in his own country, and hoped that a German emperor might undertake the rôle of a social emperor. He was also a true patriot, and was proud and hopeful of the career that lay before the regenerated empire of Germany.

The basis of the economic teaching of Rodbertus is the principle laid down by Adam Smith and Ricardo, and insisted on by all the later socialists, that labour is the source and measure of value. In connection with this he developed the position that rent, profit, and wages are all parts of a national income produced by the united organic labour of the workers of the community. Consequently there can be no talk of the wages of labour being paid out of capital; wages is only that part of the national income which is received by the workmen, of a national income which they have themselves entirely produced. The wages fund theory is thus summarily disposed of.

But the most important result of the theory is his position that the possession of land and capital enables the landholders and capitalists to compel the workmen to divide the product of their labour with those non-working classes, and in such a proportion that the workers only obtain as much as can support them in life. Thus the Iron Law of Wages is established. Hence also Rodbertus deduces his theory of commercial crises and of pauperism, and in the following way: In spite of the increasing productivity of labour, the workers obtain in general only sufficient to support their class, and therefore a smaller relative share of the national income. But the producers form also the large mass of consumers, and, with the decline of their relative share in the national income, must decline the relative purchasing power of this large class of the people. The growing production is not met by a correspondingly growing consumption; expansion is succeeded by contraction of production, by a scarcity of employment, and a further decline in purchasing power on the part of the workers. Thus we have a commercial crisis bringing with it pauperism as a necessary result. In the meantime the purchasing power of the non-producing capitalists and landholders continues relatively to increase; but, as they have already had enough to buy all the comforts of life, they spend the more in the purchase of luxuries, the production of which increases.

A fundamental part of the teaching of Rodbertus is his theory of social development. He recognised three stages in the economic progress of mankind: (1) the ancient heathen period in which property in human beings was the rule; (2) the period of private property in land and capital; (3) the period, still remote, of property as dependent on service or desert. The goal of the human race is to be one society organised on a communistic basis; only in that way can the principle that every man be rewarded according to his work be realised. In this communistic or socialistic State of the future, land and capital will be national property, and the entire national production will be under national control; and means will be taken so to estimate the labour of each citizen that he shall be rewarded according to its precise amount. An immense staff of State officials will be required for this function. As we have already said, Rodbertus believed that this stage of social development is yet far distant; he thought that five centuries will need to pass away before the ethical force of the people can be equal to it.

From what we have already said, it will be understood that by his temperament, culture, and social position Rodbertus was entirely averse to agitation as a means of hastening the new era; and in the measures which he recommends for making the transition towards it he showed a scrupulous regard for the existing interests of the capitalists and landholders. He proposed that those two classes should be left in full possession of their present share of the national income, but that the workers should reap the benefit of the increasing production. To secure them this increment of production he proposed that the State should fix a normal working day for the various trades, a normal day’s work, and a legal wage, the amount of which should be revised periodically, and raised according to the increase of production, the better workman receiving a better wage. By measures such as these, carried out by the State in order to correct the evils of competition, would Rodbertus seek to make the transition into the socialistic era.

The economic work of Rodbertus is therefore an attempt made in a temperate and scientific spirit to elucidate the evil tendencies inherent in the competitive system, especially as exemplified in the operation of the Iron Law of Wages. The remedy he proposes is a State management of production and distribution, which shall extend more and more, till we arrive at a complete and universal socialism—and all based on the principle that, as labour is the source of value, so to the labourer should all wealth belong.

It is hardly necessary further to dwell on the theories of Rodbertus. The general outlines of his teaching are clear enough, and the details could be properly treated only in a work specially devoted to him. In some leading features his economic position is the same as that of Marx and Lassalle. The chief difference lies in the application of their principles. We have seen that he expects the Prussian or German State to adopt his theories, but the interest we can have in the very remote realisation of them in this way naturally cannot be very great. It was unreasonable to believe that the people of Germany would make no use of their newly acquired political rights to promote their social claims; and it is needless to say that a socialistic evolution slowly carried out under an army of officials is not a very inviting prospect.

On the recent political economy of Germany, especially as represented by Adolf Wagner, Rodbertus has exercised a great influence. For many he is the founder of a truly scientific socialism. His criticism of the leading principles of economics has led them to make important changes in the statement and treatment of their science.[1]

[1]

The following are the most important works of Rodbertus: Zur Erkenntniss unserer staatswirthschaftlichen Zustände (1842); Sociale Briefe an von Kirchmann (1850); Creditnoth des Grundbesitzes (2nd ed., 1876); ‘Der Normal-arbeitstag,’ in Tüb. Zeitschrift (1878); Letters to A. Wagner, etc., Tüb. Zeitschrift (1878-79); Letters to Rudolf Meyer (1882). See also Adolf Wagner (Tüb. Zeitschrift) (1878); Kozak’s work on Rodbertus (1882); an excellent monograph by G. Adler (Leipsic, 1884); and Prof. Gonner’s Social Philosophy of Rodbertus (London, 1899).

CHAPTER VII

KARL MARX

The greatest and most influential name in the history of socialism is unquestionably Karl Marx. He and his like-minded companion Engels are the acknowledged heads of the ‘scientific and revolutionary’ school of socialism, which has its representatives in almost every country of the civilised world, and is generally recognised as the most serious and formidable form of the new teaching.

Like Ferdinand Lassalle, Karl Marx was of Jewish extraction. It is said that from the time of his father, back to the sixteenth century, his ancestors had been rabbis.[1] Marx was born at Treves in 1818, where his father belonged to the legal profession. Both parents were highly cultured and raised above the traditions and prejudices of their race. In 1824, when Marx was six years of age, the family passed over from Judaism to the profession of the Christian faith.

Brought up under very favourable circumstances, ardent and energetic, and endowed with the highest natural gifts, the young Marx speedily assimilated the best learning that. Germany could then provide. At the universities of Bonn and Berlin he studied law to please his father, but following his own bent he gave his time much more to history and philosophy. Hegel was still about the zenith of his influence, and Marx was a zealous student, and for some time an adherent of the reigning school. In 1841 Marx finished his studies and gained the degree of doctor with an essay on the philosophy of Epicurus. This was destined to close his connection with the German universities. He had intended to settle at Bonn as teacher of philosophy, but the treatment which his friend Bruno Bauer as teacher of theology in the same university experienced at the hands of the Prussian minister Eichhorn, deterred him from following out his purpose.

In truth, Marx’s revolutionary temperament was little suited to the routine of the German man of learning, and the political conditions of Prussia gave no scope for free activity in any department of its national life. Marx therefore could only enter the ranks of the opposition, and early in 1842 he joined the staff of the Rhenish Gazette, published at Cologne as an organ of the extreme democracy. He was for a short time editor of the paper. During his connection with it he carried on an unsparing warfare against the Prussian reaction, and left it before its suppression by the Prussian Government, when it sought by compromise to avoid that fate.

In the same year, 1843, Marx married Jenny von Westphalen, who belonged to a family of good position in the official circles of the Rhine country. Her brother was subsequently Prussian minister. It was a most happy marriage. Through all the trials and privations of a revolutionary career Marx found in his wife a brave, steadfast, and sympathetic companion.

Soon after his marriage Marx removed to Paris, where he applied himself to the study of the questions to which his life and activity were henceforward to be entirely devoted. All his life he appears to have worked with extraordinary intensity. At Paris he lived in close intercourse with the leading French socialists; with Proudhon he often spent whole nights in the discussion of economic problems. His most intimate associates, however, were the German exiles. Arnold Ruge and he edited the Deutsch-Französische Jahrbücher. He met also the greatest of the German exiles, Heine, and is said to have had a share in suggesting to the poet the writing of the celebrated Wintermärchen.

Most important of all those meetings in Paris, however, was that with Friedrich Engels. Friedrich Engels was the son of a manufacturer at Barmen, where he was born in 1820. Brought up to his father’s business, Engels had resided for some time in Manchester. When he met Marx at Paris in 1844 the two men had already arrived at a complete community of views, and for nearly forty years continued to be loyal friends and comrades-in-arms.

Early in 1845, Marx, at the instance of Prussia, was expelled from Paris by the Guizot Ministry. Marx settled in Brussels, where he resided three years. He gave up his Prussian citizenship without again becoming naturalised in any country. It was in 1845 that Engels published his important work, The Condition of the Working Class in England. In Brussels, in 1847, Marx published his controversial work on Proudhon’s Philosophie de la Misère, entitled Misère de la Philosophie. Proudhon, it must be remembered, was at that time the leading name in European socialism, and Marx had been on very intimate terms with him. Marx’s criticism of his friend is nevertheless most merciless. In defense of the German we can but say that such scathing methods were not unusual at that time, and that where the cause of truth and of the proletariat as he understood it was concerned, he scorned all manner of compromise and consideration for personal feelings. His book on Proudhon, in spite of its controversial form, is interesting as the first general statement of his views.

This book on Proudhon scarcely attracted any attention whatever. In the same year, 1847, he and his friend Engels had a notable opportunity for an expression of their common opinions which excited wide attention, and which has had a great and still growing influence in the cause of the working man.

A society of socialists, a kind of forerunner of the International, had established itself in London, and had been attracted by the new theories of Marx and the spirit of strong and uncompromising conviction with which he advocated them. They entered into relation with Marx and Engels; the society was reorganised under the name of the Communist League; and a congress was held, which resulted, in 1847, in the framing of the Manifesto of the Communist Party, which was published in most of the languages of Western Europe, and is the first proclamation of that revolutionary socialism armed with all the learning of the nineteenth century, but expressed with the fire and energy of the agitator, which in the International and other movements has so startled the world.

During the revolutionary troubles in 1848 Marx returned to Germany, and along with his comrades, Engels, Wolff, etc., he supported the most advanced democracy in the New Rhenish Gazette. In 1849 he settled in London, where he spent his after-life in the elaboration of his economic views and in the realisation of his revolutionary programme. In 1859 he published Zur Kritik der politischen Oekonomie. This book was for the most part incorporated in the first volume of his great work on capital, Das Kapital, which appeared in 1867.[2] Much of his later life was spent in ill health, due to the excessive work by which he undermined a constitution that had originally been exceptionally healthy and vigorous. He died in London, March 14, 1883. It was a time of the year which had been marked by the outbreak of the Commune at Paris, and is therefore for a twofold reason a notable period in the history of the proletariat.

Since the death of Marx his great work, Das Kapital, has been completed by the publication of the second and third volumes, which have been edited by Engels from manuscripts left by his friend. But neither of these two volumes has the historical interest which may fairly be claimed for the first. In 1877 Engels published on his own account a work called Herrn Eugen Dührings Umwälzung der Wissenschaft,[3] a controversial treatise against Dühring (a teacher of philosophy in the university of Berlin) which has had considerable influence on the development of the German Social Democracy. Engels died in 1895, after loyal and consistent service in the cause of the proletariat, which extended over more than fifty years.

The causes which have variously contributed to the rise of German socialism are sufficiently clear. With the accession of the romanticist Frederick William IV. to the throne of Prussia in 1840 German liberalism received a fresh expansion. At the same time the Hegelian school began to break up, and the interest in pure philosophy began to wane. It was a time of disillusionment, of dissatisfaction with idealism, of transition to realistic and even to materialistic ways of thinking. This found strongest expression in the Hegelian left, to which, after the ideals of the old religions and philosophies had proved unsubstantial, there remained as solid residuum the real fact of man with his positive interests in this life. The devotion and enthusiasm which had previously been fixed on ideal and spiritual conceptions were concentrated on humanity. To adherents of the Hegelian left, who had been delivered from intellectual routine by the most intrepid spirit of criticism, and who therefore had little respect for the conventionalisms of a feudal society, it naturally appeared that the interests of humanity had been cruelly sacrificed in favour of class privilege and prejudice.

The greatest thinkers of Germany had recognised the noble elements in the French Revolution. To recognise also the noble and promising features of French socialism was a natural thing, especially for Germans who had been in Paris, the great hearth of the new ideas. Here they found themselves definitely and consciously in presence of the last and greatest interest of humanity, the suffering and struggling proletariat of Western Europe, which had so recently made its definite entry in the history of the world. Thus socialism became a social, political, and economic creed to Karl Marx and his associates. But they felt that the theories which preceded them were wanting in scientific basis; and it was henceforward the twofold aim of the school to give scientific form to socialism, and to propagate it in Europe by the best and most effective revolutionary methods.

The fundamental principle of the Marx school and of the whole cognate socialism is the theory of ‘surplus value’—the doctrine, namely, that, after the labourer has been paid the wage necessary for the subsistence of himself and family, the surplus produce of his labour is appropriated by the capitalist who exploits it. This theory is an application of the principle that labour is the source of value, which was enunciated by many of the old writers on economics, such as Locke and Petty, which was set forth with some vagueness and inconsistency by Adam Smith, and was more systematically expounded by Ricardo. The socialistic application of the principle in the doctrine of surplus value had been made both by Owenites and Chartists. It was to prevent this appropriation of surplus value by capitalists and middlemen that the Owen school tried the system of exchange by labour notes in 1832, the value of goods being estimated in labour time, represented by labour notes.

The principle that labour is the source of value has been accepted in all its logical consequences by Marx, and by him elaborated with extraordinary dialectical skill and historical learning into the most complete presentation of socialism that has ever been offered to the world. A like application of the principle, but in a less comprehensive fashion, has been made by Rodbertus; and it is the same theory that underlies the extravagances and paradoxes of Proudhon. The question whether the priority in the scientific development of the principle is due to Marx or Rodbertus cannot be discussed here. But it may be said that, the theory had been set forth by Rodbertus in his first work in 1842, that the importance of the principle was understood by the Marx school as early as 1845, and that in a broad and general way it had indeed become the common property of socialists. The historical importance and scientific worth of the writings of Rodbertus should not be overlooked; nor are they likely to be when so much attention has been given to him by A. Wagner and other distinguished German economists.

But in the great work of Marx the socialist theory is elaborated with a fulness of learning and a logical power to which Rodbertus has no claim. With Marx the doctrine of surplus value receives its widest application and development: it supplies the key to his explanation of the history and influence of capital, and consequently of the present economic era, which is dominated by it. It is the basis, in fact, of a vast and elaborate system of social philosophy. In any case it is an absurdity as well as an historical error to speak of Marx as having borrowed from Rodbertus. Marx was an independent thinker of great originality and force of character, who had made the economic development of modern Europe the study of a laborious lifetime, and who was in the habit, not of borrowing, but of strongly asserting the results of his own research and of impressing them upon other men.

The great work of Marx may be described as an exposition and criticism of capital. But it is also indirectly an exposition of socialism, inasmuch as the historical evolution of capital is governed by natural laws, the inevitable tendency of which is towards socialism. It is the great aim of Marx to reveal the law of the economic movement of modern times. Now, the economic movement of modern times is dominated by capital. Explain, therefore, the natural history of capital, the rise, consolidation, and decline of its supremacy as an evolutionary process, and you forecast the nature of that into which it is being transformed—socialism. Hence the great task of the Marx school is not to preach a new economic and social gospel, not to provide ready-made schemes of social regeneration after the fashion of the early socialists, nor to counteract by alleviating measures the wretchedness of our present system, but to explain and promote the inevitable process of social evolution, so that the domination of capital may run its course and give place to the higher system that is to come.

The characteristic feature of the régime of capital, or, as Marx usually calls it, the capitalistic method of production, is, that industrial operations are carried on by individual capitalists employing free labourers, whose sole dependence is the wage they receive. Those free labourers perform the function fulfilled in other states of society by the slave and the serf. In the development of the capitalistic system is involved the growth of the two classes,—the capitalist class, enriching itself on the profits of industry, which they control in their own interest, and the class of workers, nominally free, but without land or capital, divorced, therefore, from the means of production, and dependent on their wages—the modern proletariat. The great aim of the capitalist is the increase of wealth through the accumulation of his profits. This accumulation is secured by the appropriation of what the socialists call surplus value. The history of the capitalistic method of production is the history of the appropriation and accumulation of surplus value. To understand the capitalistic system is to understand surplus value. With the analysis of value, therefore, the great work of Marx begins.

The wealth of the societies in which the capitalistic method of production prevails appears as an enormous collection of commodities. A commodity is in the first place an external object adapted to satisfy human wants; and this usefulness gives it value in use, makes it a use value. These use values form the material of wealth, whatever its social form may be. In modern societies, where the business of production is carried on to meet the demands of the market, for exchange, these use values appear as exchange values. Exchange value is the proportion in which use values of different kinds exchange for each other. But the enormous mass of things that circulate in the world market exchange for each other in the most different proportion. They must, however, have a common quality, or they could not be compared. This common quality cannot be any of the natural properties of the commodities. In the business of exchange one thing is as good as another, provided you have it in sufficient quantity.

Leaving out of consideration, therefore, the physical qualities that give commodities use value, we find in them but one common characteristic—that they are all products of human labour. They are all crystallised forms of human labour. It is labour applied to natural objects that gives them value. What constitutes value is the human labour embodied in commodities. And the relation of exchange is only a phase of this value, which is therefore to be considered independently of it. Further, the labour time spent in producing value is the measure of value, not this or that individual labour, in which case a lazy or unskilled man would produce as great a quantity of value as the most skilful and energetic. We must take as our standard the average labour force of the community. The labour time which we take as the measure of value is the time required to produce a commodity under the normal social conditions of production with the average degree of skill and intensity of labour. Thus labour is both the source and the measure of value.

The conditions necessary to the existence and growth of capitalism, therefore, are as follows:—A class, who have a virtual monopoly of the means of production; another class of labourers, who are free, but destitute of the means of production; and a system of production for exchange in a world market. But it may be asked how these historical conditions were established? How did the capitalist class originate, and how were the workers divorced from the instruments of labour, and how was the world market opened up?

Such a state of things was established only after a long and gradual process of change, which Marx copiously illustrates from the history of England, as the classic land of the fully developed capitalism. In the Middle Ages the craftsman and peasant were the owners of the small means of production then extant, and they produced for their own needs and for their feudal superior; only the superfluity went into the general market. Such production was necessarily small, limited, and technically imperfect. Towards the close of the Middle Ages a great change set in, caused by a remarkable combination of circumstances—the downfall of the feudal system and of the Catholic Church, the discovery of America and of the sea route to India. Through the breaking-up of the feudal houses with their numerous retainers, through the transformation of the old peasant-holdings into extensive sheep-runs, and generally through the prevalent application of the commercial system to the management of land, instead of the Catholic and feudal spirit, the peasantry were driven off the land; a multitude of people totally destitute of property were thrown loose from their old means of livelihood, and were reduced to vagabondage or forced into the towns. It was in this way that the modern proletarians made their tragic entry in history.

On the other hand, there was a parallel development of the capitalist class, brought about by the slave-trade, by the exploitation of the American colonies and of both the Indies, and by the robbery, violence, and corruption which attended the transference of the land from the Catholic and feudal to the modern régime. The opening and extension of the vast world market, moreover, gave a great stimulus to industry at home. The old guilds having already been expropriated and dissolved, the early organisation of industry under the control of an infant capitalism passed through its first painful and laborious stages, till, with the great mechanical inventions, with the application of steam as the motive-power, and the rise of the factory system towards the close of the eighteenth century, the great industrial revolution was accomplished, and the capitalistic method of production attained to its colossal manhood.

Thus the capitalistic system was established. And we must remember that in all its forms and through all the stages of its history the great aim of the capitalist is to increase and consolidate his gains through the appropriation of surplus value. We have now to inquire how this surplus value is obtained?

The starting-point of the capitalistic system is the circulation of wares. As we have seen, the capitalistic method of production is dominated by exchange. If exchange, however, consisted merely in the giving and receiving of equivalents, there could be no acquisition of surplus value. In the process of exchange there must appear something the utilisation of which by the buyer yields a greater value than the price he pays for it.

The thing desired is found in the labour force of the workman, who, being destitute of the means of production, must have recourse to the owner of these, the capitalist. In other words, the workman appears on the market with the sole commodity of which he has to dispose, and sells it for a specified time at the price it can bring, which we call his wage, and which is equivalent to the average means of subsistence required to support himself and to provide for the future supply of labour (in his family). But the labour force of the workman, as utilised by the capitalist in the factory or the mine, produces a net value in excess of his wage; that is, over and above his entire outlay, including the wage paid to his workmen, the capitalist finds himself in possession of a surplus, which can only represent the unpaid labour of his workmen. This surplus is the surplus value of Karl Marx, the product of unpaid labour.

This appropriation of surplus labour is a very old phenomenon in human society. In all the forms of society which depended on slave-labour, and under the feudal régime, the appropriation of the results of other men’s labour was open, undisguised, and compulsory. Under the capitalistic system it is disguised under the form of free contract. The effect is the same. For the workman who is unprovided with the instruments of labour, whose working power is useless without them, this compulsion is not less real because it is concealed under the forms of freedom. He must agree to this free contract or starve.

It is the surplus value thus obtained which the capitalist seeks to accumulate by all the methods available. These methods are described by Marx with great detail and elaboration through several hundred pages of his first volume. His account, supported at every step by long and copious citations from the best historical authorities and from the blue-books of the various parliamentary commissions, is a lurid and ghastly picture of the many abuses of English industrialism. It is the dark and gloomy reverse of the industrial glories of England. The fearful prolongation of the hours of labour, the merciless exploitation of women and of children from the age of infancy, the utter neglect of sanitary conditions—whatever could lessen the costs of production and swell the profits of the capitalist, though every law of man and nature were violated in the process; such are the historical facts which Marx emphasises and illustrates with an overwhelming force of evidence. They receive ample confirmation in the history of the English Factory Acts, imposed on greedy and unscrupulous capitalists after a severe struggle prolonged for half a century, and required to prevent the moral and physical ruin of the industrial population.

We must now consider the process of the development of capitalism rather more closely.[4] Under the old system industry was carried on by the individual. There could be no doubt as to the ownership of the product, as he produced it by his own labour, with materials and tools that belonged to himself. Such was the normal method of production in those days.

It is very different in the existing system. The most conspicuous result of the capitalistic system is, that production is a social operation carried on by men organised and associated in factories; but the product is appropriated by individual capitalists: it is social production and capitalistic appropriation. Whereas the property of the preceding era rested on the individual’s own labour, property under the capitalistic system is the product of other men’s labour. This is the contradiction which runs through the entire history of capitalism. Here we have in germ all the antagonism and confusion of the present time. The incompatibility of social production and capitalistic appropriation must more and more declare itself as the supremacy of the system extends over the world.

The contradiction between social production and capitalistic appropriation naturally appears in the contrast between the human beings concerned in it. For the appropriators form the bourgeoisie, and the social workers constitute the proletariat, the two historic classes of the new era. Another conspicuous and important result is that, while we have this organisation in the factory, we have outside of it all the anarchy of competition. We have the capitalistic appropriators of the product of labour contending for the possession of the market, without systematic regard to the supply required by that market—each one filling the market only as dictated by his own interest, and trying to outdo his rivals by all the methods of adulteration, bribery, and intrigue; an economic war hurtful to the best interests of society. With the development of the capitalistic system machinery is more and more perfected, for to neglect improvement is to succumb in the struggle; the improved machinery renders labour superfluous, which is accordingly thrown idle and exposed to starvation; and this is entirely satisfactory to the capitalist class, whose interest it is to have a reserve army of labourers disposable for the times when industry is specially active, but cast out on the streets through the crash that must necessarily follow.

But as the technique improves the productive power of industry increases, and continually tends more and more to surpass the available needs of the market, wide as it is. This is all the more inevitable, because the consumption of the masses of the population is reduced to the minimum requisite merely to maintain them in life. It is another contradiction of the capitalistic system that on the one hand its inherent laws tend to restrict the market which on the other hand it is ready by all means fair and foul to extend. The consequence is, that the market tends to be overstocked even to absolute repletion; goods will not sell, and a commercial crisis is established, in which we have the remarkable phenomenon of widespread panic, misery, and starvation resulting from a superabundance of wealth—a “crise pléthorique,” as Fourier called it, a crisis due to a plethora of wealth.

These crises occur at periodic intervals, each one severer and more widespread than the preceding, until they now tend to become chronic and permanent, and the whole capitalistic world staggers under an atlantean weight of ill-distributed wealth. Thus the process goes on in obedience to its own inherent laws. Production is more and more concentrated in the hands of mammoth capitalists and colossal joint-stock companies, under which the proletariat are organised and drilled into vast industrial armies. But as crisis succeeds crisis, until panic, stagnation, and disorder are universal, it becomes clear that the bourgeoisie are no longer capable of controlling the industrial world. In fact, the productive forces rise in chronic rebellion against the forms imposed on them by capitalism.

The incompatibility between social production and anarchic distribution decidedly declares itself. A long course of hard experience has trained the modern democracy in the insight necessary for the appreciation of the conditions of its own existence. The social character of production is explicitly recognised. The proletariat seizes the political power, and through it at last takes complete control over the economic functions of society. It expropriates the private capitalist, and, appropriating the means of production, manages them in its own interest, which is the interest of society as a whole; society passes into the socialistic stage through a revolution determined by the natural laws of social evolution, and not by a merely arbitrary exercise of power. It is a result determined by the inherent laws of social evolution, independent of the will and purpose of individual men. All that the most powerful and clear-sighted intellect can do is to learn to divine the laws of the great movement of society, and to shorten and alleviate the birth-pangs of the new era. The efforts of reactionaries of every class to turn the wheel of history backwards are in vain. But an intelligent appreciation of its tendencies, and a willing co-operation with them, will make progress easier, smoother, and more rapid.

We need hardly return to the rôle which is played by surplus value in this vast historical process. The capitalist appropriates the product of labour because it contains surplus value. It is the part of the product that embodies surplus value and represents a clear gain which attracts him. Surplus value is the beginning, middle, and end of capitalism. It moves it alike in its origin and progress, decline and fall. It is the keynote of a great process of historic evolution continued for centuries; the secret of a vast development, which becomes more and more open as time goes on. And capitalism grows sick of the sustenance which formerly nourished it. It dies of over-repletion, of habitual excess in surplus value.

Let us now inquire how far the Marx school have thrown any light on the forms likely to be assumed by the new society after the downfall of capitalism. In his mature works as far as published Marx himself has said little to guide us. The clearest indication of his views is contained in the following passage:—‘Let us assume an association of free men, who work with common means of production and consciously put forth their many individual labour powers as a social labour power. The total product of the association is a social product. A part of this product serves again as means of production. It remains social property. But another part is as means of living consumed by the members of the association. It must therefore be distributed among them. The nature of this distribution will change according to the special nature of the organisation of production and the corresponding grade of historical development of the producers.’ And then he goes on to assume that the share of each producer in the means of living may be determined by his labour time. Labour time will at once serve as measure of the share of each producer in the common labour, and therefore also of his share in the portion of the common product which is devoted to consumption.[5]

Another important indication by one who has full right to speak for Marx is contained in Fr. Engels’ views regarding the State. After the proletariat have seized political power and transformed the means of production into State property, the State will cease to exist. In the old societies the State was an organisation of the exploiting class for the maintenance of the conditions of exploitation that suited it. Officially the representatives of the whole society, the exploiting class only represented itself. But when the State at last becomes the real representative of the whole society it renders itself superfluous. In a society which contains no subject class, from which class rule and the anarchy of production and the collisions and excesses of the struggle for individual existence have been removed, there is nothing to repress, and no need for a repressing force like the State. The first act wherein the State really appears as representative of the entire society—the appropriation of the means of production in the name of society—is also its last independent act as State. In place of the government over persons, there will be an administration of things and the control of productive processes. The State is not abolished; it dies away.[6]

In effect, these two indications of opinion point to a condition of society which is not fundamentally different from that contemplated by the anarchist school. Both look forward to a period when men will live in free associations, and when the administration of social affairs will be conducted without the exercise of compulsion.

It will have been seen that what Marx and his school contemplate is an economic revolution brought about in accordance with the natural laws of historic evolution. But in order to understand the full import of this revolution in the mind of Marx, we must remember that he regards the economic order of society as the groundwork of the same, determining all the other forms of social order. The entire legal and political structure, as well as philosophy and religion, are constituted and controlled in accordance with the economic basis. This is in harmony with his method and his conception of the world, which is the Hegelian reversed: ‘For Hegel the thought process, which he transforms into an independent subject under the name idea, is the creator of the real, which forms only its external manifestation. With me, on the contrary, the ideal is nothing else than the material transformed and translated in the human brain.’ His conception of the world is a frank and avowed materialism.

And to a world thus understood he applies the dialectic method of investigation. Dialectic is a word current in the Hegelian and other philosophies. It sounds rather out of place in a materialistic view of the world. In the system of Marx it means that the business of inquiry is to trace the connection and concatenation in the links that make up the process of historic evolution, to investigate how one stage succeeds another in the development of society, the facts and forms of human life and history not being stable and stereotyped things, but the ever-changing manifestations of the fluent and unresting real, the course of which it is the duty of science to reveal. Both Marx and Fr. Engels, moreover, are fond of expressing the development of capitalism in the language of the well-known Hegelian threefold process—thesis, antithesis, and synthesis. Private property resting on a man’s own labour of the former times is the thesis. The property resting on other men’s labour of the capitalistic era is the negation of this individual property. The expropriation of the capitalists by the proletariat is the negation of the negation, or synthesis. But how far this use of the Hegelian terms is merely a form of literary expression, or how far it is a survival in Marx of a real belief in Hegelianism, it is not easy to determine.[7]

The whole position of the Marx school may be characterised as evolutionary and revolutionary socialism, based on a materialistic conception of the world and of human history. Socialism is a social revolution determined by the laws of historic evolution—a revolution which, changing the economic groundwork of society, will change the whole structure.

It may now be convenient to sum up the socialism of the Marx school under the following heads:—

(1) Materialistic conception of the world and of history.

(2) Dialectic method of investigation.

(3) The economic order is the basis of all social order; the entire legal and political structures of society, religion, and philosophy are to be explained in accordance with the economic basis.

(4) The historic evolution of capitalism; how, from the fifteenth century onwards, the capitalist class was developed, and how a corresponding proletariat was created.

(5) The capitalist class grows by the appropriation and accumulation of the surplus value contained in the product of labour, whilst the proletariat is reduced to a subsistence wage. It is social production and capitalistic appropriation.

(6) Organisation in the factory; anarchy in society as a whole.

(7) This anarchy is intensified, especially in the great commercial crises, showing that the middle class are no longer able to control the productive forces.

(8) All these contradictions can be solved only by an explicit recognition of the social character of production. The proletariat seizes political power and transforms the means of production into social property.

(9) The State, which has hitherto been an arrangement for holding the producing class in subjection, will become superfluous, and die a natural death. Henceforward, government will consist simply in the control of industrial processes.

The work of Marx is a natural history of capital, especially in its relation to labour, and in its most essential features is a development of two of the leading principles of the classic economics—that labour is the source of value, but that of this value the labourer obtains for himself merely a subsistence wage, the surplus being appropriated by the exploiting capitalist. Marx’s great work may be described as an elaborate historical development of this glaring fundamental contradiction of the Ricardian economics, the contradiction between the Iron Law of Wages and the great principle that labour is the source of wealth. Marx’s conception of labour is the same as that of Ricardo, and as a logical exposition of the historic contradiction between the two principles, on the basis of Ricardo, the work of Marx is quite unanswerable. It is obvious, however, that the definition of labour assumed both in Ricardo and Marx is too narrow. The labour they broadly posit as the source of wealth is manual labour. In the early stages of industry, when the market was small and limited, and the technique was of the simplest and rudest description, labour in that sense might correctly enough be described as the source of value. But in modern industry, when the market is world-wide, the technique most complex, and the competition most severe, when inventiveness, sagacity, courage, and decision in initiative, and skill in management, are factors so important, no such exclusive place as has been claimed can be assigned to labour. The Ricardian principle, therefore, falls to the ground.

And it is not historically true to maintain, as Marx does, that the profits of the capitalist are obtained simply by appropriating the products of unpaid labour. In initiating and managing, the capitalist is charged with the most difficult and important part of the work of production. As a natural consequence, it follows that Marx is also historically inaccurate in roundly explaining capital as the accumulation of unpaid labour appropriated by the capitalist. In past accumulation, as in the control and management of industry generally, the capitalist has had the leading part. Capital, therefore, is not necessarily robbery, and in an economic order in which the system of free exchange is the rule and the mutually beneficial interchange of utilities, no objection can be raised to the principle of lending and borrowing of money for interest. In short, in his theory of unpaid labour as supplying the key to his explanation of the genesis and development of the capitalistic system, Marx is not true to history. It is the perfectly logical outcome of certain of the leading principles of the Ricardian school, but it does not give an adequate or accurate account of the facts of economic evolution.

In his theory of unpaid labour Marx is not consistent with the general principles of his own philosophy of social evolution. With him history is a process determined by material forces, a succession of orderly phenomena controlled by natural laws. Now we may waive the objection suggested by the principle enunciated in the Marx school itself, that it is not legitimate to apply ethical categories in judgment on economic processes that are merely natural; which, however, Marx does with revolutionary emphasis throughout some hundreds of pages of his great work. It is more important to point out, in perfect consistency with the principles of the school, that the energy and inventiveness of the early capitalists especially were the most essential factors in determining the existence and development of a great economic era, and that the assertion of freedom was an indispensable condition in breaking the bonds of the old feudal order, which the new system displaced. Instead, therefore, of living and growing rich on the produce of unpaid labour, the capitalist had a great social and industrial function to perform, and played a great part in historic evolution. The position and function of the workman was subordinate.

In short, Marx has not sufficiently recognised the fact that the development of the new social forces brought with it a new set of functions: that of initiating and directing industrial enterprise. These functions are not comprehended in the narrow definition of labour, but they are, nevertheless, most essential to progress; and the men that performed them have a most complete historical reason for their existence and a share in the results of industry. We need not add that such an argument does not justify all they did as the heads of the new industry. There is ample evidence that they were often rough, hard, cruel, and unscrupulous in the prosecution of their industrial enterprises. Nor does it prejudice the question whether the like direction of industry must and should continue in the future.

There can be no doubt that in his theory of surplus value obtained from unpaid labour, Marx, as agitator and controversialist, has fallen into serious contradiction with himself as scientific historian and philosopher. The theory that labour is the source of value was widely accepted among economists during his early life, and by its justice and nobleness it was well adapted to the comfortable optimism prevalent among so many of the classical school. The economists, however, did not follow the principle to its obvious conclusion: that if labour is the source of wealth, the labourer should enjoy it all. It was otherwise with the socialists, who were not slow to perceive the bearing of the theory on the existing economic order. In his controversial treatise against Proudhon, Marx gives a list of writers (beginning with the political economy of Hopkins,[8] published in 1822, only five years after the appearance of Ricardo’s great work), by whom the principle was applied to revolutionary purposes. Its simplicity and seeming effectiveness must have made it most attractive. As posited by the classic economy, and applied by the socialists, Marx accepted the principle. It was an unanswerable argumentum ad hominem when addressed to an economist of the Ricardian school; but it should have broken down when confronted with historical fact. Nevertheless it was made, and continued to be, the foundation-stone of the system of Marx, and is really its weakest point. His doctrine of surplus value is the vitiating factor in his history of the capitalistic system. The most obvious excuse for him is that he borrowed it from the classic economists.

Fr. Engels sums up the achievement of his friend Marx in the two great discoveries—the materialistic conception of history, and the revelation of the secret of the capitalistic method of production by means of surplus value. Materialism is a very old theory of the world. It is now given up by competent thinkers, and we need not discuss it here. Nor need we say that it is a grave exaggeration to maintain that all social institutions, including philosophy and religion, are to be explained by reference to the economic factors. History is a record of the activity of the human mind in very many directions. Men have had various interests, which have had a substantive, and so far, an independent value, though they must also be regarded as an organic whole. It is absolutely impossible to account for all by reference to any one.

Nevertheless, it is a great merit of Marx that he has so powerfully called attention to the vast importance of the economic side of history. The economic factors in the life of mankind have been sadly neglected, even by philosophic historians. Such neglect has been partly due to the scarcity of material relating to this aspect of their subject, partly owing to false conceptions of the function of the historian, chiefly because their public was a high-bred class, which had no particular wish to read about such unfashionable topics as those connected with the daily toil of the lower orders. In this way the true causation of history has often been overlooked, or totally misconceived, and results have, in thousands of instances, been traced to conventional and imaginary agencies, when the real origin lay deep down in the economic life of the people. We are now beginning to see that large sections of history will need to be rewritten in this new light.

To proceed with our criticism of Marx. It is a feature of his materialistic conception of history that his language respecting the inevitable march of society would sometimes suggest a kind of fatalism. But this is more than counterbalanced by his strong assertion of the revolutionary will. On both sides we see overstatement. The most prominent feature of his teaching, however, in this reference, is the excessive stress which he lays on the virtues and possibilities of the revolutionary method of action. The evolution he contemplates is attended and disturbed by great historic breaks, by cataclysm and catastrophe. These and other features of his teaching, to which objection must be made, were most pronounced in his early writings, especially in the Manifesto of the Communist League, but they continue to be visible throughout his life. According to his latest teaching, a great revolutionary catastrophe is to close the capitalistic era; and this must be regarded as a very bad preparation for the time of social peace which is forthwith to follow. The proletariat, the class which is to accomplish the revolution, he described as oppressed, enslaved, and degenerate. How can such a class be expected to perform so great an historic function well and successfully?

But the main defect of his teaching lies in the arbitrariness and excessive abstractness that characterise his method of investigation and presentation; and this defect particularly attaches to the second great discovery attributed to him by Fr. Engels—his theory of surplus value.

We shall better understand the position of Marx if we recall some of the important circumstances in his life and experience. As we have seen, his family passed from the profession of Judaism to Christianity when he was six years of age, and he thus lost the traditions of the faith of his ancestors without living into the traditions of the new faith. Like many Jews in a similar position the traditions of the past therefore had little influence on Karl Marx, and he was so far well fitted to take a wide and unprejudiced view of human affairs. With his great endowments and vast knowledge he should have been one of the freest heads in Europe. His practical energy was not inferior to the range of his intelligence.

All the more regrettable, therefore, is it that Marx should have adopted such a narrowing system of philosophy as materialism. It is also remarkable that he, the severest of critics, should have adopted, at so early an age and without due scrutiny, the theory of value set forth by Adam Smith and Ricardo, and that he should have applied it without question during the remainder of his life to the building up of a vast system of thought, and to a socialistic propaganda which was meant to revolutionise the world. Another instance of the premature dogmatism which has so often exercised a great and not seldom a mischievous influence on human thought.

In this connection it may not be altogether fanciful to observe that his heredity derived from rabbinical ancestors may account for much that is peculiar in his way of thinking. The excessive acumen, the relentless minuteness with which he pursues his course through details which often seem very unreal, the elaboration which he bestows upon distinctions which are often abstract and artificial, may well be regarded as alien to Western modes of thought. Revolutionary materialism was a strange sphere in which to exercise a logic after the manner of the rabbi.

However this may be, we know that when his mind was being formed the Hegelian philosophy was supreme in Germany; and it can hardly be said that the study of Hegel is a good training for the study of history, according to the freest and purest conception of the subject. The study of history, in the highest sense of the word, requires a modest attitude towards objective fact which is not easily attained in the philosophy of the schools.

Marx was a German, trained in the school of Hegel; and he passed most of his life in laborious seclusion, in exile and revolt against dominant ideas and institutions. Though a materialist, he does not show sufficient respect for facts, for history. In reading his great work we feel that the facts are in chronic rebellion against the formulas to which he seeks to adapt them.

Adam Smith, the founder of Political Economy, was also academic at the outset of his life; but he was a Scotsman of a period when the ablest Scotsmen were trained by French clearness and common sense. And he was not in revolt, like Marx, but in full sympathy with a cause whose time had come, whereas Marx represented a cause which had not yet attained to any considerable degree of clearness. In learning and philosophic power, Marx will compare favourably with Adam Smith; but in historic reasonableness, in respect for fact and reality, Smith is decidedly his superior. In Smith’s great work we see philosophy controlled by fact, by historic knowledge and insight. The work of Marx, in many of its most important sections, is an arbitrary and artificial attempt to force his formulas on the facts of history. Whether the fault lay in the Hegelian philosophy, or in Marx’s use of it, there can be no doubt that its influence has inflicted most serious damage on what might otherwise have been a splendid historical work.

We are therefore obliged to say that the historical work of Marx does not by any means rise to the highest conception of history. It is deficient in the free outlook, in the clear perspective, in the sympathy and impartiality which should characterise the best historical achievements. The historical work of Marx is placed at the service of a powerful and passionate propaganda, and of necessity is disturbed and troubled by the function which it is made to serve.

In dealing with history we must accept facts and men as we find them. The facts are as they are; and the men of history are not ideal men. Like other men Marx had to work under human limitations. The great task of his life was to rouse the proletariat of the world to a sense of its position, its mission, and destiny, to discover the scientific conditions under which a new era in the evolution of the human race could be inaugurated and carried on by the working classes of all lands. It was a mixed task in which science and practice were combined, and in which the purely scientific study of history naturally suffered in the partnership with a very strenuous revolutionary practice.

We need not say that it was not the fault of Marx that he adopted the revolutionary career. He was born at a time and in a country where men of independence and originality of character of necessity became revolutionists. In face of the European reaction Marx never made any concession or compromise. He never bowed himself in the house of Rimmon. Seldom in the history of human thought has there been a man who travelled right ahead in so straightforward a path, however formidable the opposition and however apparently hopeless surrounding circumstances might be. Public opinion had no weight with him; neither idle sentiment nor amiable weaknesses found any place in his strongly-marked individuality.

In view of such a career spent in the unflinching service of what he regarded to be truth, and in the greatest of human causes, it would be mean and disgraceful not to speak of Marx in terms of profound respect. His sincerity, his courage, his self-abnegation, his devotion to his great work through long years of privation and obloquy, were heroic. If he had followed the broad and well-beaten highway of self-interest, Marx, with his exceptional endowments both for thought and action, might easily have risen to a foremost place in the Prussian State. He disdained the flesh-pots of despotism and obscurantism so much sought after by the average sensual man, and spent forty hard and laborious years almost wholly in exile as the scientific champion of the proletariat. Many men are glad to live an hour of glorious life. Few are strong and brave enough to live the life heroic for forty years with the resolution, the courage, and consistency of Karl Marx.

In the combination of learning, philosophic acumen, and literary power, he is second to no economic thinker of the nineteenth century. He seems to have been master of the whole range of economic literature, and wielded it with a logical skill not less masterly. But his great strength lay in his knowledge of the technical and economic development of modern industry, and in his marvellous insight into the tendencies in social evolution determined by the technical and economic factors. Whether his theories in this department are right or wrong, they have suggested questions that will demand the attention of economic thinkers for a long time to come. It is in this department, and not in his theory of surplus value, that Marx’s significance as a scientific economist is to be found.

Notwithstanding all that may justly be said in criticism of Marx, it remains, then, that his main achievement consists in the work he has done as scientific inquirer into the economic movement of modern times, as the philosophic historian of the capitalistic era. It is now admitted by all inquirers worthy of the name that history, including economic history, is a succession of orderly phenomena, that each phase in the line of succession is marked by facts and tendencies more or less peculiar to itself, and that laws and principles which we now condemn had formerly an historical necessity, justification, and validity. In accordance with this fundamental principle of historical evolution, arrangements and institutions which were once necessary, and originally formed a stage in human progress, may gradually develop contradictions and abuses, and thus become more or less antiquated.

The economic, social, and political forms which were the progressive and even adequate expressions of the life of one era, become hindrances and fetters to the life of the succeeding times. This, the school of Karl Marx says, is precisely the condition of the present economic order. The existing arrangements of landlord, capitalist, and wage-labourer under free competition are burdened with contradiction and abuse. The life of society is being strangled by the forms which once promoted it. They maintain that the really vital and powerful tendencies of our time are towards a higher and wider form of social and economic organisation—towards socialism. Here, as we believe, is the central point of the whole question. The place of Marx in history will depend on how far he has made a permanent contribution towards the settlement of it.

During his lifetime the opinions of Marx were destined to find expression in two movements, which have played a considerable part in recent history—the International and the Social Democracy of Germany. Of the International, Marx was the inspiring and controlling head from the beginning; and the German Social Democracy, though originated by Lassalle, before long fell under Marx’s influence. Marx wrote the famous inaugural address of the International and drew up its statutes, maintaining a moderation of tone which contrasted strongly with the outspoken vigour of the communist manifesto of 1847. But it was not long before the revolutionary socialism which underlay the movement gained the upper hand. The International no doubt afforded a splendid opportunity for the propaganda of Marx. The fortunes of the International and of the German Social Democracy will be sketched in subsequent chapters.

