Produced by Peter Vachuska, Martin Pettit and the Online
Distributed Proofreading Team at http://www.pgdp.net
CONTEMPORARY SOCIALISM
BY
JOHN RAE, M.A.
_SECOND EDITION, REVISED AND ENLARGED_
New York
CHARLES SCRIBNER'S SONS
1891
PREFACE.
In the present edition the original work has not only been carefully
revised, but very considerably enlarged. The chapters on "The Progress
and Present Position of Socialism" and "Russian Nihilism" contain a few
sentences retained from the first edition, but otherwise they are
entirely new--the former necessarily so on account of the nature of its
subject, and the latter on account of the importance of the fresh
materials that have been recently given to the world. A new chapter has
been added on "Anarchism," and another, of considerable extent, on
"State Socialism." No apology is required for the length of the latter,
for though State socialism is only a growth of yesterday, it has already
spread everywhere, and if it is not superseding socialism proper, it is
certainly eclipsing it in practical importance, and to some extent even
modifying it in character. Revolutionary socialism, growing more
opportunist of late years, seems losing much of its old phrenzy, and
getting domesticated into a shifty State socialism, fighting a
parliamentary battle for minor, though still probably mischievous,
changes within the lines of existing society, instead of the old war _a
l'outrance_ against existing society in whatever shape or form. Anyhow
the socialistic controversy in the immediate future will evidently be
fought along the lines of State socialism. It is there the hostile
parties meet, and it is well therefore to get, if we can, some more
exact knowledge of the ground. Some of the other chapters in the work
have been altered here and there for the purpose of bringing their
matter, where necessary, down to date, or embodying fresh illustrative
evidence, or occasionally of making the exposition itself more lucid and
effective; but it is unnecessary to specify these alterations in detail.
_April, 1891._
CONTENTS.
CHAPTER I.
INTRODUCTORY.
Revival of Socialism, 1--Extinction of Old Types, 2--Main Surviving
Type, Social Democracy, 3--Its Two Varieties, Socialist and Anarchist,
4--Its Relations to Political Democracy, 4--Definition of Socialism,
5--Cairnes on Mill's Profession of Socialism, 6--Ruling Characteristic
common to Old and New Socialism, 9--State Socialism, 11--Conservative
Socialism, 13--The Minimum of Socialism, 14--First Rise of
Social Democracy, 15--Rousseau, 16--Baboeuf, 17--Connection of
Socialism with Democracy, 18--The Danger to Free Institutions,
24--Necessity and Probability of Wider Diffusion of Property, 25.
CHAPTER II.
THE PROGRESS AND PRESENT POSITION OF SOCIALISM.
National Conditions Favourable to Socialism, 30--Germany, 30--Progress
of Socialist Vote, 33--Action of Socialist Party in Reichstag, 34--Party
Programme, 38--Halle Congress of 1891, 40--France, 45--Anarchists,
47--Socialist Revolutionary Party, 48--Possibilists, 50--Blanquists,
53--The Socialist Group in the Chamber, 53--Austria, 54--Italy,
57--Spain, 60--Portugal, 65--Norway and Sweden, 66--Denmark,
67--Belgium, 70--Holland, 72--Switzerland, 73--United States, 77--Boston
Anarchists, 77--Mr. Henry George, 78--Mr. Bellamy's Nationalism,
79--Anarchists, 80--Socialistic Labour Party, 81--Knights of Labor,
82--England, 83--Social Democrats, 84--Anarchists, 86--Christian
Socialists, 87--Fabians, 88--Land Nationalization, 89--Scotland,
90--Australia, 90.
CHAPTER III.
FERDINAND LASSALLE.
German Socialists before Lassalle, 93--Favourable Conditions for
Socialist Agitation in Germany, 94--Character of Lassalle, 96--The
Hatzfeldt Case, 99--Theft of the _Cassette_, 100--Trial for Sedition,
101--Literary Activity, 102--Letter to Leipzig Working Men,
103--Foundation of General Working Men's Association, 105--Lassalle's
Agitation, 105--His Death, 106--Funeral, 108--Political Views, 109--Idea
and Position of the Working Class, 109--Functions of the State,
111--Economic Doctrines, 113--Anarchic Socialism of the present
Industrial _Regime_, 117--Ricardo's "Iron Law" of Wages, 119--A
National, not an International Socialist, 124--Internationally not
Peculiar to Socialist Parties, 126--Reason of Socialist Condemnation of
Patriotism, 127.
CHAPTER IV.
KARL MARX.
