WHAT SOCIALISM IS NOT
It is no use telling you what _Socialism_ is until I have told you what
it is not. Those who do not wish you to be Socialists have given you
very false notions about _Socialism_, in the hope of setting you against
it. They have brought many false charges against Socialists, in the hope
of setting you against them. So you have come to think of _Socialism_ as
a thing foolish, or vile, and when it is spoken of, you turn up your
noses (instead of trying to see beyond them) and turn your backs on it.
A friend offers to give you a good house-dog; but someone tells you it
is mad. Your friend will be wise to satisfy you that the dog is _not_
mad before he begins to tell you how well it can guard a house. Because,
as long as you think the dog will bite you, you are not in the frame of
mind to hear about its usefulness.
A sailor is offering to sell an African chief a telescope; but the chief
has been told that the thing is a gun. Then before the sailor shows the
chief what the glass is good for, he will be wise to prove to him that
it will not go off at half-cock and blow his eye out.
So with _Socialism_: before I try to show you what it really is, I must
try to clear your mind of the prejudice which has been sown there by
those who wish to make you hate Socialism because they fear it.
As a rule, my friends, it will be wise for you to look very carefully
and hopefully at anything which Parliament men, or employers, or
pressmen, call bad or foolish, because what helps you hinders them, and
the stronger you grow the weaker they become.
Well, the men who have tried to smash your unions, who have written
against you, and spoken against you, and acted against you in all great
strikes and lock-outs, are the same men who speak and write against
_Socialism_.
And what have they told you? Let us take their commonest statements, and
see what they are made of.
They say that Socialists want to get up a revolution, to turn the
country upside down by force, to seize all property, and to divide it
equally amongst the whole people.
We will take these charges one at a time.
As to _Revolution_. I think I shall be right if I say that not one
Socialist in fifty, at this day, expects or wishes to get _Socialism_ by
force of arms.
In the early days of _Socialism_, when there were very few Socialists,
and some of those rash, or angry, men, it may have been true that
_Socialism_ implied revolution and violence. But to-day there are very
few Socialists who believe in brute force, or who think a revolution
possible or desirable. The bulk of our Socialists are for peaceful and
lawful means. Some of them hope to bring _Socialism_ to pass by means of
a reformed Parliament; others hope to bring it to pass by means of a
newer, wiser, and juster public opinion.
I have always been dead against the idea of revolution, for many
reasons. I do not think a revolution is _possible_ in Britain. Firstly,
because the people have too much sense; secondly, because the people are
by nature patient and kindly; thirdly, because the people are too _free_
to make force needful.
I do not think a revolution is _advisable_. Because, firstly, it would
be almost sure to fail; secondly, if it did not fail it would put the
worst kind of men into power, and would destroy order and method before
it was ready to replace them; thirdly, because a State built up on force
is very likely to succumb to fraud; so that after great bloodshed,
trouble, labour, and loss the people would almost surely slip down into
worse evils than those against which they had fought, and would find
that they had suffered and sinned in vain.
I do not believe in force, and I do not believe in haste. What we want
is _reason_ and _right_; and we can only hope to get reason and right by
right and reasonable means.
The men who would come to the top in a civil war would be fighters and
strivers; they would not be the kind of men to wisely model and
patiently and justly rule or lead a new State. Your barricade man may be
very useful--at the barricades; but when the fighting is over, and his
work is done, he may be a great danger, for he is not the man, usually,
to stand aside and make way for the builders to replace by right laws
the wrong laws which his arms have destroyed.
Revolution by force of arms is not desirable nor feasible; but there is
another kind of revolution from which we hope great things. This is a
revolution of _thought_. Let us once get the people, or a big majority
of the people, to understand _Socialism_, to believe in _Socialism_, and
to work for _Socialism_, and the _real_ revolution is accomplished.
In a free country, such as ours, the almighty voice is the voice of
public opinion. What the public _believe in_ and _demand_ has got to be
given. Who is to refuse? Neither King nor Parliament can stand against a
united and resolute British people.
And do not suppose, either, that brute force, which is powerless to get
good or to keep it, has power to resist it or destroy it. Neither
truncheons nor bayonets can kill a truth. The sword and the cannon are
impotent against the pen and the tongue.