[1]

Franz Mehring, Geschichte der Deutschen Sozialdemokratie, part i. p. 156.

[2]

An English translation of vol. i. by Messrs. Moore and Aveling has appeared, Engels being editor. There are translations also of vols. ii. and iii.

[3]

This book of Engels, Eugen Dühring’s Revolutionising of Science, is better known in its much shorter form, Entwickelung des Sozialismus von der Utopie zur Wissenschaft. Eng. tr. Socialism: Utopian and Scientific.

[4]

See Fr. Engels’ Umwälzung der Wissenschaft, p. 253, and passim.

[5]

Das Kapital, i. 48.

[6]

Umwälzung der Wissenschaft, pp. 267, 268.

[7]

See Preface to second edition of the Kapital, p. xix.

[8]

This, however, must be a mistake for T. Hodgskin, who in 1825 published a pamphlet, Labour defended against the Claims of Capital, in which such views are set forth.

CHAPTER VIII

THE INTERNATIONAL

It is an inevitable outcome of the prevalent historic forces that the labour question has become international.

From the dawn of history there has been a widening circle of communities with international relations. Civilisation had its earliest seats on the banks of the Nile and the Euphrates. The Greeks and Phœnicians carried it round the shores of the Mediterranean. The Romans received it from the Greeks, and, after adding to it a valuable contribution of their own, handed it on to the nations of Western and Central Europe. The Christian Church spread over the countries in which the Roman peace prevailed, but did not confine itself to the limits of the empire.

Amidst the group of nations who thus participated in the Greco-Roman culture and in the Christian life, there has always been a special degree of international sympathy: ideas and institutions have been largely common to them all. Feudalism and the Church, chivalry and the Crusades, all these were international in their influence.

Then, as now, great ideas and great movements could not be confined within national barriers. In the expansive and progressive epochs of history, particularly, supreme interests have raised men above the prejudices of race, and have united them by wider and deeper principles than those by which they are separated into nations.

At the great religious revolt of the sixteenth century, Germans combined with the Swedes and the French against their own countrymen. The Catholic Church, as its name implies, has always been, and still continues to be, a great international institution.

The enlightenment of the eighteenth century had an international influence, and at the French Revolution high concerns of political and social freedom for a time broke through the conventional feelings of patriotism. Germans, Italians, and even Englishmen, were in many cases ready to receive the boon of a better order of things at the price of French victory over their own countrymen. Only for a time, till the enthusiasm of the Revolution was made subservient to the selfishness of the new France—an instrument for the colossal egotism of a single man.

In our time, steam and the electric telegraph have become the bearers of a widening international movement. All the great human interests are cultivated and pursued on a wider scale than ever—religion, science, literature, art.

Commerce and industry have naturally shared in the general expansion. We have only to scan the operations of the great markets and exchanges in any daily paper as a proof of this. In a small space round the Bank of England, financial transactions are carried on which powerfully affect the entire world. Even the very simple breakfast of an ordinary citizen is a great international function, in which the productions of the most diverse countries combine to appease his wants.

The methods and appliances of this modern industry have been developed in England since the middle of the eighteenth century. Not many years ago England was still the supreme, almost the exclusive, representative of the new industry; now it is becoming the common possession of all countries dominated by European culture, and is rapidly gaining ground in the long-isolated nations of the East. The competition for business among the capitalists of various countries grows more intense every year. Once carried on chiefly or entirely for local needs, production has now to work for a market of wide and often incalculable extent.

Under these circumstances, we need not be surprised that labour, the prime factor in industry, has international interests and relations of the most serious importance. Its antagonism to capitalism must declare itself on the international arena. In the competitive struggles of the last sixty years, the cheap labour of one nation has not seldom been thrown into the scale to weigh down the dear labour of another. Irishmen, Germans, Belgians, and Italians have often rendered unavailing the efforts of English and French workmen for a higher standard of living. Continuous emigration from Europe depresses American labour. The Chinese and other Eastern races, habituated to a very low standard of subsistence, menace the workmen of America and Australia. The great industry which is now being established in the East will be a most serious danger alike to workmen and capitalists in the Western World.

The capitalists of most countries have long sought to shield themselves against the consequences of competition by protection, by combinations tacit or avowed among themselves, of wide and frequently international magnitude. In view of the facts that we have indicated, in view of the example thus set them, why should not the working men seek to regulate their international interests?

Efforts towards the international organisation of labour have proceeded chiefly from men who, banished from their own country by reactionary governments, have carried to other lands the seeds of new thought, and, meeting abroad those of like mind and like fate with themselves, have naturally planned the overthrow of their common oppressors. The origin of the famous International Association of Working Men was largely due to such a group of exiles.

In 1836, a number of German exiles at Paris formed themselves into a secret society, under the name of the League of the Just, the principles of which were communistic.[1] Being involved in a rising at Paris in 1839, they removed to London. Here they met with workmen belonging to the nations of Northern Europe, to which German is a common speech, and the League naturally began to assume an international character.

This was not the only change which the League underwent. Its members began to understand that their real duty under the present circumstances was not conspiracy or the stirring up of revolutionary outbreaks, but propaganda. The basis of the League had been a sentimental communism, based on their motto that ‘all men are brothers.’ From Marx they learned that the emancipation of the proletariat must be guided by scientific insight into the conditions of its own existence and its own history; that their communism must indeed be a revolutionary one, but it must be a revolution in harmony with the inevitable tendencies of social evolution. The cardinal point in the theory worked out by Marx and now impressed upon the League, was the doctrine that the economic conditions control the entire social structure, therefore the main thing in a social revolution is a change in economic conditions.

The group of exiles put themselves into communication with Marx, and a Congress was held in London in 1847, with the result that the association was reorganised under the name of the Communist League.

The aim of the League is very comprehensively stated in the first article of its constitution: ‘The aim of the League is the overthrow of the bourgeoisie, the rule of the proletariat, the abolition of the old society resting on class antagonisms, and the founding of a new society without classes and without private property.’

Marx and Engels were commissioned by the League to set forth its principles in a manifesto, which, as the manifesto of the communistic party, was published shortly before the Revolution of February 1848. We shall best illustrate the spirit and aim of the treatise by quoting Fr. Engels’ Preface to the edition of 1883:—

‘The Preface to the present edition I must, alas! sign alone. Marx, the man to whom the entire working class of Europe and America owes more than any other—Marx rests in the cemetery at Highgate, and the grass already begins to grow over his grave. Since his death nothing further can be said of a revisal or completion of the manifesto. It is therefore the more necessary expressly to make the following statement.

‘The pervading thought of the manifesto: that the economic production with the social organisation of each historical epoch necessarily resulting therefrom forms the basis for the political and intellectual history of this epoch; that accordingly (since the dissolution of the primitive common property in land) the entire history is a history of class struggles—struggles between exploited and exploiting, ruled and ruling, classes at different stages of social development; but that this struggle has now reached a stage when the exploited and oppressed class (the proletariat) can no more free itself from the exploiting and oppressing class (the bourgeoisie) without at the same time delivering the whole of society for ever from exploitation, oppression, and class struggles—this pervading thought belongs exclusively and alone to Marx.’

‘The history of all society hitherto has been the history of class struggles’; such is the keynote of the manifesto. ‘But it is a distinguishing feature of the present time that it has simplified class antagonisms; the entire human society more and more divides itself into two great hostile camps, into two great conflicting classes, bourgeoisie and proletariat.’ The manifesto is for the most part an exposition and discussion of these two classes, the historical conditions under which they have grown up, their mutual relations, past, present, and future.

It would not be easy to give a brief analysis of the manifesto, nor is it necessary, as we have, in our chapter on Marx, already given an account of the same views in their maturer and more philosophic expression. The manifesto is a treatise instinct with the fiery energy and enthusiasm of a young revolutionary party, and its doctrines are the doctrines of Marx in a crude, exaggerated, and violent form. In such a pamphlet, written for propaganda, we must not expect the self-restraining moderation of statement, the clear perspective, or the high judicial charity which should characterise a sober historical exposition.

The Iron Law of Wages is stated in its hardest and most exaggerated form. To the charge that they desire to abolish private property, its authors reply that individual property, the produce of a man’s own labour, is already abolished. What they desire to abolish is the appropriation of other men’s labour by the capitalist. To the charge that they wish to abolish the family, they reply to the bourgeoisie with a tu quoque: ye have already abolished it by the exploitation of women and children in the factories, which has broken up the family ties, through the prevalence of prostitution and the common practice of adultery. The charge of abolishing patriotism they repudiate in the same manner: the workman has no country.

We cannot understand the manifesto unless we remember that it was drawn up by young men living in exile, and that it was written in 1847, shortly after some of the earliest inquiries into the condition of labour both in England and the Continent had revealed facts which ought to fill every human heart with sorrow and indignation.

As the manifesto of the first international combination of workmen, it has a special historical importance, and claims special attention. And apart from that, it is one of the most remarkable utterances of the nineteenth century.

‘The manifesto,’ says Fr. Engels, ‘was sent to the press at London a few weeks before the February Revolution. Since then it has made the tour of the world. It has been translated into almost every tongue, and in the most different countries still serves as the guiding-star of the proletarian movement. The old motto of the League, “All men are brethren,” was replaced by the new battle-cry, “Proletarians of all lands unite,” which openly proclaimed the international character of the struggle. Seventeen years later this battle-cry resounded through the world as the watchword of the International Working Men’s Association, and the militant proletariat of all lands has to-day written it on its banner.’[2]

The Revolution of 1848, as we have already seen,[3] was a rising of the people in France, Italy, Germany, Austria, and Hungary against antiquated political arrangements and institutions. It was partly an interruption to the operations of the League, as it was far too weak to exercise any great influence on the course of events; but it was also an opportunity, as its members found access to the land of their birth, and in many parts of Germany formed the most resolute and advanced wing of the struggling democracy during that troubled period.

After the triumph of the reaction it became clear that the hope of effective revolutionary activity had again for a time passed away. A period of unexampled industrial prosperity set in. Capitalism was about to enter a far wider phase of development than it had yet seen, a fact which abundantly showed that the time was not favourable for an active propaganda in the interests of the proletariat. When capitalism has become a hindrance to progressive social development, when it is obviously too weak and narrow a framework for further evolution, only then is there hope of successful effort against it. So reasoned Marx and his associates. He withdrew, therefore, from the scene of action to his study in London. In 1852 the first international combination of working men came to a close. Observers who could not reasonably be considered superficial, thought that the movement had died without hope of resurrection.

But the triumph of reactionary governments in 1849 was not a settlement of the great questions that had been raised during that period of revolution; it was only a postponement of them. Before many years had passed, the peoples of Europe again began to move uneasily under the yoke of antiquated political forms. The rising of Italy against Austria in 1859; the struggle of Prussian Liberals against the Ministry; the resolve of Bismarck and his Sovereign to have the Prussian army ready for action in the way of reconstituting a united Germany on the ruins of the old Federation—these were only different symptoms of a fresh advance. They were ere long to be followed by similar activity in France, Spain, and Eastern Europe, all proving that the history of European communities is an organic movement, the reach and potency of which often disturb the forecast of the politician. In the generation after 1848 the governments were everywhere constrained to carry out the political programme which the people had drawn out for them during the revolution.

The social question may seem to have only a remote connection with the political movements just mentioned, and yet the revival of the social question was but another sign of the new life in Europe, which could not be repressed. The founding of the Social Democracy of Germany by Lassalle, and the appearance of the International on a wider and worthier scale under the auspices of Marx, were a clear proof that the working classes of the most advanced countries of Europe now meant to claim a better share in the moral and material inheritance of the human race. We have now to sketch the growth of the movement, which is properly styled the International.

Appropriately enough, the event which gave the first occasion for the founding of the International Association of Working Men was the International Exhibition of London in 1862. The workmen of France sent a deputation to visit the Exhibition. This visit had the approval and even pecuniary support of the Emperor; and it was warmly commended by some of the leading Parisian journals as a means not only of acquainting the workmen with the industrial treasures of the Exhibition, but of removing from the relations of the two countries the old leaven of international discord and jealousy. In the course of their visit the French delegates were entertained by some of their English brethren at the Freemasons’ Tavern, where views as to the identity of the interests of labour, and the necessity for common action in promoting them, were interchanged.

In the following year a second deputation of French workmen crossed the Channel. Napoleon was interested in the Polish insurrection of 1863, and it was part of his policy to encourage the expression of opinion in favour of an intervention in Poland by the Western Powers. At this visit wishes for the restoration of Poland and for general congresses in the interest of labour against capital were expressed. Nothing decisive, however, was done till 1864, when on the 28th September a great public meeting of working men of all nations was held in St. Martin’s Hall, London. Professor Beesly presided, and Karl Marx was present. The meeting resulted in the appointment of a provisional committee to draw up the constitution of the new association. This committee consisted of fifty representatives of different nations, the English forming about half of its number. At the first meeting of the committee the sum of three pounds was collected, a humble beginning of the finances of an association which was designed to shake the world.

The work of drafting the constitution was first of all undertaken by Mazzini, but the ideas and methods of the Italian patriot were not suited to the task of founding an international association of labour. The statutes he drew up were adapted to the political conspiracy, conducted by a strong central authority, in which he had spent his life; he was strongly opposed to the antagonism of classes, and his economic ideas were vague. Marx, on the other hand, was in entire sympathy with the most advanced labour movement—had indeed already done much to mould and direct it; to him, therefore, the duty of drawing up a constitution was transferred. The inaugural address and the statutes drawn up by him were unanimously adopted by the committee.

In the inaugural address[4] three points were particularly emphasised. First, Marx contended that, notwithstanding the enormous development of industry and of national wealth since 1848, the misery of the masses had not diminished. Secondly, the successful struggle for the ten-hours working-day meant the break-down of the political economy of the middle classes, the competitive operation of supply and demand requiring to be regulated by social control. Thirdly, the productive association of a few daring ‘hands’ had proved that industry on a great scale, and with all the appliances of modern science, could be carried on without the existence of capitalist masters; and that wage-labour, like slave-labour, was only a transitory form, destined to disappear before associated labour, which gives to the workman a diligent hand, a cheerful spirit, and a joyful heart.

The numbers of the workmen gave them the means of success, but it could be realised only through union. It was the task of the International to bring about such an effective union, and for this end the workmen must take international politics into their own hands, must watch the diplomacy of their Governments, and uphold the simple rules of morality in the relations of private persons and nations. ‘The struggle for such a policy forms part of the struggle for the emancipation of the working class; proletarians of all lands, unite!’

The preamble to the statutes contains implicitly the leading principles of international socialism. The economic subjection of the workmen to the appropriator of the instruments of labour—that is, of the sources of life—is the cause of servitude in all its forms, of social misery, of mental degradation and political dependence; the economic emancipation of the working class is the great aim to which every political movement must be subordinated; the emancipation of the working class is neither a local nor a national, but a social problem, to be solved only by the combined effort of the most advanced nations.

‘For these reasons the International Association of Working Men has been founded. It declares:

‘That all societies and individuals who adhere to it recognise truth, justice, and morality as the rule of their conduct towards one another, and to all men without distinction of colour, faith, or nationality. No duties without rights; no rights without duties.’

Such are the leading ideas of the preamble; we have only to develop them, and we have the programme of international socialism. Whatever opinion we may hold of the truth and practicability of the theories set forth in it, we must respect the lucid and masterly form in which Marx has presented them. It is seldom in the history of the world that talents and learning so remarkable have been placed at the service of an agitation that was so wide and far-reaching.

The International Association was founded for the establishment of a centre of union and of systematic co-operation between the working-men societies, which follow the same aim—viz. the protection, the progress and the complete emancipation of the working class. It would be a mistake to regard its organisation as one of excessive centralisation and dictatorial authority. It was to be a means of union, a centre of information and initiative, in the interests of labour; but the existing societies which should join it were to retain their organisation intact.

A General Council, having its seat in London, was appointed. While the president, treasurer, and general secretary were to be Englishmen, each nation was to be represented in the Council by a corresponding secretary. The General Council was to summon annual congresses and exercise an effective control over the affairs of the Association, but local societies were to have free play in all local questions. As a further means of union, it was recommended that the workmen of the various countries should be united in national bodies, represented by national central organs, but no independent local society was to be excluded from direct correspondence with the General Council. It will be seen that the arrangements of the Association were so made as to secure the efficiency of the central directing power on the one hand, and on the other to allow local and national associations a real freedom and abundant scope for adapting themselves to the peculiar tasks imposed on them by their local and national position.

As in founding, so in conducting the International, Marx took the leading part. The proceedings of the various congresses might be described as a discussion, elucidation, and filling up of the programme sketched by him in the inaugural address and in the statutes of the Association. Men representing the schools of Proudhon (who died in 1865), of Blanqui, and of Bakunin also exercised considerable influence; but the general tendency was in accordance with the views of Marx.

It was intended that the first congress for finally arranging the constitution of the Association should be held at Brussels in 1865, but the Belgian Government forbade the meeting, and the Council had to content itself with a conference in London. The first congress was held at Geneva in September 1866, sixty delegates being present. Here the statutes as drafted by Marx were adopted. Among other resolutions it decided on an agitation in favour of the gradual reduction of the working day to eight hours, and it recommended a most comprehensive system of education, intellectual and technical, which would raise the working people above the level of the higher and middle classes. Socialistic principles were set forth only in the most general terms. With regard to labour the International did not seek to enunciate a doctrinaire system, but only to proclaim general principles. They must aim at free co-operation, and for this end the decisive power in the State must be transferred from capitalists and landlords to the workers.

The proposal of the French delegates for the exclusion of the intellectual proletariat from the Association led to an interesting discussion. Was this proletariat to be reckoned among the workers? Ambitious talkers and agitators belonging to this class had done much mischief. On the other hand, their exclusion from socialistic activity would have deprived the labourers of the services of most of their greatest leaders, and the intellectual proletariat suffered from the pressure of capital quite as much as any other class of workers. The proposal for their exclusion was rejected.

The second congress, held at Lausanne in 1867, made considerable progress in the formulating of the socialistic theories. It was resolved that the means of transport and communication should become the property of the State, in order to break the mighty monopoly of the great companies, under which the subjection of labour does violence to human worth and personal freedom. The congress encouraged co-operative associations and efforts for the raising of wages, but emphatically called attention to the danger lest the spread of such associations should be found compatible with the existing system, thus resulting in the formation of a fourth class, and of an entirely miserable fifth. The social transformation can be radically and definitely accomplished only by working on the whole of society in thorough accordance with reciprocity and justice.

In the third congress, held at Brussels in September 1868, the socialistic principles which had all along been implicitly contained in the aims and utterances of the International received most explicit statement. Ninety-eight delegates, representing England, France, Germany, Belgium, Italy, Spain, and Switzerland, assembled at this congress. It resolved that mines and forests and the land, as well as all the means of transport and communication, should become the common property of society or of the democratic State, and that they should by the State be handed over to associations of workers, who should utilise them under rational and equitable conditions determined by society. It was further resolved that the producers could gain possession of the machines only through co-operative societies and the organisation of the mutual credit system, the latter clause being a concession apparently to the followers of Proudhon. After proposing a scheme for the better organising of strikes, the congress returned to the question of education, particularly emphasising the fact that an indispensable condition towards a thorough system of scientific, professional, and productive instruction was the reduction of the hours of labour.

The fundamental principle, ‘to labour the full product of labour,’ was recognised in the following resolution: ‘Every society founded on democratic principles repudiates all appropriation by capital, whether in the form of rent, interest, profit, or in any other form or manner whatsoever. Labour must have its full right and entire reward.’

In view of the struggle imminent between France and Germany, the congress made an emphatic declaration, denouncing it as a civil war in favour of Russia, and calling upon the workers to resist all war as systematic murder. In case of war the congress recommended a universal strike. It reckoned on the solidarity of the workers of all lands for this strike of the peoples against war.

At the Congress of Basel in September 1869, little remained for the International to accomplish in further defining the socialistic position. The resolution for transforming land from private to collective property was repeated. A proposal to abolish the right of inheritance failed to obtain a majority, for while thirty-two delegates voted for the abolition, twenty-three were against it, and seventeen declined to vote.[5]

If we now turn from the congresses of the International to consider the history of its influence in Europe, we shall see that its success was very considerable. A conference of delegates of English Trade Unions which met at Sheffield in 1866 most earnestly enjoined the unions to join the International; and it repeatedly gave real help to the English trade unionists by preventing the importation of cheap labour from the Continent. It gained a substantial success in the effectual support of the bronze-workers at Paris during their lock-out in 1867. At the beginning of 1868 one hundred and twenty-two working men’s societies of South Germany, assembled at Nuremberg, declared their adhesion to the International. In 1870 Cameron announced himself as the representative of 800,000 American workmen who had adopted its principles.

It soon spread as far east as Poland and Hungary; it had affiliated societies, with journals devoted to its cause, in every country of Western Europe. The leading organs of the European press became more than interested in its movements; the Times published four leaders on the Brussels Congress. It was supposed to be concerned in all the revolutionary movements and agitations of Europe, thus gaining a world-historic notoriety as the rallying-point of social overthrow and ruin. Its prestige, however, was always based more on the vast possibilities of the cause it represented than on its actual power. Its organisation was loose, its financial resources insignificant; the Continental unionists joined it more in the hope of borrowing than of contributing support.

In 1870 the International resolved to meet at the old hearth of the revolutionary movement by holding its annual congress in Paris. This plan was rendered abortive by the Franco-German war. The war, however, helped to bring the principles of the Association more prominently before the world. During the Austro-German struggle of 1866 the International had declared its emphatic condemnation of war; and now the affiliated societies of France and Germany, as well as the General Council at London, uttered a solemn protest against a renewal of the scourge. Some of its German adherents likewise incurred the wrath of the authorities by venturing to protest against the annexation of Alsace and Lorraine.

All will agree that it is a happy omen for the future that the democracy of labour as represented by the International was so prompt and courageous in its denunciation of the evils of war. It gives us ground to hope that as the influence of the democracy prevails in the council of nations the passion for war may decline. On this high theme no men have a better right to speak than the workers, for they have in all ages borne the heaviest of the burden of privation and suffering imposed on the world by the military spirit, and have had the least share in the miserable glories which victory may obtain.

The relation of the International to the rising of the Commune at Paris in 1871 is often misunderstood. It is clear that the International, as such, had no part either in originating or conducting the Commune; some of the French members joined it, but only on their individual responsibility. Its complicity after the event is equally clear. After the fall of the Commune, Karl Marx, in the name of the General Council, wrote a long and trenchant manifesto commending it as substantially a government of the working class, whose measures tended really to advance the interests of the working class. ‘The Paris of the workers, with its Commune, will ever be celebrated as the glorious herald of a new society. Its martyrs will be enshrined in the great heart of the working class. History has already nailed its destroyers on the pillory, from which all the prayers of their priests are impotent to deliver them.’[6]

The Commune was undoubtedly a rising for the autonomy of Paris, supported chiefly by the lower classes. It was a protest against excessive centralisation raised by the democracy of Paris, which has always been far in advance of the provinces, and which found itself in possession of arms after the siege of the city by the Germans. But while it was prominently an assertion of local self-government, it was also a revolt against the economic oppression of the moneyed classes. Many of its measures were what we should call social-radical.

In two important points, therefore, the communal rising at Paris had a very close affinity with socialism. In the first place, it was a revolutionary assertion of the Commune or local unit of self-government as the cardinal and dominating principle of society over against the State or central government. That is to say, the Commune was a vindication of the political form which is necessary for the development of socialism, the self-governing group of workers. And in the second place, the Commune was a rising chiefly of the proletariat, the class of which socialism claims to be the special champion, which in Paris only partially saw the way of deliverance, but was weary of oppression, and full of indignation against the middle-class adventurers that had on the fall of the Empire seized the central government of France.

It would, however, be a mistake to assume for the Commune a clearness and comprehensiveness of aim which it did not really possess. We should not be justified in saying that the Commune had any definite consciousness of such an historical mission as has been claimed for it. The fearful shock caused by the overwhelming events of the Franco-German war had naturally led to wide-spread confusion and uncertainty in the French mind; and those who undertook to direct it, whether in Paris or elsewhere, had painfully to grope their way towards the renovation of the country. At a time when it could hardly be said that France had a regular government, the Commune seized the opportunity to make a new political departure. The true history of its doings will, we hope, be written after passion and prejudice have sufficiently subsided to admit of it. The story of its rise and fall was only one phase of a sad series of troubles and disasters, which happily do not often overtake nations in so terrible a form.

From this point the decline and fall of the Association must be dated. The English trades unions, intent on more practical concerns at home, never took a deep interest in its proceedings; the German socialists were disunited among themselves, lacking in funds, and hampered by the police.

It found its worst enemies perhaps in its own household. In 1869, Bakunin, with a following of anarchists, had joined the International, and from the first found themselves at variance with the majority led by Marx. It can hardly be maintained that Marx favoured a very strongly centralising authority, yet, as his views and methods were naturally entirely repugnant to the anarchists, a breach was inevitable.

The breach came at the Hague Congress in September 1872. Sixty-five delegates were present, including Marx himself, who with his followers, after animated discussion, expelled the anarchist party, and then removed the seat of the General Council to New York. The congress concluded with a meeting at Amsterdam, of which the chief feature was a remarkable speech from Marx. ‘In the eighteenth century,’ he said, ‘kings and potentates used to assemble at the Hague to discuss the interests of their dynasties. At the same place we resolved to hold the assize of labour’—a contrast which with world-historic force did undoubtedly mark the march of time. ‘He could not deny that there were countries, like America, England—and, as far as he knew its institutions, Holland also—where the workmen could attain their goal by peaceful means; but in most European countries force must be the lever of revolution, and to force they must appeal when the time came.’ Thus it was a principle of Marx to prefer peaceful methods where peaceful methods are permitted, but resort to force must be made when necessary. Force also is an economic power. He concluded by expressing his resolve that in the future, as in the past, his life would be consecrated to the triumph of the social cause.

The transfer of the General Council of the Marx International from London to New York was the beginning of the end. It survived just long enough to hold another congress at Geneva in 1873, and then quietly expired. The party of destruction, styling themselves autonomists and led by Bakunin, had a bloodier history. The programme of this party, as we shall see in our chapter on Anarchism, was to overturn all existing institutions, with the view to reconstructing them on a communal basis. This it endeavoured to realise by the great communal risings in Southern Spain in 1873, when its adherents set up their special form of government at Barcelona, Seville, Cadiz, and Cartagena—at the last-mentioned place also seizing on part of the iron-clad fleet of Spain. The risings were suppressed, not without difficulty, by the national troops. The autonomists had a lingering existence till 1879.

In its main practical aim, to serve as a common centre for the combined efforts of working men of all nations towards their universal emancipation, the International had only a moderate and transitory success. It was a great idea, for which the times were not ripe. How effectually organise so many millions of working men, of different countries, at different stages of social development—men ignorant of each other’s language, with little leisure, without funds for travelling and purposes of propaganda? It was inevitable that some such effort should be made; for we need not repeat that labour has international interests of vital and supreme importance. And men might have expected that the attempt would be renewed. But on the vast scale contemplated by the International it was at least premature, and inasmuch as it drew the attention of the workmen from practical measures to far-distant and perhaps utopian aims, and engaged them in revolutionary schemes for which the times were not ready, even if they were otherwise desirable, its influence was not salutary.

In a movement so momentous, however, it is important to have taken the first step, and the International took more than the first step. It proclaimed a great cause in the face of the world—the cause of the poor man, the cause of the suffering and oppressed millions of labour. As an instrument of propaganda, as a proclamation of a great cause with possibilities of vast and continual growth, it has had a world-historic significance, and teaches lessons from which all governments and all men may learn. Its great mission was propaganda, and in that it has succeeded marvellously. Largely by means of it, the ideas of Marx and his associates are making the tour of the world. The governments most menaced by the social revolution, and most antagonistic to its principles, must perforce have regard to the questions raised by the International. It is a movement that will not rest, but will in many ways, and for many a year, claim the attention of the world.

Though the International was dead, the forces which gave it birth were still alive. The principles it proclaimed continued to exercise the thoughts of men. It had placed before the world a whole group of problems for study, for experiment, to be pursued through doubt, struggle, and agony, to some kind of wise and beneficial solution, we fervently hope.

We should not be discouraged by the fact that the efforts made for the solution of the questions of the world have so often been so hopelessly incommensurate with the greatness of the task which they attempted.

In beginning these high endeavours, men have always been like children groping in the dark. Yet the failures of one generation have frequently shown the way to success in the next. The International attempted the great task of the present epoch of the world in its most difficult form. We need not be surprised that its success was partial; and we may with confidence expect that the lessons taught by it will prove most helpful for the future.

In truth the International had only suffered a brief eclipse. The various socialistic societies all over the world continued to be fully conscious of the international character of the movement in which they were engaged. Without a formal organisation they represented the claims and aspirations of the same class, had common sympathies, and pursued like aims. While differing greatly in methods of action, and even in principle, they felt that they belonged to the same stream of historic effort and tendency.

The international movement soon began again to find expression in congresses representing the different countries. Such was the congress at Ghent in 1877, which was not marked by any noteworthy feature. Greater than any socialist congress previously held were those which assembled at Paris in 1889, the centenary of the Revolution, on the 14th of July, the anniversary of the fall of the Bastille. There were two congresses, one representing, as far as any difference of principle was concerned, the more uncompromising Marx school, the other consisting of delegates who are not indisposed to co-operate with other democratic parties. But the cleavage of principle was by no means definite; the difference between the two meetings originated largely in personal matters, especially as regards the French socialist parties, which issued the invitations. The immediate occasion of disagreement related to the manner of proving the mandates of the members. Both congresses advocated an energetic collectivism, while both also urged more practical measures for the protection of labour, such as Sunday rest, an eight-hours working-day, etc. The Marx congress consisted of 395 delegates, and the other congress of about six hundred delegates from the various countries of the civilised world.

International Congresses followed at Brussels in 1891, at Zürich in 1893, and in London in 1896. Both at Brussels and London there was much disorder, caused chiefly by the presence of a considerable number of delegates with anarchist sympathies, and proving too clearly that the International of Workers was like the Concert of Europe, not yet ready to march.

After being alarmed by an International of Workers, the world was agreeably startled by the project for an International of Governments. In 1889 the Swiss Government brought forward a proposal for an International Conference on Labour of the countries most interested in industrial competition. The question assumed a new aspect when, early in 1890, the young German Emperor issued rescripts, one of which contained the same proposal. Naturally, the matters presented for discussion by the Emperor covered only a small part of the ground occupied by the International of Workers. The protection of adult labour, except in mines, was excluded from the business of the conference. Sunday labour, the protection of women, children, and young persons, were the chief questions laid before the meeting. There can be no doubt that the conference gave a much-needed and a beneficial stimulus to legislation for the protection of labour in civilised countries, though it by no means realised the sanguine expectations that many formed regarding it.

The main result of the conference has been the recognition by the Governments of the fact that there are labour questions of vast importance, and that these questions have international aspects which can no longer be ignored. Let us hope that it may be the beginning of better things. In the course of human improvement we may hope that the question of the needs and rights of labour will ever take a large place beside the concerns of war and diplomacy, and that it will eventually supersede them. The workers have a growing influence at the elections in civilised countries. It is their duty to press their just claims on the Governments, and so to bring about that desirable consummation.

[1]

Enthüllungen über den Communisten-Prozess zu Köln, von Karl Marx, Einleitung von Fr. Engels, p. 3.

[2]

Enthüllungen, Introduction, p. 11.

[3]

P. 47.

[4]

For the official documents connected with the International, see R. Meyer’s Emancipationskampf des vierten Standes, vol. i. 2nd ed.

[5]

Oscar Testu, L’Internationale, p. 153.

[6]

Der Bürgerkrieg in Frankreich.

CHAPTER IX

THE GERMAN SOCIAL DEMOCRACY

To understand the modern development of Germany, we must recall a few of the leading facts of its history. German history is largely a record of disunion, and this became chronic at the Reformation, which divided the country between two conflicting forms of religion. The religious struggle had its culmination and its catastrophe in the Thirty Years’ War.

Seldom, if ever, in the history of the world, has a calamity so awful befallen a people so highly endowed and so well fitted to excel in all the paths of progress. In every respect—economical, political, and moral—Germany in the Thirty Years’ War received wounds from which she has hardly recovered even to-day. Division and weakness at home invited interference and aggression from abroad. For generations it was the corner-stone of French policy to foster the divisions of Germany, and so to maintain her supremacy in Western Europe.

The victories of the Great Frederick, the works of her great writers—Lessing, Schiller, and Goethe, and of her great philosophers—Kant, Fichte, Schelling, and Hegel, and the mighty struggles of the War of Liberation in 1813, did much to restore the national consciousness of Germany. But the disunion continued, and in her industrial organisation she was far behind England and France. Feudalism survived, especially in the regions east of the Elbe, far into the nineteenth century. The power-loom was not introduced, even into the more progressive Rhine country, till the middle of the nineteenth century.

The results of the War of Liberation were, for the German people, most disappointing. After throwing off the French yoke, citizen and peasant alike found that the enthusiasm and devotion with which they had spent blood and treasure had been in vain. The German princes took to themselves all the fruits of victory, and the old abuses continued to flourish under the old régime. The only considerable reforms were those which had been established in the Rhine country by the hereditary enemy, the French, and which the German reaction did not venture to abolish.

In these circumstances we need not wonder that a profound and brooding discontent began to occupy the best German minds. A Fatherland which was disunited at home and weak abroad, princely despotisms which fostered servility and raised a barrier to progress, backward methods and institutions which were all the more galling when contrasted with the pre-eminence which Germany had attained in literature and philosophy—how could any patriot be satisfied with such a wretched condition of affairs? Thus it happened that Germany took a leading part in the revolutionary troubles of 1848. Both at Vienna and Berlin the old régime was for a time overturned; and a national Parliament met at Frankfort. But the German reformers were not united; they had no clear aims; and there was little or no material strength behind them. The reaction had been taken by surprise. But it wielded the organised military power, and so was able to act whilst the Liberals talked and proposed. Before the troubled year had come to a close the reaction was triumphant both in Vienna and Berlin.

Then a time of darkness which could be felt, and which apparently was as hopeless as ever, followed in Germany. Parliaments were dispersed. Many who had shared in the struggle were put to death or imprisoned. In 1849 Switzerland counted within her borders as many as 11,000 German refugees, most of whom eventually found a home in America. It appeared as if only one failure the more had been made in the toilsome march of human progress.

But it was not an entire failure. The revolutionary disturbances had at least proved that many of the old institutions were untenable, and must in whole or in part be removed. It was found necessary to make some concessions to Liberalism. Much of the old feudalism was set aside.

Above all, both in the middle and working class there had arisen a new spirit which only awaited the opportunity that was sure to come. The opportunity arrived a few years afterwards, when the forces which have made the Germany of to-day came into action. In the new circumstances it was an interesting question how far the bourgeoisie and the working class could march together. It is a standing charge brought against German Liberalism by the Social Democrats, that it has never led the progressive forces against the reaction with any degree of courage or resolution. They maintain that in the revolutionary struggles of 1848 the German Liberals never trusted the working class, that when the choice came to be made between the reaction and a strenuous democratic policy supported by the proletariat, they preferred to transact with the reaction, and so committed treason on the sacred cause of progress. On this question largely turns the history of recent German politics. It is a wide and complicated question which can be rightly answered only by due consideration of the facts of the historical situation.

The middle class had triumphed both in France and England. But the industrial revolution which naturally brings with it the rule of the middle class, was in Germany much later than in France and England. In 1848 the German middle class was still in its infancy, and had neither the insight nor the material means to lead the democracy against the reaction with any prospect of success; nor was it reasonable to expect that it should.

Further, it may be maintained that the German working class, following the example of their French brethren, has been too ready to enter on revolutionary courses, and by thus exciting the alarm and suspicion of all sober-minded men, has done vital injury to the cause of rational and hopeful progress. There can be no doubt that for those who are bent on revolutionary courses, and those who are content with what is usually comprehended under the name of liberalism, the parting of the ways must come sooner or later. That is no reason why the parting should be premature. If they can with mutual advantage make their way along a common road against their common enemy, feudalism and the reaction, why should they not do so?

Unfortunately for German Liberals and the energetic Democratic party, there was no common way. The parting came at the very outset, and it may be regarded as inevitable. The chief aim of the Democrats was universal suffrage, and for a time at least universal suffrage in Germany, as in France, meant the strengthening of Conservatism. In Germany, as in France, universal suffrage would give the deciding power at the polls to the peasantry and the rural population generally which were under the control of the reaction, and which largely outnumbered the urban population. The German Liberals did not wish universal suffrage, as it was not in their interest. They treated the working men and their leaders with scant courtesy or consideration. They wished to utilise them as subordinates, or, at the best, as dependent allies. If the workmen were not willing to be thus treated, the Liberals were ready to show them the door.

The working men were not willing to be so treated, and they turned to Lassalle, with the result which we have already briefly narrated. As time went on the gulf between Liberals and Democrats widened, and the democratic working men became Social Democrats. It was a breach which may fairly be regarded as extremely hurtful to the sound political development of Germany. On one hand it has led to the result that the German middle class has never with resolution and comprehensiveness of purpose led the democracy along the path on which a really free German State might have been established. Partly from choice, partly from the necessities of its position, the German middle class has followed the policy of making for itself the best terms it could with the reaction; and the socialists say that this meant the sacrifice of democratic ideals to the material interests of the middle class. ‘The treason of the bourgeoisie,’ ‘the abdication by the bourgeoisie’ of its historic place at the head of the democratic movement: these phrases sum up the worst accusations brought by the Social Democrats against the German middle class.

On the other hand, the working men, finding themselves neglected or repudiated by those who, according to the natural laws of historical development, should for a time at least have been their leaders, gave ear, it may be prematurely, to men of revolutionary views and antecedents like Lassalle and Karl Marx; and in this manner was formed a revolutionary party which in many ways has not had a salutary organic relation to the main stream of German life. It is in fact the reaction which has profited by the division between the bourgeoisie and the working class.

We shall now return to the history of the Universal Working Men’s Association which, as we have seen, was founded by Lassalle in 1863.[1] At the death of the founder in 1864 the membership of the Association amounted to 4610, a small number, but we must recollect that it had existed for only about fifteen months.

Lassalle, in his will, had recommended as his successor Bernhard Becker, a man totally unqualified for such a difficult post. At the founding of the Association it had been thought good that the president should exercise a species of dictatorship. This arrangement might be suitable so long as the office was filled by a Lassalle. It was not easy to get a competent man of any kind. In such a novel organisation we need not say that there were hardly any members of ability and experience. Lassalle’s choice was therefore extremely limited. The most capable of his adherents undoubtedly was Von Schweitzer, a young man who belonged to a patrician house of Frankfort on the Main, but his reputation was so far from stainless that the German workmen for some time refused to have anything to do with him. Becker was elected, and conducted the affairs of the Association with more energy than wisdom, while the Countess Hatzfeldt, as the intimate friend of Lassalle, used her wealth and social position to control its fortunes in a way little calculated to satisfy the self-respecting German working men. It was a time of confusion and uncertainty in the Association; of suspicion, jealousy, and contention among its leading members. There would be no profit, however, in narrating the squabbles which disturbed the progress of the Association in its helpless infancy.

Indeed, if we consider the matter with some measure of sympathy and impartiality, it would hardly have been natural had it been otherwise. Let us try to realise from what low estate the German working men were now endeavouring to rise. We must remember that the German workman had no share or experience in government, either local or national. The right of combination, of free speech in a free meeting, and even of free movement, had been denied him for generations. He could hardly turn to the right hand or the left without coming into collision with the police and the courts of law. He had no leaders whom he could trust. The German working men, it is scarcely an exaggeration to say, had in the sphere of social and political action everything to learn. Under conditions which were most trying and uncertain they had to shape out a policy which suited their interests and ideals; they had to learn to know each other and to work in union, and they had to find trustworthy and capable leaders.

Nameless misery and degradation prevailed in too many of the industrial regions on the Rhine in Saxony and Silesia. Men, women, and children were worked for fifteen hours a day. Hand labour was disappearing with the wonted unspeakable suffering before the machinery brought in by the industrial revolution. Both the hand labour and the factory labour of Germany suffered under the pressure of the competition of the more advanced mechanical industry of England.

In the lot of the German working man there had been neither light, leading, nor hope. The men who represented State and Church, law and learning, and who should have been responsible for his guidance, were too often found among his oppressors.

In view of facts like these need we wonder that Lassalle, with all his eloquence and energy, found it difficult to rouse the German working men out of their apathy and hopelessness? Under such depressing circumstances it was no particular disgrace for an ordinary man like Bernhard Becker to fail. Becker’s tenure of the presidency was of short duration. He was succeeded by Tölcke, a man of ability and energy; but at his entrance into office the prospects of the Association were not bright. The funds in its treasury amounted to only six thalers or eighteen shillings. If finance be the test of success the Association founded by Lassalle was indeed at a very low ebb.

The brightest feature in the early history of the Association was the Sozialdemokrat, a paper founded by Schweitzer at the end of 1864, and which had on its list of contributors the names of Marx and Engels. But even here the evil fortune of the Association clung to it. In a series of articles on Bismarck, Schweitzer had given expression to views regarding that statesman which were highly displeasing to the two revolutionists in England, and they publicly renounced all connection with the paper. Following Lassalle, Schweitzer had shown his readiness to join hands with the Conservatives of Prussia when circumstances made it advisable in the interests of the Social Democracy. Such a policy met with no favour in the eyes of Marx and Engels. They demanded from Schweitzer the same energetic opposition to the feudal and reactionary party as he showed to the Progressists. Schweitzer claimed the right to shape his tactics in accordance with the situation of affairs in Prussia, which he knew better than men living in exile. A socialist who could take a lucid and comprehensive view of the theories which he professed, a man of the world of real insight and tact, Schweitzer, by his articles in the Sozialdemokrat, rendered effectual service to the Association and to the socialist cause in Germany at a most critical time in their history.

During those years the political condition of Germany was most uncertain and chaotic, and the Association had to grope its way through the darkness as best it could. It was a new party composed of members who had no experience of common action, and who had with much labour and perplexity to work out a set of common convictions. Under the circumstances a clear line of policy was impossible. The first mighty step out of this political chaos was made in 1866, when Bismarck, after defeating Austria, established the North German Confederation. The elections to the North German Diet, which was now established, were based on universal suffrage. The first North German Diet met in 1867, and in the same year Schweitzer was elected president of the Association founded by Lassalle. How were the Social Democrats of Germany to relate themselves to the new order of things? Before answering this question we must say something of important movements which were proceeding on the Social Democratic side.

The adherents of the Universal Working Men’s Association were drawn chiefly from Prussia and North Germany. In Saxony and South Germany there had meanwhile grown up a new working men’s party, from which Schweitzer encountered the most strenuous opposition. Under the influence of the new life which prevailed in Germany in the years following 1860, many workmen’s unions were established. As it was dangerous to make too open a profession of a political object these unions adopted the name of workmen’s educative associations (Arbeiterbildungsvereine). Some of these working men’s associations had attached themselves to Lassalle, but from the first many had held aloof from him. Many of these associations had been founded and promoted under liberal democratic influences, and their aim may generally be described as political and educational rather than economical; but it would be more accurate still to describe them as having no clear aims, and as on the look-out for a policy rather than possessing one. It is certain that as Saxons and South Germans they were to a large degree inspired by the hatred to the growing ascendency of Prussia which prevailed around them.

Shortly after the founding of the Lassalle Association a Union of the working men’s associations which continued loyal to the Progressist party was founded at Frankfort in 1863, and was intended to form a bulwark against the influence of Lassalle. But this Union of associations speedily began to move in the direction of democracy and through democracy to socialism. Two men were chiefly responsible for this result, Wilhelm Liebknecht and August Bebel.