Reception of his Work on Capital, 128--The Young Hegelians,
130--Feuerbach's Humanism, 131--"Young Germany," 136--Weitling and
Albrecht, 137--Early Socialistic Leanings of Marx, 139--Marx in Paris,
141--in Brussels, 142--The Communist League, 142--Communist Manifesto of
1847, 144--_New Rhenish Gazette_, 146--Marx in London, 147--The
International, its Rise and Fall, 149--Tendency to Division in
Revolutionary Parties, 152--"Das Capital," 155--Historical Rise of
Capitalism, 156--Origin of Surplus Value, 157--Theory of Value,
160--Price, 163--Criticism of his Theory of Value, 165--Wages,
166--Normal Day of Labour, 168--Machinery, 170--Piecework, 172--Relative
Over-population, 174.
CHAPTER V.
THE FEDERALISM OF CARL MARLO.
Rodbertus, 179--Professor Winkelblech (Marlo), 180--His Awakening to
Social Misery, 180--Application to Economic Study for Solution,
181--View of Social Problem, 182--Heathen Idea of Right (Monopolism) to
be replaced by Christian Idea of Right (Panpolism), 183--Liberalism and
Communism both Utopias, 184--Federalism alone realizes Christian Idea of
Right, 188--Natural Right of all to Property, 189--Right to Labour and
to Fruits of Labour, 191--Necessity of Controlling Increase of
Population, 192--Of Suppressing Unproductive Acquisition,
193--Collectivization of Land and Productive Capital, 193.
CHAPTER VI.
THE SOCIALISTS OF THE CHAIR.
The Name, 195--Held's Vindication of it, 196--Objections to it,
197--Founders of the Historical School, 200--Their Departure from
Manchester Party, 202--Eisenach Congress, 202--The Historical Method,
204--The Historical School a Realist School, 205--An Ethical School,
209--Their Theory of the State, 211--The Social Question, 212--Von
Scheel, 215--Brentano, 215.
CHAPTER VII.
THE CHRISTIAN SOCIALISTS.
Socialism and Christianity, 218--Views of St. Simon and Cabet,
218--Irreligious Character of Contemporary Socialism, 219--The Christian
Socialists of England in 1850, 220--Those of Germany now, 223--The
Catholic Group, 223--Ketteler, 224--Moufang, 230--Protestant Group,
233--Stoecker, Todt, 234--Christian Social Working Men's Party, 239--The
Social Monarchical Union, 241--The Evangelical Social Congress of 1890,
241--Is there a Specific Christian Social Politics? 242--Christian
Socialism in Austria, 242--In France, 243--International Catholic Social
Congress of 1890 at Liege, 243--The Pope's Encyclical, 245.
CHAPTER VIII.
ANARCHISM.
Recent Activity of Anarchists, 247--Individualist Anarchists and
Communist Anarchists, 248--Latter are Ultra-Socialist,
249--Ultra-Democratic, 250--Proudhon's Anarchic Government, 250--No
Representative Institutions, 251--Prince Krapotkin's Plan for Housing
the Poor, 252--The Russian _Mir_ the Anarchist Model of Government,
252--Anarchism Atheistic, 254--Ultra-revolutionary, 255--Propaganda of
Deed, 256--Disunity and Weakness of Anarchism, 257.
CHAPTER IX.
RUSSIAN NIHILISM.
Haxthausen's Opinion of Russia's Safety from Socialism, 259--Successive
Phases of Nihilism, 260--Origin of Nihilism, 261--Influence of the
Rural Commune on Revolutionary Thought, 262--Decabrist Conspiracy
of 1825, 263--Extreme Opinions at Russian Universities in Reign
of Nicholas, 264--Ascension of Alexander II., 264--Alexander Herzen,
265--Turgenieff and the word Nihilist, 266--Koscheleff and Fircks's
Accounts of Nihilism, 267--Causes of it, 268--Nihilist Sunday Schools,
Tchernycheffsky, 269--Effect of Emancipation of Serfs, 270--Ruined
Landlords, 270--Jews, 271--Heretics, 272--Bakunin, 273--Herzen's
Recantation of Revolutionism, 273--Bakunin in London, 274--His
"Amorphism," 274--His Picture of the Good Revolutionist, 275--Netchaieff
founds Branches of the International in Russia, 276--The
first Attempt on the Czar, 276--Reversion to Arbitrary and Despotic
Government, 276--Bakunin and Lavroff at Zurich, 278--"Going into
the People," 279--Secret Societies, 280--Nihilist Arrests and Trials,
281--Terrorism, 282--Assassination of Czar, 283--Present Socialist
Parties, 283--The Black Division Party, 283--Alarming Growth of a
Proletariat in Russia, 284--Impoverishment of Peasantry, 286--Break
up of Communistic System, 288--Dissolution of House Communities,
289--The Black Division, 292--The Labour Emancipation League, 295.