Believe me, we can overcome the constable, the soldier, the Parliament
man, the landlord, and the man of wealth, without shedding one drop of
blood, or breaking one pane of glass, or losing one day's work.
Our real task is to win the trust and help of the _people_ (I don't mean
the workers only, but the British people), and the first thing to be
done is to educate them--to teach them and tell them what we mean; to
make quite clear to them what _Socialism_ is, and what it is _not_.
One of the things it is not, is British imitation of the French
Revolution. Our method is persuasion; our cause is justice; our weapons
are the tongue and the pen.
Next: As to seizing the wealth of the country and sharing it out amongst
the people. First, we do not propose to _seize_ anything. We do propose
to get some things,--the land, for instance,--and to make them the
property of the whole nation; but we mean that to be done by Act of
Parliament, and by purchase. Second, we have no idea of "sharing out"
the land, nor the railways, nor the money, nor any other kind of wealth
or property, equally amongst the people. To share these things out--if
they _could_ be shared, which they could not be--would be to make them
_private_ property, whereas we want them to be _public_ property, the
property of the British _nation_.
Yet, how often have you been told that Socialists want to have the
wealth equally divided amongst all? And how often have you been told
that if you divided the wealth in that way it would soon cease to be
equally divided, because some would waste and some would save?
"Make all men equal in possessions," cry the non-Socialists, "and in a
very short time there would be rich and poor, as before."
This is no argument against _Socialism_, for Socialists do not seek any
such division. But I want to point out to you that though it _looks_
true, it is _not_ true.
It is quite true that, did we divide all wealth equally to-morrow, there
would in a short time be many penniless, and a few in a way of getting
rich; but it is only true if we suppose that after the sharing we
allowed private ownership of land and the old system of trade and
competition to go on as before. Change those things: do away with the
bad system which leads to poverty and to wealth, and we should have no
more rich and poor.
_Destroy_ all the wealth of England to-morrow--we will not talk of
"sharing" it out, but _destroy_ it--and establish _Socialism_ on the
ruins and the bareness, and in a few years we should have a prosperous,
a powerful, and a contented nation. There would be no rich and there
would be no poor. But the nation would be richer and happier than it
ever has been.
Another charge against Socialists is that they are _Atheists_, whose aim
is to destroy all religion and all morality.
This is not true. It is true that some Socialists are Agnostics and some
are Atheists. But Atheism is no more a part of Socialism than it is a
part of Toryism, or of Radicalism, or of Liberalism. Many prominent
Socialists are Christians, not a few are clergymen. Many Liberal and
Tory leaders are Agnostics or Atheists. Mr. Bradlaugh was a Radical, and
an Atheist; Prof. Huxley was an opponent of Socialism, and an Agnostic.
Socialism does not touch religion at any point. It deals with laws, and
with _industrial_ and _political_ government.
It is not sense to say, because some Atheists are Socialists, that all
Socialists are Atheists.
Christ's teaching is often said to be socialistic. It is not
socialistic; but it is communistic, and Communism is the most advanced
form of the policy generally known as _Socialism_.
The charge of _Immorality_ is absurd. Socialists demand a higher
morality than any now to be found. They demand perfect _honesty_.
Indeed, it is just the stern morality of _Socialism_ which causes
ambitious and greedy men to hate _Socialism_ and resist it.
Another charge against Socialists is the charge of desiring _Free Love_.
Socialists, it has been said, want to destroy home life, to abolish
marriage, to take the children from their parents, and to establish
"Free _Love_."
"Free Love," I may say, means that all men and women shall be free to
love as they please, and to live with whom they please. Therefore, that
they shall be free to live as "man and wife" without marriage, to part
when they please without divorce, and to take other partners as they
please without shame or penalty.
Now, I say of this charge, as I have said of the others, that there may
be some Socialists in favour of free love, just as there are some
Socialists in favour of revolution, and some who are not Christians; but
I say also that a big majority of Socialists are not in favour of free
love, and that in any case free love is no more a part of _Socialism_
than it is a part of Toryism or of Liberalism.
It is not sense to say, because some Free-Lovers are Socialists, that
all Socialists are Free-Lovers.
I believe there is not one English Socialist in a hundred who would vote
for doing away with marriage, or for handing over the children to the
State. I for one would see the State farther before I would part with a
child of mine. And I think you will generally find that those who are
really eager to have all children given up to the State are men and
women who have no children of their own.