Liebknecht had taken an active part in the revolutionary disturbances in Germany in 1848, had been a member of the group of exiles that gathered round Karl Marx in London, and from him had imbibed the principles of international revolutionary socialism. He had joined the Universal Association of Lassalle, but he never enjoyed the entire confidence of his chief. Liebknecht counted Luther among his ancestors, and was descended from the learned middle class of Germany. His friend, August Bebel, was a working man, who, being left an orphan at an early age, had been educated at charity schools. Brought up to the handicraft of turner, Bebel continued with the most laudable diligence and thoroughness to educate himself. By his acquirements, his natural talent and his force of character, he soon gained considerable influence among his comrades. Bebel before long became a force in the German workmen’s unions.

At first Bebel was merely a radical of strong convictions, and he had no love for a socialistic agitation like that of Lassalle which was to adapt itself so much to Prussian nationalism. It was only a question of time, however, when a nature so thorough and strenuous would make the transition from radicalism to socialism. As the representative man of the German workmen’s educative associations, we see him making his way in a few short years to Social Democracy, and the associations followed him step by step. Influential members soon expressed their preference for universal suffrage. The Union of associations at its meeting in Stuttgart in 1865 declared for universal suffrage, whilst their organ in the same year repudiated the Schulze-Delitzsch schemes in the most emphatic language. In 1866 a great meeting of workmen’s associations at Chemnitz in Saxony adopted a programme which on its political side was entirely democratic, and on its economic side made considerable advances towards socialism. At its congress in Nuremberg in 1868 the Union by a large majority declared its adhesion to the principles of the International. In a great congress at Eisenach in 1869 they founded the Social Democratic Working Men’s Party, and in the same year sent representatives to the International Congress at Basel. The Union which had been designed by the Progressists as a bulwark against Social Democracy had proved a roadway by which the workmen marched into the enemy’s camp.

Thus two socialist parties were established in Germany, the Lassalle Association, which had its membership chiefly in Prussia, and the Eisenach Party, which found support in Saxony and South Germany. Both parties were represented in the North German Diet, in which at one time as many as six socialists sat. They now had a tribune from which to address the German people, but it cannot be said that they were particularly grateful to Bismarck for the opportunity which he had given them. To men of the revolutionary party of 1848, whose ideal had been the unification of Germany under the free initiative of the people, the work of Bismarck could not appear a very delightful consummation, even though it was accompanied with the gift of universal suffrage. Schweitzer regarded the North German Confederation as a very unpleasant and very unwelcome, but yet irrevocable fact, with which the Social Democracy would need to find a way of getting on, on whose basis they would have to establish themselves as the extreme opposition if they wished to continue a political party.

Liebknecht, on the other hand, looked upon the North German Confederation as a reactionary work of violence and injustice that must be overthrown. In order not to strengthen it he repudiated all practical participation in the legislative measures of the Diet. The parliamentary tribune was only a platform from which he could hurl his protest against the new arrangement of things among the masses of the German people. In his opinion the creation of Bismarck meant the division, weakening, and servitude of Germany, and history would march over its ruins.

During the Franco-German War of 1870-71 the flood of patriotic enthusiasm for a time almost submerged the socialistic agitation. At the commencement of hostilities Liebknecht and Bebel refrained from voting on the question of a war loan; they disapproved alike of the policy of Prussia and of Bonaparte. The other socialist deputies, including Schweitzer, voted for it, as the victory of Napoleon would mean the overthrow of the socialist workmen in France, the supremacy of the Bonapartist soldiery in Europe, and the complete disintegration of Germany. But after the fall of the French Empire all of them voted against a further loan and recommended the speediest conclusion of peace with the Republic, without annexation of French territory. Such views did not meet with much acceptance in Germany, either from Government or people. Several of the socialist leaders were thrown into prison. At the first election to the German Reichstag in 1871 the socialists counted only 102,000 votes, and returned two members.

Soon afterwards Schweitzer announced his intention of retiring from the leadership of the Universal Working Men’s Association. He had been defeated at the general election. His position at the head of the Association, which, as we have seen, was a species of dictatorship, was no longer tenable. His trials and struggles with the Prussian police and courts of justice, the troubles he experienced in the midst of his own party, the persecution and calumny which he endured from the opposing Eisenach party, the sacrifice of time and money, of health and quiet, which were inseparable from such a post, had made it a very uneasy one. He had conducted the affairs of the Association with a tact, insight, and appreciation of the situation to which his successors in the leadership of the German socialists have apparently never been able to attain. He died in Switzerland in 1875.

About the same time, in the spring of 1871, came the tidings of the great rising of the working class in the Commune at Paris. Mass meetings of German workmen were held in Berlin, Hamburg, Hanover, Dresden, Leipzic, and other large towns, to express their sympathy with their French brethren in the struggle which they were waging. In the Reichstag Bebel made a speech which contained the following passage:—‘Be assured that the entire European proletariat, and all that have a feeling for freedom and independence in their heart, have their eyes fixed on Paris. And if Paris is for the present crushed, I remind you that the struggle in Paris is only a small affair of outposts, that the main conflict in Europe is still before us, and that ere many decades pass away the battle-cry of the Parisian proletariat, war to the palace, peace to the cottage, death to want and idleness, will be the battle-cry of the entire European proletariat.’[2]

When the war fever of 1871 subsided the socialistic agitation resumed its course, and it was fostered by the wild speculations of the time, and by the industrial crisis which followed it. At the elections of 1874 the socialist party polled 340,000 votes and returned nine members.

From Lassalle’s first appearance on the scene in 1862, the socialistic agitation had encountered the German police at every step of its career. Its leaders were prosecuted and thrown into prison. Meetings were broken up, newspapers and organisations were suppressed. The free expression of opinion on the platform and through the press was curtailed in every way.

Such experience taught the socialist leaders the advantage and necessity of union in face of the common enemy. The retirement of Schweitzer from the control of the Lassalle party in 1871 had removed the most serious obstacle to union. Hasenclever had been elected president in his stead, but it was felt that the party had outgrown the autocratic guidance which had been helpful and perhaps necessary to it in its early years. All the tendencies and influences of the time served to bring the Lassalle and the Eisenach parties together. They were pursuing the same aims under the same conditions, against the same opposition; and there was really nothing now to keep them apart except the recollection of old rivalries and animosities which soon faded under the pressure of their practical difficulties.

Under these circumstances the process of union was easy, and the fusion of the Eisenach and Lassalle parties was effected in a congress at Gotha in 1875. At this congress 25,000 regular members were represented, of whom 9000 belonged to the Marx party and 15,000 to that of Lassalle. The united body assumed the name of the Socialistic Working Men’s Party of Germany, and drew up a programme, which, as the most important that till that time had been published by any socialistic organisation, deserves to be given entire.[3]

The union of the two parties thus accomplished was the starting-point of a new career of prosperity for the German Social Democracy. At the election of 1877 the new party polled nearly half a million votes, and returned twelve members to the Reichstag. This result was largely due to the admirable organisation to which the socialistic propaganda had now attained. A staff of skilful, intelligent, and energetic agitators advocated the new creed in every town of Germany, and they were supported by an effective machinery of newspapers, pamphlets, treatises, social gatherings, and even almanacs, in which the doctrines of socialism were suggested, inculcated, and enforced in every available way. At all the great centres of population—in Berlin, Hamburg, and in the industrial towns of Saxony and on the Rhine—the Social Democrats threatened to become the strongest party.

Such a rate of progress, and the aggressive attitude of the spokesmen of the party, naturally awakened the apprehensions of the German rulers. They resolved to meet it by special legislation. The Social Democrat programme contained nothing that was absolutely inconsistent with the idea of a peaceful development out of the existing state. As we have seen, it is a principle of the Marx socialism that its realisation depends on the inherent tendencies of social evolution; but the process can be hastened by the intelligent and energetic co-operation of living men, and as this co-operation may take the shape of revolutionary force, and was actually in Germany assuming a most aggressive and menacing attitude, both on the platform and in the press, it was inevitable that the German Government should adopt measures to repress it.

The occasion of the anti-socialist legislation was found in the attempts of Hödel and Nobiling on the Emperor’s life in 1878. It is needless to say that neither attempt was authorised by the Social Democratic party. The two men had no official connection with the party. Both were weak in character and intellect. Their feeble brains had been excited by the socialistic doctrines which were fermenting around them. No further responsibility for their acts attaches to the Social Democratic party, whose principles and interests were entirely opposed to such attempts at assassination.

The Bill introduced after the attempt of Hödel was rejected by the Reichstag. On the attempt of Nobiling the Government dissolved the Reichstag and appealed to the country, with the result that a large majority favourable to exceptional legislation was returned. At the general election the socialist vote declined from 493,000 to 437,000. Severe anti-socialist laws were speedily carried by the new Reichstag.

A most interesting feature of the discussions which took place in connection with the exceptional legislation was the attitude of Bismarck. Now when the great statesman is no more it is specially necessary to state that he approached the subject of socialism with an open-mindedness which does him honour. He felt it his duty to make himself acquainted with all the facts relating to his office, and took particular pains to understand the new social and economic problems which were engaging the attention of the country.

In a sitting of the Reichstag on September 17, 1878, he did not hesitate to express his sympathy and even respect for Lassalle. He explained how he had met Lassalle three or four times at the request of the latter, and had not regretted it. Referring to baseless rumours that had been circulated to the effect that he had been willing to enter into negotiation with the agitator, he stated that their relations could not have taken the form of a political transaction, for Lassalle had nothing to offer him, and there could be no bargain when one of the parties had nothing to give. ‘But Lassalle had something,’ Bismarck went on to say, ‘that attracted me exceedingly as a private man. He was one of the cleverest and most amiable men with whom I ever met; a man who was ambitious in great style, and by no means a republican; he had a very strongly marked national and monarchical feeling, the idea which he strove to realise was the German Empire, and therein we had common ground. Lassalle was ambitious in the grand style; it was doubtful, perhaps, whether the German Empire should close with the Hohenzollern dynasty or the dynasty Lassalle, yet his feeling was monarchical through and through.... Lassalle was an energetic and most intellectual man, whose conversation was very instructive; our talks lasted for hours, and I always regretted when they came to an end.... I should have been glad to have had a man of such endowments and genius as neighbouring landlord.’

It should be added also that Bismarck saw no objection in principle to the scheme of productive associations with State help recommended by Lassalle. Such experiments were not unreasonable in themselves, and were entirely consistent with the range of duties recognised by the State as he understood them; but the course of political events had not left him the necessary leisure. Before leaving this matter we should note that, as regards universal suffrage and the scheme of productive associations with State help, Bismarck and Lassalle had common ground, on which they could have co-operated without sacrifice of principle on either side.

In his speech in the Reichstag of September 17, 1878, the Chancellor also explained the origin of his hostility to the Social Democracy. One of its leading representatives, either Bebel or Liebknecht, had in open sitting expressed his sympathy with the Commune at Paris. That reference to the Commune had been a ray of light on the question; from that time he felt entirely convinced that the Social Democracy was an enemy against which the State and society must arm themselves.

As we have seen, it was Bebel who had used the objectionable language in the Reichstag; but Liebknecht had never been backward in the frank and uncompromising expression of views of a similar nature. Such views were not the passing feeling of the hour; they were the statement of firm and settled conviction, and may fairly be taken as representative of the beliefs and convictions of the German Social Democracy in general. The Social Democrats were hostile to the existing order in Germany, and they did not hesitate to say so. In these circumstances it is hardly necessary to say that a collision with a Government like that directed by Bismarck was inevitable.

Bismarck himself was a Prussian Junker who had become a great European statesman, but in many ways he remained a Junker to the end of his life. With rare sagacity and strength of will he had shaped the real forces of his time towards the great end of uniting the Fatherland and restoring it to its fitting place among the nations of Europe. To use his own words, he had lifted Germany into the saddle, and his task afterwards was to keep her there. The methods, however, by which he had accomplished the first part of his task, were scarcely so suitable for the accomplishment of the second.

In the now united Germany he found two enemies which appeared to menace the new structure which he had so laboriously reared, the Black International, or the Ultramontane party, and the Red International, or the Social Democrats. These enemies he tried to suppress by the high-handed methods which had been familiar to him from his youth. He was about fifty-six years of age when the German Empire was established. It was too much to expect of human nature that he should at so late a time of life break away from his antecedents as Prussian Junker and statesman, and adopt the methods which would make Germany a free as well as a united State.

Yet it is only right to say that he went a considerable distance on this desirable path. Both as realist statesman and as patriot he wished to have the German people on his side. When he attempted to suppress the Social Democracy by methods which are not worthy of a free and enlightened nation, he did so in all seriousness, as a German patriot. He was a man working under the human limitations of his birth, antecedents, and position. On the other hand, the Social Democrats had endured oppression for many generations from the classes which Bismarck represented. They had now risen in anger out of the lower depths of society as an organised party, demanding that the hereditary oppression should cease. Considered in this aspect the anti-socialist legislation of Bismarck was only a new phase in a secular process. Time has not yet fully revealed the means by which a process of this kind can be brought to a close.

The anti-socialist laws came into force in October 1878. Socialist newspapers and meetings were at once suppressed, and the organisation of the party was broken up. Generally, it may be said that during the operation of the laws the only place in Germany in which the right of free speech could be exercised by the socialists was the tribune of the Reichstag, and the only organisation permitted to them was that formed by the representatives of the party in the Reichstag. As time went on the minor state of siege was established in Berlin, Hamburg, Leipzig, and other towns, and the police did not hesitate to exercise the power thereby put into their hands of expelling Social Democratic agitators and others who might be objectionable to them.

For some time confusion, and to some extent dismay, prevailed among the Social Democrats. But ere long they found that their union and their power did not depend on any formal organisation. As Marx had taught, the organisation of the factory necessarily brings with it the organisation of the proletariat. A well-drilled working class is a natural and inevitable result of modern industrial evolution, which no fiat of the law can disturb, if the workmen have the intelligence to understand their position and mission. Thus the German workman realised that the union in which he trusted was beyond the reach of repressive laws, however cunningly devised and however brutally exercised.

The want of an organ, however, was greatly felt, and accordingly, in September 1879, the Socialdemocrat, International Organ of the Socialdemocracy of German Tongue, was founded at Zürich. From 1880 it was edited by Eduard Bernstein with real ability and conscientious thoroughness. Every week thousands of copies were despatched to Germany, and, in spite of all the efforts of the police, were distributed among the Social Democrats in the Fatherland. In 1888 it was removed to London, whence it was issued till the repeal of the anti-socialist laws in 1890.

The efforts of Bismarck against socialism apparently had a temporary success, for in 1881, the first election after the passing of the laws, the voting power of the party sank to about 312,000. But it was only temporary, and probably it was more apparent than real. The elections in 1884 showed a marked increase to 549,000, and in 1887 to 763,000. These symptoms of growth, however, were vastly exceeded by the results of the poll in 1890, when the number of Social Democratic votes swelled to 1,427,000. They were now the strongest single party of the Empire.

In all the large towns of the Empire, and especially in the largest of all, such as Berlin, Hamburg, and Leipzig, where the minor state of siege had been proclaimed, the socialists could show an enormous increase of votes. Till about 1885 the Social Democrats had, by their own confession, made very little progress in country districts, or among the Catholic population either of town or country. At the election of 1890 there was evidence of a very considerable advance in both quarters. The election sounded the knell of Bismarck’s system of repression, and the anti-socialist laws were not renewed.

The Social Democrats thus came out of the struggle against Bismarck with a voting power three times as great as it had been when the anti-socialist laws were passed. The struggle had proved the extraordinary vitality of the movement. The Social Democrats had shown a patience, resolution, discipline, and, in the absence of any formal organisation, a real and effective organisation of mind and purpose which are unexampled in the annals of the labour movement since the beginning of human society. They had made a steady and unflinching resistance to the most powerful statesman since the first Napoleon, who wielded all the resources of a great modern State, and who was supported by a press that used every available means to discredit the movement; and, as a party, they had never been provoked to acts of violence. In fact, they had given proof of all the high qualities which fit men and parties to play a great rôle in history. The Social Democratic movement in Germany is one of the most notable phenomena of our time.

After the anti-social legislation had ceased the Social Democratic party found that its first task was to set its house in order. At a party meeting at Halle in 1890 an organisation of the simplest kind was adopted. The annual meeting forms the highest representative body of the party. The party direction was to consist of two chairmen, two secretaries, one treasurer, and also of two assessors chosen by a Board of Control of seven members. The Sozialdemokrat, which, as we have seen, had for some time been published in London, was discontinued, and the Vorwärts of Berlin was appointed the central organ of the party.

In 1891, at the party meeting at Erfurt, a new programme, superseding that of Gotha, was adopted; and as it may fairly be regarded as the most developed expression of the Social Democratic principles yet put forth by any body of working men, we give it here entire for the perusal and study of our readers.[4]

‘The economic development of the bourgeois society leads by a necessity of nature to the downfall of the small production, the basis of which is the private property of the workman in his means of production. It separates the workman from his means of production, and transforms him into a proletarian without property, whilst the means of production become the monopoly of a comparatively small number of capitalists and great landowners.

‘This monopolising of the means of production is accompanied by the supplanting of the scattered small production through the colossal great production, by the development of the tool into the machine, and by gigantic increase of the productivity of human labour. But all advantages of this transformation are monopolised by the capitalists and great landowners. For the proletariat and the sinking intermediate grades—small tradesmen and peasant proprietors—it means increasing insecurity of their existence, increase of misery, of oppression, of servitude, degradation, and exploitation.

‘Ever greater grows the number of the proletarians, ever larger the army of superfluous workmen, ever wider the chasm between exploiters and exploited, ever bitterer the class struggle between bourgeoisie and proletariat, which divides modern society into two hostile camps, and is the common characteristic of all industrial lands.

‘The gulf between rich and poor is further widened through the crises which naturally arise out of the capitalistic method of production, which always become more sweeping and destructive, which render the general insecurity the normal condition of society, and prove that the productive forces have outgrown the existing society, that private property in the means of production is incompatible with their rational application and full development.

‘Private property in the instruments of production, which in former times was the means of assuring to the producer the property in his own product, has now become the means of expropriating peasant proprietors, hand-workers, and small dealers, and of placing the non-workers, capitalists, and great landowners in the possession of the product of the workmen. Only the conversion of the capitalistic private property in the means of production—land, mines, raw material, tools, machines, means of communication—into social property, and the transformation of the production of wares into socialistic production, carried on for and through society, can bring it about that the great production and the continually increasing productivity of social labour may become for the hitherto exploited classes, instead of a source of misery and oppression, a source of the highest welfare and of all-sided harmonious development.

‘This social transformation means the emancipation, not merely of the proletariat, but of the entire human race which suffers under the present conditions. But it can only be the work of the labouring class, because all other classes, in spite of their mutually conflicting interests, stand on the ground of private property in the means of production, and have as their common aim the maintenance of the bases of the existing society.

‘The struggle of the working class against capitalistic exploitation is of necessity a political struggle. The working class cannot conduct its economic struggle, and cannot develop its economic organisation, without political rights. It cannot effect the change of the means of production into the possession of the collective society without coming into possession of political power.

‘To shape this struggle of the working class into a conscious and united one, and to point out to it its inevitable goal, this is the task of the Social Democratic party.

‘In all lands where the capitalistic method of production prevails, the interests of the working classes are alike. With the extension of the world commerce and of the production for the world market, the condition of the workmen of every single land always grows more dependent on the condition of the workmen in other lands. The emancipation of the working class is therefore a task in which the workers of all civilised countries are equally interested. Recognising this the Social Democratic party of Germany feels and declares itself at one with the class-conscious workers of all other countries.

‘The Social Democratic party of Germany therefore contends, not for new class privileges and exclusive rights, but for the abolition of class rule and of classes themselves, and for equal rights and equal duties of all without distinction of sex and descent. Proceeding from these views it struggles in the present society, not only against exploitation and oppression of the wage-workers, but against every kind of exploitation and oppression, whether directed against class, party, sex, or race.

‘Proceeding from these principles the Social Democratic party of Germany now demands—

‘1. Universal, equal, and direct suffrage, with vote by ballot, for all men and women of the Empire over twenty years of age. Proportional electoral system; and, till the introduction of this, legal redistribution of seats after every census. Biennial legislative periods. Elections to take place on a legal day of rest. Payment of representatives. Abolition of all limitation of political rights, except in the case of disfranchisement.

‘2. Direct legislation through the people, by means of the right of proposal and rejection. Self-government of the people in Empire, State, Province, and Commune. Officials to be elected by the people; responsibility of officials. Yearly granting of taxes.

‘3. Training in universal military duty. A people’s army in place of the standing armies, decision on peace and war by the representatives of the people. Settlement of all international differences by arbitration.

‘4. Abolition of all laws which restrict or suppress the free expression of opinion and the right of union and meeting.

‘5. Abolition of all laws which, in public or private matters, place women at a disadvantage as compared with men.

‘6. Religion declared to be a private matter. No public funds to be applied to ecclesiastical and religious purposes. Ecclesiastical and religious bodies are to be regarded as private associations which manage their own affairs in a perfectly independent manner.

‘7. Secularisation of the school. Obligatory attendance at the public people’s schools. Education, the appliances of learning, and maintenance free in the public people’s schools, as also in the higher educational institutions for those scholars, both male and female, who, by reason of their talents, are thought to be suited for further instruction.

‘8. Administration of justice and legal advice to be free. Justice to be administered by judges chosen by the people. Appeal in criminal cases. Compensation for those who are innocently accused, imprisoned, and condemned. Abolition of capital punishment.

‘9. Medical treatment, including midwifery and the means of healing, to be free. Free burial.

‘10. Progressive income and property taxes to meet all public expenditure, so far as these are to be covered by taxation. Duty of making one’s own return of income and property. Succession duty to be graduated according to amount and relationship. Abolition of all indirect taxes, customs, and other financial measures which sacrifice the collective interest to the interests of a privileged minority.

‘For the protection of the working class the Social Democratic party of Germany demands—

‘1. An effective national and international protective legislation for workmen on the following bases:—

‘(a) Fixing of a normal working day of not more than eight hours.

‘(b) Prohibition of money-making labour of children under fourteen years.

‘(c) Prohibition of night work, except for those branches of industry which from their nature, owing to technical reasons or reasons of public welfare, require night work.

‘(d) An unbroken period of rest of at least thirty-six hours in every week for every worker.

‘(e) Prohibition of the truck system.

‘2. Supervision of all industrial establishments, investigation and regulation of the conditions of labour in town and country by an imperial labour department, district labour offices, and labour chambers. A thorough system of industrial hygiene.

‘3. Agricultural labourers and servants to be placed on the same footing as industrial workers; abolition of servants’ regulations.

‘4. The right of combination to be placed on a sure footing.

‘5. Undertaking of the entire working men’s insurance by the Empire, with effective co-operation of the workmen in its administration.’

If we consider the above programme we shall see that collectivism is set forth as the goal of a long process of historical evolution. But this goal is to be attained by the conscious, intelligent, and organised action of the working class of Germany in co-operation with the working classes of other lands. This is the twofold theme of the first part of the programme. The second part is a detailed statement of the social-political arrangements and institutions, by which on and from the basis of the existing society the German Social Democracy may move towards the goal. The goal, collectivism, is therefore the central point of the programme.

The programme, it will be observed, is a lengthy one about which many treatises might be written, and indeed it sums up a world of thought, on which the Social Democratic mind has been exercised for more than a generation. It will be seen that the materialistic conception of history and the theory of surplus value of Marx are not expressed in the programme, though they may be taken as underlying it by those who emphasise those two leading principles of Marx. The Social Democracy of Germany, therefore, is not committed to the special theories of Marx to the extent that is commonly supposed, though the general lines on which the programme is constructed owe their elucidation greatly more to him than to any other man. The various points of the programme will, we may be assured, be subjects of discussion and of education for the industrious and intelligent working class of Germany for many a year to come. It embodies their thoughts and interests, their aspirations and ideals, in the social economic and political sphere, but it represents no fixed system of dogma. It is meant to be a living creed, mirroring a living movement.

We have thus briefly sketched the rise of the German Social Democratic party from 1863 to 1890. It is a short period, but full of change and trouble. The party has come victoriously through a very hard school. We have seen how low and feeble were the beginnings of the party. We have seen also how hard at every step of its career has been its experience of the German police. Indeed the Prussian and German executive has left no means untried to suppress and destroy the movement.

Looking back on the development of the party we cannot doubt that at certain decisive stages greater wisdom and insight might have been shown by its leaders. The ascendency of Prussia should have been recognised as an inevitable fact which unquestionably made for progress in the unification of Germany. In this aspect at least the work of Bismarck was profoundly progressive. We may safely assume that the unification and regeneration of Germany would never have been accomplished by a talking apparatus like the Frankfort Parliament of 1848; and we can see no other force that could have succeeded except the military power of Prussia. And we may further add that the present policy of the Social Democratic party in refusing to vote for the budgets, if it were seriously to weaken the German executive, would in the existing state of Europe be disastrous in the last degree. That men like Liebknecht should hate the Junker party as the hereditary oppressors of the poor was natural; but the Junkers have had and still have a great historic function as the heads of the forces political and military which have again made Germany a nation. Their way of making the new Germany has not been the ideal way, let us say; but it has been the way of fact, and no exercise of revolutionary impatience of Marx or Liebknecht has been able to arrest or reverse the fact.

Trained in the school of adversity, the German Social Democratic party has been obliged to learn circumspection and to acquire all the virtues of discipline, patience, sobriety, and self-control. Some of its members, among whom Most and Hasselman were prominent, strongly urged a policy of anarchic resistance to authority, but this tendency was strenuously opposed by the vast majority. Most and Hasselman, on refusing to submit to the party discipline, were eventually expelled. Every attempt to encourage the theory or practice of anarchism in the German Social Democratic party has been sternly and almost unanimously suppressed by the party. It succeeded only to a slight degree in cases where it was promoted by the agents of the German police for their own evil ends.

A most wholesome effect of the adverse experience of the Social Democratic party was that it sifted from their ranks all who were not thoroughly in earnest in the cause of the working man. It is a grave misfortune of new movements like socialism that it attracts from the middle and upper classes all manner of faddists and crotchety enthusiasts and adventurers, vapid and futile talkers, acrid and morbid pessimists, who join the movement, not from real love of the cause, but because it gives them an opportunity to scheme and harangue, and to lash out at the vices of the existing society. From this dangerous class the German Social Democratic party was saved by the anti-socialist legislation at a time when socialism was becoming fashionable.

It is a most significant feature in the development of the German Social Democracy that it has attained to its present advanced position without the help of any leader of commanding talent. It has had many loyal chiefs. For over fifty years, during which exile, privation, discouragement, prosecution, and imprisonment were followed by a season of comparative triumph, Liebknecht was at all times the consistent and unflinching champion of the revolutionary cause. Bebel’s service for the working man now extends to about forty years, and has been not less consistent and courageous. Many others, such as Hasenclever, Auer, and Vollmar, have served with ability for many years. But none of those named can be considered men of remarkable gifts. Bernstein and Kautsky, who may be described as the leading theorists of the party in recent years, have shown wide knowledge, judgment, and clearness of vision, but they would be the last to lay claim to the endowments that give Marx and Lassalle their high place in the history of the working class. These things being so, we must regard the German Social Democracy as a movement which owes its rise no doubt to the initiative of two men of original force, but which in its development finds its basis in the minds and hearts of the proletariat of the Fatherland.

In the absence of other guidance the Social Democratic party has been a centre and a rallying-point to the German workmen. While all else was uncertain, dark, and hostile, the party could be relied upon to give friendly and disinterested counsel. The strikes which from time to time broke out among the German workmen received the most careful advice and consideration from the Social-Democratic leaders, and those leaders soon found that the strikes were the most impressive object-lessons in arousing the class-consciousness of the workmen. Whole masses of the working men went over to the Social Democracy under the severe practical teaching of the strike.

The cause of the German Social Democracy has therefore called forth the most entire devotion among all ranks of its members. When Liebknecht and Bebel were condemned to two years’ imprisonment in a fortress after the great trial at Leipzig, in 1872, they were glad, they said, to do their two years because of the splendid opportunity it had given them for socialistic propaganda in the face of Germany. During the fortnight the trial had lasted they had in the course of their defence been able to dispel prejudices and misunderstandings, and so to educate German opinion in socialism.

But the 10th of March 1878 saw a demonstration which of all the events and incidents in the history of the German Social Democracy may well be regarded as the most deeply significant. It was the funeral of August Heinsch. August Heinsch was a simple workman, a compositor; but he had deserved well of the proletariat by organising its electoral victories in Berlin. He had died of consumption, called by the socialists the proletarian malady, because it is so frequently due to the insanitary conditions under which work is carried on. In the case of August Heinsch the malady was at least aggravated by his self-sacrificing exertions in the common cause, and the workmen of Berlin resolved to honour his memory by a solemn and imposing demonstration. As the body was borne to the cemetery through the working men’s districts in East Berlin, black flags waved from the roofs and windows, and the vast crowds of people, reckoned by the hundred thousand, who filled the streets, bared their heads in respectful sympathy. Many thousands of workmen followed the bier in serried ranks to the last resting-place.

Of all the achievements of the German Social Democracy it may be reckoned the most signal that it has so organised the frugal, hard-working and law-abiding proletariat of the Fatherland, and has inspired them with the spirit of intelligent self-sacrifice in their common cause. The programme and principles of the party have received modification in the past, and will no doubt receive it in the future, for the German Social Democracy is a reality and a movement instinct with vitality. The new times will bring new needs, which will require new measures. They will bring also, we hope, a wider and clearer vision and a mellower wisdom, as without wisdom even organised power is of little avail.

In view of the loyalty and devotion of the working men, it is all the more incumbent on the leaders of the German Social Democratic party that they should now guide it along paths which will be wise, practical, and fruitful. It has too long been their evil fortune or their own deliberate choice to stand apart from the main movement of German life. They have had little part in the work of State, municipality, or country commune. The party began in opposition to the great co-operative movement of Germany.

It is most important that the theories and ideals of the German Social Democratic party should be fairly tested and corrected by their application to the practical work of society. The leaders of the party agree in their preference for legal and peaceful methods. In this point they and the representatives of the existing order might find common ground which may form a basis for better relations in the future.

[1]

The best authority for the facts connected with the development of the German Social Democracy is Franz Mehring’s Geschichte der Deutschen Sozial-demokratie.

[2]

See Mehring, Geschichte.

[3]

See Appendix.

[4]

Our tr. of the programme is taken from the Protokoll or shorthand report of the party meeting at Stuttgart, 1898, to which it is prefixed.

CHAPTER X

ANARCHISM

It is agreed that anarchism as a form of socialism originated with Proudhon; but the theory owes its fuller development chiefly to Russian agitators. The great apostle of the system in its most characteristic stage was Michael Bakunin.

Bakunin[1] belonged to the highest Russian aristocracy and was born at Torshok, in the government of Twer, in 1814. In due time he entered the army as an officer of artillery, which was a select department of the service. While serving in Poland, however, he was so painfully impressed with the horrors which he saw exercised under Russian despotic rule, that he resigned his commission and entered on a life of study. In 1847 he visited Paris, and met Proudhon, who had a decisive influence on his opinions.

The revolutionary movement of 1848 gave the first opportunity for the activity of Bakunin as agitator. He was particularly concerned in the rising at Dresden in 1849. But the hands of the reactionary Governments and of their police were heavy on the baffled enthusiasts of the revolution. Bakunin had a full share of their bitter experience. As he tells us himself in his work on Mazzini, he was for nearly eight years confined in various fortresses of Saxony, Austria, and Russia, and was then exiled for life to Siberia. Fortunately, Muravieff, Governor of Siberia, was a relative, who allowed him considerable freedom and other indulgences. After four years of exile, Bakunin effected his escape, and through the greatest hardships made his way to California, and thence to London in 1860.

Bakunin thus passed in prison and in exile the dreary years of European reaction which followed the revolutionary period of 1848. When he returned to London he found that the forward movement had again begun. It was a time of promise for his own country after the accession of Alexander II. to the throne. In the Kolokol he assisted Herzen to rouse his countrymen and prepare them for a new era; but the impatient temperament of Bakunin could not be satisfied with the comparatively moderate counsels followed by his friend. The latter years of his life he spent, chiefly in Switzerland, as the energetic advocate of international anarchism. In 1869 he founded the Social Democratic Alliance, which, however, dissolved in the same year, and entered the main International. He attempted a rising at Lyons in September 1870, soon after the fall of the Second Empire, but with no success whatever.

At the Hague Congress of the International he was outvoted and expelled by the Marx party. His activity in later years was much impaired by ill-health. He died at Berne in 1876.

In their preface to Bakunin’s work, God and the State, his friends Cafiero and Elisée Reclus afford us some interesting glimpses of the personality of the agitator. ‘Friends and enemies know that the man was great by his thinking power, his force of will, and his persistent energy; they know also what lofty disdain he felt for fortune, rank, glory, and all the miserable prizes which the majority of men are base enough to covet. A Russian gentleman belonging to the highest nobility of the empire, he was one of the first to enter in that proud association of the revolted, who knew to detach themselves from the traditions, the prejudices, the interests of race and class—to contemn their own happiness. With them he fought the hard battle of life, aggravated by prison, by exile, by all the dangers, and all the bitterness which devoted men have to undergo in their troubled existence.’

They then go on to say how ‘in Russia among the students, in Germany among the insurgents of Dresden, in Siberia among his brethren in exile, in America, in England, in France, in Switzerland, in Italy, among men of goodwill, his direct influence has been considerable. The originality of his ideas, his picturesque and fiery eloquence, his untiring zeal in propaganda, supported by the natural majesty of his appearance, and by his strong vitality, gained an entrance for him in all the groups of revolutionary socialists, and his activity left deep traces even among those who, after having welcomed it, rejected it because of differences in aim or method.’ But it was mainly by the voluminous correspondence with the revolutionary world, in which he spent whole nights, that his activity was to be explained. His published writings were the smallest part of his work. His most important treatise, God and the State, was only a fragment. ‘My life itself is a fragment,’ he said to those who criticised his writings.

Nothing can be clearer or more frank and comprehensive in its destructiveness than the socialism of Bakunin. It is revolutionary socialism based on materialism, and aiming at the destruction of external authority by every available means. He rejects all the ideal systems in every name and shape, from the idea of God downwards; and he rejects every form of external authority, whether emanating from the will of a Sovereign or from universal suffrage. ‘The liberty of man,’ he says in his Dieu et l’Etat, ‘consists solely in this, that he obey the laws of Nature, because he has himself recognised them as such, and not because they have been imposed upon him externally by any foreign will whatsoever, human or divine, collective or individual.’ In this way will the whole problem of freedom be solved: that natural laws be ascertained by scientific discovery, and the knowledge of them be universally diffused among the masses. Natural laws being thus recognised by every man for himself, he cannot but obey them, for they are the laws also of his own nature; and the need for political organisation, administration, and legislation will at once disappear.

It follows that he will not admit of any privileged position or class, for ‘it is the peculiarity of privilege and of every privileged position to kill the intellect and heart of man. The privileged man, whether he be privileged politically or economically, is a man depraved in intellect and heart.’ ‘In a word, we object to all legislation, all authority, and all influence, privileged, patented, official and legal, even when it has proceeded from universal suffrage, convinced that it must always turn to the profit of a dominating and exploiting minority, against the interests of the immense majority enslaved.’

The following extracts taken from the programme of the International Social Democratic Alliance, which he founded, will help to complete our knowledge of the views of this extraordinary agitator. The Alliance declares itself atheistic; it seeks the abolition of all religions, the displacement of faith by science and of divine justice by human justice, the abolition of marriage as a political, religious, legal, and bourgeois institution. The Alliance demands above all things the definite and complete abolition of classes, and political, economic, and social equality of individuals and sexes, and abolition of inheritance, so that in the future every man may enjoy a like share in the produce of labour; that land and soil, instruments of labour, and all other capital, becoming the common property of the whole society, may be used only by the workers—that is, by associations of cultivators and industrialists. It looks forward to the final solution of the social question through the universal and international solidarity of the workers of all countries, and condemns every policy grounded on so-called patriotism and national jealousy. It demands the universal federation of all local associations through the principle of freedom.

Bakunin’s methods of realising his revolutionary programme are suited to his principles. He would make all haste to sweep away the political and social institutions that prevent the realisation of his plans for the future. The spirit of destruction reaches its climax in the Revolutionary Catechism, which has been attributed to Bakunin, but which contains extreme statements that do not consist with his acknowledged writings. It is at least a product of the school of Bakunin, and as such is worthy of attention. The spirit of revolution could not further go than it does in this document. The revolutionist, as the Catechism would recommend him to be, is a consecrated man, who will allow no private interests or feelings, and no scruples of religion, patriotism, or morality, to turn him aside from his mission, the aim of which is by all available means to overturn the existing society. His work is merciless and universal destruction. The future organisation will doubtless proceed out of the movement and life of the people, but it is the concern of coming generations. In the meantime all that Bakunin enables us to see as promise of future reconstruction is the free federation of free associations—associations of which we find the type in the Russian commune.

The influence of Bakunin was felt chiefly on the socialist movement in Southern Europe. The important risings in Spain in 1873 were due to his activity. In the later revolutionary movement of Italy his influence superseded that of Mazzini, for there, as elsewhere, the purely political interest had yielded to the social in the minds of the most advanced.

The doctrines of Bakunin have also left their mark on the recent social history of France and French Switzerland. About 1879 the anarchist propaganda showed signs of activity in Lyons and the surrounding industrial centres. Some disturbances among the miners at Montceau-les-Mines in 1882, also provoked the attention of the police and Government, with the result that sixty-six persons were accused of belonging to an international association with anarchist principles. Of the accused the most notable was Prince Kropotkine, who, with the eminent French geographer Elisée Reclus and the Russian Lavroff, may be regarded as the greatest recent exponents of anarchism.

There is no more interesting figure in the recent revolutionary history of Europe than Prince Kropotkine. Like Bakunin, he belongs by birth to the highest aristocracy of Russia; his family, it was sometimes said among his familiar friends, had a better right to the throne of that country than the present dynasty. A man of science of European fame, of kindly nature and courteous manners, it may seem strange that he should be an avowed champion of the most destructive creed now extant. A few of the leading facts of his life, as he gave them in his defence at the trial at Lyons in 1883, may throw some light on that question.[2]

His father was an owner of serfs, and from his childhood he had been witness to scenes like those narrated by the American novelist in Uncle Tom’s Cabin. The sight of the cruelties suffered by the oppressed class had taught him to love them. At sixteen he entered the school of pages at the Imperial Court, and if he had learned in the cabin to love the people, he learned at the Court to detest the great. In the army and the administration he saw the hopelessness of expecting reforms from the reactionary Russian Government. For some time afterwards he had devoted himself to scientific work. When the social movement began, Kropotkine joined it. The demands made by the new party for more liberty met with a simple response from the Government: they were thrown into prison, where their treatment was terrible. In the prison where the Prince was detained nine lost their reason and eleven committed suicide. He fell seriously ill, and was carried to the hospital, from which he made his escape. In Switzerland, where he found refuge, he witnessed the sufferings of the people caused by the crisis in the watch manufacture; everywhere the like miseries, due to the like social and political evils. Was it surprising that he should seek to remedy them by the transformation of society?

The record[3] of the great anarchist trial at Lyons in 1883, to which we have already referred, is an historical document of the first importance. Every one who wishes to understand the causes, motives, and aims of the anarchist movement should study it carefully. At the trial a declaration of opinion was signed by the accused. The following extracts which give the purport of this declaration may be useful in elucidating the anarchist position. What they aim at is the most absolute freedom, the most complete satisfaction of human wants, without other limit than the impossibilities of Nature and the wants of their neighbours, equally worthy of respect. They object to all authority and all government on principle, and in all human relations would, in place of legal and administrative control, substitute free contract, perpetually subject to revision and cancelment. But, as no freedom is possible in a society where capital is monopolised by a diminishing minority, they believe that capital, the common inheritance of humanity, since it is the fruit of the co-operation of past and present generations, ought to be at the disposal of all, so that no man be excluded from it, and no man seize part of it to the detriment of the rest. In a word, they wish equality, equality of fact, as corollary, or rather as primordial condition of freedom. From each one according to his faculties; to each one according to his needs. They demand bread for all, science for all, work for all; for all, too, independence and justice.

As one of the accused maintained, even a Government based on universal suffrage gives them no scope for effective action in the deliverance of the poor, as of the eight million electors of France only some half a million are in a position to give a free vote. In such a state of affairs, and in view of the continued misery and degradation of the proletariat, they proclaim the sacred right of insurrection as the ultima ratio servorum.

Perhaps the most striking feature of the trial was the defence of Émile Gautier before the Court of Appeal. Gautier was described by the Public Prosecutor as a serious intelligence gone astray, a licentiate in law who had passed brilliant examinations, a powerful orator who might be considered as the apostle of the anarchist idea in France. He was only twenty-nine years of age. In his defence Gautier described with passionate eloquence how he, the son of a law-officer (huissier), had been converted to revolution and anarchism by the sight in court of the daily miseries of debtors and bankrupts and other victims of a capitalist society. As Voltaire is said to have had an attack of fever at every anniversary of the massacre of St. Bartholomew, so he, far away in Brittany, was seized with a fever of rage and of bitter indignation when the calendar brought round the accursed dates at which bills and rents became due.

The leading principles of anarchism are marked by great clearness and simplicity, and may be summed up as the rejection of all external authority and of all private appropriation of land and capital. All human relations will depend on the free action and assent of the individuals concerned. Free associations will be formed for industrial and other purposes, and these associations will with a like freedom enter into federal and other relations with each other. The process of social reconstruction is, in short, the free federation of free associations.

Considered as an historic socialist movement, anarchism may therefore be set forth under these three heads: (1) Economically it is collectivism; (2) it is a theory of revolutionary action, which is certainly its characteristic feature; (3) it is a theory of the relation of the individual to law or government.

As regards the first point, its collectivism is common to it with the prevalent socialism, and therefore need not detain us here. Nor need much be said in the way of criticism of the details of the ultra-revolutionary programme of the anarchists. In our chapter on Marx we have already indicated that the materialism which is common to both schools cannot now be regarded as a tenable or admissible theory of the world. The materialism of both schools sprang from the Hegelian left. It should now be considered as dead, and should in all fairness be set aside in discussion for or against socialism. With regard to religion and marriage, it is hardly necessary to state that progress lies not in the abolition, but in the purification and elevation of those great factors of human life. Bakunin’s criticism of religion is simply a tissue of confusion and misconception. Marriage is a fundamental institution, on the purity and soundness of which social health and social progress must above all things depend: in this matter, more than almost any other, society must and should insist on the maintenance of due safeguards and regulations. Free love is a specious and delusive theory, which would tend to bring back social chaos. It would certainly establish a new slavery of women, whose needs and rights would be sacrificed in the name of a hollow and disastrous freedom.

With regard to the third leading principle above mentioned, the negation of government and external authority, the anarchy of Bakunin is essentially the same as that of Proudhon. But in Proudhon the principle was set forth in paradox, whereas Bakunin expounds it with perfect frankness and directness, and with a revolutionary energy which has seldom been equalled in history. What they both contemplate is a condition of human enlightenment and self-control in which the individual shall be a law to himself, and in which all external authority shall be abolished as a despotic interference with personal freedom. It is an ideal to which the highest religion and philosophy look forward as the goal of man, not as one, however, which can be forthwith reached through the wholesale destruction of the present framework of society, but through a long process of ethical and social improvement. The error of the anarchists consists in their impatient insistence on this proclamation of absolute freedom in the present debased condition of the great mass of the people in every class. They insist on taking the last step in social development before they have quite taken the first.

Like its collectivism, the theory of freedom is not a special feature of anarchism. Collectivism is simply the economic side of the prevalent socialism generally. Its theory of freedom is a very old theory, which has no necessary connection whatever with a revolutionary programme, and we should not misunderstand it because of the strange company in which we here find it. It is a high and long-cherished ideal of the best and greatest minds. The good man does his duty, not from fear of the police or the magistrate, but because it is his duty. And we must regard it as the high-water mark of his probity and goodness that the right is so wrought into the texture of his conscience and intelligence that the doing of it has become as natural to him as breathing or locomotion.

It is an ideal, also, which we must cherish for society and for the human race. And not in vain; for there is an ever-widening circle of human action, in which good and reasonable men do the right without pressure or stimulus from without, either from law or government. We are therefore to regard a well-ordered, intelligent, and ethical freedom as the goal of the social development of the human race.