CHAPTER X.
SOCIALISM AND THE SOCIAL QUESTION.
A Social Question recognised by Contemporary Economists, 297--Mr.
Cairnes on the Situation, 297--Socialist Indictment of Existing
_Regime_, 299--1st, the "Iron Law of Wages," 300--Alleged Deterioration
of Wage-Labourers' Position Unfounded, 301--Their Standard of Living
Better, 302--Their Individual Share in the National Wealth more,
304--The "Iron Law" Misunderstood by Socialists, 305--The "Iron Law"
Itself Unsound, 307--The Rate of Wages really Depends on the _per
capita_ Production, 307--Prospects of Increasing _per capita_
Production, 312--Piecework, 314--Shorter Day of Labour, 318--2nd,
Alleged Multiplication of Vicissitudes, 323--Effects of Machinery,
323--Temporary Redundancies, 324--Serious Redundancies Lessening,
324--Value of Good System of Commercial Statistics, 325--3rd, Alleged
Expropriation of the Value of the Labourer's Work, 327--How Value is
Constituted, 327--Justice of Interest, 329--Social Importance of Work of
Capitalist Employer, 330--Public Value of Private Property, 333--Value
of Freedom, 334--_Laissez-faire_, 336--Necessity for Opportunities of
Investment, 338--Co-operative Production, 338--Advantage of Interlacing
of Classes, 340--Reason of exceptionally good House Accommodation among
Working Classes of Sheffield, 341.
CHAPTER XI.
STATE SOCIALISM.
_1. State Socialism and English Economics._
M. Leon Say on State Socialism, 345--State Property and State Industries
in Germany, 345--Mr. Goschen and others on Change in English
Opinion regarding State Intervention, 346--Their Views Exaggerated
and undiscriminating, 347--Little done in England in Nationalizing
Industries, 348--Much done in enlarging Popular Rights, 349--English
Thinkers never Believers in _Laissez-faire_, 351--Except Mr. H. Spencer,
352--Adam Smith's "Simple and Obvious System of Natural
Liberty," 353--His Theory of Social Politics, 356--Ricardo's Views,
359--McCulloch's, 360--On the Manufacturing System, 362--On
Crises, 363--On Irish Pauper Labour, 364--On Factory Legislation,
366--On Housing the Poor, 366--On the Poor Law, 368--The So-called
Manchester School, 372--The English Theory of Social Politics, 373.
_2. The Nature and Principle of State Socialism._
Different Definitions of Socialism, 374--Origin and Meaning of State
Socialism, 379--The Social Monarchists, 380--Rodbertus, 380--His
Theory of Social Politics, 381--M. de Laveleye and Establishment of
Equality of Conditions, 384--Alleged Disinheritance of the People
from the Primitive Economic Rights, 385--Mr. Chamberlain's Doctrine
of "Ransom," 386--Professor A. Wagner's State Socialism, 387.
_3. State Socialism and Social Reform._
Cobden's Praise of the Prussian Government for its Social Work,
393--Property, a Requisite of Progress, not of Freedom, 394--Limits
of Legitimate Intervention, 395--Short Definition of State Socialism,
399--Error of Plea for State Socialism as Extinguisher of Chance,
399--As Saving the Waste from Competition, 400--Wastefulness of
Socialism, 401--As shown in Samoa, 401--In England under Old Poor
Law, 402--In Brook Farm, 402--Idleness the Destroyer of the American
Owenite and Fourierist Communities, 403--Idleness, the Great
Difficulty in the Shaker and Rappist Communities, 405--"Old Slug,"
406--Contentment with Squalid Conditions, 407--Special Liability to
Mismanagement, 408.
_4. State Socialism and State Management._
Natural Qualities and Defects of State as Industrial Manager, 409--Post
Office, 410--Dockyards, 410--Forestry, 412--Mint and other
Forms of Attesting, 412--Monopolies, 413--Municipal Management
of Gas and Water Supply, 413--Land Nationalization, 414--State
Railways, 415--State Insurance in New Zealand, 417--Results of
Joint-Stock Management and Private Management in Massachusetts, 417.
_5. State Socialism and Popular Right._
Why Impracticable Legislation is Socialistic, 418--Rule of Intervention
for Realizing Rights, 419--Right to Existence, 421--Right to
Superannuation, 421--Right to Labour, 423--Problem of the Unemployed,
425--Free Education, Libraries, Parks, 427--Where Stop?