Now, I submit that a childless man is not the right man to make laws
about children.
As for the questions of free love and legal marriage, they are very hard
to deal with, and this is not the time to deal with them. But I shall
say here that many of those who talk the loudest about free love do not
even know what love _is_, or have not sense enough to see that just as
love and lust are two very different things, so are free love and free
lust very different things.
Again, you are not to fall into the error of supposing that the
relations of the sexes are all they should be at present. Free _love_,
it is true, is not countenanced; but free _lust_ is very common.
And although some Socialists may be in favour of free _love_, I never
heard of a Socialist who had a word to say in favour of prostitution. It
may be a very wicked thing to enable a free woman to _give_ her love
freely; but it is a much worse thing to allow, and even at times compel
(for it amounts to that, by force of hunger) a free woman to _sell_ her
love--no, not her _love_, poor creature; the vilest never sold that--but
to sell her honour, her body, and her soul.
I would do a great deal for _Socialism_ if it were only to do that one
good act of wiping out for ever the shameful sin of prostitution. This
thing, indeed, is so horrible that I never think of it without feeling
tempted to apologise for calling myself a man in a country where it is
so common as it is in moral Britain.
There are several other common charges against Socialists; as that they
are poor and envious--what we may call Have-nots-on-the-Have; that they
are ignorant and incapable men, who know nothing, and cannot think;
that, in short, they are failures and wasters, fools and knaves.
These charges are as true and as false as the others. There may be some
Socialists who are ignorant and stupid; there may be some who are poor
_and_ envious; there may be some who are Socialists because they like
cakes and ale better than work; and there may be some who are clever,
but not too good--men who will feather their nests if they can find any
geese for the plucking.
But I don't think that _all_ Tories and Liberals are wise, learned,
pure, unselfish, and clever men, eager to devote their talents to the
good of their fellows, and unwilling to be paid, or thanked, or praised,
for what they do.
I think there are fools and knaves,--even in Parliament,--and that some
of the "Bounders-on-the-Bounce" find it pays a great deal better to
toady to the "Haves" than to sacrifice themselves to the "Have-nots."
And I think I may claim that Socialists are in the main honest and
sensible men, who work for _Socialism_ because they believe in it, and
not because it pays; for its advocacy seldom pays at all, and it never
pays well; and I am sure that _Socialism_ makes quicker progress amongst
the educated than amongst the ignorant, and amongst the intelligent than
amongst the dull.
As for brains: I hope such men as William Morris, Karl Marx, and
Liebknecht are as well endowed with brains as--well, let us be modest,
and say as the average Tory or Liberal leader.
But most of the charges and arguments I have quoted are not aimed at
_Socialism_ at all, but at Socialists.
Now, to prove that some of the men who espouse a cause are unworthy, is
not the same thing as proving that the cause is bad.
Some parsons are foolish, some are insincere; but we do not therefore
say that Christianity is unwise or untrue. Even if _most_ parsons were
really bad men we should only despise and condemn the clergy, and not
the religion they dishonoured and misrepresented.
The question is not whether all Socialists are as wise as Mr. Samuel
Woods, M.P., or as honest as Jabez Balfour; _the_ question is whether
_Socialism_ is a thing in itself just, and wise, and _possible_.
If you find a Socialist who is foolish, laugh at him; it you find one
who is a rogue, don't trust him; if you find one "on the make," stop his
making. But as for _Socialism_, if it be good, accept it; if it be bad,
reject it.
Here allow me to quote a few lines from _Merrie England_--
Half our time as champions of Socialism is wasted in denials of
false descriptions of Socialism; and to a large extent the anger,
the ridicule, and the argument of the opponents of Socialism are
hurled against a Socialism which has no existence except in their
own heated minds.
Socialism does not consist in violently seizing upon the property of
the rich and sharing it out amongst the poor.
Socialism is not a wild dream of a happy land where the apples will
drop off the trees into our open mouths, the fish come out of the
rivers and fry themselves for dinner, and the looms turn out
ready-made suits of velvet with golden buttons without the trouble
of coaling the engine. Neither is it a dream of a nation of
stained-glass angels, who never say damn, who always love their
neighbours better than themselves, and who never need to work unless
they wish to.
And now, having told you what _Socialism is not_, it remains for me to
tell you what _Socialism is_.