But it is an ideal which must obviously depend for its realisation on the moral and rational development of men. It cannot come till men and the times are ripe for it. No doubt the realisation of it may be hindered by evil institutions and reactionary Governments; yet these, too, are merely the outcome of such human nature as was once prevalent in the countries where we now find them. They have outlived their time. We are certainly right to get rid of them, as of other evil habits and conditions of the past, but it is best done when done wisely and reasonably. And it cannot be done in any wise or effectual manner except through a wide organic change in the human beings concerned.

A moral and rational freedom is therefore the goal of the social development of the world, and it is a goal towards which we must strive even now. But it is a goal that lies far ahead of us. For the present, and in the future with which we have any practical concern, society cannot be maintained without adequate laws, sanctioned and enforced by a regular Government. The elimination of the baser elements from human character and human society proceeds with most regrettable slowness. In the meantime, therefore, we must hold them in check by the best available methods. We may improve our laws, our police, and magistrates, but we cannot do without them.

It is an interesting fact that socialism has taken its most aggressive form in that European country whose civilisation is most recent. The revolutionary opinions of Russia are not the growth of the soil, and are not the natural and normal outcome of its own social development: they have been imported from abroad. Falling on youthful and enthusiastic temperaments which had not previously been inoculated with the principle of innovation, the new ideas have broken forth with an irrepressible and uncompromising vigour which has astonished the older nations of Europe. Another peculiarity of the situation is that the Government is an autocracy served or controlled by a camarilla which has often been largely foreign both in origin and sympathy. In this case, then, we have a revolutionary party inspired by the socialism of Western Europe fighting against a Government which is also in many ways an exotic, and is not rooted in the mass of the people.

The history of Russia turns on two great institutions, the Tzardom and the mir. The Tzardom is the organ of Russian political life, while the mir is the social form taken by the agricultural population, and is the economic basis of the nation generally.

No reasonable man can doubt that the Tzardom has performed a most important function in the historical development of Russia. It was the central power which united the Russian people and led them in the long, severe, and successful struggle against Tartars, Turks, Lithuanians, Poles, and Swedes. Without it Russia would in all probability have suffered the same fate as Poland, which was distracted, weakened, and finally ruined by the anarchy and incurable selfishness of its nobles.

As in other countries, so in Russia, the central power was established through the subjection of princes and lords who were crushed by the strong and merciless rule of the Tzars. Among those Tzars, too, were men of originality and courage like Peter the Great, who forced the people out of the old-world grooves which they loved so much; and when other means failed they did not hesitate to employ the cane, the knout, and the axe of the executioner to urge their nobles into the paths of Western progress. We need not say that the Tzars were not moved by benevolent reasons thus to benefit their subjects. The historic Tzars were not philanthropists or humanitarians. The aim of their reforms was political, to provide the Russian nation with better means and appliances for the struggle with her neighbours.

While the nobles were unable to make head against the Tzardom, the clergy were neither able nor disposed so to do. In Russia the clergy were not backed by a great international power like the Papacy. They were nursed in the traditions of Eastern Greek despotism and had no inclination to resist their rulers. The peasants were not a political power, except at the rare intervals when desperation drove them into rebellion.

Thus the circumstances of Russia have combined to establish an autocracy which has performed the greatest historic functions, and which has had a power and solidity without example in the rest of Europe. It has maintained the national existence against fierce and powerful enemies, it has in every generation extended the borders of the Russian power, and has been a real centre of the national life, satisfying the needs and aspirations of the people, not in a perfect manner by any means, yet with a considerable measure of success. If we do not realise the supreme importance of the work that the Tzardom has done for Russia, we cannot understand its present position and the hold it has on the feelings of the Russian people. The power of the Tzar has been such that it was hardly an exaggeration, when the Emperor Paul stated to General Dumouriez that there was no important man among his subjects except the person he happened to speak to, and while he was speaking to him.

It is only another instance of the irony of human affairs, however, that the really effective limit to the power of the Tzars is found in the officials, who are intended to carry it into effect. These officials act as the organs of the imperial authority from the centre to the farthest extremities of the empire. Yet they can by delay, by passive resistance, by suggestion, by falsehood, by the arts of etiquette and ceremonial, and all the other methods familiar to the practised servants of autocracy, mislead or thwart the will of their master or render it of no effect.

Such is the central power. Let us now consider the body of the people. In Russia, industry and city life have not formed a large part of the national existence. The mass of the people still live directly from the soil, and are organised in the mir. As is now well known, the mir is merely the Russian form of the village community, which at one time prevailed over all the countries of the world, as they attained to the sedentary or agricultural stage of development. It was the natural social form assumed by people settling down into agriculture. It was the social unit as determined by obvious local economic and historic conditions. In most countries the village community has been reduced to a shadow of its former self, partly through the operation of natural economic causes, but largely also because the central power and the classes connected therewith have crushed it out. The local life of England in particular has been repressed and starved through the want of the most elementary resources and opportunities. It has been recognised as a most pressing duty of statesmen to revive and restore it in accordance with the prevalent conditions, but it will be long before the capacity and habit of common action can be again adequately acquired.

Owing to a variety of causes, which we cannot explain here, the Russian mir has continued to survive. It gave to the mass of the Russian people their own form of social life and of self-government; and it was economically self-sufficing. The mir drew from the soil, which it held in common occupation, the means for its own support and for the support of the nation as a whole. The relations of the members of the mir to each other were substantially conducted on terms of equality and freedom; but in view of the nobles and the Tzardom they were serfs till their emancipation in 1801. The mir was a social-economic arrangement, convenient both for the noble proprietors and for the Tzardom. It afforded to the central Government the necessary taxes and the necessary recruits; and therefore the Tzars did not disturb it, but rather sought to fix and solidity it, and thereby make it more efficient as a source of supply both of soldiers and material means. Thus for centuries, full of movement in the political history of Russia, the mir has with little change endured as the social and economic basis of the national life.

In Russia, therefore, we find only two institutions that have had a real vitality and a specific influence, the Tzardom and the peasant community. Nobles and priests have exercised a substantive power only when the Tzardom has suffered a temporary lapse. The middle class has always been inconsiderable.

It was into a nation thus constituted that the most advanced revolutionary opinions of Western Europe at last found their way. The spirit of revolt had indeed not been unknown in Russia in former times. Among a peasantry sunk in immemorial ignorance and misery, and harassed by the incessant tribute of men and taxes which they were forced to pay, discontent had always been more or less prevalent, and it had sometimes broken out in open rebellion. During the reigns of the great Catharine and of Alexander I. a sentimental Liberalism had been fashionable in the upper classes. But it was not a very practical matter, and was not a serious danger to the autocracy. At the beginning of his reign Nicholas had to face a rising among the Guards at St. Petersburg, led by Liberal officers of high birth. He suppressed it in the speediest and most summary manner. Till his death, 1855, Nicholas maintained a régime of repression at home, and was the champion of absolutism in Europe.

Many circumstances combined to render the accession of Alexander II. a new departure in Russian history. The old methods of government had been thoroughly discredited by the failures of the Crimean war. There was a general feeling that the ideas and methods of the West, which had proved their superiority during the struggle, must be tried in Russia. As the young Emperor recognised the necessity of a new policy, great changes were made, and all went well for a time. Alexander carried the emancipation of the serfs, instituted new courts of law and a new system of local government, and gave a real impetus to education. It was not long, however, before the Emperor began to hesitate in view of the Liberal forces which he had let loose, and which threatened to overturn the whole fabric of Russian society. Like his uncle, Alexander I., the young monarch had not resolution enough to persevere in a practical and systematic course of reform.

The changes already made, and the prospect of changes still to come, roused into action all the conservative instincts and prejudices of old Russia. The insurrection of Poland in 1863, which called forth the sympathies of many Russian Liberals, provoked also a powerful reaction in old Russian circles. An attempt by Karakozoff on the Emperor’s life in 1866 may be regarded as the turning-point of his reign. Ideas of steady reform and of gradual temperate change have not yet become familiar to the Russian temperament. Between those who wished to reform everything, and those who wished no change at all or to change very slowly, no compromise was possible in the circumstances and conditions of Russian society. Thus a revolutionary movement soon declared itself in full opposition to the policy of the Tzar. When we consider that the new party menaced not only the special political institutions of Russia, but the fundamental principles of the existing society generally—property, religion, and the family—we can see that the breach was inevitable.[4]

Three stages may be recognised in the history of the revolutionary movement. The first covered the period from the accession of Alexander II. in 1855 to about 1870. Its leading characteristic was negation, and the name of Nihilism, which is often erroneously applied to the whole revolutionary movement, should properly be restricted to this early stage. In the main it was simply the spirit of the Hegelian left frankly accepting the materialism of Büchner and Moleschott as the final deliverance of philosophy. In a country where religion had little influence among the educated classes, and where philosophy was not a slow and gradual growth of the native mind, but a fashion imported from abroad, the most destructive materialism made, an easy conquest. It was the newest fashion; it was the prevalent form among those who were reckoned the most advanced thinkers; it was clear, simple, and thorough. It was particularly well suited to a state of culture which was superficial, without experience or discipline.

In the words of Turgenief, who has portrayed the movement in his novel, Fathers and Sons, the Nihilists were men who ‘bowed before no authority of any kind, and accepted on faith no principle, whatever veneration may surround it.’ They weighed political institutions and social forms, religion and the family, in the balances of that negative criticism, which was their prevailing characteristic, and they found them all wanting. With revolutionary impatience they rejected everything that had come down from the past, good and bad alike. They had no respect for art or poetry, sentiment or romance. A new fact added to our positive knowledge by the dissecting of a frog was more important than the poetry of Goethe or a painting by Raphael.

Nihilism as represented by Bazarof, in the novel of Turgenief, is certainly not an attractive picture. We may respect his courage, honesty, thoroughness, and independence; but his roughness, cynicism, and indifference to family feelings are very repellent. Through the early death of the hero we are prevented from observing what might have been the further development of his character. We feel sure that if the story of this typical life had been continued, we should have seen very considerable changes in a more positive direction. The mood of universal negation can only be a temporary phase in individual or national development. Negation may be the physic, it cannot be the diet, of the mind.

No movement for emancipation can be a purely negative thing; and no movement can be adequately described by reference to a single characteristic. The Nihilists found a wider view of the world in the writings of Darwin, Herbert Spencer and J. S. Mill; and they had also at an early period felt the influence of Saint-Simon, Fourier, Robert Owen, and latterly also of Lassalle and Marx. From the first, Nihilism seems to have involved a broad and real sympathy with the suffering classes. They wished to recall the attention of men from windy verbiage about art and poetry, from a sentimentalism which was often spurious, and from the clatter of the parliamentary machine, whose grinding was solely for the benefit of the wealthier classes, to the question of ‘daily bread for all,’ to the common people perishing for lack of elementary knowledge. And they insisted strongly on the equal rights of women.

It is evident that Nihilism could only be a passing phase in the history of Russia, and that it had a wholesome and beneficial side as well as a repellent one. In a country which was oppressed by an enormous burden of immemorial prejudices and abuses, a powerful dose of negation was calculated to have a most salutary operation. But the movement could not long live on negations merely. As time went on, the struggle for emancipation in Russia began to assume a more positive character.

In this way the revolutionary movement entered on its second stage, the stage of socialistic teaching and propaganda. Events in the West had kindled the imagination of the youthful champions of liberty in Russia, the rise and progress of the International, the terrible struggle at Paris under the Commune, the growth of the German Social Democracy. A positive and far-reaching ideal now drew the aspirations of the enthusiasts for liberty, the deliverance of the proletariat, represented in Russia by an ignorant and wretched peasantry. The anarchic socialism of Bakunin was unquestionably the controlling element in the new Russian movement. Beside it we must place the influence of Lavroff, another eminent Russian exile, who represented the more temperate phase of anarchism, shading off into the recognition of a constitutional and gradual development of the theory. In its second stage also the revolutionary movement of Russia was a mixed phenomenon. The anarchism of Bakunin continued, however, to be the characteristic feature, and thus the negative factor was still prominent enough.

From Bakunin also proceeded the practical watchword at this stage of the revolutionary movement, ‘to go among the people’ and spread the new doctrines. And this course was unwittingly furthered by the action of the Government. Early in the seventies, hundreds of young Russians of both sexes were studying in Western Europe, particularly at Zürich in Switzerland. As their stay there exposed them to constant contact with revolutionary Russian exiles, and to infection with all the unsettling ideas of the West, an imperial ukase of 1873 recalled them home. They returned home, but they carried their new ideas with them. ‘Going among the people’ was adopted as a systematic principle, a passion and a fashion among the youthful adherents of anarchism. In accordance with their creed they had no appointed organisation, no very definite plan of action. They ‘went among the people’ as the apostles of a new theory, each one as his heart moved him.

They went to be teachers or midwives or medical helps in the villages. In order the better to identify themselves with the common folks, some learned the humblest occupations. The trades of carpenter or shoemaker were most usually chosen, as being the easiest to master. Others toiled for fifteen hours a day in the factories, that they might have an opportunity of saying a word in season to their fellow-workers. Ladies and gentlemen, connected with the aristocracy and nurtured in all the refinement of civilisation, patiently endured the nameless trials of living with the Russian peasant. They endeavoured to adopt the rough hands and swarthy weather-beaten complexion, as well as the dress of the peasant, that they might not excite his distrust, for the gulf between the lower classes and the gentlemen in Russia is wide and fixed. The peasants had experience of the gentleman only as the representative of the Government coming with the knout and the police to extort taxes and recruits. No wonder that the sight of a shirt underneath the sheepskin of the socialist missionary was enough to arouse the unconquerable suspicion of the poor people of the country.

The success of the missionaries was limited. With all his strong suspicion and his narrow range of ideas, the peasant could not easily understand the meaning and purpose of those strange men teaching strange things. The traditions of the past, as they came down to him dim and confused, contained many a bitter memory of disappointed hopes. He was apathetic as well as suspicious. Moreover, the teacher often delivered his message in half-digested formulas which had a meaning only as connected with the economic development of Western Europe, and which did not rightly attach themselves to anything within the experience of the Russian Peasantry.

Above all, the propaganda enjoyed only a very brief period of activity. The teachers went about their work with very little circumspection, in the careless free-and-easy way which seems so natural to the Russian temperament. Consequently, the Government had no difficulty in discovering and following up the traces of the propagandists. Before the year 1876 had ended, nearly all of them were in prison. More than 2000 were arrested during the period 1873-76! Many were detained in prison for years, till the investigations of the police resulted in 50 being brought to trial at Moscow and 193 at St. Petersburg at the end of 1877. Most were acquitted by the courts, yet the Government sent them into exile by administrative process.

The adverse experiences which we have recorded brought the attempts at peaceful propaganda to a close, and the revolutionary party decided on the propaganda of action. They resolved to settle among the people and prepare them for a rising against the Government. Where peaceful teaching had failed, they sought to force a way by violent methods. It was a desperate policy to pursue among a people who had not been able even to understand the aims of the revolutionary party.

It is very characteristic of the circumstances of Russia that the most successful attempt at thus organising a scheme for revolutionary action could gain the adhesion of the peasantry only by pretending that it had the sanction of the Tzar. Jacob Stephanovitz, one of the prominent members of the revolutionary party, gave it out in South-Western Russia that he had an order from the Tzar to form a secret society among the common people against the nobles, priests and officials who were opposing the imperial wishes to confer land and freedom on the peasants. Those to whom he addressed himself could hardly believe that the Emperor was so powerless, but he did eventually succeed in forming a society of about a thousand members. When the plot was discovered by the police, the peasants were naturally enraged at the deception which had been practised on them. It should be added that such a method of action did not meet with the approval of the party as a whole.

Like the peaceful propaganda, the propaganda of action failed to gain a firm footing among the people.

At every step the revolutionary party found the organs of the central power ready to suppress their efforts in the most summary way. They were now convinced that they must directly attack the autocracy and its servants, and as they had received no mercy they decided to show none; and thus began the resolute, systematic, and merciless struggle of the revolutionary party against the Tzardom. For this end they naturally made a great change in their mode of action. They adopted a strong organisation instead of the lax discipline or total want of discipline commended by Bakunin. Affairs were conducted by a secret central committee, who with unsparing energy carried out the new aims of the party. The first great act in this the third stage of the Russian revolutionary movement was the assassination of General Trepoff, Prefect of Police, by Vera Sassoulitsch, at St. Petersburg, in 1878. The occasion of the deed was the flogging, by command of Trepoff, of a political prisoner personally unknown to her. Her object was to avenge the cause of outraged humanity on the servant of the autocracy. At the trial she was acquitted by the jury, to the great surprise of the Imperial Court. An attempt by the police to apprehend her on leaving the place of trial was frustrated by the mob, and she succeeded in making her escape to Switzerland.

The public gave the most unmistakable proofs of sympathy with Vera Sassoulitsch; and the event naturally excited great enthusiasm and emulation among the eager spirits of the revolutionary party. Police officials and spies of the Government were cut off without mercy. General Mezentseff, Chief of Police, was stabbed in the streets of the capital in broad daylight. Prince Kropotkin, Governor of Charkoff, a relative of the revolutionist, was shot. General Drenteln was also openly attacked in the streets. After thus assailing the officers of the executive, they proceeded systematically to plan the assassination of the Tzar himself, as the head of the central power which they abhorred so much. Solovieff fired five shots at the Tzar without doing any harm; three attempts were made to wreck the imperial train, one of them failing because the Tzar had made a change in his arrangements; and he escaped the terrible explosion at the Winter Palace only because he was later than usual in entering his dining-room. These failures did not prevent the executive committee from prosecuting its desperate work, and on March 13, 1881, followed the tragic death of Alexander II.

We need not say that the violent death of Alexander II. sent a thrill of horror throughout Europe. It was felt to be a most lamentable and regrettable ending to a reign which had begun with such high and generous aspirations, and with so much promise of good to the Russian people. There was a natural difficulty in understanding how a Sovereign, benevolent in character and not unwilling to pursue a liberal policy, should be the victim of a forward movement among his people. The explanation must be found in the special circumstances of Russia, for Alexander was merely the representative of a political system which, by its historic evolution, its nature and position, has exercised an absolute and often merciless mastery over its subjects, and the men that cut him off were youthful enthusiasts, who with revolutionary impatience were eager to apply to the belated circumstances of Russia the most extreme theories of the West.

The historian has often to regret that more wisdom is not available for the management of human affairs, and we may believe that a moderate measure of wisdom and patience might have prevented the fatal collision between the Tzar and the revolutionary party. The Tzardom, as we have seen, has performed a great and indispensable function in the national life of Russia. It still seems to be the only practicable form of government in such a country. No class is advanced or powerful enough to take its place. The mass of the Russian people are not yet capable of self-government on a wide scale. There is no large educated class. The middle and industrial class, in the modern sense of the word, are still comparatively small and unimportant; and it is probable enough that if there had been an influential middle class, and if the abolition of serfdom had been effected under their auspices, the peasants would have received less favourable treatment than they experienced from the autocracy. The best available form of government for Russia seems to be an enlightened Tzardom, and the Emperor Alexander II. was personally both enlightened and well-intentioned.

At the same time the position of the Tzardom cannot very long be tenable in its present form. Russia lies where it is, in close proximity to progressive countries. In the past the Russian people have been largely disciplined by Germans; they have learned much from England, and have perhaps shown the greatest social and spiritual affinity to the French. This intercourse will go on. The strongest and most watchful Tzar cannot maintain a Chinese wall of separation between his country and the rest of Europe. Nor can the Tzars expect to have the benefit of the science of Western Europe for military purposes, and at the same time succeed in shutting it out from influencing the social and political life of their people. It is inevitable, therefore, that the liberal ideas of the West will continue to dissolve and disintegrate the old fabric of Russian ideas and institutions. One of two results appears necessary, either that the Tzars must strenuously follow the path of reasonable and energetic reform, or they may risk a revolution which will sweep away the present central power.

For Russia, as for other countries, there are but two alternatives, progress or revolution. If the latter consummation were to happen, it does not, however, follow that the cause of freedom would have any great direct and immediate furtherance. In the circumstances of Russia the man who wields the military power must be supreme. A new ruler resting on the army might be not less an autocrat than the old. We can but say that the present policy of the Tzardom is seriously retarding and arresting the natural and national development of Russia, and that it tends to provoke a catastrophe which may endanger its own existence. The industrial progress now being made in the country renders it only the more necessary that her political institutions should make a corresponding advance.

It remains now to say a word about the revolutionists who have played so remarkable a part in the recent history of Russia. The members of the Russian revolutionary party have been drawn from nearly all classes of the people. Some, as we have seen, belonged to highly placed aristocratic families; some have been sons of priests and of the lower officials. More recently the rural classes supplied active adherents to the militant party. One of the most notable features of the movement is the influence exerted in it by women. It was Vera Sassoulitsch who opened the death-struggle with the autocracy in 1878. A lady of high birth, Sophia Perovskaia, by the waving of a veil guided the men who threw the fatal bombs at the assassination of Alexander II.

But whether aristocrats or peasants, men or women, the members of the Russian revolutionary party have been remarkable for their youth. The large majority of those engaged in the struggle had not attained to the age of twenty-five. In view of their extreme youth, therefore, we need not say that they had more enthusiasm than wisdom, and more of the energy that aims at immediate success than of the considerate patience that knows how to wait for the slowly maturing fruits of the best and surest progress. Having regard to the very subversive theories which they tried to sow broadcast among the masses of the Russian people, we see clearly enough that no autocracy in the world could avoid taking up the challenge to authority which they so rudely threw down. Only the Government of an enlightened people long familiar with the free and open discussion of every variety of opinion, can afford to give unlimited opportunity of propaganda to such views as were entertained by the Russian revolutionary party.

Yet while the theories of the party were from the first of a most subversive nature, it is right to emphasise the fact that they did not proceed to violent action till they were goaded into it by the police and the other officials of the central Government. Indeed, the measures of the Government and its representatives have often directly tended to the stirring up of the revolutionary mood. By their irritating measures of repression they provoked, among the students at the universities, disturbances which they quelled by most brutal methods. Young men arrested on suspicion, and kept in vile prisons for years while awaiting investigation, were naturally driven to hostile reflection on the iniquity of a Government from which they received such treatment.

In speaking of a country like Russia, we need not say that the most elementary political rights were denied the revolutionists. They had no right of public meeting, no freedom of the press, no freedom of utterance anywhere. They were surrounded with spies ready to give to every word and deed the worst interpretation. The peasants whom they desired to instruct in the new teaching might inform upon them. Their comrades in propaganda might be induced or coerced to betray them. It was often fatal even to be suspected, as the police and the other organs of Government were only too disposed to take the most rigorous measures against all who were charged with revolutionary opinion. Nor could the accused appeal to the law with any confidence, for the ordinary tribunals might be set aside, and his fate be decided by administrative procedure; that is, he could be executed, or condemned to prison or exile in Siberia, without the pretence of a legal trial. In such circumstances it was natural that resolute champions of liberty should be driven to secret conspiracy in its extremest form, and to violent action of the most merciless character.

While, therefore, historical accuracy obliges us to emphasise the fact that the aims of the revolutionary party far exceeded all that is included in liberalism and constitutional government, it is only just to explain that they resorted to violent methods only because the most elementary political rights were denied them. In the fiercest mood of their terrible struggle with the autocracy, they were still ready to throw aside their weapons.

In the address sent by the Executive Committee to Alexander III., after the death of his father, in March 1881, they offered to give up their violent mode of action, and submit unconditionally to a National Assembly freely elected by the people. They meant under a constitutional government to have recourse only to constitutional methods.

With regard to the number of those concerned in the Russian revolutionary movement, it is not easy to speak with precision. There is no proof that the anarchist opinions have gained a large body of adherents in the country. The numerical strength of the party directly engaged in the struggle with the Tzardom has always been comparatively small. On the other hand, the movement has evidently met with a very wide sympathy in Russian society. In the absence of precise information, we may quote the words of one who has a good right to speak for the revolutionary party:—

‘The Russian revolutionary movement is really a revolution sui generis, carried on, however, not by the mass of the people or those feeling the need of it, but by a kind of delegation, acting on behalf of the mass of the people with this purpose.

‘No one has ever undertaken, and perhaps no one could with any certainty undertake, to calculate the numerical strength of this party—that is to say, of those who share the convictions and aspirations of the revolutionists. All that can be said is, that it is a very large party, and that at the present moment it numbers hundreds of thousands, perhaps even millions of men, disseminated everywhere. This mass of people, which might be called the Revolutionary Nation, does not, however, take a direct part in the struggle. It entrusts its interests and its honour, its hatred and its vengeance, to those who make the revolution their sole and exclusive occupation; for under the conditions existing in Russia, people cannot remain as ordinary citizens and devote themselves at the same time to Socialism and the Revolution.

‘The real revolutionary party, or rather the militant organisation, is recruited from this class of revolutionary leaders.’[5]

[1]

The detailed Life of Bakunin, promised by Cafiero and Elisée Reclus in the preface to God and the State, has apparently not yet been published. Hence the above meagre account of life.

[2]

Procés des Anarchistes, p. 97.

[3]

Le Procés des Anarchistes, Lyons, 1883.

[4]

For the revolutionary movement in Russia under Alexander II. see Alphons Thun’s Geschichte der revolutionären Bewegungen in Russland. See also Stepniak’s Underground Russia, and Russia under the Tzars.

[5]

Stepniak, Underground Russia, p. 264.

CHAPTER XI

THE PURIFIED SOCIALISM

We have, in the preceding chapters, sketched the rise and the principles of the leading schools of historic socialism. The history we have reviewed is a most protean one, and very prolific in theories which are more or less akin.

It is easy to trace certain general features of resemblance in the development of socialism. In the experiments conducted by the followers of Saint-Simon, Fourier, and Owen, we see a desire forthwith to create a ready-made and complete socialism, which almost always ended in failure. Louis Blanc and Lassalle agreed in demanding the organisation of society on democratic principles, and the establishment of productive associations by a State thus constituted. The resemblance in type between the community of Owen, the phalange of Fourier, and the free commune of Bakunin is obvious; and it is not going too far to say that all of them have interesting points of analogy with the village community, which has its survival in the Russian mir.

Throughout the history of socialism we naturally also observe the contrast between the tendency which more or less emphasises State authority and the need of centralisation, and that other tendency which regards the local body as cardinal and decisive. As we have seen, that contrast was perfectly clear in the earliest French socialism, in the schools of Saint-Simon and Fourier. While calling on the State to furnish credit for productive associations, both L. Blanc and Lassalle strongly insisted that these associations should be self-governing and self-developing. The centralising tendency was very marked in Rodbertus. Though it cannot be maintained that the Marx school insist excessively on the claims of authority, yet in the conduct of the International they had a severe struggle with the anarchist following of Bakunin. It is simply the old question of authority and order in relation to individual and local freedom, which always reappears under the newest conditions, and which cannot be solved on absolute principles.

Notwithstanding those general features of resemblance, it would be a serious mistake to identify socialism with any of its forms, past or present. They are only passing phases of a movement which will endure. If socialism has given proof of a persistent vitality, it has also undergone many transformations, and will in all probability undergo many more. Our task now is to inquire into the significance, tendency, and value of the general movement.

The problem before us is one of historical interpretation in the widest sense of the word. It is not an academic question which can be settled by the scholarly comparison of texts and systems.

If the socialistic movement were complete and finished, it would be merely a subject of sympathetic analysis and generalisation by the historian. But the socialistic movement is not complete; it is in process of making—probably only in its early stage. It is a question, therefore, which must be treated not only in the light of history and human nature, but with special reference to the now prevailing forces—industrial, political, social, and ethical. For on these will depend the future course of the movement and its prospects of success. While socialism has a past, it has also a profound significance for the present and the future. The great task for the student is to find out the rational meaning and purport of socialism, its probable significance for the present time and the time coming.

For the rational interpretation of socialism we cannot too often emphasise the fact that it is not an abstract system, but a thing in movement. It is not wedded to any stereotyped set of formulas, whether of Marx or any other, but must be rooted in reality, and, while moulding facts, it must adapt itself to them. Above all, we must ever remember that it claims to represent the aspirations after a better life of the toiling and suffering millions of the human race.

Even a cursory review of the historic socialism is enough to show that, while it has been prolific of new thought in economics, it has been disfigured by every kind of extravagance. In general, it has been far too artificial, arbitrary, and absolute in its treatment of social questions. As we have seen, the early theorists especially were profoundly ignorant of the laws governing the evolution of society. Many later socialists of great influence have laid excessive stress on revolution as the lever of social progress. Few of them have really appreciated the bearings of the population question on the great problems of society. Most of them have been far too absolute in their condemnation of competition. In fact, their general position consists far too much in a sweeping condemnation of the present society, forgetful the while that it is only out of the present that the future, in which they place their hopes, can proceed.

The current socialism, too, has very prematurely shown a tendency to degenerate into a stiff and barren orthodoxy, which seeks to apply narrow and half-digested theories, without adapting or even reasonably understanding them, to circumstances for which they are not suited. This is particularly apparent in the attempts to introduce into England and America formulas and modes of action which have grown up in the very different atmosphere of the European continent. It has not sufficiently recognised the fluent and many-sided variety of modern life, which cannot be embodied in any formula, however comprehensive and elastic.

Finally, socialistic speculation has in many cases tended, not to reform and humanise, but to subvert the family, on the soundness of which social health above all things depends. It has not understood the solidity and value of the hereditary principle in the development of society. Socialists have, in short, been far too ready to attack great institutions, which it must be the aim of all rational progress, not to subvert, but to reform and purify.

In the socialistic treatment of other questions, such as capital, rent and interest, the same defects of arbitrariness and absoluteness are apparent. But the extravagances of the historic socialism are so obvious that they confute themselves, and we shall not dwell on this aspect of our subject. We must remember that most historic systems have had to run themselves clear of the turbid elements with which they were originally mixed. Socialism, considered both as a movement and as a system of economic thought, is still in process of development. Its theories must undergo the rough-hewing of continual controversy, discussion, and criticism. The whole movement must pass through the test, the tear and wear of experience, under the conditions prescribed by history and the fundamental laws of human nature, before its ideals can hope to be wedded to fact. We might add that it will receive the purification of experience; only, we have to lament that it is the fate of our ideals to submit also to the degradation of experience.

A like charge of abstractness may justly be brought against the two great German economists, Adolf Wagner and Schäffle, whose writings have so largely promoted a better comprehension of socialism. Their economic works are monuments of learning and lucidity, but their exposition and interpretation of the subject are marked by that excessive love of system which is usually characteristic of German specialists. They have brought to the discussion of the historic socialism the same systematising spirit with which German economists have treated Adam Smith. The economists of the Fatherland have reduced the teaching of Adam Smith to a set of abstract propositions, and so have transformed it beyond recognition. In like manner Adolf Wagner laboriously sums up socialism in abstract language, whereas it is above all things a concrete movement, instinct with change and with human passion. In his Bau und Leben des sozialen Körpers Schäffle’s construction of socialism is an elaborate attempt to conceive society as transformed and dominated by a single principle.

Such a point of view can never accord with the actual development of historic forces. In the past the great economic eras have been remarkable for the endless variety of forms which they have assumed. Feudalism was not a stereotyped system, but took a special form in each European country, and in each country it changed from age to age. The competitive system has never entirely and exclusively dominated any society, and has been endlessly modified by custom and the traditions of the past, by national and social interests, and by moral considerations. Adam Smith, the great expounder of natural liberty, did not put it forth as an abstract and exclusive principle, but set it in the light of historic fact, and reserved a large sphere where private enterprise needed to be supplemented by the action of the State. We can only say of the competitive system that it has been normal or prevalent over the most advanced countries of the world for a considerable time. We must conceive socialism in the same way as claiming, when certain historical conditions have been realised, to be the normal or prevalent type of economic and social organisation.

In fact, they have had too exclusively in view the theories of Marx and Rodbertus. In his conception of socialism Wagner has been chiefly influenced by Rodbertus. Schäffle, in his Quintessenz des Socialismus, appears as the interpreter of the Marx socialism. Even the less absolute presentation of the socialistic theories by Lassalle should have been sufficient to bring out the contrast between socialism in movement and socialism in the abstract.

This is very nearly equivalent to saying that both economists have been too much influenced by the Prussian type of government and theory of the State. With regard to the two socialists, Rodbertus and Marx, we are not surprised that the former should be Prussian throughout in his way of thinking, but it is a notable instance of the irony of circumstances that Marx should be so largely controlled by habits of speculation which he had learned in Germany in his youth. He was to a great degree Prussian and Hegelian in his political and philosophical habit of mind till the end of his life. It is natural enough that the conception of socialism formed by Wagner and Schäffle should be of a similar character. For them socialism is a system of centralisation, of management from above (von oben herab) under a bureaucracy. Such a view may suit people that are used to a centralising autocracy and bureaucracy associated with militarism, but it is entirely opposed to English ideas. An industrial and economic system which would remind us at every step of the Prussian army, the Prussian police and Prussian officialism, is not attractive to those who have breathed a freer air.

Prussia has had a great mission to perform in modern history. From its geographical position and the circumstances attendant on its rise and progress, we can see that it required a powerful army, a strongly centralised government, and an industrial system entirely different from laissez-faire. We must respect the great vocations of the different historic peoples, among which Prussia has been one of the first. But that is no reason for expressing socialism in terms suggested by the Prussian form of government, or for supposing that the claim of socialism to control the economic organisation of the future will depend on its conforming to the Prussian type of State. It is to be devoutly hoped that the type of government rendered necessary by the struggle for existence among the nations on the European continent will not become universal.

But we must now consider a question which is vastly more important than any of the criticisms now offered. What may be regarded as the solid and permanent contribution to human progress made by socialism?

There should be no doubt that socialism has largely contributed to the following results:—

First, It has greatly helped to give prevalence to the historical conception of Political Economy. The very conception of socialism has been based on the idea of social-economic change. Their subject has naturally led socialists to study the rise, growth, decline, and fall of economic institutions. And, as we shall see later on, the influence of Hegel and Darwin has taught them to merge the idea of historical economics in the wider and more fundamental conception of evolution. In England socialists are now the chief promoters of the advance in economic study from the ordinary standpoint to the historical, and from the historical to the evolutionary point of view.

Secondly, Socialism has greatly deepened and widened the ethical conception of Political Economy. It has, in season and out of season, taught that the entire technical and economic mechanism of society should be made subordinate to human well-being, and that moral principle should be supreme over the whole field of industrial and commercial activity. The charge sometimes brought against socialism, that it appeals only to the lower appetites and instincts of humanity, is most unjust. It would be a more reasonable criticism to say that it inculcates an unselfishness unattainable by any probable development of human nature.

Thirdly, Socialism has brought the cause of the poor most powerfully before the civilised world. It is one of the enduring results of socialistic agitation and discussion that the interests of the suffering members of the human race, so long ignored and so fearfully neglected, have become a question of the first magnitude, the foremost question in all progressive countries. It is this question which gives a substantial basis and a real meaning to the great democratic movement, which it would be the gravest of all errors to regard as a merely political struggle. The cause of the poor is likely to be the burning question for generations, lending to political questions their interest, seriousness, and unspeakable importance.

Fourthly, Socialism has given us a searching criticism of the existing social-economic system. It may be said to have laid its diagnosing finger on all the sores of society. The only objection that can be rationally taken is that the diagnosis has been an exaggerated one. All fair-minded judges will, however, admit that the socialistic criticism of the existing competitive system is largely, if not substantially, justified on the following points:—

1. The position of the working people, who are the overwhelming majority in every society, is not in harmony with ethical ideas. It has often and largely been a position of degradation, demoralisation, and misery. Normally, it is not consistent with what must be striven after as a desirable condition for the mass of humanity, for it is insecure, dependent and to a large degree servile. The workmen have no reasonable control of their dearest interests; have no guarantee of a settled home, of daily bread, and of provision for old age. It is a delusive freedom that has no solid economic basis.

2. The prevailing competitive system is to a large degree anarchy, and this is not an accident, but a necessity of its nature. This anarchy has two great and baneful modes of expression: strikes, which are a form of industrial war, carrying misery and insecurity over large sections of population, and sometimes menacing the industrial and social life of a whole nation; and the great crises, which at times have even a more disastrous influence, spreading like a storm over the entire civilised world, overthrowing honourable houses of business, and exposing to hopeless ruin and starvation millions of honest people who are in no wise responsible for their fate. And the times of crash are succeeded by protracted periods of stagnation, which for all concerned are scarcely better than the crises which caused it.

3. The phenomena of waste, which are always more or less a feature of the competitive system, are particularly manifest during the great industrial and commercial crises. Not only are the products of industry intended for consumption wasted in vast masses, but the productive forces themselves, such as machinery and shipping, are sacrificed enormously, whilst great numbers of people are idle and starving.

4. The prevailing system also leads to the large development of an idle class of the most motley description. Those conversant with the history of revolutions know how influential an overgrown idle class has often been in forcing them on.

5. The existing competitive system also necessarily leads to a vast amount of inferior, inartistic production in all departments. Cheapness is too conspicuous a feature of every branch of industry.

6. Our moral standards in every department of the national life have been lowered and corrupted by the excessive prevalence of a commercial and mercenary spirit. No rank, profession, or calling has escaped its influence.

7. Thus we are led to the general result, that inequalities of condition, and the too prevalent anarchy and insecurity as well as the unworthy status of the workers under the competitive system, are a permanent source of trouble and even danger to society. The circumstances of the workmen have improved; but it is doubtful whether the improvement has kept pace with their advancing enlightenment and the growing sense of their rights and needs. Here again we must emphasise the fact that the progress of democracy is not merely a political matter. It means still more the continual development of intelligence and of higher and finer needs in the mass of the people, a fuller consciousness of the claims of labour, a greater capacity for organisation, a wider moral and intellectual horizon. In the contrast between their moral and intellectual growth on the one hand, and their insecure and inferior position as precarious wage-labourers on the other, we may at one and the same time discover a great danger to our present social order and a splendid guarantee of further progress. Now, as ever, progress must be, attained through struggle, and perfection through suffering.

Scarcely any reasonable man therefore will deny that socialism has done excellent service to mankind in so strongly emphasising the necessity for further progress. While it has largely helped to rouse the working classes out of their apathy, it has also done much to dispel the comfortable optimism of those who had succeeded in the competitive struggle for existence.

This criticism of society is valuable, but its effect is mainly negative. We may go on to claim, however, that socialism, when purified from materialism, from the too revolutionary, absolute, and abstract elements with which it has been associated in history, can render a positive and substantial service to human improvement that would be vastly more valuable than any criticism. It may be maintained that in its main aim and tendency socialism is perfectly sound and right. For amidst much error and exaggeration it has brought out the type of social economic organisation which in the future should and will prevail.

In previous chapters it has been made abundantly clear that the characteristic feature of the present economic order lies in the fact that industry is carried on by private competing capitalists served by wage-labour. According to socialism the industry of the future should be carried on by free associated workers rationally utilising a united capital with a view to an equitable system of distribution. As we have already had occasion to say, no formal statement can rightly give expression to the meaning of a great historical movement. But in such language we believe the contrast between the old order and the new can be most simply and at the same time with due adequacy expressed.

The same type of industrial organisation has been well set forth by J. S. Mill in these words: “The form of association, however, which, if mankind continue to improve, must be expected in the end to predominate, is not that which can exist between a capitalist as chief and workpeople without a voice in the management, but the association of the labourers themselves on terms of equality, collectively owning the capital with which they carry on their operations, and working under managers elected and removable by themselves.”[1] Mill’s view of the subject, it may be remarked in passing, was derived from the study of French and English socialists. His good sense saved him from the utopian extravagance of these writers, and as he had little sympathy with the peculiarly German ways of thought, he shows no tendency to the abstractness of the specialists of the Fatherland. The result is a conception of socialism which is at once intrinsically more reasonable, more adapted to the English mind and to universality, than any other offered by prominent economists. And in this connection we need hardly add that by the English mind we mean the mind of the English-speaking people; also, notwithstanding all that may be said to the contrary, that the English type of society has the best claim to universality, because it has best succeeded in reconciling and realising the fundamental requirements of order and freedom.

The simple expression of the socialistic theory will, no doubt, in the course of propaganda and discussion, long continue to be overlaid and obscured by a mass of detail, sometimes utopian, sometimes all too abstract and systematic. It will be well, therefore, to keep the simplicity of the type in view, but a few explanations may be necessary more fully to elucidate it.

The true meaning of socialism, when rationally understood, is given in the dominating tendencies of social evolution. On the one hand, the effect of the industrial revolution has been to concentrate the means both of production and distribution in immense masses. Capital can now be moved and controlled only on a large scale. The day for the small capital, and the successful control of it by individuals, has passed away. It may continue under exceptional circumstances, but it can no longer expect to be the normal or prevalent form of industry. On the other hand, the body of the people, represented by the modern democracy, can legitimately claim that they shall no longer be excluded from the control of their own economic and social interests. It is a rational and equitable demand that the prevalent divorce of the workers from land and capital should cease. This divorce can be terminated, and the mass of the people can be restored to a participation in the ownership and control of land and capital, only through the principle of association. This is the basis of socialism as given in the normal and dominant forces of the social evolution of our time. As we said in the introduction, socialism is the child of two great revolutions—the industrial revolution, and the vast social and political change embodied in the modern democracy.

Socialism, rationally interpreted, is therefore simply a movement for uniting labour and capital through the principle of association. It seeks to combine labour and capital in the same industrial and social groups. In such a group the present distinction between labourers and capitalists would cease, and the workers become producers, equitably disposing of the entire produce.

Such an industrial association would be self-governing. Socialism is an attempt to establish a free self-governing type of industry, and would therefore seek to realise in the social-economic sphere the principles already recognised in the political. It is a free self-governing form of industry, corresponding in the economic sphere to the democratic system in politics; industry of the people, by the people, for the people. But while a rational socialism seeks to establish industrial freedom, it aims also at promoting and securing industrial peace by terminating the struggle between labour and capital, for, as we have seen, its aim is to unite them in the same group.

Under such a system the workers will have full control of their economic interests. They will have the sobering and steadying discipline of responsibility. They will no doubt make mistakes, as all bodies of men have done since the beginning of the world; but as they will suffer by them, so they will have the power of correcting them. It will be a self-reforming and self-developing system of industry.

And it is hardly necessary to state that these associations will subsist in organic relation to one another. The State is, in idea or principle, such an association on the wide scale, just as the municipality or commune is the local form of association; and their relations to each other may in various degrees and forms represent the principle of federalism or centralisation.

In the history and condition of the working people it is a pathetic fact that their sons, who have been gifted with exceptional capacity, generally go over to the richer classes. Their services are thus lost to the class from which they sprang. It must be the aim of the socialist movement also to terminate this incessant divorce between labour and intelligence, by providing within the groups of associated workers due scope for the best talent.

Socialism claims to be the normal and prevalent type of organisation in the future. The methods of production, distribution, and exchange will be under social control. This being so, it may surely be regarded as a special instance of the arbitrariness and absoluteness of the current socialism, when it maintains that all capital must pass out of individual ownership. It may safely be maintained that such a condition of things is not possible, and that, if it were possible, it is entirely undesirable, because most likely to repress individual freedom, and affording indefinite scope for social tyranny. Under any conceivable system of society the free development of man is likely to be promoted by the possession of reasonable private means. The only objection that can be rationally alleged against private property is when it involves injustice to others—a possibility which, under socialism, is amply provided against by the prevalence of social control over economic processes.

The views just stated are not unwarranted by the historic socialism. Amidst much that is most extravagant, Fourier has the merit at least of offering the strongest safeguards for individual and local freedom. Fourier provided that every worker should have the opportunity of gaining and maintaining a capital of his own, but under such social regulation that it would no longer involve wrong to others; and further, he arranged that the owner should have perfect freedom to transfer his services and his capital from one association to another. These are features of Fourier’s system which have been too much neglected by scientific socialists so called; and in these respects he is much less utopian than his critics.

In no question is the arbitrariness of the historic socialism more apparent than in the artificial attempts made to formulate a just method of distribution or remuneration. We have in previous chapters indicated the different methods proposed in the schools of Saint-Simon, Fourier, and Louis Blanc. Nothing has so much tended to give a utopian air to socialistic speculation. Our ideas of justice cannot well be expressed in a single formula, however comprehensive. It has been the endeavour more or less of all moralists and legislators since the origin of human society to elucidate it and reduce it to some kind of reasonable form, but with only very imperfect results; and socialists are not now likely to succeed in a task which is really impracticable. Progress in the realising of justice can be attained only through the collective enlightenment and moral experience of the race; and it will always fall short of our ideals, for our ideals rise as we approximate towards a realisation of them, and so ever leave us behind in the race after perfection.