427--Legal Fixing of Prices, as in Fares and Rates, 428--Of Fair Rent,
429--Of Fair Wages, 430--Compulsory Arbitration, 430--Legal
Minimum Wages, 431--Sweating System and Starvation Wages,
432--International Compulsory Eight Hours Day, 434.
CHAPTER XII.
THE AGRARIAN SOCIALISM OF HENRY GEORGE.
Mr. George Predicts that his Book would find Apostles, 441--Fulfilment
of the Prediction, 441--Sisyphism, 442--Loses His Religious Belief
through Perception of Poverty, 443--Recovers it again, 445--1st, His
Problem, 445--Its unverified Assumption, 445--Evidence of Facts
against it, 448--Average Scale of Living has Risen, 449--Proportion
of Paupers, unable to obtain it, has Declined, 449--Special Decline of
Able-bodied Pauperism, 450--Increase of Length of Life, 452--Mr.
George Changes his Problem from one of Quantity to one of Proportion,
453--Rent really no larger Proportion of National Wealth or
even of Agricultural Produce than before, 454--Wages no Smaller
Proportion, 456--Indications of Increasing Distribution of Wealth,
457--2nd, Mr. George's Explanation, 461--Alleged Tendency of
Wages to a Minimum that gives but a Bare Living, 462--The Wages
Fund and Population Theories, 464--Mr. George's New Population
Theory, 465--His New Wages Fund Theory, 468--His Explanation
of the Distribution of Wealth without taking Profits into Account,
474--Views on Rent, 476--on Interest, 483--Wages, 484--Margin of
Cultivation, 484--Absurdities of his Explanation, 485--3rd, Mr.
George's Remedy, 487--Land Nationalization Movement in England,
488--Futility of Mr. George's Remedy, 489--Confiscation, 490--Difference
of Mr. George's Proposal from Mr. Mill's, 491--Agricultural
Land as truly the Fruit of Labour as other Commodities, 492--Real
Distinction between Land and other Property, 494--Social Claim on
all Property, 495--Is Private Property the best Guarantee for the
most Productive use of Land? 496--Land Nationalization no Assistance
to the Reforms that are Needed, 498.
CHAPTER I.
INTRODUCTORY.
It was a common topic of congratulation at the Exhibition of 1862 that
the political atmosphere of Europe was then entirely free from the
revolutionary alarms which overclouded the first Exhibition in 1851; but
in that very year the old clouds began to gather once more at different
quarters of the horizon. It was in 1862 that Lassalle delivered to a
club of working men in Berlin his address on "The Present Epoch of the
World, and the Idea of the Working Class," which was published shortly
afterwards under the title of "The Working Man's Programme," and which
has been called by his friends "The Wittenberg Theses" of the new
socialist movement; and it was at the Exhibition itself that those
relations were established between the delegates of English and French
trade societies which issued eventually in the organization of the
International. The double train thus laid has put in motion a propaganda
of social revolution more vigorous, widespread, and dangerous than any
which has preceded it.
But though the reappearance of socialism was not immediately looked for
at the time, it could cause no serious surprise to any one who
considered how nearly the socialist theory is allied with some of the
ruling ideas of modern times, and how many points of attraction it
presents at once to the impatient philanthropy of enthusiasts, to the
passions of the multitude, and to the narrow but insistent logic of the
numerous class of minds that make little account of the complexity of
life. Socialism will probably never keep long away during the present
transitional period of society, and there is therefore less interest in
the mere fact of its reappearance than in marking the particular form in
which, after a prolonged retirement, it has actually returned; for this
may perhaps be reasonably taken to be its most vital and enduring type,
and consequently that with which we shall mainly have to reckon in the
future.
Now the present movement is, before all, political and revolutionary.
The philanthropic and experimental forms of socialism, which played a
conspicuous _role_ before 1848, perished then in the wreck of the
Revolution, and have never risen to life again. The old schools have
dispersed. Their doctrines, their works, their very hopes have gone. The
theories of man's entire dependence on circumstances, of the
rehabilitation of the flesh, of the passional attraction, once in
everybody's mouth, have sunk into oblivion. The communities of Owenites,
St. Simonians, Fourierists, Icarians, which multiplied for a time on
both sides of the Atlantic, are extinct. The socialists of the present
day have discarded all belief in the possibility of effecting any social
regeneration except by means of political authority, and the first
object of their endeavours is therefore the conquest of the powers of
the State. There are some exceptions, but these are very unimportant.
The communistic societies of the United States, for instance, are mostly
organizations of eccentric religious sects which have no part or
influence in the life of the century. The Colinsian Collectivists,
followers of the Belgian socialist Colins, are a mere handful; and the
Familistere of Guise in France--a remarkable institution, founded since
1848 by an old disciple of Fourier, though not on Fourier's plan--stands
quite alone, and has no imitators. Non-political socialism may
accordingly be said to have practically disappeared.
