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Title: A history of socialism, 4th ed.
Author: Thomas Kirkup
Release date: July 9, 2024 [eBook #73997]
Language: English
Original publication: London: Adam and Charles Black, 1909
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*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK A HISTORY OF SOCIALISM, 4TH ED. ***
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
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