We need not say, however, that it is an obvious implicate in every equitable theory of distribution that remuneration must generally depend on work or desert. The normal income of the future must be based on service rendered to society by all able members. Regard will be had to the needs of the disabled.

It should be emphasised, moreover, that socialism must assert the supremacy of morality over all the economic processes—production and exchange as well as distribution. Production should be rational and systematic. Above all, distribution should be equitable. In these respects socialism is fundamentally opposed to the one-sided conception of competition which has been so prevalent. It seeks to supersede the existing competitive system of industry by a new order, in which reason and equity shall prevail.

It should also be clear that socialism supplies the much-needed complement and corrective of the principle of natural liberty advocated by Adam Smith. The principle of natural liberty had a great historical value, and when rightly understood must always be regarded as a prime factor in every theory of social progress. But it can be applied only under obvious limits, prescribed by reason and morality. The natural liberty of struggling individuals would, if unchecked, land us in social chaos. The true freedom of human beings is a rational and ethical freedom. Such principles ought to prevail in the commercial relations of nations with each other, as well as in every other department of our industrial and social life.

Socialism, then, simply means that the normal social organisation of the future will and should be an associated or co-operative one. It means that industry should be carried on by free associated workers. The development of socialism will follow the development of the large industry; and it will rationally, scientifically, and systematically use the mechanical appliances evolved during the industrial revolution for the promotion of a higher life among the masses of the people.

It is a new type of industry and economic organisation the practicability of which must be decided by the test of experience. It cannot be introduced mechanically. We cannot force or improvise such a change in the constitution of society. No revolutionary violence can avail to carry through a transformation which runs counter to the fundamental laws of human nature or the great prevailing tendencies of social evolution. This will be especially manifest when we consider that its realisation will above all things depend on the ethical advance of the mass of the people. Character cannot be improved by magic; it can be substantially ameliorated only by an organic change, external circumstances co-operating with an inward moral spirit. The present competitive system must therefore be regarded as holding the field until socialism has given adequate proof of the practicability of the theory which it offers.

[1]

Mill’s Political Economy, People’s Edition, p. 465.

CHAPTER XII

SOCIALISM AND THE EVOLUTION THEORY

The idea of evolution has had a great influence in the history of socialistic speculation. Beginning with Saint-Simon most socialists have recognised three stages in the economic development of mankind—slavery, serfdom, and wage-labour—which last they believe will be displaced by an era of associated labour with a collective capital. The idea of development may indeed be regarded as essential to socialism, inasmuch as it must contemplate a succession of social-economic changes in history.

Marx and Lassalle were both trained in the school of Hegel, and naturally applied to the problems of society the Hegelian theory of development. The principle that economic categories are historical categories, so much emphasised by Lassalle, was by him, as it was by his fellow-labourers, merged in the wider and more fundamental conception of evolution, historical economics thus becoming evolutionary economics.

Some of the later socialists see in the theory of evolution associated with the name of Darwin a suitable expression of their ideas of development. Followers of Marx have found special points of attraction in Darwinism. Darwin himself was, of course, not a materialist; but many speculators have not unreasonably recognised in his teachings an affinity with materialism, which obviously accorded well with the materialistic conception of history held by Marx. The struggle of classes, which Marx regards as the key to history, is, we need not say, also an allied feature.

But the Darwinian conception of development has to many students suggested the strongest reasons for doubt and hostility with reference to socialism. How does the theory of the struggle for existence consist with the harmony of interests contemplated by socialism? Is it not utopian of the Marx school to believe that the struggle of classes, which has hitherto characterised the course of history, can be brought to a close by a great revolutionary act?

Competition, that bête noire of the socialists, is simply the social-economic form of the struggle for existence. Is not competition, therefore, the prime condition of social progress? And is not socialism, therefore, inconsistent with progress?

Thus we are confronted with the twofold problem, whether socialism does not deny the cardinal principles of evolution, and thereby also deny the prime condition of social progress?

These questions are of considerable complexity. And their import will be better understood it we consider them in relation to another question with which they are intimately connected, and which is even more fundamental—the population question. The Darwinian theory of evolution rests on the Malthusian theory of population, and can be fully appreciated only by reference to it.

In this place we need not discuss the theory of population as a whole, but merely in so far as it bears on our present inquiry. The theory of Malthus is so remarkable for its simplicity that no worthy excuse can be offered for the misconceptions regarding it which have been prevalent. The seeds of life, so runs the theory of Malthus, have been scattered throughout the world with a profuse and liberal hand. All living things tend to multiply indefinitely. Animals—even the least prolific—would, if their increase were not checked, fill the entire world. But as the means of subsistence are limited, the struggle for existence inevitably ensues, which is obviously all the more intense because so many animals are themselves the means of subsistence to others.

So with man. If his natural powers of increase were exercised without check, it is only a question of time when the globe itself would be too small for the numbers of human beings, even though equipped with the most effective means of cultivation. In point of fact, population has almost always pressed on the available means of subsistence. The only important exceptions are found in new countries, when opened up to colonists who have brought with them the superior methods of exploitation developed in more advanced civilisations.

Thus the history of the human race is largely the record of a struggle for the means of subsistence caused by the pressure of population. Not that the population is necessarily dense. Some of the most thinly scattered peoples have had the greatest difficulty in making a living, simply because the available means of subsistence were exceptionally scanty, as the North American Indians, and above all in the continent of Australia before its settlement by Europeans. The study of human history shows that if the population was small, it was not owing to any defect in the natural powers of increase of human beings.

It will be seen that the Malthusian theory rests on two great facts: (1) on the physiological fact, viz. that all human beings are capable of indefinite increase; and (2) on a natural economic fact, that the means of subsistence are not capable of a corresponding indefinite increase, the ultimate reason of this being nothing else than the limited size of the planet on which we live. The inevitable result is the struggle for existence. The Darwinian theory of the struggle for existence has the widest application to human society and human history.

This struggle has gone on through a great variety of stages. In the earliest phases of human history it generally resulted in the extermination of the vanquished, and was often associated with cannibalism. As society advanced from the hunting and pastoral into the agricultural state, the victors saw that it would be their interest to spare the vanquished that they might enjoy the benefit of their labour as slaves. In this way began the institution of slavery, on which ancient civilisation rested. The warlike tribes that overturned the Roman Empire found that they could more easily and conveniently utilise the labour of the vanquished under the various forms of serfdom. In modern times free workers, destitute of capital, are ready under a system of competition to perform the labour of society for a wage that renders them the customary subsistence.

In the earliest stages the struggle was one for bare existence, not far removed above the lower animals; but as time went on, it began, as we have seen, to take a higher form. The main motive power, however, has always been the self-regarding principle in which the struggle originated. On the whole it was only a more rational and enlightened self-interest which dictated the change from extermination to slavery, from slavery to serfdom, and from serfdom to the system of competitive free labour. Idealism, the longing for a better life, has always had a considerable power in human affairs, and we hope that its influence will never cease to grow and prevail. Yet it could not be seriously maintained that the peoples who instituted slavery, serfdom, or the competitive system, were in the main actuated by ideal or high ethical motives. It is our duty to recognise with thankfulness that the inevitable progress of society has brought with it a higher life, even though it be merely due to a more enlightened self-interest.

Thus, while in its early stages it was a struggle for mere existence, in later times it has become more and more a struggle for a privileged or superior existence. The victors in most historic struggles have reserved to themselves the loftier functions of government, war and the chase, and the vanquished have been constrained to provide a subsistence both for their masters and themselves by means of labour. Life still is a struggle for the best places in society. And it is a particular object of struggle not to belong to the class of manual labour.

The competitive system is the latest form of the struggle for existence. It is not an accident, but the outcome of the prevalent historic forces. The time had come when free labour was found to be more efficient than servile labour. The feudal system, of which serfdom was a part, went down before the strongly centralised State. The competitive system is the form assumed by the struggle for existence in societies which were controlled by powerful central governments; it is industrial freedom under conditions of legality enforced by strongly constituted governments. In earlier and less settled states of society the struggle for existence used to be decided by more direct and forcible methods. In other days men slew their rivals; at the present time they undersell them.

And we need not say that the competitive system has been a process of selection, bringing to the front, as leaders of industry and also as heads of society, the fittest men.

The struggle for existence, therefore, has continued through human history, and does still continue. And we may feel assured that under the pressure of an ever-increasing population it will continue. The only question is regarding the form it is likely to take in the historic conditions which now tend to prevail all over the world.

For no conclusive solution of the population question is possible under any system. It has been a fundamental difficulty since the beginning of human society, and more than anything else may be regarded as the key to history. The migrations, wars, and conquests recorded in history have for the most part had their origin in want caused by the pressure of population on the extant means of subsistence. No doubt, ambition, vanity, suspicion, and restlessness have played a very considerable part of their own in the military annals of the race, but not nearly so large a part as is generally supposed. Historians have not given anything like adequate attention to the economic factors which have often so decisively operated in human affairs.

In its most comprehensive form, indeed, the population question does not concern the immediate future, for the world is not nearly replenished with human beings. In all the countries dominated by European civilisation, wealth has, owing to the vast mechanical development of the last hundred years, increased much more rapidly than population. But the question is one which does already practically concern the more populous centres over large areas of the world. In many of the old seats of population, both in Europe and the East, the struggle for existence is intense, and if not strongly counteracted, must tend to the increase of egotism, unscrupulousness, and general demoralisation. This is most observable in cases where a large population has to face the prospect of a declining prosperity. If the prosperity of this country were menaced by a great war, or a great shock to the national credit, or by both together, or simply by the slow decline of its industrial and commercial supremacy, the struggle for existence in our large towns would be unspeakable.

It is obvious, therefore, that we are not yet done with the problem of population. It is always a serious matter in the great centres; it may, under very conceivable circumstances, be a fearful dilemma at no very distant date; and as the world becomes more thickly peopled it will more and more present itself as a pressing question. We cannot here, however, enter into a detailed discussion of the problem. It will probably always be a difficulty, and will call forth a variety of answers. But, as we have already said, no satisfactory and conclusive solution can be offered or expected by any one who understands the conditions of the problem. The solution must wait on the moral and social development of mankind. There is certainly no prospect of the question being materially affected by any physiological modification of the human constitution. We can only hope that the present progress of civilised countries in morality, intelligence, and in a reasonable standard of living, will continue; that the improvement in material and economic conditions will go hand in hand with ethical advancement; that the happiness of mankind will not be wrecked by the irrational and unrestrained gratification of a single passion. If the mass of the people remain as they are, ready to sacrifice their own happiness and that of posterity to animal instinct, the population question cannot be solved, and the best hopes of human progress must be unfulfilled.

For socialism, as we have explained it, it may be claimed that it gives the strongest guarantees that the difficulty will receive the best and most rational treatment. As socialism generally means the supremacy of reason and morals over the natural forces, so with reference to the population question it means that natural appetite should be controlled by nobler and more rational feelings and principles. Under a socialistic system every member of the community will be interested in this as in every other serious question. The general enlightenment and the social conscience will most powerfully co-operate with the light and the conscience of the individual to effect a reasonable and a beneficent solution, as far as possible.

But we must now return to the questions with which we started—the relation of socialism to the struggle for existence, and to social progress as dependent on the struggle for existence. As we have seen, the Darwinian theory of the struggle for existence has the widest application to human society and human history. But the struggle for existence is not the sole principle of social progress. Social progress proceeds from the interaction, the balance and harmony, of many principles. The general question of social development, in which that of progress is involved, must be regarded in the light of the following considerations. Only we must premise that they are not a contradiction of the Darwinian theory; they are to be taken as a complement of it, and a correction of the narrow and one-sided conception of the theory.

1. The political, social, and ethical development of mankind is largely a record of the endeavour to place the struggle for existence under regulation. Progress chiefly and supremely consists in the growing control of ethical principle over all the forms of selfishness, egotism, unscrupulousness, and cruelty called forth by such struggle. In other words, progress mainly consists in the growing supremacy of law, order, and morality over the excess of the self-regarding principle in which the individual struggle has its root. We do not say that this exhausts the meaning of the ethical development of man, but it is a most important aspect of it.

Thus the ethical factor is the decisive one in human progress, but it has advanced pari passu with the general social and political progress. We see it in the crudest and most elementary forms when man emerged from the darkness of pre-historic times, and it has gradually developed into a noble complex of ideals, informed by a growing knowledge and by widening sympathies. In short, human progress has been a continual effort towards the realisation of the true, the beautiful, and the good, in such measure as was attainable by each succeeding generation of the race.

Not that the struggle for existence is hereby abolished. The struggle, and the regulation of it too, are carried forward into a further stage of progress, to be continued on a higher social and ethical plane. The human struggle generally is on a higher plane than the animal one which Darwin describes. It is a struggle on the plane of an intelligence which never ceases to develop, amongst beings who pursue social and ethical aims with growing clearness and energy. If the results still fall so far below our aims, it is because our intelligence and means of performance, though enlarging, are still very imperfect.

What we call natural selection in the animal world is in human history transformed, elevated, and idealised; it becomes social selection. We may call it natural, if we please; only, we must remember the greatly altered character of the agents concerned in it. While at every stage we see moral and intellectual growth, we must particularly remember that the new society for which socialists strive will consist of associated free beings acting under the regulation and stimulus of high ethical and artistic ends and ideals.

Nothing, therefore, can be more narrow and one-sided than to consider the struggle for existence as the sole lever of human progress. Such one-sided insistence on the idea of struggle is to deny the whole ethical development of the world.

Socialism professes to continue and promote the ethical and social development which we have described; on a higher plane of progress than has hitherto been reached to place the natural economic powers operating in human destiny under the regulation of reason, moral principle, and ideals of beauty; to render technical and mechanical appliances, and all the material and economic factors underlying human life, subservient to the well-being of man in a way hitherto unattained; and so to achieve the ethical freedom of man and his rational supremacy over the world. The competitive system is the latest phase in the struggle for existence, and socialism is the latest theory for the regulation of it along the well-approved lines of human progress.

By such tests, none lower or narrower, must a rational socialism be tried.

2. There is, however, one side of this ethical progress which deserves to be more particularly considered. The ethical progress of man is largely a development of the principle of sociality, community, or association. This principle has its centre in the family, with all that is implied therein; in the association of man and woman, in the sacrifices made by both and especially by the mother for the children. Historically, it has developed from the tribe into ever wider and more complex forms—the city, nation, and race—until it more and more embraces the whole human family. That is, it finally tends to become international, so that the whole human family may be included in common ethical and social bonds—a state of things which is still far from being realised, but it is in process.

In the evolution of living things two factors have been decisive, the development of brain power and the development of the social principle. We need scarcely add that the two are intimately connected, and further that the brain power of man is closely co-ordinated with his physical development. The supremacy of man is due to his brain power and to his readiness to associate for common ends, far more than to his strength or hardihood, in which he is greatly excelled by other animals. The entire history of civilisation bears witness to the potency of the two factors; for it is a truism to say that the communities and races that have excelled in brain power and in the family and social moralities have prevailed. A rational socialism might be defined as the mastery of associated human intelligence over the resources of nature for the general good. In this respect, also, the success of socialism would simply mark the continuous development of man along the tested and approved lines of progress.

It is no doubt one of the many exaggerations of Lassalle, due partly to his function of agitator, that he laid excessive emphasis on the principle of community as the lever of progress, compared with the individual principle. Progress has always depended on the action and interaction of both principles. It is rather an idle question, which of the two is the more important; like that other question, whether the great man makes the age, or the age makes the great man. The man and the age make each other.

We know the great influence often exerted in history by exceptional brain power or character, and both are often associated with a prominent individual. But high individual capacity is usually, if not always, found in an age and community with a high average of talent. Well-organised and well-endowed societies are most likely to produce the strongest and finest individuals, and it is only in such societies that the greatest individuals are likely to find adequate scope for their powers. We cannot form a just estimate of our subject unless we give due weight to both principles, but obviously the danger to society lies in the excessive development of the individual principle. History has too often witnessed the abnormal development of private selfishness, so overgrown as to weaken and finally dissolve the society in which it acted, thus accomplishing its own destruction. This is indeed the open secret of the ruin of most communities that have existed. We should seek in vain for an instance of a community ruined by excessive regard for the public good. A happy and wholesome individual development can be secured only by healthy relation and due subordination to society and the common weal.

It will be seen, then, that the principle of sociality or of association plays a specially important part in human development. Yet in close connection with it we again observe the wide operation of the struggle for existence. The struggle for existence is not only a struggle of individuals against each other. It has also been a struggle of tribe against tribe, of city against city, of nation against nation, and race against race. In the existing society it is, moreover, a struggle of classes against each other. Considered in this aspect, which is too obvious to require illustration, the struggle for existence has assumed the most complicated forms, and has had the greatest influence in the history of the world. And the intensity of the struggle has called forth some of the highest human qualities—inventiveness, capacity for organisation, submission to discipline, enthusiasm, heroism, and self-sacrifice. The struggle, hateful though it be in many respects, has been one of the great training schools of the human race.

Modern European history is an impressive example of the importance of this struggle for existence. The progress of Europe is greatly owing to the fact that in this continent we have a group of communities which are closely related, yet independent, and rivals. In every department of activity they learn from each other, and spur one another on by continual emulation. Each must follow its rivals in the adoption of every new improvement, under penalty of decline and even ruin. Communities like China and India in the old world, and the native States of Mexico and Peru in the new world, were isolated, and therefore stationary.

Under the existing conditions, a social organisation favourable to the development of the intelligence, energy, and enthusiasm of the mass of the people is more and more necessary to success in the keen and arduous struggle waged by the European communities. The future both of democracy and of socialism will largely depend on how far they can supply these advantages of organisation. For it is a struggle also between forms of social organisation. Any better form of organisation, when adopted by one of the communities, must also be adopted by its rivals. As soon as it was recognised that universal education and universal liability to military duty gave Prussia an exceptional advantage in the European struggle, other nations have been eager to follow.

Thus, through the development of the principle of sociality in the history of civilisation, the struggle for existence is not abolished. It is continued under more complex conditions, on a wider scale, over larger areas, by greater masses of organised men, with mightier weapons and vaster resources.

3. It is one of the most interesting aspects of history, that we regard it as the education of the human race. Social progress is the result of a long process of discipline, and the training has often been most severe. It would appear as if mankind needed to be goaded and driven forward on the path of improvement.

The theory of the struggle for existence throws new light on the education of humanity. The nations of the world have been schoolmasters to each other; and the competitive system, too, has been a process of discipline for all who have been concerned in it. Socialism, rightly understood, may be regarded as a new phase of the discipline of humanity. For the transition into socialism, if attainable at all, will be more difficult than many suppose. It must be gradual, preparing the minds and morals, the habits and institutions, of the mass of the people for a higher form of social-economic life. As isolated individuals, the working class have no prospect of success. They can make progress only by practising the virtues of combination, foresight, self-control, self-denial, discernment in choosing their leaders, loyalty, unwearying perseverance in well-doing. These qualities have been already cultivated in them by means of their trade-unions and co-operative societies. The process of socialistic evolution will carry on the process of social-economic education.

Socialism must therefore be regarded as providing an economic and social discipline for all men who have the requisite insight, and particularly for the working class, who are its special representatives and promoters. It will offer fresh scope and opportunity to the working class as a whole. But it will also be a process of social selection; for, while inviting all, it will attract the fittest and most worthy, and lead them on to higher things.

CHAPTER XIII

RECENT PROGRESS OF SOCIALISM

During recent years the organised socialism has made notable progress in nearly all parts of Europe. The German working men still continue to form the vanguard of the proletariat of the world. At the general election of 1893 the Social Democrats polled 1,786,000 votes, which was an increase of nearly 360,000 on the large figures of 1890. At the general election of 1898 the Social Democratic vote rose to about 2,100,000. Their seats in the Reichstag increased from 48 to 56, out of a total of 397.

There is no change to record in the principles of this powerful party. Its tactics, while remaining essentially the same, naturally vary to some degree according to circumstances. It adheres to the Erfurt programme. Its single-minded aim is the advocacy and promotion of the interests and ideals of the working class of Germany without compromise and without alliance with other parties, though it is ready to co-operate with them in particular questions. The party consistently refuses to vote for the imperial budgets, not only because they are designed for the support of militarism, but because they are so largely made up of indirect taxes that throw an unfair burden on the poorer classes. To the high tariff, which, after long discussion, came into operation in 1906, they offered the most strenuous resistance. The Social Democrats are also in general opposed to the colonial policy of the empire. They are the champions of the democratic rights of the people, of free speech, of a free press, and especially of the right of combination, which was lately threatened by the Emperor. In all matters relating to factory legislation and the better protection of the working class in its daily life and vocation they are forward both to make suggestions themselves and to assist any legislation which is really fitted to contribute towards these important ends. They claim, in fact, to be the representatives and advocates in the widest sense of the working class of Germany, and are opposed to all measures which tend to strengthen the class State to which they are so entirely opposed. While expressing a preference for peaceful methods, they still regard as probable a great crisis or catastrophe by which they will gain political power and so realise their collectivist ideal. Such a crisis will, they say, be brought on not by them but by the ruling classes, of which the class State is the representative.

At the Annual Congress at Stuttgart in 1898 the busts of Marx and Lassalle appeared on the platform amidst laurels and palms. The busts of Lassalle, Karl Marx, and Engels were grouped amidst ferns and flowers round an allegorical figure of Liberty on the platform at the Hanover Congress of 1899. It is only right to add that, with the development of Social Democracy in Germany and throughout the world, the stage on which these men appear seems to widen and their stature to grow. Their writings, whether learned or popular, are read and pondered in all lands of the civilised world, sometimes leading to organisation and action, often to latent thought and conviction ready to bear fruit in due time. Lassalle and Karl Marx promise to be, if they are not already, historical figures of the first magnitude.

It is also clear that, if the Social Democracy means to be worthy to guide the destinies of the working class of Germany, it must not stiffen and degenerate into a sect. Its principles and tactics founded on the views of Marx must be subject to continual discussion and to revision. The party is disposed to take Marx too literally, more literally than Marx took himself. They have been disposed out of season to emphasise the ultra-revolutionary side of Marx. We have already seen that this ultra-revolutionary side of Marx was the product of a time and of circumstances which no longer prevail in Germany or elsewhere, or prevail at least in a much milder degree. But there was another side to Marx. It would not be fair to call it his opportunist side. On this side Marx had regard to his environment, as every man must have. Even in the communistic manifesto Marx recommended co-operation with other advanced parties for the attainment of democratic ends. He recognised the possibilities of progress contained in a peaceful evolution. Factory legislation and the co-operative movement in England were not only good results, they were the victories of new principles. As we have seen, he believed that in America, England, and Holland the workmen might attain their goal by peaceful means. In a milder time it would only be consistent that this milder side of Marx should be more emphasised by his followers.

The necessity for a criticism of Marx as a condition of the further development of his teaching has recently been pointed out by Eduard Bernstein, formerly editor of the Sozialdemokrat. This criticism he attempted in a memorial addressed to the Congress at Stuttgart, and more fully in 1899 in a book Die Voraussetzungen des Sozialismus und die Aufgaben der Sozialdemocratie. Bernstein’s criticism is applied more or less to all the leading positions of Marx, his materialistic conception of history, his dialectical method, his theory of surplus value, his revolutionary conception of social development which looks forward to a great catastrophe as the close of the capitalistic era. He maintains that statistics do not favour the theory that a social catastrophe is imminent as the result of a class war carried on by a continually increasing host of impoverished and degraded proletarians against a diminishing band of the colossal magnates of capitalism, and has greater faith in a peaceful evolution through the democratic transformation of the State, the extension of municipal socialism and of the co-operative movement. We need not say that we believe that these criticisms are in the right direction.

Bernstein’s book made a great stir in Germany, and received a limited support at the Hanover meeting. But a resolution, which was moved by Bebel in a long and able speech, and which affirmed the old positions of the party against Bernstein, was carried by an overwhelming majority.

The abstract collectivism of the German Social Democratic party is not fitted to ensure success among the peasantry. Yet at the election of 1898 they gained ground in many agricultural districts east of the Elbe. We may presume that these results were obtained chiefly among the purely labouring class as distinguished from the men who own their farms. But they do not despair of also winning over the peasant owners, many of whom are heavily burdened with mortgages. The peasant owner is often proprietor only in name, being really caretaker for the mortgagee, and therefore merely a dependent of the capitalist.

All previous successes of the German Social Democrats were eclipsed by the triumph at the general election of 1903, when they counted 3,010,000 votes, and returned 81 members. Of the entire poll they had 32 per cent, or nearly one-third. It was an increase of 900,000.

The number of their seats in the Reichstag never correspond to their votes at the elections. There has been no Redistribution Act since the founding of the Empire, and the strength of the party lies in the towns, which have grown enormously since 1871. Even under the most favourable circumstances they have little direct influence on the legislation of Germany, and still less on the executive, which depends on the Emperor and his ministers. The rôle prescribed to them by their circumstances is vigilant scrutiny and outspoken criticism. They are an opposition party. In fact, they are more and more becoming the only effective opposition party in Germany.

At the Jena meeting of 1905 the bust of Liebknecht, who died in 1900, held a place of honour on the platform beside those of Marx and Lassalle. Changes of organisation aiming at greater energy and efficiency were introduced. This meeting elected a party direction (Parteivorstand) of two chairmen, four secretaries and a treasurer, with the two assessors chosen by the Board of Control. It thus consisted of nine members. The Board of Control, which acts as check on this executive, also numbers nine members. Among the subjects discussed were the dearness of meat and other necessaries of life caused by the German protective system, and the question of the general strike, introduced in a masterly speech by Bebel, who advocated it as a possible resource in case universal suffrage be withdrawn, or the right of combination be infringed by the Government. A resolution in this sense was in principle adopted by a very large majority. It was confirmed at the Mannheim meeting in 1906.

The German Social Democrats do not insist on universal suffrage in the hope of exercising any immediate influence on the Government or in the Reichstag. They regard it rather as an instrument of agitation and education. They seek to enlighten the masses of the people, to make them of one mind on the political and economic questions that concern them, to organise and discipline them for the great task of emancipation. Their main field of action is the people, not parliament. Their ‘main aim is to win the whole working class for socialism.’

In this aim their prospect of success depends on how far they can win over the Catholic working men and the rural population. With both they have so far gained ground. It is not impossible that they may in time prevail with both. In their principles and tactics there is nothing now that need give offence to the religious convictions of the Catholic electors. The rural population could be won over by a suitable agrarian programme. In these circumstances the Centre and the Conservatives would alike have the ground taken away from under their feet, and the German Government would find itself in an untenable position. For in such a case the army could hardly continue to be a trustworthy support. The following significant passage occurs in the speech of Bebel already referred to:—‘The struggle in Russia sends a chill into the marrow-bones of our rulers much more than you believe. They have a deadly fear that the fire may cross the border. They say to themselves, if that is possible in Russia where there is no organisation, and the proletariat is comparatively small, what then may happen in Germany where we have politically enlightened masses and an organised proletariat, where already there are not only battalions but whole regiments in the army which consist of Social Democrats, and when the Reserve and the Landwehr are called out, whole brigades are formed of them?’[1] The raising of the tariff has been to the party a most helpful subject of agitation, which they have used to the uttermost. Molkenbuhr, one of their leaders, looks forward to the doubling of their adherents in a few years.

At the general election of 1907 the party had 3,260,000 votes, but owing to the more active combination against it of other parties it returned only 43 members. The congress at Nürnberg in 1908 was notable for the first serious opposition to the rigid discipline of the party. The claim of the South German members to vote for the budgets of their governments was maintained by a minority of 119 against 258.

It was not till 1894 that a Social Democratic party was founded in Holland. It is making progress: in the general election of 1897 it counted 13,000 votes, and returned 3 members out of 100. In 1901 it had 38,000 votes, and returned 7 members, and there was besides an independent socialist member. It had 65,000 votes and 7 members in 1905. An interesting feature of the Dutch movement is the sympathetic reception which socialism has met among the artist and intellectual class generally. It is curious that anarchism has had considerable influence, which, however, is declining.

In Denmark the social democratic movement began in 1871, and it continues to have a strong and growing influence. At the general election of 1903 the party returned 16 members out of 114, polling 56,000 votes. In 1906 it polled 77,000 votes and returned 24 members to the popular chamber. For some time before 1902 half of the members of the municipal council of Copenhagen were socialists. The mayor also was one of the party. Denmark may still rightfully be regarded as the most progressive country in Europe. Even in Norway and Sweden the socialists are gaining ground. They claim to have wielded a considerable influence in securing the peaceful separation of the two countries.

No country in Europe has during recent years had a more interesting social history than Belgium. In hardly any country has the working class endured such misery. Ignorance, long hours of labour and low wages, the want of political rights and of organisation, have for generations tended to keep the workers in the lowest estate. All the more remarkable, therefore, is the awakening which has recently taken place. The Belgian socialist party can now muster at the polls a voting strength of about half a million, and in a chamber of 166 it returns about one-fifth. In 1900 it had 33, in 1902 it had 34, in 1904 only 28, in 1906 it had 30, and 34 in 1908. The organisation of the trade-unions is well developed. But the distinctive feature of the social movement of Belgium is its co-operative undertakings. These are affiliated to the socialist movement, and form an admirable training on its more practical side. The Belgian socialist party is specially fortunate in such leaders as Anseele and Vandervelde.

France, which was so long the foremost nation in the revolutionary movement, has for the last three decades yielded the first place to Germany. The terrible disasters sustained by the working men of Paris in 1848 and 1871 quelled their revolutionary energy for a time. The first working men’s congress after the Commune met in 1876, and at the congress of Marseilles in 1879 a socialist party was organised. It remained a united party till 1882, when it polled 98,000 votes. Since that year French socialism has been fruitful in division. In view of the danger which in 1899 appeared to threaten the Republic in connection with the Dreyfus case, the socialist parties combined in common action for its defence. For this purpose they formed a permanent comité d’entente socialiste. Five important socialist organisations were included in the agreement. The good understanding was broken when the socialist Millerand entered the emergency Cabinet of that year. Without going into details, it is enough to say that there have been two main tendencies in French socialism—the uncompromising revolutionary school which adheres to Marx, and an opportunist or possibilist school which has been ready to co-operate with other democratic parties. The first-named school naturally objected to Millerand entering the Cabinet.

Socialism is rapidly becoming a power in France. According to M. Marcel Fournier, in the Revue Politique et Parlementaire, the radical socialists polled 171,810 votes at the general election of 1893 and 629,572 at that of 1898, whilst the socialists polled 598,206 in 1893 and 791,148 in 1898. The Parti Ouvrier or Marx party claimed to have cast 152,000 votes in 1893 and 371,000 in 1898. The socialist members in the Chamber of 1898 numbered about fifty.

After 1900 two distinct parties, representing the two tendencies of which I have spoken, were for a time consolidated. The Socialist Party of France represented the uncompromising section. The French Socialist Party stood for the more opportunist policy. In 1902 the French socialists together polled 805,000 votes, and returned 48 members to the Chamber of Deputies. There was really very little difference between the two leading parties, and they formed a union in 1905. At the general election in 1906 it was calculated that the whole socialist vote amounted to 1,120,000. The unified party returned 52 members with 896,000 votes, while 23 were described as independent socialists. There were besides 143 radical socialists.

The radical and democratic republicans are to a large degree dependent on labour and socialist support. There is also a growing conviction that the political principles of the Revolution of 1789, which are so dear to the French heart, cannot be realised apart from the economic principles which are comprehended in socialism. In the great debate of Clemenceau with Jaurèz in the Chamber in 1906 it was no impassable gulf which separated radical and socialist. The former was in favour of a graduated income-tax, the eight hours’ day, and the restoration of monopolies to the State. What we may call the prevailing republican atmosphere is most favourable to social justice and the claims of labour. But it would be a very serious mistake to believe that France is at all convinced of the reasonableness or practicability of the abstract collectivism of the socialist party. When a motion for the substitution of collective property for individual property was put to the vote at the close of the debate, it was rejected by 505 to only 55. As at present advised, France will have neither clericalism nor collectivism.

The socialists form a majority in many of the most important French communes, and exercise great practical influence on their work. Thus they are taking a large part in the national and local life of France.

Revolutionary feeling tending to anarchism has considerable influence in France, especially among the trade unions (syndicats ouvriers).

The Italian socialist party definitely separated itself from anarchism and formed a distinct organisation at a congress in Genoa in 1892. Its career has been a hard and troubled one. There has been much discord in its own household. The government was for some years openly hostile. It has been concerned in many strikes and popular disturbances. The working classes of Italy, we must remember, were from an educational, economic, and political point of view at an inferior stage of progress. Between the various provinces, and especially between the north and south, the differences of development were very serious. Italy has had long to suffer from the burden of a divided and depressed historical past.

At the general election of 1892 the party had only 26,000 votes and returned 6 deputies. The next elections showed a rapid increase, till in 1900 they counted 175,000 votes and returned 32 members to the Chamber. On that occasion an alliance with the radicals and republicans partly accounted for the increase of members returned. At the general election of 1904 the party had a voting strength of 320,000, but returned only 27 members.

For some time after 1900 the Government was not only sympathetic, but in some degree dependent on the party for support. As in other countries, there is a reformist or moderate and a revolutionary wing in the Italian socialist party. The latter takes a syndicalist or trade-union form and is largely imbued with anarchism. At the congress at Rome in 1906 a new movement called integralism became supreme. The integralists aimed at combining the best and most effective methods of all sections, gradual reform when possible, but violence also, and the general strike if necessary. They are anti-monarchical and anti-clerical.

The Italian socialists have been active not only in organising strikes but in municipal work and in co-operative undertakings. A marked feature in the brief history of the party has been its success in organising the peasantry. One of these peasant combinations, with a membership of 200,000, held a national congress at Bologna in 1901 and formed a national federation. In that and the following year many agrarian strikes were successful, and brought a little improvement in the hard lot of the rural workers in Italy. It was a notable awakening of labour, in which the party took a leading share. When we consider the very backward condition of Italy and the short period during which the party has been in existence, we must regard its success as remarkable.

After making some progress the Working-Men’s Socialist Party of Spain has declined in recent years. The number of its votes for the Chamber decreased from 26,000 in 1904 to 23,000 in 1905. It has, however, succeeded in sending representatives to a good number of municipalities and communes. The political and industrial life of Spain has been in a most depressed condition.

Besides the Parliamentary Socialism, which is based more or less on Marx, anarchism has always found a congenial soil in Spain, Italy, and other countries where misery and oppression have been hereditary for so many centuries, and which even yet have not learned habits of self-control, of free discussion, and open action. It is such an unhappy environment that produced the assassins of President Carnot, the Empress of Austria, and King Humbert of Italy. Anarchism is very powerful and widespread in the south of Spain.

We may note a rapid progress of socialism in Eastern Europe. Even Servia and Bulgaria have socialist parties, which are affiliated to the International. In Austria there is a numerous and active Social Democratic Party, which has introduced the federal principle into its organisation. It is a united party with a common programme and tactics, but it is composed of national groups—German, Czech, Polish, Italian, etc., each of which enjoys a real autonomy. In fact, the party is an International on a small scale, of which the basis as regards principles and tactics is national autonomy and international solidarity. On the political side, it holds that the real and vital forces of the State in Austria can be developed only on the two principles of national autonomy and complete democracy. On the economic side the party adheres to the common principles of socialism. At the general election of 1901 the party polled about 800,000 votes. Its most pressing demand was for universal suffrage as necessary to the political development of the country. After long debate this was granted in 1907, in which year the party polled 1,050,000 votes and returned 87 members to the Reichsrath. The Christian Social Party returned 96 members with 722,000 votes. In view of the medley of races and languages which exist in Austria, the position and organisation of the party have a special interest. The various national groups, we are told, work together in perfect harmony.

The revolutionary movement in Russia had in 1881 its tragic culmination in the assassination of the Emperor Alexander II. Though his successor Alexander III. was for a time kept a prisoner in his palace at Gatschina by fear of the revolutionists, the movement was suppressed, and for several years there was comparative quiet. Among the innovating party a feeling set in that they had been trying to force the march of natural evolution, and a tendency prevailed to await the time when the economic development of the country would make revolutionary action practicable. Under a very high tariff the industrial revolution made rapid progress. Large factories soon led to the creation of a numerous proletariat, with the usual strikes. A gigantic strike at St. Petersburg in 1896 may be regarded as the starting-point of a new revolutionary movement arising naturally out of modern industrial conditions. A Social Democratic Party, which laid great emphasis on the doctrines of Marx, originated in this way. The Russian socialists were for the first time represented at an International Congress in London, 1896.

Groups of socialists, however, had been rising up and taking shape all over the country, and it was felt by many that they could not wait for the unfolding of the economic evolution, and that in the special circumstances of Russia a strenuous revolutionary action was necessary. Some surviving members of the old revolutionary party helped to supply the nucleus of a Socialist Revolutionary Party, which was accordingly formed towards the end of 1901. There were now two important socialist parties in the empire: the Social Democrats, who emphasised the need for awaiting the economic development of Russia, including the full creation of the proletariat, and the Socialist Revolutionary Party. The first party had little hope of leading the peasantry into the movement, so long as they were not expropriated by the growth of the great estates. The second party insisted on an energetic propaganda among the peasantry as well as an active campaign against the Tzardom and its servants.

Besides these two parties we find in Lithuania, Russian Poland, and other parts of Western Russia, a socialist organisation of Jewish workmen called the Bund. It is the peculiar fate of the Jews in Russia that their revolutionary activity renders them obnoxious to the Government, whilst the exactions of the usurers and dealers of the same race make them hateful to peasantry and workers. The Jewish question in Russia can be understood only by due recognition of both points.

The anarchists also are still active in Russia. And among the peasantry there is an agrarian movement, which may be regarded as the most powerful of all, though vague and ill-organised. As we saw in our chapter on anarchism, the revolution in Russia was an exotic or importation from abroad in the reign of Alexander II. It has now taken root in the soil and very strongly shows the influence of conditions peculiar to the country. Mutinies in fleet and army, strikes and popular risings, massacres, assassinations, conflagration, and pillage seem to portend the dissolution sooner or later of an ancient society and a long-established autocracy. The socialists have been the most active agents in the appalling movement.

After the decline of the Owen agitation and of the Christian Socialist movement in 1850, socialism could hardly be said to exist in England, and where it attracted any attention at all, it was generally regarded as a revolutionary curiosity peculiar to the Continent, with little practical interest for a free and normal country like our own. As we have seen, the English workmen took a considerable share in the founding of the International in 1864 and subsequently. But on the fuller development of the revolutionary tendencies of that movement, and especially after the great disaster of the Commune at Paris, socialism lost the not very serious hold which it had found among the English working class. There had indeed always been a group of men who were influenced by personal intercourse with Karl Marx and Engels during their long residence in this country, but they were mostly of foreign extraction, and had no wide relations with the English workmen.

About 1883 English socialism took a fresh start, indirectly through the influence of Henry George, and directly through the teaching of Karl Marx. By his vigorous and sympathetic eloquence Henry George gained a hearing for opinions which were not distinctly socialistic, but certainly tended to disturb the existing modes of thought. Though it led to little positive result, the agitation connected with his name was really the beginning of a radical change in English economics. A variety of causes, among which we may mention the agrarian agitation in Ireland, and the legislation which was designed to meet it, had contributed to shake the confidence of the English public in the finality of the accepted economic doctrines.

The recent English socialism had, in 1884, a definite beginning with the Social Democratic Federation, which, with great fervour, denounced the existing system and proclaimed the views of Marx. Most active and prominent in this movement was Mr. Hyndman; the most eminent was the robust and genial figure of William Morris, widely known as the author of the Earthly Paradise, and one of the foremost of living poets. The chief literary product of the movement at this early stage was Hyndman’s Historical Basis of Socialism in England. The organ of the Federation was, and continues to be, Justice.

About the end of the year 1885 the Socialist League diverged from the Federation on grounds of difference, which were partly personal, partly of principle, for the League showed a decided sympathy with the anarchist theory of socialism. Morris himself, its leading member, had anarchist leanings, which come out clearly in News from Nowhere and other works. Belfort Bax, another prominent member of the League, has published Ethics of Socialism and other works, which represent the extreme and uncompromising side of the movement. The Commonweal was the organ of the League. The League and its organ, however, did not survive many years.

The year 1884 also saw the beginning of a Socialist Society of a nature different from the above. This was the Fabian Society, whose members were mostly young men, clever, full of initiative, and little disposed to bow before accepted authority. They are socialists whose aim has been first to educate themselves in the economic, social, and political questions of the time, and then to educate the English people in their views, or, to use their own language, to “permeate” English Society with progressive socialist ideas. The Fabian Essays on Socialism, by seven of its leading members, published in 1890, a work which has been the chief literary product of the Society, have had a great success. By its popular lectures and discussions, by its tracts and its articles in the monthly reviews, as well as by its activity in the press, the Fabian Society has undoubtedly done much toward the permeation of public opinion with a progressive evolutionary socialism. The tracts, of which there is now a large number, have been always able, generally well informed, and often brilliant. A tract by one of its members on the Workmen’s Compensation Act, issued in 1898, had a circulation of 120,000 the first year of its publication. Important works on a large scale have been The History of Trade Unionism and Industrial Democracy by Mr. and Mrs. Sidney Webb. The writings of Mr. G. B. Shaw and of Mr. H. G. Wells have done much to startle men’s minds out of the old way of thinking. In 1908 the membership of the Fabian Society had increased to 2500 in the London society, and 500 more in local societies. We give its Basis in the Appendix.

The Independent Labour Party, formed in 1893, was an organisation of socialists with a view to political action. It was to a large extent an offshoot from Fabianism in the provinces, and many of its leading members are Fabians. It has kept itself in close touch with trade unions.

All sections of recent English socialism have included men of real ability and culture, and the movement has been marked by sincere conviction, generous enthusiasm, and hard work in a great cause. For some years after its rise, in 1883, it had considerable influence in the country. Its mission was to rouse men of all classes out of the individualistic routine which had so long been prevalent. Trade unionists and co-operators were the objects of denunciation not less unsparing than that which they poured upon the middle class. The disturbances in Trafalgar Square in 1887 made no little stir; and the Dock Strike in London, which was so ably conducted by John Burns in 1889, for a time gave the movement a national importance. It almost seemed at one period as if English public opinion was veering round to Socialism. The reaction which was bound to set in was certainly due in part to the vehemence and extravagance of the socialistic orators, and to their want of skill and insight in adapting their theories to the atmosphere of the English mind. It is clear that recent English socialism has been too loyal to Marx. This particularly applies to the Social Democratic Federation, now the Social Democratic Party. But even the Fabian basis has implications which are ultra-revolutionary, and hardly consistent with a peaceful and orderly evolution.

At the general election of 1895, the organised socialism in England polled only about 45,000 votes. The mass of the English working men still voted with the old political parties. On the other hand, the Trade Union Congresses, representing over a million workers, for several years passed resolutions of a collectivist nature by large majorities, showing that when the man or men appear that know how to give voice and form to the half-articulate or latent socialism of the country it may have a great future.

In 1900 steps were taken towards the political organisation of labour on a wider scale than formerly. There was formed a Labour Representation Committee in which trade unions, the Independent Labour Party, the Social Democratic Federation, and the Fabian Society were represented. The Social Democratic Federation retired, however, at the end of the first year.

The new committee had been too recently formed to take much part in the general election of 1900. Yet it then returned two members, and two more at subsequent by-elections. At the general election of 1906 it had a great success, and produced an impression even greater on the national mind. As there was no definite dividing line at the election between socialism and labour on the one hand, or between labour and liberalism on the other, it is impossible to speak precisely as to the results. The committee had 323,000 votes and returned 30 members to the House of Commons. There was also a labour or trade-union group, which formed part of the Liberal Party. We may reckon the labour members at 54, of whom about half were socialists.

After the election the Labour Representation Committee transformed itself into the Labour Party, and very wisely decided not to formulate a programme. The new party had behind it a million adherents, of whom 21,000 were members of socialist societies, the rest being trade unionists. Mr. Keir Hardie had taken the leading share in the formation of a Labour Party distinct from the old political parties. In 1908 the trade unions and especially the Miners’ Federation which were represented by the liberal-labour group resolved to join the Labour Party, but this decision was not to be operative with regard to sitting members during the existing parliament. The same year the Labour Party was definitely affiliated to the International. It now represented one and a half million of adherents.

The Labour Party, whose origin we have briefly described, may fairly be regarded as a successful attempt on a worthy scale to form a labour-socialist organisation suited to British conditions. It appears to be commendably free from the excessive Marx influence; but in many important questions it has not thrown off old radical views which are inconsistent with a reasonable and enlightened socialism.

What we may call the avowed and organised socialism has made no great headway in the United States of America or in the English colonies. Books like Bellamy’s Looking Backward have made a great impression, but in a vague way. Labour questions have, on the other hand, attained to a very high state of development. The struggle between trade-unionism and the employers’ combinations is carried on with an energy and comprehensiveness which can hardly be equalled in any part of the old world.

Australia has a Labour Party which is well organised and well led and takes a most honourable place in the recently constituted Commonwealth. It even formed the government in 1904, though it did not retain power long. It is, however, most powerful when out of power, as it then holds the balance between the other two parties. The party is to a great degree socialistic in aim and tendency. It was in power again in 1908.

During recent years we have seen in America a transformation which is without parallel in the history of the world. Till the middle of the nineteenth century the United States might be described as an agricultural country, which, apart from negro slavery, had no division of classes, no poverty, and no social question. It was a highly favoured region which to the most energetic and enterprising of the working classes of Europe had for generations been a Land of Promise. The early settlers had in the main brought from England all that was best and highest in respect of character, belief, and institutions. In particular, for the planting of New England the “finest of the wheat” was sifted from the most progressive counties of England; and as the area of emigration widened it embraced the best elements in the British Isles and in north-western Europe, the best endowed and the most progressive in the world. The country they came to live in had resources, and offered opportunities which were almost boundless. In the development of the country from the first settlement of Virginia, there was just enough of difficulty to stimulate and correct the energies of a free people.

A marvellous set of new conditions came into operation in the latter half of the nineteenth century. The industrial revolution ran its course with astonishing rapidity and thoroughness, and on a scale absolutely unprecedented. The Republic now has a gigantic machine industry and a vast railway and financial system organised in trusts which are controlled by a few men wealthy beyond example in history, and it has also got a large wage-earning class, the unemployed, poverty and slums. If the commonwealth has not already become a plutocracy, it appears to be on the downward way to it.

If the wage-earning class consisted of fully trained American citizens, the situation would be clearer. It is complicated by the fact that for many years the Republic has received an enormous number of immigrants from the less-advanced countries of eastern and southern Europe, and has the very difficult task of raising them to its own high standard of citizenship. The general result is that America is confronted with the vast problem, which socialism has undertaken to solve, in its most formidable form. Between a highly organised and gigantic capitalism and a continually increasing labour class which is largely composed of new immigrants, and is only partially organised, a wide gulf is fixed. A growing chasm threatens to divide the commonwealth in two. This rent is made manifest in the strikes, which degenerate into private war and even into civil war. Socialists maintain that they have been repressed with a severity and brutality known in Russia alone. As yet the organised socialism has made only moderate progress. In 1902, however, a resolution in favour of socialism obtained about half the votes at the congress of the American Federation of Labour, which numbered over 2,000,000 members. At the presidential election of 1904 the socialist candidate Eugène V. Debs received 408,000 votes, in 1908 he had 500,000 votes. It was widely recognised that the presidential election of 1908 turned on the vote of organised labour. The Republican and Democratic candidates both made special appeal to organised labour and made a special effort to gain its vote. It is obvious that the gigantic growth of the trust system in America has quickened inquiry into the most fundamental questions of industrial and social order. The programme of the Knights of Labour was for many years the nearest approach to socialism made by any great labour combination in America. But there can be no doubt now that America contains all the elements which favour the growth of socialism, and especially of the labour organisations which make for socialism.

The result of our brief review is, that in most countries of Europe the avowed and organised socialism has a formidable and rapidly increasing number of adherents. It is equally clear that socialistic theories have made a wide and deep impression on the opinion of most countries of the civilised world. Socialism has been a standing challenge to the economic theories so long prevalent: it is a protest against the existing social-economic order; and as such it has been discussed on every platform, in all journals, and we may venture to say in every private gathering, with some comprehension of its nature and aims. Whatever the issue may be, it is very improbable that reasonable men can ever again regard the competitive system of economics with the same satisfaction as formerly. The mere fact that we can survey and analyse great ideas and institutions with critical objectiveness is a proof that we are looking back upon them, and that we have already so far left them behind in the onward march of progress. In countries where the socialistic theory is accepted in its entirety only by a few, it has nevertheless effected a great change in opinion. It is hardly an exaggeration to say that the orthodox political economy, if it exist anywhere, survives only in old books and in the minds of a diminishing band of doctrinaires. Friends of the existing order would now almost have us believe that the old competitive political economy never existed at all, which at least may be taken as a sufficient proof that its days are numbered. Under these circumstances it is not surprising that we do not at present possess a settled political economy.

We may best consider the growing influence of socialistic ideas on current opinion under the following heads:—

1. On the theory of the State’s relation to labour.—The attitude of most governments to the organised socialism is naturally unfriendly; but the accepted view of the relation of the State to the working and suffering classes has marvellously changed in recent years. Whereas not many years ago the policy and principles of government took little account of the masses of the people, it is now a recognised duty of the State to care for them. So complete has the transformation been, that it will soon require a considerable knowledge of history to realise it, for the times when the claims of the lower orders were ignored are already beginning to pass out of the memory of the younger and most active portion of the community.

2. The relation of political economy to socialism.—We have already referred to the influence of social problems on the classical political economy of this country. The development of J. S. Mill’s economic views from loyal adherence to Ricardo, to a reasonable socialism, cannot be regarded as representative, seeing that he has so entirely outstripped his scholars. In recent important works on economics we see indeed only a moderate recognition of the new influences, but they do not command the assent of the public as formerly, the result being that English Political Economy remains in a most unsettled problematical and unsatisfactory condition.

Here again Germany leads the way. The socialism of the chair is not to any large extent really socialistic. But it includes among its representatives eminent professors and other economists, who recognise the historical and ethical sides of political economy, who go far in giving labour problems their due place in the treatment of their subject, and who have made most important concessions to the socialistic criticism of the existing society and the prevalent political economy. One of the most notable of living German economists and sociologists, Albert Schäffle, is more than historical; his great work Bau und Leben des socialen Körpers is a construction of society from the evolution point of view. In the same work he has even expressed his conviction that ‘the future belongs to the purified socialism,’ though later utterances make his attitude somewhat doubtful. However that may be, he has brought to the study of social problems a combination of learning, of philosophic insight directed by the best light of his time, and of sympathy inspired by the cause of the poor man, which is not equalled by any living economist. No great living economist has been so powerfully influenced by socialist speculation.

3. The relation of the Christian Church to socialism.—It is a most serious mistake to suppose that there can be any real antagonism between the ethical and spiritual teaching of Christianity and the principles of socialism rightly understood. The difficulty is how to reconcile the prevalent competitive system with any reasonable conception of Christian ethics. We can now see that Christianity was a strong assertion of the moral and spiritual forces against the struggle for existence, which had assumed such a hard, cruel, and vicious form in ancient civilisation and in the Roman world. The Christian Church did much to soften and then to abolish slavery and serfdom, into which the peoples defeated in the struggle for existence had been forced. A right comprehension of the Christian life and of the spirit and tendency of Christian history should show that the Church should also use its influence against the continuance of the struggle for existence in the competitive system, and in favour of the less fortunate who in the course of that form of struggle have been driven to precarious wage-labour as their only means of livelihood.

Some of the prominent spokesmen of the Church have clearly seen that the competitive system is not consistent with Christian teaching. As we have already seen, Maurice and Kingsley denounced the Manchester school, started the Christian Socialist movement of 1848, and gave a very considerable impetus to co-operation.

The participation of the Catholic Church of Germany in the social question dates from the period of the Lassalle agitation. In 1863 Döllinger recommended that the Church should intervene in the movement, and Bishop von Ketteler of Mainz lost no time in expressing sympathy with Lassalle. In a treatise entitled Die Arbeiterfrage und das Christenthum (1864) Ketteler criticised the liberalism of the Manchester school in substantially the same terms as Lassalle, and recommended the voluntary formation of productive associations with capital supplied by the faithful. In 1868 the Catholic Socialism of Germany took a more practical form: it started an organ of its own and began to organise unions for the elevation of the working men. The principles of the movement were with some precision expounded by Canon Moufang in an electoral address at Mainz in 1871, and by the writers in their organ.

All agree in condemning the principles of liberalism, especially in its economic aspects, as destructive of society and pernicious to the working man, who, under the pretence of freedom, is exposed to all the precariousness and anarchy of competition and sacrificed to the Iron Law of Wages. Self-help as practised in the Schulze-Delitzsch schemes is also considered to be no sure way of deliverance. The general remedy is union on Catholic principles, especially the formation of trade-guilds suited to modern exigencies, which some of their leaders would make a compulsory measure enforced by the State. The views of Moufang, which are most definite, may thus be summarised: legal protection for the workers, especially as regards hours of labour, wages, the labour of women and children, sanitation; subventions for workmen’s productive associations; lightening of taxes on labour; control of the moneyed and speculating interests. In the organisation of unions the success of Catholic Socialism has been great; and for several years the Social Democrats made no progress in Catholic districts.

The socialist activity of the Protestant Church of Germany dates from 1878. The most important literary product of the movement is a work by Pastor Todt entitled Der radikale deutsche Socialismus und die christliche Gesellschaft. In this work Todt condemns the economics of liberalism as unchristian, and seeks to show that the ideals of liberty, equality, and fraternity are entirely Scriptural, as are also the socialist demands for the abolition of private property and of the wage system, that the labourer should have the full produce of his labour, and that labour should be associated. The chief leader of the movement was the Court preacher Stöcker, the head also of the anti-Semitic agitation, which is largely traceable to economic causes. Stöcker founded two associations—a central union for social reform, consisting of members of the middle classes interested in the emancipation of labour, and a Christian social working men’s party. The former has had considerable success, especially among the Lutheran clergy. The movement met with the most strenuous resistance from the Social Democratic party, and was greatly hampered by the anti-socialist law of 1878.

In recent years all the sections of the Christian Church in England have felt the influence of the democratic movement, and have shown a commendable interest in social questions. Among Catholics the most notable representative of this new spirit was Cardinal Manning. The Report on Socialism made to the Pan-Anglican Conference, which met at Lambeth in 1888, by the committee appointed to deal with the question, was also a remarkable sign of the times. This Report accepted what should be regarded as the main aim of socialism—the reunion of capital and labour through the principle of association. Without expressing an opinion on the Report, the Conference commended it to the consideration of the people. The Christian Social Union, founded in 1889 by members of the Church of England, has done good service. Its aim is to study ‘how to apply the moral truths and principles of Christianity to the social and economic difficulties of the present time.’ The late Dr. Westcott, Bishop of Durham, took a leading part in founding and guiding it. It is open to Conservatives and Liberals, socialists and non-socialists, who accept its main aim, as above stated. In a pamphlet on Socialism Dr. Westcott gives one of the best and finest expositions of the principles of the subject which we have read.

The sympathetic attitude towards labour shown at the Lambeth Conference of 1888 was maintained also at the Conferences of 1897 and 1908. Very noteworthy was the favourable reception given to socialistic expressions of opinion at the Pan-Anglican Congress which preceded the Conference of 1908, though it would obviously be a mistake to assume that it meant the acceptance of any definite collectivist economic creed. A like sympathetic feeling has been shown in many nonconformist quarters. Dr. Clifford, so eminent as a nonconformist leader, is a socialist and member of the Fabian Society.

4. It is needless to speak of the great revolution in current opinion regarding labour, as reflected in the press and in contemporary literature. All is changed since the time when Carlyle and Ruskin lifted up their voices in the wilderness to an unbelieving generation! All that is best, all that is tenable in the teaching of those two great men is comprehended in socialism rightly understood.

5. Nor is it necessary to say anything of the greatest change of all, which has taken place in the opinions and feelings of the masses of working men, who constitute the modern democracy. Few men, however, really understand the new power that has arisen in the growing intelligence of the workers, in the discontent, in the passion for improvement, in the hopes and aspirations which so deeply move them. It has not yet found adequate expression, direction, and organisation; but every year it is making fresh advance towards clearness of aim. A main part of the significance of Marx’s activity lay in the fact that he strove to give utterance and organisation to this vast and growing mass of vague and half-conscious sentiment. In the future we can but hope that it will receive wise and salutary guidance.

[1]

Protokoll of the party meeting at Jena, p. 298.

CHAPTER XIV

TENDENCIES TOWARDS SOCIALISM

So much may fairly be said regarding the influence of socialistic speculation on the opinion of the civilised world. It must be admitted, however, that as yet the change is mainly in the region of opinion. For in the domain of practice the competitive system, in spite of many very important modifications, still holds the field; and the old Political Economy, though greatly discredited, still finds its strongest justification in the fact that it is a reasonably accurate analysis of an existing and working system. When asked for any grounds that may be brought forward for believing that the socialistic ideal is becoming a reality, we can only point to symptoms or tendencies, not to definite results on a scale commensurate with the development of modern industry.

Yet these tendencies are large, most significant, and visibly increasing. The following are the main lines along which they may be observed:—

1. The State, which by a reasonable socialism should be regarded as the association of men on a large scale, and as such should continue to have a most important function.

2. The Municipality, or Commune, which, notwithstanding certain objections, is the more convenient word, as it includes the parish as well as the municipality, and which should be regarded as the association for local purposes. As every one knows how greatly the range of State and municipal action for the common good has been extended in recent years, we need not enlarge on this aspect of our subject. But in what we have to say it will be convenient to consider the State and the local body together, as they are really complements of each other. In a well-ordered community there should be no real opposition between the two. Under the conditions which now prevail there can be no nourishing local life except in reasonable relation to an efficient central organ; and the central organ can do its part wisely and effectively only by allowing suitable scope to local energy. No absolute rules can be laid down for the relations of the two to each other; these must be determined by considerations of time and circumstance. But the problem of their opposition under any régime can be a difficulty only for unwise statesmanship.

It may not be a new thing in theory, that the State should be an association for the promotion of the common interests of all its members, or that the commune should be an association for the general good of the inhabitants of a locality; but it is practically new. It is only during the last generation that the people who form the majority of every society have received any reasonable consideration from the organs of the State. We have during the last seventy years seen a tardy reversal of the old injustice in our own country, and for some years the movement towards improvement has been growing apace. But our leading statesmen seem even yet to be reluctant or only half willing to advance. The domestic history of recent times is the record of concessions made, not because the leaders of either of our great parties particularly approved of them, but because they were demanded by large sections of voters. In fact the initiative in legislation has now passed from the statesmen to the democracy. We can hardly regard it as the outcome of a reasoned and comprehensive theory of the State when politicians trained in the theory and practice of laissez-faire in 1908 passed an Old Age Pensions Bill, which under certain restrictions gave a pension of 5s. a week to persons over 70.

The statesmen of Germany have been more consistent; for when they inaugurated their schemes of State socialism they frankly proclaimed their adhesion to its principles. In this they were encouraged by the old law of Prussia, which recognised the duty of the State to provide subsistence for those who could not make a living, and labour for those who were out of employment. The position of the Prussian kingdom has always been such that it required to foster the full strength of the State by all available means, and therefore could not afford to neglect any considerable portion of its population. In his State socialism, therefore, Bismarck could appeal with some show of reason to the traditional policy of Prussia. But it was really a new departure.

Its leading principles were announced in an Imperial message to the Reichstag on the 17th of November 1881. Besides the repressive measures necessary to restrain the excesses of the Social Democracy, the Emperor declared that the healing of social evils was to be sought in positive measures for the good of the working man. The measures proposed were for the insurance of the workmen against accident, sickness, old age, and inability to work, by arrangements under State control. ‘The finding of the right ways and means for this State protection of the working man is a difficult task, but also one of the highest duties that concern every society standing on the ethical foundations of the Christian national life.’ The aged Emperor next went on to say that he would look back with greater satisfaction on the successes with which Providence had visibly blessed his reign, if he could bequeath to the Fatherland new and lasting pledges of peace at home, and to the needy greater security and larger means for rendering the help to which they had a claim. The message also spoke of ‘organising the life of the people in the form of corporative associations under the protection and furtherance of the State, to render possible the solution of problems which the central power alone cannot undertake.’ The Imperial programme has now been realised. It may be regarded as the beginning of better things to come. The help provided by its various measures is scanty enough, but no one can reasonably doubt that it is immeasurably superior to our English Poor Law.

So much for State socialism in Germany. To find a democracy which is really government of the people by the people for the people, we must go to our colonies at the antipodes. It is a democracy which both in theory and practice has most fully recognised that the State is an association for the promotion of the well-being of the whole people. New Zealand, one of the youngest of the English colonies, is the finest example of such a State. The State in New Zealand owns and works railways, telegraphs, and telephones. When the Bank of New Zealand was on the point of stopping payment, with the most disastrous results to the country, the government came to its help with a guarantee of £4,000,000 and made it a State institution. It made advances of cheap money to settlers and passed legislation to break up large estates. The laws for the protection of labour are of the most advanced type. It settles labour disputes by compulsory arbitration, and has in operation an old-age pension scheme by which persons over 65 years of age receive an annual pension. At first fixed at £18, this has been raised to £26, or 10s. a week. It has introduced women’s suffrage, graduated taxation, a complete system of local option in the drink trade, a public system of life insurance and of medical care, and a public trustee with very wide and beneficent powers.

All these measures and others which we need not name are the outcome in New Zealand of a great wave of agrarian labour and socialistic feeling which spread over the world about twenty years ago. It has been well described as socialism without dogma. Every measure has been examined and approved on its merits. The policy therefore is all the more valuable as a mass of testimony to the beneficent tendency of a reasonable socialism. The conditions have no doubt been exceptionally favourable. New Zealand is a young country with great natural advantages and a small population which has a very high average of intelligence, initiative, and energy. It is an example, however, which should be most encouraging to the world, as it shows what may be done in a true democracy, where the government is in entire sympathy with the people and responsive to their wishes. The high honour of carrying out this model legislation belongs to Richard Seddon and his associates. Seddon was Prime Minister of New Zealand from 1893 to his death in 1906.

3. The co-operative society or association for the ordinary purposes of industry.—Co-operation for some time made comparatively little progress in production, but when we consider the low point from which the movement started, only about sixty years ago, and how painfully capital, experience, and skill had to be acquired by the poor workers, we should rather be surprised at the advance that has been made in so many progressive countries. It is only a partial realisation of the socialistic ideal, but it is well founded, solid, and most promising. Its strongest point is that it has arisen directly out of the people and remains in close touch with them.

In England a co-operative society is usually a group of workers who manage distribution with their joint capital in their own interests. The group is entirely democratic, open to every one, organised on the principle of one man one vote, and choosing their own committee or executive; the manager is a social functionary; no member can legally hold more than £200 of capital in any society. Production, especially for domestic consumption, has now made very great progress. In 1907 the movement had 1566 registered societies and 2,434,000 members. By that date the £28 with which the movement started in 1844 had expanded into a capital of £32,000,000, with an annual turnover of £105,000,000, and an annual profit of £12,000,000. It provides for the consumption of one-fifth of the population. The co-operative movement in Great Britain is already an industrial and economic power of no mean order. If it has not solved the social question, it has at least done much to clear the way towards a solution. The movement is also making rapid progress in Germany, Austria, Belgium, France, and Italy, and its greatest successes are in other fields than distribution. In Denmark the co-operative system is one of the brightest features of recent history. More recently a co-operative movement of great promise has begun in Ireland.

The co-operative society, therefore, is a self-governing group of workers, which has already made very considerable progress in controlling the economic interests of the labouring class. Not a little disappointment is felt that it has not accomplished greater results; as we believe, without good ground. It might reasonably have been expected that human nature would survive among co-operators, and that the self-regarding principle would continue to be the mainspring of individual action. Better social arrangements can only provide for it a more efficient system of regulation.

It is particularly regrettable that co-operative societies have not always had sufficient regard for their employees. There can be little doubt that the contrast between producers and consumers, and between the centralising and de-centralising tendencies in organisation, will long be a difficulty among co-operators, who do not thoroughly understand the new system to which they belong. Yet it should also be said that many of the objections raised by the critics of the movement are really due to the fact that they do not understand its real nature, and imagine that they find old things where really they meet only old names.

The noblest embodiment of the co-operative idea is to be found in one of the oldest seats of industry in Western Europe. This is the Vooruit (Forward) Society, which was founded at Ghent in a season of scarcity by Edouard Anseele and a few weavers in 1873. It was started with a capital of 84 francs and 93 centimes, about £3: 8s., at first naturally as a bakery, and has grown till it embraces the economy and life of about 100,000 out of the 165,000 inhabitants of the city. Besides the enormous and splendidly-equipped bakeries, it has huge stores and the largest cotton factory in Ghent, with an eight-hours’ day. It has its own printing works, a daily and weekly press, its own system of life insurance, and old-age pensions. It offers to its members at its People’s Palace the means of education and of wholesome recreation and it encourages art. This is a great achievement in a country where Church and State, landlord and capitalist, have so long combined to keep the workers in the lowest ignorance and degradation. The Vooruit has been a model to similar co-operative enterprises not only in Belgium, but in France, Holland, and Germany.

4. Of all the recent movements for the better ordering of society in England, we believe the co-operative movement to be the most hopeful, because the most thorough and practical, but it is only one of many. During the last half-century we have seen a long succession of efforts, partially successful, towards a new organisation of society rendered necessary by the changes due to the industrial revolution. In all spheres the watchword of the new era has been freedom, the removal of restraint. But it has been found that positive measures of reconstruction were also necessary. Factory legislation carried in opposition to the prevailing economic theory, trade-unions, employers’ combinations, industrial partnerships, boards of conciliation, the co-operative system,—all these are real, if partial, endeavours towards a new organisation of society suited to the new conditions. They are all modifications and limitations imposed on the competitive system, and to them the progress of the last sixty years is largely due. Socialism claims to be the comprehensive scheme of organisation which embraces in a complete and consistent unity all these partial efforts.

5. But the most striking feature of recent economic history is the continuation of the movement which began with the industrial revolution. Through this process the small producer was superseded by the capitalist, the smaller capitalist by the larger. And now the single capitalist is being absorbed by the company, an increasing proportion of the world’s business being so vast that only a great company can provide the requisite capital and organisation; whilst in the large companies, in case they cannot drive each other out of the field, there is a marked tendency to bring about a fusion of interests. In all this we see a great constructive process going on as the result of the inherent laws of industrial development.

The movement is active in our own country; but it is far surpassed in magnitude and activity by similar phenomena in the United States of America, where it is favoured by special circumstances. Under the protective system the economic development of America has proceeded without being disturbed by the industrial power of England. It is a self-contained and self-sufficing continent with a vast area and enormous natural resources. The people have not such a wide variety of political, social, literary, and artistic interests as have the ruling classes of England, and have therefore been all the more keenly engaged in the exploitation of the new world that lay open to them. Capitalism in America has shown an energy, acuteness, and fertility of resource which even in England are unparalleled. But in the various departments of industry the chiefs have found that competition may be suicidal and mutually destructive, and have therefore seen it expedient to arrange with each other for the regulation of production, of prices and wages. Hence the trusts, or great combinations of capitalists, which now confront American society and the American Republic, and which, as the latest development of capitalism, are well calculated to excite scientific curiosity in every country.

The trust system is, however, by no means confined to America. A like organisation under the name of cartels or syndicates is, in proportion to the size of the country, almost equally strong in Germany. In forms more or less open and undisguised it is spreading in England, Austria, and other lands. It may be regarded as an inevitable stage in the natural history of capitalism.

Thus far have we come through the natural growth of the company. If we consider the nature and development of the company, we shall find that it is not entirely undemocratic. The directors are, in principle at least, elected and removable by the shareholders. And as the shares are open for purchase by any one, a porter may be a shareholder in the railway company of which he is a servant, with, so far, a voice in the management. But in point of fact the companies are owned and controlled by the capitalist classes, and are a development of capitalism. The directors are usually large capitalists. Their main aim is to produce dividends. The relation of the management to the employees cannot have much of a kindly, human, and personal element.

On the other hand, the development of the company in a large degree means that the real administration of the economic movement is passing out of the hands of the owner of capital as such. The companies are for the most part managed by paid officials, who may or may not have a substantial holding in the capital. That is, the capitalists do not really manage the companies in which their capital is embarked. The manager, with a staff of paid officials, has become the pivot of the industrial movement. Generally speaking, the large company is more amenable to social regulation than a variety of small enterprises. And now we see that the natural development of the company has prepared the whole organisation necessary for its complete transference to social ownership and control, if such a step were deemed advisable. A great railway or system of water-supply can be transferred to State or municipal control without any particular change in the organisation by which it is worked. In fact, capitalism has prepared or is preparing the mechanism by which it may be superseded. It has done its work so thoroughly that it has been rendering even itself superfluous. We need not add that preparatory steps towards the transformation of the company may also be seen in the spread of the principle of industrial partnerships or profit-sharing. In America, where the industrial development is more recent, the founders of the great corporations still to a large degree continue to control them. Yet we can see how the constructive talent they have so marvellously shown has paved the way for social control when the time may come for it.

6. But the greatest force in the social evolution of the present time consists of the human beings who are most directly interested in it—the modern democracy. This democracy is marked by a combination of characteristics which are new to history. It is being educated and enlightened in the school and by the cheap press; it is being drilled and organised in large factories, in the national armies, by vast popular demonstrations, in the gigantic electoral struggles of the time. Thus it is becoming conscious of its enormous power, and able to make use of it. It is becoming conscious also of its unsatisfactory social and economic position. The democracy which is growing to be the master-force of the civilised world is still for the most part economically a proletariat dependent on precarious wage-labour. While they are resolved to proceed with the consummation of the political change which is involved in the establishment of democracy, their goal is an economic transformation. But the inevitable process of concentration of industrial operations already referred to is entirely against the continuance or restoration of the small producer, whether workman or peasant proprietor. Such efforts of continuance or restoration are reactionary: they are economically unsound and must fail. The economic transformation must be sought in the application of the principle of association to the large industry.

7. We are thus brought to the conclusion that the competitive system, with precarious wage-labour as the lot of the vast majority of the people, is not a suitable and adequate form for the social development of the future. The competitive system has led to great strikes, which have been the cause of widespread misery, almost as grievous as the suffering endured during the worst campaigns under the old style of warfare. It has led to great commercial and industrial crises, which have scattered over the civilised world panic and ruin, followed by long-continued stagnation and depression. Thus anarchy, waste, and starvation have been its too frequent attendants, while the normal position of the workmen under it has been precarious and unworthy of free, enlightened men. England has had less reason than most countries to regret the prevalence of competition, for her industrial supremacy has generally left her victor in the struggle, and she has hitherto looked forward to widening markets as the solution of her economic troubles. But the rapid development of Germany and America may teach us that our industrial position is not so secure against assault as it used to be, and that we may in future suffer the bitter experience of the vanquished, which we have so long inflicted on others. And we may thus learn that reason and law should control industry and commerce as well as other spheres of human activity.

In America the development of the trust system is only another proof of the inadequacy of the competitive system. The supporters of the trusts maintain with very good show of reason that unregulated competition is harmful and may be ruinous to all concerned, and that they can maintain fair prices, pay fair wages, and secure a fair return to capital only by mutual arrangement among the producers. But the system obviously involves the serious objection, that the great industrial chiefs who organise and direct the trusts are thereby constituted supreme judges of their own interests and of the economic interests of the whole American people; that such combinations form a huge monopoly in so many of the leading articles of consumption, and establish an economic, social, and political power which may be a danger to American society. In short, we are driven to the result that while competition has been hurtful or ruinous to those engaged in it, the now prevailing system of regulation by capitalism in its own interests is a serious danger to the whole people. There is only one right way out of such a dilemma. A return to the competitive method is neither possible nor desirable. Monopoly is incompatible with freedom. The only course for peoples who desire to be free is to adopt some form of social ownership and control. This appears to be the lesson taught us by the development of the trusts.

8. The success of socialism greatly depends on the realisation of the two ideals, which may be regarded as the main pillars of the theory, when applied to practice. These are:—

(a) The normal working day: the general reduction of the working day to eight hours in the immediate future, and eventually to a shorter time. Such a desirable change would be better accomplished by voluntary agreement under the pressure of public opinion than by legislation; but it would be better made by legislation than by the cruel and clumsy method of strikes.

(b) A remuneration which will ensure a suitable standard of living; in other words, the means of a normal development. A reasonable standard of living, the competent means of a normal development have been determined by science and are no longer a matter of utopian guess-work. A fairly definite measure of fresh air, food, clothing, house comfort, recreation, and of satisfaction for the affections associated with wife and children constitute the rational needs of the average man. This is the moral and scientific basis of a rational system of distribution. The competitive wage determined by the iron law of wages of the older economists should be superseded by a remuneration embodying this principle. It is the Daily Bread of the Lord’s Prayer as definable by modern science.

The effect of the socialistic theory on these points is to remove two vital interests of man from the range of competition, and to place them on an ethical and scientific basis under social control. In so far as the working day of the employees of government, municipalities, co-operative societies, companies, and private firms approximates to eight hours, in so far as the wage paid by them secures to the workers a fit and reasonable standard of living, in so far is the socialistic ideal realised. Every one conversant with the history of the last sixty years knows how vast an improvement has been made in both respects.

We have thus reviewed the great social and economic movements of our time. How shall we interpret them? There are two main tendencies: one towards control of the economic processes by the people in state, municipality, and co-operative society; the other towards the consolidation of capitalism in trusts. In both we see plan, constructive and organising intelligence, the limitation of the anarchy of competition. But while the former makes for the public good, the latter is subservient to overgrown wealth.

The portentous growth of the trusts is indeed an object-lesson to the world. It proves that socialism is not an idle question; nor is it utopian or revolutionary merely. It is a question forced upon the present generation by the most gigantic industrial movement of recent times. All good citizens, all friends of righteousness and of progress, all inquirers worthy of the name, are under an imperative obligation to understand the true inwardness of the subject.

In considering the question of the practicability of a rational socialism, let us remember that it only proposes to accomplish on a wider scale and for a more enlightened time a task analogous to that undertaken by the guilds for the mediæval world. The guild was an organisation for the promotion of the common interests of the workers at a time when law and order were not sufficiently established by strong central governments, and when the present distinction between labourer and capitalist had not declared itself. It was a fairly equitable organisation of an industry which was local and associated with city life, and which worked with a very limited and undeveloped technique. Socialism proposes an equitable organisation of industry for the modern world with its enormous mechanical development and large industry, under a democracy guided by science and professing allegiance to the highest moral ideals.

CHAPTER XV

THE PREVALENT SOCIALISM

In the Erfurt Programme we have seen that the task of the social democracy is to give form and unity to the struggle of the working class, and to point out its natural and necessary goal. This goal is the transformation of private property in the means of production into collective property, but the change will be accomplished not in the interest of a class but of the entire human race. The Erfurt Programme has been followed by others of a like nature in Belgium, Austria, France, and elsewhere. It may be regarded as the aim of the social democracy of all countries to obtain possession of political power in order to make the economic transformation which we have indicated.

A like aim has been set forth in the resolutions passed at International Congresses. In a previous chapter we have seen that International Congresses were held at Paris in 1889, at Brussels in 1891, at Zürich in 1893, and at London in 1896. These were followed by Congresses, at Paris for a second time in 1900, at Amsterdam in 1904, and at Stuttgart in 1907.

The disorders which prevailed at the Congresses of Brussels and London led to the adoption of measures for the better ordering of business and for the better organisation of the Congresses, ‘destined to become the parliament of the proletariat.’ We shall now give a brief statement of the new measures, which date in a general way from the Paris Congress of 1900.

As to terms of admission. All associations are admitted which adhere to the essential principles of socialism: socialisation of the means of production and exchange; international union and action of the workers; socialist conquest of political power by the proletariat organised as a class party. Also all the trade organisations which place themselves on the basis of the class struggle and recognise the necessity of political action, legislative and parliamentary. Anarchists are therefore excluded.

An International Socialist Bureau having its seat at Brussels has been established. It consists of two delegates from each country and has a permanent secretary. Among other functions the Bureau and its secretary have to organise the International Congresses and to arrange the order of business at them.

At former Congresses much time was spent in hearing verbal reports, in French, English, and German, of the progress of socialism in the various countries. The Bureau now invites and receives from the various national bodies reports, which are printed and laid before the Congress. These reports form a most valuable storehouse of information with regard to the development of socialism throughout the world.

The result of those measures was manifest at the Stuttgart Congress, where the business proceeded with dispatch and in comparative order. Delegates to the number of 886 were assembled from twenty-six nationalities, and discussed matters of importance relating to the international social movement. The revival of the International could be regarded as an accomplished fact. But it was a revival in a new form and under conditions which had undergone a marvellous change. The old International has been compared by Vandervelde to a brilliant general staff without an army. In many countries the socialist cause had hardly begun to move; in no country had it attained to any real strength. Now socialism had powerful and well-organised parties in most of the leading countries of Europe, and it counted its adherents by millions.

The Bureau at Brussels does not perform the functions of the general council of the old International. It has no commanding mind and will, like that of Karl Marx, to supply initiative and energy. It serves as a connecting link between the national parties; it tends to co-ordinate theories, tactics, and action. But the vitality and moving force of the new International are found in the different national groups.

We may say, then, that the new International only in a limited measure realises the thought of Marx. The idea of using political power as an instrument of social amelioration originated with the Chartists and L. Blanc. Marx in the communist manifesto first made it international and revolutionary, and he claimed also to have made it scientific. It was scientific in so far as it was a reasoned and comprehensive expression of real forces. In the International as we now have it we may perceive an organisation of the real forces which Marx had the insight to foresee and enjoin.

A long series of resolutions have been passed by the various Congresses which have met since 1889. If we take those resolutions along with the elaborate programmes that have been formulated by the various national parties, and of which the Erfurt programme may be regarded as the type, we have a set of documents which may undoubtedly be considered official and authoritative. Both resolutions and programmes are the result of a long labour of thought and debate by their best minds. They agree generally in their exposition of principles and tactics. We may, therefore, have no doubt that they contain a reliable statement of the prevalent socialism. We give an abstract of the most important points on which socialists of all lands agree:—

(1) The goal of the whole movement is an economic revolution or transformation—the transference to society of the means of production, distribution, and exchange.

(2) The conquest of political power by the organised action of the working class of all lands is the chief means towards this great end.

(3) The great task of the socialist parties at present is education, agitation, and organisation in the widest sense, with a view to the physical and moral regeneration of the working class, so as to fit it for its great mission. To rouse the class consciousness of the workers, to increase their capacity and efficiency for the class struggle, is the daily task of international socialism.

(4) The struggle for equal and direct universal suffrage, for the popular initiative and referendum, is an important phase of the political struggle, and is fitted to have a good influence on the political education of the workers.

(5) The more purely political struggle of the Socialist Parties should go hand in hand with the more purely economic struggle of the trade unions.

(6) The right of association, of combination, of free meeting, of free speech, and of a free press, is an essential part of the worker’s claim of rights.

(7) The demonstration of the 1st of May is specially recommended in all countries as a means of securing an eight-hours’ working day. The eight-hours’ day is most desirable for improving the family life, the education, the health, energy, intelligence, and morality of the working class.

(8) But the eight-hours’ day is only the most urgent part of a large system of protective legislation in favour of the working class. Besides an eight-hours’ day for adults, they demand special legislation for children, young people, and women; proper rest for all ages; restriction of night work; abolition of the sweating system; effective inspection of factories, shops, and of domestic labour, as well as of agriculture.

(9) They are very strongly opposed to militarism, which they consider due not so much to national or political differences, as to the struggle of the capitalist classes for new markets. They believe that war will end only with the ending of capitalism. The present standing armies are the instruments of the ruling and exploiting class, and should be abolished. Their place should be taken by a citizen army or the armed nation; that is, the entire able-bodied manhood of the people should be trained and equipped on a democratic basis, like the Swiss army. The Socialist Parties of the various countries are recommended to vote against expenditure for existing army and navy.

(10) The majority at Congresses has without reserve condemned the colonial system as being merely an extension of the field of exploitation of the capitalist class. But this majority has consisted mainly of nations that have little knowledge of colonies and little interest in them. It has ignored the colonial system of England, which has so largely consisted in the development of self-governing communities; and it has also ignored or misunderstood the beneficent work of England in establishing conditions of peace, order, and progress in India. The colonial system as understood by the majority simply means the exploitation of native and coloured races for the profit of the capitalist class. A large minority, while condemning the present colonial policy, think that it might be made beneficial.

The goal of the whole movement is collectivism; but little or nothing is said as to the forms it will take or how it will be realised. That task is left to the future. On the other hand, much is said of the means by which political power may be gained. Among these we should observe that the two points which are most essential, and may be regarded as the key of the whole position, are universal suffrage and the right of combination, the former being necessary for the purely political development of socialism, the latter for the development of labour in trade unions. For these two rights socialism and labour are prepared to put forth the greatest efforts and to make the greatest sacrifices. For them the orderly and well-disciplined Social Democracy of Germany is ready to adopt in the last resort the drastic measure of the general strike.[1] Demonstrations in favour of universal suffrage have been frequent events during recent years in many European countries. The Russian Socialist Revolutionary Party has declared itself ready to accept as a field of agitation a constituent assembly elected on a thoroughly democratic basis and embodying the sovereign will of the people.

The rights of the trade union have quite recently been a supreme interest to the Labour Party in Great Britain. And in America the use of the ‘injunctions’ to hinder the development of labour combinations has been a chief grievance among the workmen. This grievance took a foremost place in the discussion of matters which went to form the platforms of candidates at the Presidential election of 1908. Universal suffrage and the right of combination, with all that these two great rights involve, may be regarded as the central points in the present tactics and policy of international socialism.

The other points in the above statement may here be left to speak for themselves. But if we note that the most deeply resented grievance of the workmen is the use of the police and the military by the executives of various countries to repress agitation, we shall the better understand many incidents of recent history in Italy, Russia, and even America.

It will be seen that the task which lies before the social democracy is a vast one. As yet even the political part of it is only to a small extent realised. At present the working class, though forming the vast majority of the people, has no corresponding representation in legislatures or influence in government. In England the ruling class has long been, and still is, an aristocracy, slowly changing in the course of generations into a plutocracy which has the wisdom to yield to the ever-growing pressure of democracy. France is now nearer to a real democracy than any other great European state. In Germany the executive depends on the Emperor; but his Chancellor has to find a majority for legislation and for the budgets in the Reichstag, which is elected by universal suffrage with an antiquated distribution of seats. The German executive is really a bureaucracy with the Emperor as chief. Government in Austria and Russia is also a bureaucracy of which the Emperor is the head. In Italy the democracy is slowly growing. It has very little real influence in Spain.

If the American people do not exert themselves very effectively in the immediate future, the Republic seems destined to be a plutocracy. A power which appears to be incompatible with a real commonwealth has arisen in a marvellously short time. The oil industry in America goes back only to 1859. Mr. J. D. Rockefeller entered the trade in 1865. It was organised by him and his associates into the Standard Oil Company; and the Company has been the type of further organisation, has provided the men, the methods, and the capital, by which other great industries have been transformed. That is to say, Mr. J. D. Rockefeller and the men trained in his methods have gained control of railways, of finance and insurance, and even of the basic industries of steel and coal. The process has naturally gained enormously in momentum as it has gone on; the capital accumulated, and still more the capital controlled by the Trusts, the interests they have absorbed or brought within their orbit are gigantic, and continually increasing. Even the American Senate is declared to be in their pay. Most evil of all symptoms, when an eminent American senator, Mr. Tillman, lately undertook to speak for his order, a main point in his defence was, that the House of Representatives was worse than the Senate! Thus we see the industrial and economic power, which is also the money power, subordinating to itself the political, and, indeed, threatening all that is articulate and organic in the American people. In 1908, at the Chicago Convention, Senator Lodge went to the heart of the matter: ‘It is the huge size of private fortunes and the vast extent of the power of modern combinations of capital which have brought upon us in these later years problems portentous in their possibilities, and threatening not only our social and political welfare, but even our personal freedom if they are not boldly met and wisely solved.’

Warnings have been given by some observers, including the present writer, that such a condition of things was coming. In my Inquiry into Socialism, published in 1887, I said: ‘In crossing the ocean the colonists left behind them the monarchy and aristocracy, and many other social forms hoary with venerable abuse; but they carried with them an institution older and more fundamental than royalty or a hereditary legislature—human nature itself.’ The old evils of Europe grew out of human nature. On the other side of the Atlantic men will still be human. ‘Freedom in America seems threatened by the domination of great corporations, combining to obtain the control of industrial operations, of governments, and courts of justice. If unchecked by the healthy public opinion, and by the collective will of the American people, such corporations may establish an economic, social, and political tyranny quite as oppressive as anything existing in Europe. It will be a miserable thing for the world if triumphant democracy, and a material prosperity unexampled in the annals of mankind, end in a fiasco such as this.’[2]

The struggle to curb the corporations and bring them within the limits prescribed by the public good will not be an easy one. Waves of popular enthusiasm are apt to be fitful and transient, whilst the pull of organised wealth is steady, continuous, incessant. The favourite rhetorical figure of the octopus spreading its gigantic tentacles over American society gives but a faint impression of the subtle and insidious activity of the Trusts. Even in Russia the problem is a simple one compared with that in America; the contest with the Tzardom is merely one of force striving against force by all available means. Vastly simpler was the earliest struggle of historic civilisation, when the Greeks met the clumsy hosts of Persia. The Americans may consider themselves as the foremost champions, at the most critical point, in the most momentous struggle now going forward on the planet.

Noblesse oblige was the maxim of a caste that is vanishing. It is still an imperative call on all truly noble men and nations. The American colonies were founded by the noblest pioneers of freedom, from the best and strongest races of Europe. Such a high ancestry lays men under a special obligation to acquit themselves well in the warfare against organised wealth. One of the main causes of the present situation is that in the eager race for wealth or for a living the Americans have had no leisure to be good citizens, in the sense contemplated by the founders of the Republic. They have left their own proper civic work to professional politicians. In the combination of professional politicians ready to be bought and of wealthy capitalists ready to buy lies the supreme danger to American freedom. The danger will be averted when the people take care duly to think the matter out, and to enter upon a course of resolute organised action suitable to the time and its needs.

One of the first duties of the people will obviously be to simplify the cumbrous machinery of the Constitution, and to make it a more efficient organ of their will. In the two great crises of American history, nothing strikes us so forcibly as the high standard of character and intelligence which was shown. It may be regarded as a symptom of a really strong race, that they were so slow and reluctant to take decisive measures in the struggle for Independence and at the time of the Civil War. We may now see the same natural hesitation in deciding how to handle a problem of surpassing gravity. Such crises are the severest and truest tests of national character. All friends of freedom in every part of the world will fervently hope that the people of America may display their historic qualities of insight, high principle, energy, and resolution in the mighty struggle of Commonwealth against Wealth upon which they are entering.

According to Liebknecht, late leader of the German socialists, ‘the social democracy is the party of the whole people, except 200,000 large proprietors, squires, middle-class capitalists, and priests.’ We need not discuss the exactitude of such figures in relation either to Germany or any other country. It is a fact which no reasonable man can dispute that economic and political power is in most civilised countries actually wielded by a very small minority. Nor need we stay here to inquire into the methods by which such power has been gained. Even as regards England we have not yet an impartial and comprehensive account of the rise of the present economic and political order since the liquidation of the mediæval system began about the middle of the fourteenth century. How labour legislation was carried on by the ruling class in its own interests for five centuries after 1349; how Henry VIII. took his courtiers and privy councillors into partnership for the dividing of the church lands; how commons were inclosed; how even the poor-law became an occasion for the subjection and degradation of labour; how for generations bribery was a normal instrument of government; how wealth was gained in the slave-trade, in the East Indies, in the jobbing of government loans and contracts, and by the imposition of corn-laws—all these we vaguely know, but they have not yet been presented in a form which can satisfy the canons of scientific history.

It is too soon, therefore, to determine how far the business of the Standard Oil Company has been built up on its merits; how far its success is due to efficient management and organisation by the shrewdest and ablest men, and how far due to the illegal and immoral methods of which they are accused. At the Chicago Convention in 1908 Senator Lodge said that the great body of the people had come to believe more and more that these vast fortunes, these vast combinations of capital, were formed and built up by tortuous and dishonest means and with a cynical disregard of the very laws which the mass of the people were compelled to obey. On the other hand the Reminiscences of Mr. Rockefeller reveal a rare combination of insight and energy in founding and consolidating a new industry which of itself is sufficient to account for success. In any case, we in England, looking back on our history, have no right to point the finger of reproach at our American kinsmen. There is indeed a cynical theory that our ruling classes are free from such reproach only because they have been sated with the wealth they have already gained. With us the struggle has long been decided; whereas in America the dust and heat of battle still blind the eyes of men.

The motives and merits of the agents by which great historic changes are accomplished, whether they be Julius Cæsar, Henry VIII., or J. D. Rockefeller, form a most interesting and important subject of study. But far more important is the problem we must face regarding the forces and the issues which they set in movement. Here we are concerned with live forces and urgent issues.

Briefly we may describe the situation with which we have to deal as the struggle now proceeding between various forms of autocracy, bureaucracy, and plutocracy, on the one hand, and a social democracy which claims to represent the mass of the people, on the other. The features of the former powers we all know. The social democracy is still in its giant and untried youth. Not very long ago, as we have seen, the German working men had neither voice nor organisation nor insight into their position and prospects. France, after the failures of 1848, was hardly better. In most countries labour was dumb, or moaning under its burden of hardship and sorrow. Now much is changed. The working men have the foremost orators in the world to speak with their enemies in the gate, and they have an organisation which the strongest statesmen have been unable to break up or weaken. In previous chapters we have had frequent occasion to characterise the democracy of which the workers are the vast majority. We shall understand it better if we duly consider a few special points.

On the 28th November 1905 the city of Vienna saw a new sight. The gay city on the Danube has been the scene of many stirring events. It was twice in vain besieged by the Turks, and twice taken by Napoleon. It was the seat of two congresses which met to rearrange the map of Europe after the downfall of the French conqueror. It witnessed many of the most dramatic incidents of the mad year (des tollen jahres)—the year of revolution, 1848.

To those who can see beneath the surface of things, the scene of November 1905 was vastly more significant than any of the events we have mentioned. A procession of working men and women, estimated by the correspondent of the Morning Post at 300,000, and by socialist organs at 250,000, marched under the red flag through the streets. Work ceased and traffic was stopped, while the serried ranks passed on. But there was no tumult, no call for the interference of the police or the display of military force. Not a shout was raised or song sung or voice heard above a whisper. The silence, order, and discipline shown by this vast host, which was about equal to either of the great armies that lately contended in Manchuria, were even more striking than its numbers. Members of parliament who witnessed the demonstration from the Reichsrath declared that they were more impressed by it than by any political event since Austria became a parliamentary state. Even the most stubborn adherent of the old order was bound to feel that a new era had come, and that the demand for universal suffrage, which was the object of the demonstration, could no longer be refused. That very day legislation based on universal suffrage was announced by the government.

The great demonstration was, indeed, a fit subject for meditation in Austria, but not in that country only. The monition contained in such an event should be taken to heart by all concerned in all lands. In the ordering and organising intelligence, in the self-restraint and force of character displayed by the working men of Vienna on that day, we see qualities which are replete with meaning in their relation to the great problems of the present century.

Or let us consider the matter from another point of view. It is now about half a century since the socialist agitation began in Germany. During that time the German workmen have received an education in social politics such as no university in the world can furnish. They have been accustomed to the freest and most thorough discussion of the widest variety of topics in books and pamphlets, at public meetings and debates, in private talks over their beer and coffee. Great strikes, elections, and demonstrations have been object-lessons to them of the most vivid and forcible description. A new move on the part of the Kaiser, a new speech of Bebel or Liebknecht has given fresh food for reflection and discourse. Above all, the matters so handled have come near to their hearts, have touched them in their everyday life in the closest and most real way. They were no hearsay, conventional, or traditional subjects that thus appealed to them! Need we wonder that the teaching of Marx, Lassalle, and Engels has become a possession to them, a theme for mind and heart? The seed has taken root among millions of men and women remarkable for intelligence, thoroughness, and earnestness. And the process that has thus gone on in Germany goes on more or less all over the world.

The men and women of the labouring democracy, let us remember, have, many of them, known hunger and privation in every form, not only as an exceptionally severe occurrence in times of strike and unemployment, but as a chronic experience. Mothers have been obliged to work hard too long before child-bearing, and too soon after it, to eke out a scanty family income. For a society that has shown so little respect even for the sacred function of motherhood, what can we say but that it is time to repent? The children in the same competitive society have cried for bread when there was none to give them, and have not had rags enough decently to cover their nakedness.

In a moment of feeling at the Jena meeting of his party Bebel confessed that for years it was his ideal for once to eat his fill of bread and butter. During the sieges of Kimberley and Mafeking our countrymen had a new experience; they found out what it meant never to have enough to eat, to be always hungry. The leader of one of the strongest organisations in the world, one of the foremost orators in Europe, to whom all men listen when he makes a speech, had the experience for years in the very heart of modern civilisation.

The same children who were thus early acquainted with hunger have gone to be racked at the mill of labour before they were eight, or even six years of age. We need not wonder that they were stunted and dwarfed in growth, that they were wrinkled, deformed, attenuated, grey, and decrepit before their time; and they have suffered all this hunger and privation through a long agony of years, they and their fathers and mothers before them, while the classes which have held economic and political power have wasted the means so much needed for worthier uses in war and in the preparation for war, in the luxury and extravagance of society and of courts.

Nor has this condition of rags, hunger, and privation come to an end. We may see it in the course of a casual walk in almost any quarter of any of the towns of Great Britain to-day.

In many countries the democracy assumes a more serious and a menacing form. Among the trade unions of France there is a pronounced distrust in the efficacy of parliamentary action and a predilection for more direct and energetic methods. We see a like tendency in a stronger form in Italy. The new Italy has endeavoured to play a rôle as a great military and naval power, for which she was hardly fitted by her natural resources or her economic development. A large majority of her people suffer all the miseries that flow from extreme ignorance, poverty, and degradation. Strikes, riots, and other tumultuary outbreaks have been put down by the police and the soldiers with a rough hand. The misery of the people of Italy finds expression in a very large emigration. In a single year as many as 270,000 go abroad, chiefly to the countries of Central Europe, for a period of six months, while 350,000 leave the country as permanent emigrants, chiefly to America. We must regard them as driven by poverty and hunger rather than impelled by the spirit of enterprise.

But the most active revolutionary centre of Europe has now shifted eastwards. In Russia the development of modern methods of industry has only added to the depth and intensity of the struggle. Great capitalists have joined the great landlords in giving support to the Czardom and the bureaucracy in the mighty conflict with the growing revolutionary parties which represent rural and town workers. It has been an appalling struggle, in which the oldest forms of rule have contended with the newest forces of change. What the end may be no man can foresee. So long as the Czardom receives adequate support from the military forces it may continue to survive, but the course of the revolution has shown that the loyalty of army and fleet has been seriously shaken. The Socialist Revolutionary Party contemplate a victory of the working class led by them, and in case of necessity the provisional establishment of its revolutionary dictatorship. But we may fear that the anarchy which might ensue on the overthrow of the Czardom might lead to the supremacy of a military chief. In either case the danger to the neighbouring countries, and especially to South-Eastern Europe, already distracted by racial differences, is only too obvious.

In a well-informed article on the rising of the Roumanian peasantry in 1907 the Spectator said that their cause was the cause of a hundred million of peasantry in Eastern Europe. The remark was a true one. The revolt of labour in Russia is for the most part a rising of peasants for ‘land and liberty.’ It has been a rising full of terror, of omen, and of warning to all who undertake the rule and guidance of men. In Eastern Europe Enceladus has risen. Long buried under heavy mountain loads of privation, of oppression, and of neglect even worse than oppression, he has risen to claim his rights. If well guided he might have been a kindly and beneficent giant, for the Russian peasant is essentially good-humoured and well-disposed. But the powers that be have contented themselves with the exaction of recruits and taxes, of labour and rent. They have otherwise done nothing for him, and have given him no scope for doing anything for himself. With little light or guidance, too frequently suffering the worst privations of cold and famine, and goaded by the sense of immemorial wrong, he could not be expected to resist the fiery draughts from the winepress of the revolution, and he committed such excesses as we know! The Czardom and its servants have prevailed. The giant has been driven back to his prison. He is neither dead nor asleep, but lies moaning and restless on his bed of pain. He will rise again!

The Socialist Revolutionary Party declare that it is from no love for sanguinary methods that they have taken up arms. It was their stern duty before the revolution, before the cause of the workers. It was a decision serious and full of responsibility. The party ‘will not cease to employ terrorist tactics in the political struggle till the establishment of institutions which will make the will of the people the source of power and of legislation.’

Its task has been to lead the masses of the people in revolt, and it has done so with a resolution and self-sacrifice seldom equalled in history. Its members have been ready to kill and to be killed. There can be no doubt that the revolutionary feeling in Russia has increased enormously in depth and width since the days of Alexander II. The composition of the second Duma, which was probably the most revolutionary assembly that has ever met on this planet, was a proof and symptom of the extent to which the spirit of revolt had spread. Out of 500 members 200 belonged to the left, and of these 60 were social democrats, 40 socialist revolutionaries, 15 populist socialists, and 60 were labour men, the small remainder being independent radicals. But the same spirit of revolution has pervaded rural and town workers, has penetrated to fleet and army, to the teachers and the intellectual classes. We may be assured that the drama of the revolution is not ended. The revolution has been spreading among a population of 135,000,000 having racial affinities with numerous peoples in Central and South-Eastern Europe. The Ukase of November 1906, which gave the right to every member of a village community to claim complete possession of his present allotment as permanent private property, will, so far as it is operative, tend greatly to aggravate the unrest. It will disintegrate the village community, break up old forms of life, give more power to the village usurer, and in many ways add to the violence of the revolutionary forces. Enceladus will rise again, with results to Russia and to Europe that no man can forecast.

The division into two nations of Rich and Poor, which the Earl of Beaconsfield described in his novel, Sybil, as existing in England, has become international. A chasm more or less wide and abrupt extends throughout the civilised world. Even Japan now has an active socialist party, and when the industrial revolution has fairly begun to run its course in China we may expect to see its people among the foremost in the social revolution. The real economic and political power still lies in the hands of a small minority, while over against it stands the democracy composed of workers who are every day advancing in intelligence, in organisation, and in the resolute endeavour towards a common goal. Wealth, power, and enjoyment go together. Labour is attended by poverty and privation.

A great struggle is going on, and there can be no doubt that it will go on. How is it to be fought out? This is the supreme question which the twentieth century must try to solve.

It is of unspeakable importance that it should take a wise and peaceful course. In all countries which have a genuine system of universal suffrage fairly carried out, a peaceful solution is practicable. But for such a peaceful solution it will be necessary that all autocratic and bureaucratic government should cease, and that an executive, not only formally responsible to the people but really responsive to their wishes, and in close touch with them, should be established. Such a government could accomplish a beneficent social and economic transformation without violence, without spoliation or confiscation, without even giving an undue shock to the reasonable claims and habits of any section of the people. This might be effected by a truly democratic government, or by the steady pressure of the democracy on the old governments, which would be gradually changed. So much for the peaceful transformation of the State.

May we not also expect that socialists will take a more serious and enlightened view of their responsibilities in aspiring to lead organised labour, and may we not in the course of time hope for a modification of their aims and methods? If these were more reasonable, they would obviously be more convincing, and the prospects of a peaceful as well as a successful issue would be vastly increased. At present their demands are often so put in elaborate programmes, in language more or less technical, that they repel the sympathy even of reasonable men. To use a common saying, socialism as frequently presented is such ‘a big order,’ expressed in alien language, that men with the best will in the world cannot give it a hospitable welcome to their minds.

In fact, it is not a paradox but the plain truth that socialists are now the greatest obstacle to the progress of their ideal. Nor is this at all strange. The same thing has happened in the development of all great ideals; men are too little for them, and in their love for forms and dogmas forget and even repudiate or suppress the spirit. For the progress of socialism the thing most needful now is to throw off the technical dogmatic and ultra-revolutionary form which it has inherited from the past, and to study the real needs and live issues of the present.

Socialism is still coloured to its detriment by excessive loyalty to Marx, and the views of Marx were shaped by a time which has passed away. In the early forties, when the system of Marx was taking form, idealism had declined, and a very crude dogmatic materialism was in the ascendant. The very active speculation which had previously been directed to the ideal, attempted to work in the real and material without due preparation on a very inadequate basis of facts—with strange results! A fierce militant revolutionary spirit, which in the circumstances must be regarded as very natural, was preparing for the troubles of 1848. Ricardo, a man singularly deficient in the requisite historical and philosophical training, was the reigning power in economic theory. Under such influences the views of Marx were prematurely shaped into the dogmatic system which we know. He continued to hold and develop them without any real attempt at self-criticism in riper years, and he, an exile living in England, forcibly urged them from his study on the socialist groups and parties of the Continent.

In his manifesto of the Communist party, Marx declares that the proletariat has nothing to lose but its chains. It has been the unfortunate destiny of him and his school to forge new chains for the working class in the shape of dogmatic materialism, a rigid and abstract collectivism, and ultra-revolutionary views, which still hamper it in the task of emancipation. The promptitude with which the emancipators of the human race have provided new chains is strange enough. Still stranger is the readiness men have shown in putting them on! As we have seen in a previous chapter, the followers of Marx have gone further in this way than their chief.[3]

An ill service was done to the working class by utterances on marriage and the family, which gave the ruling classes who keep the workers out of their rights the plea that they were maintaining the fundamental principles of social order. The abstract collectivism which is the prominent economic feature of his school suggests two serious doubts: if by a revolutionary act they took the delicate and complex social mechanism to pieces, whether they would be able to put it together again; and if they did succeed in putting it together, whether it would work. The same devotion to abstract collectivism has made his followers unable to draw up a reasonable agrarian policy suitable to the peasantry. Their hostility to religion, expressed most freely in the early years of the agitation in Germany and elsewhere, has been a serious hindrance to their progress, both among Catholics and Protestants, especially the former.

Thus in many directions their propaganda has been an obstacle to their success in their proper task of emancipating the working class, and it has at the same time been a hindrance to the peaceful solution of the great struggle. The great central problem has been confused by side issues and irrelevant matter. We can best show how tragic has been the confusion of parts and of issues by reference to religion. Love, brotherhood, mutual service, and peace are most prominent notes in the teaching of Jesus. They must be woven into the moral texture of socialism if it is to succeed and be a benefit to the world. If Marx and his school had merely attacked what we may call the official and professional representatives of the Christian Church, they would have been within their rights. As it has been, the religion of love, brotherhood, and mutual service has officially become part of a government system by which the hereditary oppressors of the poor in Germany and elsewhere claim to continue their unblest work. The professional representatives of Christ’s teaching support and encourage them in it, and so make themselves accomplices, not only in the oppression and degradation of the poor, but in war and militarism, and in all the waste, extravagance, and misdirection of class government. How many of them are conscious of the profound incongruity of their position?

In the history of human thought opinion has hardened often prematurely into dogma, and dogma has usually degenerated into pedantry. Dogma has often been simply the expression of egotism, which had not the saving grace either to be loyal to truth or really helpful to mankind. So it has been in the development of socialism. Its champions have too frequently failed in keeping a single eye and mind on a task which requires insight, self-restraint, loyalty, and consistency, as well as energy and enthusiasm. A great cause demands the best and noblest service. Such a cause as socialism demands from its supporters the self-denial which will suppress the many phases of an excessive, disorderly, morbid, and malignant egotism that has done so much harm in the past—no easy task for human nature.

It is a very serious result alike of the past history and of the present policy of socialists that the practical work of emancipating labour has to such a degree been postponed to a remote and hypothetical future. They form only a small minority in the legislatures of the leading European countries. This minority is increasing, and is likely to increase. But there is no present probability of an increase that would win political power by parliamentary action.

According to the prevalent socialism the goal of the whole movement is to acquire possession of the means of production. Such a conception lays excessive stress on the dead and passive instruments of labour. It ascribes too much importance to the economic factor. The economic factor is most important, but the cardinal thing in socialism is the living and active principle of association, and the essential thing for the working man to acquire is the capacity and habit of association. In other words, the motive power of socialism must be found in the mind and character of men guided by science and inspired by the highest ethical ideals, and who have attained to the insight and capacity requisite for associated action.

But in making those criticisms let us remember that the social democracy is still in its unformed youth. The socialist parties of most European countries have sprung up since 1870. They have had, through much labour and tribulation, to shape their organisation, principles, and policy. How natural it was that they should follow a master mind like Marx, who had manfully and unsparingly devoted his entire life to their cause! And how natural too that they should have no trust in other classes, and refuse all manner of compromise with them!

And we should fail in an accurate presentation of our subject if we did not emphasise the fact that the present position of labour is the result of a vast effort of practical and constructive work. In all departments labour had to start from the very beginning not many years ago. The socialist parties with their programmes represent a strenuous and painful process of thought and organisation. Through the trade unions the ill-informed, untrained, suspicious, and turbulent democracy of labour has been drilled into habits of common action. How much of enthusiasm and high principle, of persevering toil and patient attention to detail has been put into the co-operative movement!

There are now most significant symptoms that all the diverse forms of working-class activity are being consolidated into one great movement. We have seen how in Belgium trade unions and co-operative societies work in harmony with the socialist party. So they also do in Denmark. In Italy the three classic forms of labour activity, trade unionism, co-operation, and the Friendly Society, have come to an understanding which is inspired by socialist aims. Generally we may say that the tendency in all countries is for organised labour to become socialistic.

In nearly all countries the interests of the rural workers have been by socialists neglected or sacrificed for the industrial workers. This is particularly observable in agrarian questions and questions of tariff. They have not seen that at least temporary legislation has been required to save the rural workers from ruin by the exceptional competition of cheap farm products from America. Generally they have considered the interests of the workers as consumers rather than as producers. The Socialist Revolutionary Party in Russia have, however, seriously faced the agrarian problem in their programme in language of carefully calculated vagueness. Proceeding from the basis of the old communal ownership, they advocate the socialisation of all land under an administration of popular self-government, central and local. ‘The use of the land will be based on labour and the principle of equality, that is to say, it will guarantee the satisfaction of the needs of the producer, working himself individually or in society.’ Rent will be used for collective needs. The subsoil will belong to the State. In Finland, which is the most socialistic country of Europe, the Social Democratic Party has also specially dealt with the agrarian question.

While it has hitherto been the too general tendency of socialists to distrust and oppose the existing system of government and administration, they are now in point of fact taking a larger part in the work of state and commune. Such work, like all other practical work, will serve as a wholesome discipline for parties whose energies have been too much expended and wasted in sterile opposition and unprofitable criticism. And it may lead them to see that the antagonism of other parties may be due to honest ignorance or well-justified doubt. Even in Germany Bebel admits that so much intercourse in the Reichstag and its committees between Social Democrats and the other parties has led to a friendlier feeling among them. But the main point that we wish to bring out here is that organised and progressive labour in all countries and in all its departments, trade unions, co-operative societies, etc., is being more and more inspired by socialistic aims, and tends more and more to form a solid and organic movement on practical lines. How far the movement may in the future conform or attain to the collectivist type remains to be seen.

We must particularly emphasise the fact that nothing adverse to a reasonable patriotism, to religion, marriage, or the family, is now found in the programmes of parties or in the resolutions of congresses. The International and the Socialist Parties clearly recognise that their task is the emancipation of labour, and that it is of an economic and political nature. Those who mix up this great problem with questions of religion and marriage do so on their own responsibility. They have no right to speak on behalf of socialism, and have no influence or authority beyond what they may personally possess.

In our review we have had much to say of the possibilities of revolution. To all who shrink from sudden change the experience of the Labour Party in Australia should be reassuring. The Labour Party of the Commonwealth attained to power in 1904 and again in 1908. But the Party when in power can do very little. It is only one of three or four parties. When in power it must depend on outside support. Thus do the desires and ideals of men find their limitations in human nature and in our environment. What men have most to fear as the greatest danger, particularly in English-speaking lands, is not sudden change, but the indifference and neglect which make change slow and inadequate. The efforts of labour to raise itself deserve our entire sympathy and our most careful study.

Force devoid of counsel, whether it be of the reaction or of the revolution, will only result in increase of evil. Evil in itself each tends to aggravate and perpetuate the other. We can avert the baneful consequences of both only by pursuing with temperate energy the course of well-considered and beneficent change. To guide the vast and ever-growing labour movement of the world into paths which shall be wise, righteous, peaceful, and happy, this is the task and, we hope, will be the achievement of the twentieth century. Happy the men who have the good-will, sympathy, and insight to make a worthy contribution to this great work!

[1]

See p. 316.

[2]

See Inquiry into Socialism, 3rd ed. p. 96.

[3]

See p. 313.

CHAPTER XVI

CONCLUSION

In the last chapter we have seen how in many lands the social democracy is seeking to reach its goal by parliamentary action, and how in France, Italy, and Russia the socialist movement tends less or more to assume an aggressive and violent form. We have seen how socialism is everywhere becoming the creed of organised labour. The socialist parties and the trade unions are the organised and articulate expression of the labour of the world, and they are being combined into one great movement. We must, therefore, understand the socialist movement as having its basis and its background in a vast reality which as yet has only partially found voice and organisation. One of the most striking features in recent history is to be found in the symptoms which so frequently appear of a latent and undefined socialism, which only needs a fitting occasion to call it forth, and which forms a serious but incalculable quantity in the forces of our time. In these symptoms the seeing eye can discern labour moving uneasily under its chronic burden. The unorganised labour breaks out in street riots and agrarian risings. Labour partially organised in Russia shows an intense revolutionary energy. While the prevalent socialism seeks to gain its ends by peaceful action the situation contains serious possibilities of revolution, especially in Eastern Europe.

It behoves all men of good-will in every country to ponder the extreme gravity of the situation which is being established throughout the civilised world. Are we to face a confused struggle of the old sort between those who have and those who have not, or are we to see the blessed and beneficent action of a great transforming principle? Is it to be a contest for the possession of political power, carried on with violence, and pregnant with incalculable disaster to all concerned? Or may we expect to watch the peaceful progress of a new type of industry gradually but effectually realised, under the guidance of men inspired by high economic and ethical ideals?

In England we have good ground to hope for a peaceful solution. Among our working classes there is a notable absence of rancour, and even of bitterness. But it would be very unwise to count upon the continuance of this spirit, and most unfair to make it an occasion or excuse for further neglect. It should rather be a stimulus to a truer appreciation of the position and needs of the working class. If we survey English history to the beginning of the nineteenth century, our main difficulty is to determine whether our sins of omission or commission have been the greater. Both have been heinous and enormous. In the village community as it existed long ago we see comprehended all that we now call land, labour, and capital. For the worker it performed the services that are now rendered by the trade union, the co-operative society, the friendly and benefit society, and the insurance society. It stood also for local government, and even to a large degree for what now is national government, defence, justice, and for education so far as was possible long ago. The economic, social, and political life of the men of those earliest times was summed up in the village community.

On the rise of feudalism this village community was transformed into the manor, and on the downfall of feudalism the manor was changed to the modern parish, definable as ‘a distinct area, in which a separate poor-rate is, or can be, levied.’ For a long period after the Black Death in 1349 labour was scarce and had a great opportunity. Through the conversion of small holdings into sheep-runs and the dissolution of the monasteries, labour was made superfluous and helpless. It was a tragic reversal of the situation which has had serious consequences during all the centuries that have followed. The opportunities and advantages which were offered to the worker in ancient times by the village community were at the close of the reign of Elizabeth reduced to the miserable privilege of poor relief! The worker could not be regarded as included within the body politic or social. He was no longer a citizen or member of the community. He was a landless serf, the subject of the landed class, and his position was determined by class legislation and class administration.

When the change came from class legislation to laissez faire, his position was little improved. Centuries of oppression were followed by generations of neglect. Thus the English workers have suffered in succession from evils of two kinds, from the evils of oppression and from the evils of neglect. This aspect of English history is summed up and condemned in the single fact that we had no national system of education till 1870, a fact all the more striking because Scotland, though much later in its political and economic development, had an enlightened system of education at a very early date.

Factory workers gained much dining the nineteenth century. But even yet the State has hardly done anything substantial for the rural workers. Scarcely a voice has been raised for a class which has borne the chief burden of national industry, of colonisation and war, which for so many centuries carried Church and State, aristocracy and squirearchy, on its much-enduring shoulders. Some of us hoped that in 1885 the time had at last come. We all know what happened to defer it again. Will the State never give heed to such a duty till the demand grows clamorous and agitation menacing? No class has done so much and received so little as the rural workers. Every man connected with the ruling class in England should be ashamed to look one of the peasantry in the face. It is the continual neglect of the needs and claims of the people that makes a peaceful change difficult and prepares for revolution.

There are however, many very promising symptoms. Among these we may note a growing spirit of conciliation and of sympathy with the claims of labour, shown particularly in the friendly and courteous reception accorded to the newly founded Labour Party. In the ruling and possessing classes we may observe an increasing recognition of the necessity to make substantial concessions to the needs and aspirations of the workers. One of the brightest of recent symptoms was the atmosphere, enlightened, sympathetic, and generous, which pervaded the discussions at the Pan-Anglican Congress in 1908. It was a sign of the times. No one could accuse the Congress of being a revolutionary gathering. We may expect that the influence of its members among the conservative and influential classes all over the English-speaking world will have good results.

We have abundant evidence that the American people have done much hard thinking on social politics during recent years. A striking instance of it appears in President Roosevelt’s message to Congress in December 1908. We may summarise as follows the proposals for social legislation which it contained. Besides the general control of the great corporations which he has all along urged, he advocated supervision of corporate finance, a progressive inheritance tax on large fortunes, lightening of the burden of taxation on the small man, prohibition of child labour, diminution of woman labour, shortening of hours of all mechanical labour, an eight hours’ day to be extended as soon and as far as practicable to the entire work to be carried on by Government. He particularly urges the immediate passing of an effective Employers’ Liability Act. This is a good beginning, and it is a happy omen that such legislation should be advocated by a man with so fearless and stainless a record as Mr. Roosevelt. If the American people are prepared to follow him a beneficent solution of many grave problems is assured.

In the foregoing pages we have discussed the State as a possible engine of social amelioration. But we should not forget that the most hopeful movement of recent times, the co-operative movement, owes little to the State. The State has very great power, but it has no magical power. And it is a grave mistake to regard it too much as the pivot of social evolution. The State itself is only a phase of social evolution. We can trace its rise and progress in history, and its record has not been a good one. While it has been a decisive element of strength in the struggle for existence, it has also too long and too much been an organ for the exploiting of the mass of the people by the ruling minority.

Recent English socialism has given excessive prominence to the State; to the prejudice of the question, and for two reasons. The State means compulsion, and it suggests the official. Socialism carried out by the State suggests bureaucracy, and is opposed to freedom. Such a conception of the subject is most misleading and in the highest degree prejudicial to progress.

In its propaganda the Fabian Society has too often interpreted socialism in terms of the State and the municipality. Though most important, the State and the municipality are only historic phases of deeper principles and forces. It may be a way to make the subject intelligible. But this convenience is more than counterbalanced by the tactical disadvantage that orators on the other side find an easy way of ‘confuting’ socialism, by asking how the State or municipality can grapple with the vast complexity of modern industry, and how freedom could be conserved under the compulsory action of the State and its officials.

The proposal in the Fabian Basis to transfer industrial capital to the community ‘without compensation’ is open to still wider and more serious objection. The claim of socialism to be the future form of industrial organisation rests on its superior efficiency. It claims to prevail because it is best, and it needs no arbitrary exercise of power to carry it through. Theoretically and practically, from an economic and political, social, and moral point of view, it lays claim to superior competence to do the best for mankind by giving fuller scope to the free, many-sided development of the highest human life. In this and in other points the language of the Fabian Basis is too suggestive of the rigid and abstract collectivism set forth in the prevalent socialism.

If we are to understand the true inwardness of our subject we must go behind the State. Rightly understood, socialism is concerned with principles and tendencies which are more fundamental than the State. As I have said in another place, ‘Socialism is a new type of social and economic organisation, the aim and tendency of which are to reform the existing society, the State included. It is a principle of social change which goes beyond and behind the existing State, which will modify the State, but does not depend upon it for its realisation.’[1] To be more precise, socialism is a principle of economic organisation, with the correlated social and ethical principles constituting a great ideal, to which the State must be made to conform. How far the State may in this way need to be transformed is a question which hardly concerns us at present.

In the chapter on the Purified Socialism I attempted to show how ‘the true meaning of socialism is given in the dominating tendencies of social evolution.’[2] Through the fog of controversy we should clearly see that the fundamental principle of socialism is marked by extreme simplicity. The keynote of socialism is the principle of association. Only by associating for the ownership and control of land and capital can the people protect themselves against the evils of competition and monopoly. Only by association can they control and utilise the large industry for the general good. It means that industry should be carried on by free associated workers utilising a joint capital with a view to an equitable system of distribution. And in the political organisation of society it has for complement a like ideal, namely, that the old methods of force, subjection, and exploitation should give place to the principle of free association. Through the application and development of the principle of free association it seeks to transform State, municipality, and industry in all their departments.

Socialism rests on the great ideals of freedom and justice, of brotherhood and mutual service. It may well claim to be the heir of the great ideals of the greatest races. The Hebrew ideal of truth, righteousness, and mercy, which on its ethical side was widened and deepened into the Christian ideals of love, brotherhood, and mutual service, and the Greek ideal of the true, the good, and the beautiful, all may and should be accepted by socialism, and they should be supplemented by the Roman conceptions of law, order, and continuity, but with far wider aims and meanings. In its law of mutual service, by which it at once asserted the interdependence of the members of the social organism and a profound conception of social duty, Christianity went deeper, both in philosophy and practice, than the French Revolution with its watchwords of liberty, equality, and fraternity. All these ideals, though not seldom abused and discredited in the rough school of human experience, are in their essence profoundly true and real, and they all meet and are summed up in a worthy conception of the great socialistic ideal.

These ideals, it will be seen, go together; and it should be specially observed that freedom for the mass of mankind can be won and maintained only by association. In the competitive struggle the victors are few; the many are defeated and become subject. It is a delusion to suppose that freedom and competition are really compatible.

This truth has received striking exemplification in the recent history of America. In the course of a single generation the country has passed under a system of competition from industrial freedom to what looks very like industrial oligarchy. The men who could best adapt themselves to the conditions of competition have won; and the trusts which they have organised are the natural results. The oligarchy appears to be the very unwelcome but very natural result of the free struggle for success which has been the accepted system and the ideal of the American people.

Rightly understood, socialism will thus be seen to embody the highest conceptions of life, ancient and modern, and the highest aspirations of Christian ethics interpreted and applied by the experience of centuries. The failures which we have experienced in realising our ideals are no excuse for lowering them. They are far-reaching; they are limited by obvious natural facts, and cannot be realised in a day. But we should remember that every step forward brings us nearer to the goal.

This great ideal remains, therefore, as a far-shining goal to provoke and encourage the endeavours of men to attain it. We cannot lower it, but we should be grateful for every sincere attempt to reach it, for every successful step towards it. For the rise and growth of socialism a lower and, as some would reckon, a more solid foundation is all that we need. The necessary minimum is an enlightened self-interest. Socialism does not aim at the extinguishing or superseding of the self-regarding principle—that is impossible and absurd. It seeks to regulate it, to place it under social guidance and control. When and so far as the mass of the people in any particular country and throughout the world gain a moderate, rational, and enlightened view of their real needs and interests, then and so far will socialism tend to be realised. While the elect souls have been and are ready to go far in deeds of heroism and self-sacrifice, nothing more is demanded of the average mass of mankind than to learn to understand their true interests. On this prosaic basis much has already been done.

While the competitive system still holds the field, we have very good grounds for thinking that it should pass away, and is passing away. We have seen how, in accordance with the fundamental principles of socialism, the State is becoming, not in name only, but in reality, an association for the promotion of common national interests, in so far as they can well be furthered by the central organ; and we have also seen how the municipality or commune is really beginning to perform the same functions for local purposes. In the co-operative system, in the growth of trade unions, of arbitration, boards of conciliation, and similar forms of organisation, we see partial efforts towards a comprehensive system of social control over the industrial processes. And the natural development of the company is providing the mechanism whereby it may also be placed under social management. It is clear that along these lines the movement may spread till it cover the whole field of our social-economic life and place the competitive spirit under an effective and reasonable regulation.

It may be well here to speak more at length regarding the functions of the State under a rational socialism. Of all the absurdities entertained about socialism by its critics, and apparently also by some of its adherents, the most grotesque is the idea that everything will be done by the direct action of the State. It will rather be the aim of a reasonable socialism to diminish and lighten the pressure of the State as an engine of compulsion and coercion, and to offer suitable scope for the free action of the individual and the family, for free association and voluntary agreement. For this reason one of the most urgent needs of such a socialism will be to promote local autonomy, and also to foster what we may call the autonomy of the individual and the family, but in a living organic relation to the whole community.

We must therefore regard social action as proceeding not only from above downwards, but also from below upwards, and indeed mutually and reciprocally through all the members and departments of society, from the centre to the extremities and from the extremities to the centre. But even this is only a very imperfect explanation of an organic process which expresses itself in a consensus of life and action.

The federal idea also very imperfectly expresses the relation that the parts may bear to each other and to the whole in a great society, but it helps us to understand. This federal conception may have a great future, in Austria-Hungary, in Russia, and in the Balkan Peninsula, for the solution of political difficulties. The British Empire is being transformed into a free association of free States. And we may add that the highest directing agency in the Empire, the British Cabinet, is a combination of the leading men of the strongest party for the time being, who in the main hold the same political views, and who are united, not according to a statute or a written constitution, or any kind of formal contract, but by what for want of a better name we may call a gentlemen’s agreement. The British Cabinet may be regarded as a free association of gentlemen, the Premier presiding primus inter pares.

As regards socialism, one of the most urgent needs for the promoting of local and individual autonomy is fully to reconstitute the homestead and the village community. The homestead will satisfy the most natural craving for individual property and for a family and ancestral home, with all the beneficent and sacred association implied in such a home. ‘The area of the homestead should be sufficient to employ and support a family.’ In my book Progress and the Fiscal Problem (p. 172) I have spoken of such a homestead as a freehold. But it matters comparatively little what legal term we employ, provided the occupancy be permanent and not dependent on the will of officials connected with the central government. There should, however, be some guarantee that the social conditions of occupancy be fulfilled. Tax or rent might reasonably be paid into a social fund for collective needs. Here, as in other matters, one of the difficulties in elucidating a reasonable socialism lies in the fact that we have to use old words to express facts and institutions that may be expected to become new, or at least to undergo a material change in the course of social development. For such words, it should be observed, have not a final and conclusive meaning which can be stereotyped and put into a definition in a dictionary or legal enactment, but can only be unfolded in actual human use and in the process of changing human history. It is meant that the homestead and the village community be restored to a full and beneficent life under modern conditions and to serve modern needs.

Of the State for the near future the most desirable type undoubtedly is one which, while providing a strong and efficient central organisation, gives a real and substantial autonomy to the various parts and members of which it may be composed. And it will be one of the noblest functions of such a State to train to a higher social and political life the peoples which are now subject and by some are reckoned inferior. This duty Great Britain is performing in India and Egypt. The United States of America have undertaken a like office in Cuba and the Philippine Islands. It might even be possible under wise guidance to lead peoples like the Kaffirs direct from the warlike and tribal stage into the industrial and co-operative stage. Some day, perhaps, the best solution for racial difficulties in America may be to give some kind of special autonomy to the negroes in the hot regions where they are most thickly planted near the Gulf of Mexico.

Progress in these high matters will obviously depend on the growing insight and sympathy of the rulers, as well as on the increasing enlightenment, self-control, and political experience of the subject races. It is a most important matter that the task has been worthily begun. Such work is in quality like mercy—

It is twice blest:

It blesseth him that gives and him that takes.

It will most effectually tend to cultivate the nobler political life in the States that have undertaken it, and we may believe that it will in the course of time train the more backward races in the higher life of self-government, and introduce among them the co-operative organisation of industry which is required by modern conditions. In all this we see a striking contrast to the older empires, in which the domination of race, nation, and class was twice cursed, a curse alike to rulers and ruled, to master and slave, to lord and serf. In these matters generally a reasonable socialism demands the transformation of empire into a free association of free States bound by ties of mutual service. For a fuller treatment of this idea I may refer my readers to the chapter ‘Bonds of Empire’ in my book South Africa Old and New (p. 95).

Referring to questions which were raised in other parts of this book, we believe that recent modifications in the Iron Law of Wages, which have been alleged in confutation of Lassalle’s position, are really symptoms of the decline of capitalism. Such modifications are due to influences which are inconsistent with the continued predominance of capitalism. And here we may say explicitly that socialism has no controversy with the prevalent political economy in so far as it is a correct description and analysis of the prevalent economic system. The aim of socialism is to show why and how that system should and must pass away, and is passing away; and we may believe that this is a much worthier task, from the point of view both of science and the public good, than the microscopic investigation of the conditions of the competitive system, which constitutes so large a portion of the current political economy. Anyhow the practical aim of socialism is to remove and abolish the conditions under which the so-called laws of political economy had their validity. Regarding the assumption so often made by economists that individual self-interest is the solid basis on which science must build, we can only say that it is not science, but a one-sided and erroneous conception of human nature, of human society, and of social evolution, which obviously requires the most serious correction.

With regard to the population question, and the question of the struggle for existence so intimately connected with it, we can no longer ignore the practice of limitation of families, which has now become so prevalent. It cannot be regarded as a satisfactory solution of the population question. In the past it has been one of the surest signs of a stagnant and decadent nation. No race or nation, in which the rights and duties of motherhood or the family moralities are slightly valued, can hope permanently to maintain a high standard of life and worth. We may most surely forecast the future of a class or nation from the manner in which the rights and duties of motherhood are observed by it. To use the language of biology, race suicide is the most unfavourable variation which classes and nations can inflict upon themselves. But we are not in this book concerned with the general question. What we have to note here is that the practice of limiting families, having become so prevalent, will tend to diminish the intensity of the struggle for existence, which it is the aim of socialism to regulate. For this reason we must recognise it as a fact which has an important bearing on our subject.

It was a theory of the Marx school that the bourgeoisie, in the course of the development of capitalism, would be ‘no longer capable of controlling the industrial world.’[3] The recent development of the trust system in America and Germany has shown that the bourgeoisie are only too capable of doing so on the vastest scale. The leaders of the trusts are showing that they can regulate production, wages, prices, and the markets, not for nations only but for the world. Oligarchies showed their capacity in Rome, Carthage, Venice, and Holland for centuries. They came to ruin at last, but the causes of their ruin were wider and deeper than mere want of capacity. With these we are not concerned here. The concern of socialism is that the oligarchy or plutocracy which is foreshadowed in the gigantic trust system should not be allowed to gain a permanent footing, but should be regulated and transformed in the way required by the public good. The trust is a menace alike to labour and to society. With the growth of the trust system free competition really ceases to exist, and the alternative lies between a gigantic system of monopoly and socialism.

We believe also that Marx made a serious mistake in holding that the further development of capitalism will be marked by the growing ‘wretchedness, oppression, slavery, degeneracy, and exploitation’[4] of the working class. Facts and reasonable expectations combine clearly to indicate that the democracy, on which the social evolution of the future depends, is marked by a growing intellectual, moral, and political capacity, and by an increasing freedom and prosperity; and all these things make it only more ardent and capable for further progress and for the great tasks that lie before it. Social progress must in the last resort depend on the character and capacity of the human beings concerned in it. The democracy, the representative and promoter of the new order, shows a growing fitness for its world-historic mission. The claim of socialism to be the dominant form of social organisation in the future must ultimately be its efficiency to fulfil the great ends of social union, and the decisive element in this efficiency must be the fitness of the agents who are to realise it.

This is a point of supreme and far-reaching importance which it will be well for us to ponder. All social problems in the long run resolve themselves into the question of human character. The moral forces control the world and the course of history. It has been the special function of socialism to show that a real and durable freedom can be established only on an economic basis. We should also not forget that such freedom can be attained and secured only by loyalty to reason and especially to moral law. Freedom and social progress, reason and morality, are correlated and organic conceptions which go together and can thrive only in harmony.

Government of State and municipality is only a mechanism, of which the action for good or evil will depend on the spirit by which it is moved. The nationalisation of railways may merely open up a new field of corruption, if there is not integrity to manage them for the public good. Noble ideals are of no avail, if they remain outside of our spiritual framework: they must be assimilated and become part of us. Fine sentiments, unless they are consolidated into character and translated into habitual action, may become an insidious and harmful form of self-indulgence. Let it be understood that in the great struggle for a really free commonwealth against organised wealth, called plutocracy, on which men are now entering, we shall achieve victory only by deserving it. The sacred cause of freedom will not be maintained by mammon-worshippers, parasites, and pedants. No nation or class whose women are slaves of self-indulgence and of fashion can expect to be free. We cannot hope that freedom will thrive among the base and mean, or the hysterical, irresponsible, frivolous, and apathetic.

To use the words of John Milton, it was a ‘strenuous liberty’ which was cherished and maintained by our Puritan forefathers, the fathers and founders of the American Commonwealth. We know with what solemnity and earnestness, with what gravity, deliberation, and foresight they entered on the long struggle against Stuart tyranny. If the Americans and we are to succeed in the coming struggle against plutocracy, an abundant measure of the high and virile qualities which characterised their forefathers and ours will be needed.

Happily signs are not wanting that a spirit and character strenuous and capable of the task of reformation will be forthcoming. In all civilised countries, and especially in America, men have been accomplices in the sin of mammon-worship: success in the struggle for wealth, with its many base and unscrupulous incidents, has been far too highly esteemed. There has been, especially in America, a great moral awakening, which we may expect to have good results among all classes. As regards the working classes, we have seen how long and hard in most countries has been their discipline of privation and sorrow. The representatives of labour have for generations undergone a stern and severe training in prison and exile. In Russia to-day they have been suffering and inflicting horrors which have been far worse.

But as we have repeatedly had occasion to point out in this book, their training in constructive work, in political organisation, in trade unions, and co-operative societies has been vastly more efficacious. Most promising of all; as we have seen, is the co-operative movement, because it best combines the collective use of the means of production and exchange with individual freedom and responsibility. In the vast and ever-widening co-operative movement we can see a new society rising in the midst of the old. Every year it widens and grows, and we hope it will grow and widen till the old, with all its false and base ideals, its unreason, its militarism, its mismanagement, waste, and extravagance has been put away. Hearts have been burning with the sacred fire of noble ideals in the promoting of this grand work. Imaginations have been haunted with beautiful dreams, which have not been vain. But we should prize not less the patient and persevering integrity which, through a multitude of petty and prosaic details, is bearing the movement onward to an ever higher position in the world. At Ghent and other places we may already see both in spirit and material outline the city that is to be, the new society that is rising to make life happy and beautiful for the people who have mourned so long! In the application of the co-operative principle to agriculture we can at last see an ending to the oppression of the tiller of the soil by the usurer and middleman, which has been a stain on civilisation since it began thousands of years ago in the valleys of the Euphrates and the Nile.

The day is coming, perhaps it may be near at hand, when we shall be able to discover and to apply the true tests of greatness. When, with their help, we are able to write history in a really scientific manner, we shall find that the Napoleons and the others, the records of whose doings now fill our libraries, were not great at all, but the reverse of it, and that the true heroes and benefactors of the nineteenth century were the poor weavers of Rochdale and Ghent, who started and carried forward the co-operative movement. All honour to them for what they have done!

And yet all that they have done is only the solid and hopeful beginning of the realisation of our dreams. For the ideal is superb and exacting. Men are slow to move towards it. They find it hard even to understand and appreciate its beauty and excellence. Let us fervently hope that after the way towards a good and beautiful life for humanity has been so clearly pointed out, an ever-increasing multitude may have the wisdom to walk in it.

We believe that the transition to a reasonable socialism will be marked by a long and testing process of social selection. From the beginning of the movement socialist theories have been subjected to the tests of discussion and of experience. Socialist parties have also undergone very severe trial in debate, organisation, and action. Trade unions and labour parties have been obliged to go through a very hard course of discipline and of suffering.

It should be particularly observed that these tests more and more belong to the domain of intelligence, of moral character, and of skilled organisation. Success in the struggle for existence depends on fitness or adaptation to surrounding conditions. In the lower stages of the struggle for existence, as we saw in Chap. XII., the conditions were of a lower order. In the ascending struggle for a higher existence the conditions are higher and offer a severer and more exacting test. Labour which aspires to a higher life must stand those higher tests. Socialist programmes and resolutions are therefore perfectly right in dwelling on the urgent need for agitation, education, and organisation as a means of training the working class for its great duties and its high career. And we may repeat that the most urgent need of all is the capacity, moral and intellectual, for association.

Thus the transition to socialism can be made only by increasing and widening adaptation to the higher conditions of intelligence, character, and organisation. Once made, the change to socialism will place men in a higher moral and economic environment. As we saw, two vital human interests will under socialism be no longer subject to the conditions of competition, the working day and the ‘daily bread.’ Every able man will be under obligation to perform reasonable service for a competent livelihood; but beyond this his time and faculties will be his own. In this better environment men will find the rights and the opportunities which will give them the basis and scope for a better life. There will be corresponding duties and obligations. And for those who, from vices and defects of temperament or of habit, are not disposed to fulfil such obligations suitable measures of social discipline will need to be devised. The weak and disabled will receive suitable guidance and support. But we may be assured that all normally constituted men will be ready to respond to all natural and reasonable calls.

Social service will be the main field for emulation, rivalry, and ambition, and here the struggle for a higher life may be carried on under the better conditions which will prevail. We may call it competition if we will, but it will be competition on terms that differ entirely from those which exist under the present system. It will be competition for social distinction and rewards. The reticence, secrecy, and hypocrisy, the jealousy and detraction, which are now so common will pass away. Men will be able to live sincerely and openly. Their record will be an open and public one, which their fellow-citizens will be able to read and estimate fairly. And we should avoid the grave mistake of confounding the human qualities that make for success in the present competition with the qualities that would meet with approval under the new system. The qualities that command success at present we all know. The qualities that would meet with favour under a reasonable socialism will be those which answer to the great ideals we have spoken of, and particularly those which fit men for the best social service.

The waste and demoralisation, the injustice and cruelty, which are so rife under the present system will pass away. But the new era will work for much more than the mere abolition of evil. It will make for the positive and integral development of the highest human life. Natural capacity in all the forms that are consistent with social good will have free scope for unfolding itself. We may believe that in the majority of lives the exercise of natural endowment will be in direct conformity with the requirements of social service. It will obviously be for the good of society that each will do the work for which he is best fitted. Spiritual teaching, scientific discovery, literature, art, and music will all be duly prized and rewarded as modes of social service. But if the aspirant wishes to do his share of social work in the form of some ordinary craft, in order to devote his ample leisure to a special pursuit entirely of his own choosing, he will be free to do so. In this matter freedom will be an interest of the first order.

The lesson taught by much recent experience and the goal of many convergent tendencies seem undoubtedly to be, that society should control industry in its own interest. An industry carried on by free associated men would be in perfect accord with other forms and methods of progress, ethical, political, and economic. The purified socialism may be regarded as the co-ordination and consummation of every other form of human progress, inasmuch as it applies to the use of man all the factors of scientific, mechanical, and artistic development in harmony with the prevailing political and ethical ideas.

It is therefore a most desirable form of organisation. And many large and growing symptoms show that it is practicable. It is a type of organisation which may take shape in a thousand diverse ways, according to the differences in historic conditions and in national temperament. Within its limits, as we have seen, there will be reasonable scope for individual development and for every variety of liking and capacity consistent with the well-being of others; but exceptional talent and the generous enthusiasm which is its fitting accompaniment will more and more find their proper field in the service of society, an ideal which is already largely realised in the democratic state.

In a rational socialism we may therefore see a long and widening avenue of progress, along which the improvement of mankind may be continued in a peaceful and gradual, yet most hopeful, sure, and effective way. Such a prospect offers the best remedy for the apathy and frivolity, cynicism and pessimism, which are now so prevalent; and it is the most effectual counteractive to restlessness, discontent, and all the evils and excesses of the revolutionary spirit. Under it the social forces will consciously and directly work for social ideals. The ideal will be made real, and might and right will be reconciled. The real forces which operate in modern history will be shaped by beneficent ideals, till, as Tennyson sings,

Each man find his own in all men’s good,

And all men work in noble brotherhood.

May we not with Saint-Simon hope that the golden age is not behind but before us?

[1]

Inquiry into Socialism, 3rd edition, p. 133.

[2]

See pp. 287, 288.

[3]

See p. 148.

[4]

Kapital, p. 790.

APPENDIX

After the Revolution of 1830 the Saint-Simonists were referred to in the French Chamber of Deputies as a sect who advocated community of goods and of women. The following communication in their defence was addressed to the Chamber by Bazard and Enfantin, October 1, 1830:—

‘The Saint-Simonists undoubtedly do profess ideas on the future of property and of women which are special to themselves, and which are connected with views entirely new and special on religion, authority, liberty—in short, on all the great problems which are now being agitated over the whole of Europe with so much disorder and violence; but these ideas are very different from the opinions which men attribute to them.

‘The system of community of goods is always understood to mean equal division among all the members of society, either of the means of production or of the fruit of the labour of all.

‘The Saint-Simonists reject this equal division of property, which in their eyes would constitute a greater violence, a more revolting injustice, than the unequal division, which was originally effected by force of arms, by conquest.

‘For they believe in the natural inequality of men, and regard this inequality as the very basis of association, as the indispensable condition of social order.

‘They reject the system of community of goods, for this would be a manifest violation of the first of all the moral laws, which it is their mission to teach, and which enjoins that in the future each man should be placed according to his capacity, and rewarded according to his work.

‘But in virtue of this law they demand the abolition of all the privileges of birth without exception, and consequently the destruction of the right of inheritance, the greatest of those privileges, which at present comprehends them all, and of which the effect is to leave to chance the distribution of social privileges amongst the small number of those who can lay claim to them, and to condemn the most numerous class to depravation, ignorance, and misery.

‘They demand that all the instruments of labour, land, and capital, which at present form the divided stock of private proprietors, should be exploited by associations with a suitable gradation of functions, so that the task of each may be the expression of his capacity, and his riches the measure of his services.

‘The Saint-Simonists do not attack the institution of private property, except in so far as it consecrates for some the impious privilege of idleness—that is to say, of living on the labour of others; except as it leaves to the accident of birth the social status of individuals.

‘Christianity has delivered women from slavery, but it has nevertheless condemned them to an inferior position, and in Christian Europe we still see them everywhere deprived of religious, political, and civil rights.

‘The Saint-Simonists announce their final liberation, their complete emancipation, but they do not aim at abolishing the sacred law of marriage proclaimed by Christianity; on the contrary, they desire to fulfil this law, to give it a new sanction, to add to the authority and inviolability of the union which it consecrates.

‘Like Christians they demand that a single man be united to a single woman; but they teach that the wife should become the equal of the husband, and that, according to the special grace with which God has endowed her sex, she should be associated in the exercise of the triple function of religion, the State, and the family, so that the social individual, which hitherto has been the man only, may henceforward be man and woman.

‘The religion of Saint-Simon seeks only to abolish the shameful traffic, the legal prostitution, which, under the name of marriage, at present so frequently consecrates the unnatural union of self-sacrifice and egotism, of intelligence and ignorance, of youth and decrepitude.

‘Such are the most general ideas of the Saint-Simonists on the changes which they demand in the arrangements of property and in the social condition of women.’

PROGRAMME OF THE SOCIALISTIC WORKING MEN’S PARTY OF GERMANY

Gotha, May 1875.

I. Labour is the source of all wealth and all culture, and as useful work in general is possible only through society, so to society, that is to all its members, the entire product belongs; while as the obligation to labour is universal, all have an equal right to such product, each one according to his reasonable needs.

In the existing society the instruments of labour are a monopoly of the capitalist class; the subjection of the working class thus arising is the cause of misery and servitude in every form.

The emancipation of the working class demands the transformation of the instruments of labour into the common property of society and the co-operative control of the total labour, with application of the product of labour to the common good and just distribution of the same.

The emancipation of labour must be the work of the labouring class, in contrast to which all other classes are only a reactionary mass.

II. Proceeding from these principles, the socialistic working men’s party of Germany aims by all legal means at the establishment of the free state and the socialistic society, to destroy the Iron Law of Wages by abolishing the system of wage-labour, to put an end to exploitation in every form, to remove all social and political inequality.

The socialistic working men’s party of Germany, though acting first of all within the national limits, is conscious of the international character of the labour movement, and resolved to fulfil all the duties which this imposes on the workmen, in order to realise the universal brotherhood of men.

In order to prepare the way for the solution of the social question, the socialistic working men’s party of Germany demands the establishment of socialistic productive associations with State help under the democratic control of the labouring people. The productive associations are to be founded on such a scale both for industry and agriculture that out of them may develop the socialistic organisation of the total labour.

The socialistic working men’s party of Germany demands as the basis of the State:—

I. Universal, equal, and direct right of electing and voting, with secret and obligatory voting, of all citizens from twenty years of age, for all elections and deliberations in the State and local bodies. The day of election or voting must be a Sunday or holiday.

II. Direct legislation by the people. Questions of war and peace to be decided by the people.

III. Universal military duty. A people’s army in place of the standing armies.

IV. Abolition of all exceptional laws, especially as regards the press, unions, and meetings, and generally of all laws which restrict freedom of thought and inquiry.

V. Administration of justice by the people. Free justice.

VI. Universal and equal education by the State. Compulsory education. Free education in all public places of instruction. Religion declared to be a private concern.

The socialistic working men’s party demands within the existing society:

(1) Greatest possible extension of political rights and liberties in the sense of the above demands.

(2) A single progressive income-tax for State and commune, instead of the existing taxes, and especially of the indirect taxes that oppress the people.

(3) Unrestricted right of combination.

(4) A normal working-day corresponding to the needs of society. Prohibition of Sunday labour.

(5) Prohibition of labour of children, and of all women’s labour that is injurious to health and morality.

(6) Laws for the protection of the life and health of workmen. Sanitary control of workmen’s dwellings. Inspection of mines, of factories, workshops, and home industries by officials chosen by the workmen. An effective Employers’ Liability Act.

(7) Regulation of prison labour.

(8) Workmen’s funds to be under the entire control of the workmen.

PROGRAMME OF THE KNIGHTS OF LABOUR OF AMERICA, 1885

I. To make industrial and moral worth, not wealth, the true standard of individual and national greatness.

II. To secure to the workers the full enjoyment of the wealth they create; sufficient leisure in which to develop their intellectual, moral, and social faculties; all the benefits, recreation, and pleasures of association; in a word, to enable them to share in the gains and honours of advancing civilisation.

In order to secure these results, we demand of the State:

III. The establishment of Bureaus of Labour Statistics, that we may arrive at a correct knowledge of the educational, moral, and financial condition of the labouring masses.

IV. That the public lands, the heritage of the people, be reserved for actual settlers; not another acre for railroads or speculators: and that all lands now held for speculative purposes be taxed to their full value.

V. The abrogation of all laws that do not bear equally upon capital and labour, and the removal of unjust technicalities, delays, and discriminations in the administration of justice.

VI. The adoption of measures providing for the health and safety of those engaged in mining, manufacturing, and building industries; and for indemnification to those engaged therein for injuries received through lack of necessary safeguards.

VII. The recognition by incorporation of trades-unions, orders, and such other associations as may be organised by the working masses to improve their condition and protect their rights.

VIII. The enactment of laws to compel corporations to pay their employees weekly, in lawful money, for the labour of the preceding week, and giving mechanics and labourers a first lien upon the product of their labour to the extent of their full wages.

IX. The abolition of the contract system on national, State, and municipal works.

X. The enactment of laws providing for arbitration between employers and employed, and to enforce the decision of the arbitrators.

XI. The prohibition by law of the employment of children under fifteen years of age in workshops, mines, and factories.

XII. To prohibit the hiring out of convict labour.

XIII. That a graduated income-tax be levied.

And we demand at the hands of the Congress:

XIV. The establishment of a national monetary system, in which a circulating medium in necessary quantity shall issue direct to the people, without the intervention of banks; that all the national issue shall be full legal tender in payment of all debts, public and private; and that the Government shall not guarantee or recognise any private banks, or create any banking corporations.

XV. That interest-bearing bonds, bills of credit or notes shall never be issued by the Government, but that, when need arises, the emergency shall be met by issue of legal tender, non-interest-bearing money.

XVI. That the importation of foreign labour under contract be prohibited.

XVII. That in connection with the post-office, the Government shall organise financial exchanges, safe deposits and facilities for deposit of the savings of the people in small sums.

XVIII. That the Government shall obtain possession, by purchase, under the rights of eminent domain, of all telegraphs, telephones, and railroads, and that hereafter no charter or licence be issued to any corporation for construction or operation of any means of transporting intelligence, passengers or freight.

And while making the foregoing demands upon the State and National Government, we will endeavour to associate our own labours:

XIX. To establish co-operative institutions such as will tend to supersede the wage system, by the introduction of a co-operative industrial system.

XX. To secure for both sexes equal pay for equal work.

XXI. To shorten the hours of labour by a general refusal to work for more than eight hours.

XXII. To persuade employers to agree to arbitrate all differences which may arise between them and their employees, in order that the bonds of sympathy between them may be strengthened and that strikes may be rendered unnecessary.

BASIS OF THE FABIAN SOCIETY

The Fabian Society consists of socialists.

It therefore aims at the reorganisation of society by the emancipation of Land and Industrial Capital from individual and class ownership, and the vesting of them in the community for the general benefit. In this way only can the natural and acquired advantages of the country be equitably shared by the whole people.

The Society accordingly works for the extinction of private property in land and of the consequent individual appropriation, in the form of rent of the price paid for permission to use the earth, as well as for the advantages of superior soils and sites.

The Society, further, works for the transfer to the community of the administration of such industrial capital as can conveniently be managed socially. For, owing to the monopoly of the means of production in the past, industrial inventions and the transformation of surplus income into capital have mainly enriched the proprietary class, the worker being now dependent on that class for leave to earn a living.

If these measures be carried out, without compensation (though not without such relief to expropriated individuals as may seem fit to the community), rent and interest will be added to the reward of labour, the idle class now living on the labour of others will necessarily disappear, and practical equality of opportunity will be maintained by the spontaneous action of economic forces with much less interference with personal liberty than the present system entails.

For the attainment of these ends the Fabian Society looks to the spread of socialist opinions, and the social and political changes consequent thereon, including the establishment of equal citizenship for men and women. It seeks to promote these by the general dissemination of knowledge as to the relation between the individual and society in its economic, ethical, and political aspects.

The work of the Fabian Society takes, at present, the following forms:—

(1) Meetings for the discussion of questions connected with socialism.

(2) The further investigation of economic problems, and the collection of facts contributing to their elucidation.

(3) The issue of publications containing information on social questions, and arguments relating to socialism.

(4) The promotion of socialist lectures and debates in other societies and clubs.

(5) The representation of the Society in public conferences and discussions on social questions.

INDEX

Alexander II., great hopes at his accession, 256;

rise of the revolutionary party during his reign, 257;

assassination, 265.

Alexander III., and the revolutionary party, 270, 325.

Allen, W., 62.

Altruism, 11.

America, no class divisions till the middle of the nineteenth century, 334; great transformation in industrial conditions, 335;

organised capital confronted with organised labour, 335-336;

the plutocracy and Rockefeller, 371;

problem before the American people, 372, etc.

Anarchism, first taught by Proudhon, 56;

the Marx school and the anarchist, 151;

its relation to the International, 190-192;

Michael Bakunin, its great apostle, 237;

set forth by Bakunin, 240, etc.;

and at the trial at Lyons, 243-245;

summed up and criticised, 246;

a leading form of socialism in Russia, 257-272;

France, Italy, 243, 324;

in Spain, 324.

Anarchy, socialism wrongly identified with, 7.

Art as related to socialism, 11.

Association of all classes of all nations founded by Owen, 3.

Association, productive, with State help, 108, 110, 119.

Australia, Labour Party in, 334;

its power limited by circumstances, 393-394.

Austria, 325, 377-378.

Babeuf, his communism, 18.

Bakunin, Michael, at Paris, 42;

activity in the International, 190, 191;

his life, 237;

opinions, 240;

his influence in Russia, 260.

Bax, Belfort, 329.

Bazard, 26.

Bebel, 208, 212, 218, 315, etc., 380.

Belgium, 319.

Bentham, Jeremy, 62.

Bernstein, 220, 314.

Bismarck, his work in German history, 79;

his historic insight, 94;

his relation to the German Social Democracy, 216, etc.;

his State socialism, 347.

Blanc, Louis, his method of remuneration, 9;

his activity during the Revolution of 1848, 42;

life and theories, 43;

points of agreement with Lassalle, 273, 274.

Bourgeoisie, the middle or capitalist class, 41, 98, 139, etc., 172, etc.;

its position in Russia, 255, 266;

a theory of Marx, 411.

Capital, aim of socialism with regard to it, 8, 9, 10, etc.;

contrast between labour and capital, 25;

individual capital, an institution in Fourier’s system, 38, 40;

how regarded by L. Blanc, 45, 46;

by Proudhon, 56;

how to be obtained by the productive associations of Lassalle, 108;

a historic category, 113;

word wrongly used by socialists, 114;

exposition of capital by Marx, 138, etc.;

its international relation to labour, 171, etc.;

its place in anarchism, 241, 245;

its place in a reasonable socialism, 290, etc.

Capitalism, correct name for the prevalent economic order as controlled by capitalists, 115, 141, 145.

Catholic Church, its societies and their property, 16;

how related to Saint-Simon, 25, 29;

its social activity, 340.

Chartism, its import, 42, 70.

Christian socialism, in England, 71;

in Germany, 342.

Christian Social Union, 343.

Christianity, relation to socialism, 10, 71, 339, 389.

Clifford, 343.

Collectivism, economic basis of the prevalent socialism, 12;

its place in L. Blanc’s system, 46;

goal of Lassalle’s scheme, 111;

economic basis of anarchism, 247, 249;

goal of the social democratic movement, 229;

its abstractness criticised, 290;

the goal of international socialism, 369.

Colonial system, 368.

Commune, the, its place in Fourier’s system, 31;

at Paris, 188;

its place in anarchism, 243, 273;

its general place in socialism, 289, 346.

Communism, its relation to socialism, 16, 18.

Communist Party, formation, 133, 172;

its manifesto, 173, etc., 366, etc.

Conjunctures, Lassalle’s theory of, 112.

Co-operative movement, really founded by Owen, 70;

promoted by Christian socialists in England, 71;

movement in Germany and its relation to Lassalle, 84, 106, 107, 116;

commended by the International, 180, 184, 185;

its recent progress, 350, etc.

Darwin, relation of his doctrine of development to economics, 281;

relation of his teaching to that of Marx, 294;

relation of his theory to socialism, 295, etc.

Democracy, socialism its economic complement, 10;

one of the conditions necessary for the growth of socialism, 18;

the political basis of L. Blanc’s schemes, 43, etc.;

development of, 47;

democracy of workers, 99, 120;

how trained for its great task, 148, 160;

its importance, 284, 287, 288;

its place in social evolution, 357, 381, etc.

Denmark, 318.

Distribution, problem of, how solved in various schools of socialism, 9;

such methods criticised, 291;

moral and scientific basis of, 360.

Dönniges, Fraulein von, 91.

Empire, the conception of, and socialism, 406-409.

Enfantin, 26, 27, 29.

Engels, Fr., 73, 130, 132, 135;

his exposition of the function of the State, 150.

Fabian Society, origin and aims, 329, 330;

some of its views criticised, 331, 400, 401;

its basis, 427.

Feudalism, in relation to socialism, 11, 19, 24;

its overthrow by the capitalist class, 97, 142;

not a stereotyped system, 278;

evolved by the struggle for existence, 298.

Fourier, method of remuneration, 9;

admitted private capital, 13;

a founder of socialism, 15;

grew up under the immediate influence of the French Revolution, 18;

life and opinions, 31;

contrast to Saint-Simon and the centralising socialism, 31, 273, 274;

his safeguards for individual and local freedom, 290.

George, Henry, 328.

Hegel, influence on Lassalle, 74;

on Marx, 131, 151, 152, 161, 279;

his doctrine of development, 294.

Held, Adolf, definition of socialism, 5.

Holland, 318.

Homestead, its place in a reasonable socialism, 407.

Hyndman, 328.

Independent Labour Party, 330, 332.

India, 368, 408.

Individuality under socialism, 11, 307, 406, 420.

International, its aim, 6;

Marx and the International, 166;

history, 168;

influence in it of Bakunin, 190;

influence of it on the Russian revolutionary movement, 260;

revival, 363, etc.

Italy, 322, 381, 391.

Janet, Paul, definition of socialism, 5.

Jaurèz, 321.

Keir Hardie, Mr., 333.

Kent, Duke of, 66.

Ketteler, Bishop, 88, 340.

Kingsley, 71.

Kropotkin, Prince, 243, 244.

Labour Party in Britain, how founded, 332-333;

its strength and character, 333.

Laissez-faire, 4;

economic optimism implied in it, 14;

entirely unsuitable to Prussia, 280;

its adherents in England, 347;

influence on labour, 398.

Lassalle, at Paris, 42;

on the power of lying, 49;

his life, 73;

his theories, 95;

his relations to Marx, 95;

Rodbertus, 95, 124;

position of the Social Democratic Party at his death, 203;

Bismarck’s relation to him, 216;

his influence on the revolutionary party in Russia, 259;

points of agreement with L. Blanc, 273, 274;

his presentation of socialism, 279;

exaggerated estimate of the influence of the social principle, 306;

his Iron Law of Wages, considered in relation to the evolution of capitalism, 409.

Laveleye, definition of socialism, 5.

Lavroff, 243, 260.

Leroux, Pierre, 26.

Liebknecht, W., 208, 210, 218, 233, etc., 316.

Lodge, Senator, on the very serious situation established by the trusts, 372, 376.

Ludlow, 71.

Malthus, relation to Owen, 69;

his theory and the population question, 296;

struggle for existence, 297.

Manchester theory of the State, 102.

Marx, Karl, his relation to the existing State, 6;

his school the most influential form of contemporary socialism, 15;

Proudhon’s right of aubaine, compared with the theory of capital, 56;

his theory of surplus value enunciated by the Chartists, 71;

comparison of his character with Lassalle’s, 92;

relation of his theory of surplus value to Lassalle’s Iron Law of Wages, 103;

collectivism common to him with Lassalle and Rodbertus, 111;

use of the word capital, 114;

life and theories, 130;

criticism of his theories, 154;

compared with Adam Smith, 162;

his place in history, 166;

founding of the Communist League, 172;

influence on the International, 179, etc.;

influence on the Social Democratic movement in Germany, 230;

influence on the revolutionary movement in Russia, 259;

socialist movement should not be identified with his views, 275;

his abstractness, 279;

in England, 328;

his views criticised, 386, etc., 411, etc.

Materialism, relation to socialism, 10;

as held by Marx, 151, 158, etc.;

held by Bakunin, 240;

socialism purified from it, 285.

Maurice, 71.

Mazzini, 179, 243.

Militarism, 368.

Mill, J. S., his conception of socialism, 286.

Milton, 414.

Mir, the Russian form of the village community, 251, etc.;

its analogy to the community of Owen, the phalange of Fourier, and the free commune of Bakunin, 273;

its possible disintegration, 384;

the starting-point of agrarian reform, 392.

More, Thomas, 16.

Municipality, or commune, as a factor in the evolution of socialism, 189, 346, etc.

Napoleon I., 169.

Napoleon III., 57, 178.

New Christianity of Saint-Simon, 25.

New Harmony, 66.

New Lanark, 60.

New Zealand, a democratic State, 349.

Nicholas, Emperor, 63.

Nihilism, the correct name for the early stage of the revolutionary movement in Russia, 257, etc.

Orbiston, 96.

Owen, Robert, founder of the association of all classes of all nations, 3;

one of the historic founders of socialism, 4, etc.;

the influences that conditioned his work, 19;

life and theories, 59;

doctrine of surplus value held in his school, 137;

influence on Russian revolutionary movement, 259;

desire for a ready-made socialism, 273.

Phalange, 31, 33, 273.

Plato, 16.

Political economy, its relation to socialism, 14;

historical and ethical conception of, promoted by socialism, 281;

its relation to socialism again considered, 338, 339, 409-410.

Progressist party in Germany, 79, 83, 208.

Proletariat, the class excluded from land and capital and dependent on wage-labour, 8;

brought into active historic contrast to the bourgeoisie, 41;

its share in the risings at Paris, 1848, 50;

its position conditioned by the development of capitalism, 139;

and necessary to it, 141;

its great rôle in the final dissolution of capitalism, 148, etc.;

its emancipation, the great aim of international socialism, 172;

Marx the scientific expounder of the conditions of its existence and of its emancipation, 173, etc.;

the Commune at Paris considered as a struggle for its deliverance, 189;

how existing in Russia, 260;

the democracy still mainly a proletariat, 357;

Marx’s theory of its future development, 412.

Proudhon, one of the leaders of the socialism of 1848, 42;

life and theories, 51;

theory of surplus value underlies his extravagances, 137;

the founder of anarchism, 56, 237;

his influence in the International, 183;

his exposition of anarchism, 248.

Ralahine, 67.

Reybaud, 4.

Rockefeller, 371, 376.

Rodbertus, his general conception of socialism, 13;

relation to Lassalle, 95, 96;

life and theories, 123;

relation to Lassalle and Marx, 137;

too abstract and Prussian, 279.

Roosevelt, his proposals for social reform, 399.

Roscher, 5.

Rousseau, 18.

Russia, the development of socialistic opinion, 21;

anarchism, 237;

revolutionary opinion, 250, etc.;

renewal of revolutionary activity, 325-327;

its repression, 382-384.

Saint-Simon, one of the historic founders of socialism, 4, 15, etc.;

his life and opinions, 22;

represented the principle of authority in the development of socialism, 274;

the golden age, 420.

Schäffle, definition of socialism, 12;

too abstract and Prussian in his conception of socialism, 277;

his high rank as an economist, 339.

Scheel, 6.

Schulze-Delitzsch, his schemes, 84;

Lassalle’s treatment of him, 86;

Lassalle’s criticism of his schemes, 107;

the same examined, 115, etc.

Schweitzer, 203, 207, etc.

Shaw, G. B., 330.

Smith, Adam, in relation to freedom, 17;

compared with Marx, 162;

his principle of natural liberty, 278, 292.

Social Democracy, its programme in Germany, 9;

as taught by L. Blanc, 48;

by Lassalle, 84, etc.;

German, 197, etc., 311, etc.;

its general aim, 363, etc.

Social Democratic Federation, 329.

Social selection, 304, 416.

Social workshops of Louis Blanc, 45, 48.

Socialist League, 329.

Socialist Revolutionary Party in Russia, 326, 382.

Spectator, 382.

State, in relation to socialism, 6;

historic relation to property, 16;

its place in Saint-Simon, 31;

in Louis Blanc, 44;

in Lassalle, 101, etc.;

in Rodbertus, 127;

its rôle as explained by Fr. Engels, 150;

Bakunin’s relation to it, 240;

two opposing tendencies with regard to it in socialist movement, 274;

its place in socialism, 345, etc.;

further discussed, 400, 401, 405-409.

Stepniak’s estimate of the numbers of the Russian Revolutionary Party, 271.

Strike, general, advocated by Bebel to meet certain emergencies, 316.

Surplus value, theory of, as held by Chartists, 71;

as held by Owenites, Rodbertus, Proudhon, etc., 137;

its development by Marx, 138, etc.;

criticism of Marx’s theory of it, 154.

Times, the, and the International, 187.

Trade unions and socialism, 367, 369, 391-405.

Trusts, how they have grown in America, 335-337;

a remedy for the evils of competition, 354-355;

not confined to America, 355;

a proof of the inadequacy of competition, 359, but a natural result of it, 404;

a menace to labour and to society, 411.

Turgenief, his novel, Fathers and Sons, 258.

Tytherley, 67.

Tzardom, its great function in Russian history, 251, 266, etc.

Vienna, great demonstration, 377.

Village community, its place in history, 253;

in English history, 397;

should be restored to life under modern conditions, 407.

Voltaire, 18, 246.

Vooruit, at Ghent, 352.

Wages, Iron Law of, 103, etc., 384.

Wagner, definition of socialism, 12;

justly charged with abstractness, 277.

Webb, Sidney, 330.

Wells, H. G., 330.

Westcott, 343.

William I., Emperor, 79.

William II., Emperor, 121, 195.

THE END

Printed by R. & R. Clark, Limited, Edinburgh.

*** END OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK A HISTORY OF SOCIALISM ***

Updated editions will replace the previous one—the old editions will be renamed.

Creating the works from print editions not protected by U.S. copyright law means that no one owns a United States copyright in these works, so the Foundation (and you!) can copy and distribute it in the United States without permission and without paying copyright royalties. Special rules, set forth in the General Terms of Use part of this license, apply to copying and distributing Project Gutenberg™ electronic works to protect the PROJECT GUTENBERG™ concept and trademark. Project Gutenberg is a registered trademark, and may not be used if you charge for an eBook, except by following the terms of the trademark license, including paying royalties for use of the Project Gutenberg trademark. If you do not charge anything for copies of this eBook, complying with the trademark license is very easy. You may use this eBook for nearly any purpose such as creation of derivative works, reports, performances and research. Project Gutenberg eBooks may be modified and printed and given away—you may do practically ANYTHING in the United States with eBooks not protected by U.S. copyright law. Redistribution is subject to the trademark license, especially commercial redistribution.

START: FULL LICENSE

THE FULL PROJECT GUTENBERG LICENSE

PLEASE READ THIS BEFORE YOU DISTRIBUTE OR USE THIS WORK

To protect the Project Gutenberg™ mission of promoting the free distribution of electronic works, by using or distributing this work (or any other work associated in any way with the phrase “Project Gutenberg”), you agree to comply with all the terms of the Full Project Gutenberg™ License available with this file or online at www.gutenberg.org/license.

Section 1. General Terms of Use and Redistributing Project Gutenberg™ electronic works

1.A. By reading or using any part of this Project Gutenberg™ electronic work, you indicate that you have read, understand, agree to and accept all the terms of this license and intellectual property (trademark/copyright) agreement. If you do not agree to abide by all the terms of this agreement, you must cease using and return or destroy all copies of Project Gutenberg™ electronic works in your possession. If you paid a fee for obtaining a copy of or access to a Project Gutenberg™ electronic work and you do not agree to be bound by the terms of this agreement, you may obtain a refund from the person or entity to whom you paid the fee as set forth in paragraph 1.E.8.

1.B. “Project Gutenberg” is a registered trademark. It may only be used on or associated in any way with an electronic work by people who agree to be bound by the terms of this agreement. There are a few things that you can do with most Project Gutenberg™ electronic works even without complying with the full terms of this agreement. See paragraph 1.C below. There are a lot of things you can do with Project Gutenberg™ electronic works if you follow the terms of this agreement and help preserve free future access to Project Gutenberg™ electronic works. See paragraph 1.E below.

1.C. The Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation (“the Foundation” or PGLAF), owns a compilation copyright in the collection of Project Gutenberg™ electronic works. Nearly all the individual works in the collection are in the public domain in the United States. If an individual work is unprotected by copyright law in the United States and you are located in the United States, we do not claim a right to prevent you from copying, distributing, performing, displaying or creating derivative works based on the work as long as all references to Project Gutenberg are removed. Of course, we hope that you will support the Project Gutenberg™ mission of promoting free access to electronic works by freely sharing Project Gutenberg™ works in compliance with the terms of this agreement for keeping the Project Gutenberg™ name associated with the work. You can easily comply with the terms of this agreement by keeping this work in the same format with its attached full Project Gutenberg™ License when you share it without charge with others.

1.D. The copyright laws of the place where you are located also govern what you can do with this work. Copyright laws in most countries are in a constant state of change. If you are outside the United States, check the laws of your country in addition to the terms of this agreement before downloading, copying, displaying, performing, distributing or creating derivative works based on this work or any other Project Gutenberg™ work. The Foundation makes no representations concerning the copyright status of any work in any country other than the United States.

1.E. Unless you have removed all references to Project Gutenberg:

1.E.1. The following sentence, with active links to, or other immediate access to, the full Project Gutenberg™ License must appear prominently whenever any copy of a Project Gutenberg™ work (any work on which the phrase “Project Gutenberg” appears, or with which the phrase “Project Gutenberg” is associated) is accessed, displayed, performed, viewed, copied or distributed:

This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere in the United States and most other parts of the world at no cost and with almost no restrictions whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org. If you are not located in the United States, you will have to check the laws of the country where you are located before using this eBook.

1.E.2. If an individual Project Gutenberg™ electronic work is derived from texts not protected by U.S. copyright law (does not contain a notice indicating that it is posted with permission of the copyright holder), the work can be copied and distributed to anyone in the United States without paying any fees or charges. If you are redistributing or providing access to a work with the phrase “Project Gutenberg” associated with or appearing on the work, you must comply either with the requirements of paragraphs 1.E.1 through 1.E.7 or obtain permission for the use of the work and the Project Gutenberg™ trademark as set forth in paragraphs 1.E.8 or 1.E.9.

1.E.3. If an individual Project Gutenberg™ electronic work is posted with the permission of the copyright holder, your use and distribution must comply with both paragraphs 1.E.1 through 1.E.7 and any additional terms imposed by the copyright holder. Additional terms will be linked to the Project Gutenberg™ License for all works posted with the permission of the copyright holder found at the beginning of this work.

1.E.4. Do not unlink or detach or remove the full Project Gutenberg™ License terms from this work, or any files containing a part of this work or any other work associated with Project Gutenberg™.

1.E.5. Do not copy, display, perform, distribute or redistribute this electronic work, or any part of this electronic work, without prominently displaying the sentence set forth in paragraph 1.E.1 with active links or immediate access to the full terms of the Project Gutenberg™ License.

1.E.6. You may convert to and distribute this work in any binary, compressed, marked up, nonproprietary or proprietary form, including any word processing or hypertext form. However, if you provide access to or distribute copies of a Project Gutenberg™ work in a format other than “Plain Vanilla ASCII” or other format used in the official version posted on the official Project Gutenberg™ website (www.gutenberg.org), you must, at no additional cost, fee or expense to the user, provide a copy, a means of exporting a copy, or a means of obtaining a copy upon request, of the work in its original “Plain Vanilla ASCII” or other form. Any alternate format must include the full Project Gutenberg™ License as specified in paragraph 1.E.1.

1.E.7. Do not charge a fee for access to, viewing, displaying, performing, copying or distributing any Project Gutenberg™ works unless you comply with paragraph 1.E.8 or 1.E.9.

1.E.8. You may charge a reasonable fee for copies of or providing access to or distributing Project Gutenberg™ electronic works provided that:

- • You pay a royalty fee of 20% of the gross profits you derive from the use of Project Gutenberg™ works calculated using the method you already use to calculate your applicable taxes. The fee is owed to the owner of the Project Gutenberg™ trademark, but he has agreed to donate royalties under this paragraph to the Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation. Royalty payments must be paid within 60 days following each date on which you prepare (or are legally required to prepare) your periodic tax returns. Royalty payments should be clearly marked as such and sent to the Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation at the address specified in Section 4, “Information about donations to the Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation.”

- • You provide a full refund of any money paid by a user who notifies you in writing (or by e-mail) within 30 days of receipt that s/he does not agree to the terms of the full Project Gutenberg™ License. You must require such a user to return or destroy all copies of the works possessed in a physical medium and discontinue all use of and all access to other copies of Project Gutenberg™ works.

- • You provide, in accordance with paragraph 1.F.3, a full refund of any money paid for a work or a replacement copy, if a defect in the electronic work is discovered and reported to you within 90 days of receipt of the work.

- • You comply with all other terms of this agreement for free distribution of Project Gutenberg™ works.

1.E.9. If you wish to charge a fee or distribute a Project Gutenberg™ electronic work or group of works on different terms than are set forth in this agreement, you must obtain permission in writing from the Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation, the manager of the Project Gutenberg™ trademark. Contact the Foundation as set forth in Section 3 below.

1.F.

1.F.1. Project Gutenberg volunteers and employees expend considerable effort to identify, do copyright research on, transcribe and proofread works not protected by U.S. copyright law in creating the Project Gutenberg™ collection. Despite these efforts, Project Gutenberg™ electronic works, and the medium on which they may be stored, may contain “Defects,” such as, but not limited to, incomplete, inaccurate or corrupt data, transcription errors, a copyright or other intellectual property infringement, a defective or damaged disk or other medium, a computer virus, or computer codes that damage or cannot be read by your equipment.

1.F.2. LIMITED WARRANTY, DISCLAIMER OF DAMAGES - Except for the “Right of Replacement or Refund” described in paragraph 1.F.3, the Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation, the owner of the Project Gutenberg™ trademark, and any other party distributing a Project Gutenberg™ electronic work under this agreement, disclaim all liability to you for damages, costs and expenses, including legal fees. YOU AGREE THAT YOU HAVE NO REMEDIES FOR NEGLIGENCE, STRICT LIABILITY, BREACH OF WARRANTY OR BREACH OF CONTRACT EXCEPT THOSE PROVIDED IN PARAGRAPH 1.F.3. YOU AGREE THAT THE FOUNDATION, THE TRADEMARK OWNER, AND ANY DISTRIBUTOR UNDER THIS AGREEMENT WILL NOT BE LIABLE TO YOU FOR ACTUAL, DIRECT, INDIRECT, CONSEQUENTIAL, PUNITIVE OR INCIDENTAL DAMAGES EVEN IF YOU GIVE NOTICE OF THE POSSIBILITY OF SUCH DAMAGE.

1.F.3. LIMITED RIGHT OF REPLACEMENT OR REFUND - If you discover a defect in this electronic work within 90 days of receiving it, you can receive a refund of the money (if any) you paid for it by sending a written explanation to the person you received the work from. If you received the work on a physical medium, you must return the medium with your written explanation. The person or entity that provided you with the defective work may elect to provide a replacement copy in lieu of a refund. If you received the work electronically, the person or entity providing it to you may choose to give you a second opportunity to receive the work electronically in lieu of a refund. If the second copy is also defective, you may demand a refund in writing without further opportunities to fix the problem.

1.F.4. Except for the limited right of replacement or refund set forth in paragraph 1.F.3, this work is provided to you ‘AS-IS’, WITH NO OTHER WARRANTIES OF ANY KIND, EXPRESS OR IMPLIED, INCLUDING BUT NOT LIMITED TO WARRANTIES OF MERCHANTABILITY OR FITNESS FOR ANY PURPOSE.

1.F.5. Some states do not allow disclaimers of certain implied warranties or the exclusion or limitation of certain types of damages. If any disclaimer or limitation set forth in this agreement violates the law of the state applicable to this agreement, the agreement shall be interpreted to make the maximum disclaimer or limitation permitted by the applicable state law. The invalidity or unenforceability of any provision of this agreement shall not void the remaining provisions.

1.F.6. INDEMNITY - You agree to indemnify and hold the Foundation, the trademark owner, any agent or employee of the Foundation, anyone providing copies of Project Gutenberg™ electronic works in accordance with this agreement, and any volunteers associated with the production, promotion and distribution of Project Gutenberg™ electronic works, harmless from all liability, costs and expenses, including legal fees, that arise directly or indirectly from any of the following which you do or cause to occur: (a) distribution of this or any Project Gutenberg™ work, (b) alteration, modification, or additions or deletions to any Project Gutenberg™ work, and (c) any Defect you cause.

Section 2. Information about the Mission of Project Gutenberg™

Project Gutenberg™ is synonymous with the free distribution of electronic works in formats readable by the widest variety of computers including obsolete, old, middle-aged and new computers. It exists because of the efforts of hundreds of volunteers and donations from people in all walks of life.

Volunteers and financial support to provide volunteers with the assistance they need are critical to reaching Project Gutenberg™’s goals and ensuring that the Project Gutenberg™ collection will remain freely available for generations to come. In 2001, the Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation was created to provide a secure and permanent future for Project Gutenberg™ and future generations. To learn more about the Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation and how your efforts and donations can help, see Sections 3 and 4 and the Foundation information page at www.gutenberg.org.

Section 3. Information about the Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation

The Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation is a non-profit 501(c)(3) educational corporation organized under the laws of the state of Mississippi and granted tax exempt status by the Internal Revenue Service. The Foundation’s EIN or federal tax identification number is 64-6221541. Contributions to the Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation are tax deductible to the full extent permitted by U.S. federal laws and your state’s laws.

The Foundation’s business office is located at 809 North 1500 West, Salt Lake City, UT 84116, (801) 596-1887. Email contact links and up to date contact information can be found at the Foundation’s website and official page at www.gutenberg.org/contact

Section 4. Information about Donations to the Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation

Project Gutenberg™ depends upon and cannot survive without widespread public support and donations to carry out its mission of increasing the number of public domain and licensed works that can be freely distributed in machine-readable form accessible by the widest array of equipment including outdated equipment. Many small donations ($1 to $5,000) are particularly important to maintaining tax exempt status with the IRS.

The Foundation is committed to complying with the laws regulating charities and charitable donations in all 50 states of the United States. Compliance requirements are not uniform and it takes a considerable effort, much paperwork and many fees to meet and keep up with these requirements. We do not solicit donations in locations where we have not received written confirmation of compliance. To SEND DONATIONS or determine the status of compliance for any particular state visit www.gutenberg.org/donate.

While we cannot and do not solicit contributions from states where we have not met the solicitation requirements, we know of no prohibition against accepting unsolicited donations from donors in such states who approach us with offers to donate.

International donations are gratefully accepted, but we cannot make any statements concerning tax treatment of donations received from outside the United States. U.S. laws alone swamp our small staff.

Please check the Project Gutenberg web pages for current donation methods and addresses. Donations are accepted in a number of other ways including checks, online payments and credit card donations. To donate, please visit: www.gutenberg.org/donate.

Section 5. General Information About Project Gutenberg™ electronic works

Professor Michael S. Hart was the originator of the Project Gutenberg™ concept of a library of electronic works that could be freely shared with anyone. For forty years, he produced and distributed Project Gutenberg™ eBooks with only a loose network of volunteer support.

Project Gutenberg™ eBooks are often created from several printed editions, all of which are confirmed as not protected by copyright in the U.S. unless a copyright notice is included. Thus, we do not necessarily keep eBooks in compliance with any particular paper edition.

Most people start at our website which has the main PG search facility: www.gutenberg.org.

This website includes information about Project Gutenberg™, including how to make donations to the Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation, how to help produce our new eBooks, and how to subscribe to our email newsletter to hear about new eBooks.

Table of Contents

- A HISTORY OF SOCIALISM

- INTRODUCTION

- CHAPTER II EARLY FRENCH SOCIALISM

- SAINT-SIMON

- FOURIER

- CHAPTER III FRENCH SOCIALISM OF 1848

- LOUIS BLANC

- PROUDHON

- CHAPTER IV EARLY ENGLISH SOCIALISM

- CHAPTER V FERDINAND LASSALLE

- I. Life

- II. Theories of Lassalle

- CHAPTER VI RODBERTUS
- CHAPTER VII KARL MARX
- CHAPTER VIII THE INTERNATIONAL
- CHAPTER IX THE GERMAN SOCIAL DEMOCRACY
- CHAPTER X ANARCHISM
- CHAPTER XI THE PURIFIED SOCIALISM

- CHAPTER XII SOCIALISM AND THE EVOLUTION THEORY

- CHAPTER XIII RECENT PROGRESS OF SOCIALISM
- CHAPTER XIV TENDENCIES TOWARDS SOCIALISM
- CHAPTER XV THE PREVALENT SOCIALISM
- CHAPTER XVI CONCLUSION

- APPENDIX

- PROGRAMME OF THE SOCIALISTIC WORKING MEN’S PARTY OF GERMANY

- PROGRAMME OF THE KNIGHTS OF LABOUR OF AMERICA, 1885

- BASIS OF THE FABIAN SOCIETY

- INDEX

- THE FULL PROJECT GUTENBERG LICENSE