Not only so, but out of the several sorts and varieties of political
socialism, only one has revived in any strength, and that is the
extremest and most revolutionary. It is the democratic communism of the
Young Hegelians, and it scouts the very suggestion of State-help, and
will content itself with nothing short of State-transformation. Schemes
such as were popular and noisy thirty years ago--schemes, involving
indeed organic changes, but organic changes of only a partial
character--have gone to their rest. Louis Blanc, for example, was then a
name of some power; but, remarkably enough, though Louis Blanc was but
the other year buried with great honour, his Organization of Labour
seems to be as completely forgotten as the Circulus of Leroux. M. G. de
Molinari writes an interesting account of the debates that took place in
the working men's clubs of Paris in the year 1868-9--the first year they
were granted liberty of meeting after the establishment of the Second
Empire--and he states that while Fourier and Cabet were still quoted by
old disciples, though without any idea of their systems being of
practical moment, Louis Blanc's name was not even mentioned. Proudhon's
gospel of a State bank of mutual credit for furnishing labourers with
capital, by issuing inconvertible notes without money and without price,
has still a sprinkling of faithful believers, who call themselves
Mutualists; but they are extremely few, and, as a rule, the socialists
of France at the present day, like those of Germany, put their faith in
iron rather than paper. What they want is a democracy of labour, to use
one of their own phrases--that is, a State in which power and property
shall be based on labour; where citizenship shall depend on a labour
qualification, instead of a qualification of birth or of property; where
there shall be no citizen who enjoys without labouring, and no citizen
who labours without enjoying; where every one who is able to work shall
have employment, and every one who has wrought shall retain the whole
produce of his labour; and where accordingly, as the indispensable
prerequisite of the whole scheme, the land of the country and all other
instruments of production shall be made the joint property of the
community, and the conduct of all industrial operations be placed under
the direct administration of the State. Furthermore, all this is
contended for as a matter of simple right and justice to the labouring
classes, on the ground that the wealth of the nation belongs to the
hands that made it; it is contended for as an obligation of the State,
because the State is held to be merely the organized will of the people,
and the people is the labouring class; and it is contended for as an
object of immediate accomplishment--if possible, by ordinary
constitutional means; but, if not, by revolution.
This is the form in which socialism has reappeared, and it may be
described in three words as Revolutionary Socialist Democracy. The
movement is divided into two main branches--socialism proper, or
collectivism, as it is sometimes called, and anarchism. There are
anarchists who are not socialists, but hold strongly by an individualist
constitution of property. They are very few, however, and the great mass
of the party known by that name in our day, including the Russian
Nihilists, are as ardent believers in the economic socialism of Karl
Marx as the Social Democrats of Germany themselves. They diverge from
the latter on a question of future government; but the differences
between the two are only such as the same movement might be expected to
exhibit in passing through different media, personal or national. Modern
democrats have been long divided into Centralists and Federalists--the
one party seeking to give to the democratic republic they contemplate a
strongly centralized form of government, and the other preferring to
leave the local communes comparatively independent and sovereign, and
free, if they choose, to unite themselves in convenient federations. The
federal republic has always been the favourite ideal of the Democrats of
Spain and of the Communards of Paris, and there is generally a tendency
among Federalists, in their impatience of all central authority, to drop
the element of federation out of their ideal altogether, and to advocate
the form of opinion known as "anarchy"--that is, the abolition of all
superior government. It was very natural that this ancient feud among
the democrats should appear in the ranks of socialist democracy, and it
was equally natural that the Russian Radicals, hating the autocracy of
their country and idealizing its rural communes, should become the chief
adherents of the federalist and even the anarchic tradition.
This is the only point of principle that separates anarchism from
socialism. In other respects anarchism may be said to be but an extremer
phase of socialism. It indulges in more violent methods, and in a more
omnivorous spirit of destruction. Its fury takes a wider sweep; it
attacks all current beliefs and all existing institutions; it puts its
hopes in universal chaos. I shall endeavour in a future chapter to
explain, from peculiarities of the national character and culture, why
this gospel of chaos should find so much acceptance in Russia; but it is
no exclusively Russian product. It was preached with singular coolness,
as will be subsequently shown, by some of the young Hegelians of Germany
before 1848, and it obtains among the more volatile members of most
socialist organizations still. Attacks on religion, patriotism, the
family, are very usual accessories of their practical agitations
everywhere. As institutions and beliefs are seen to lend strength to
each other, teeth set on edge against one are easily brought to gnash at
all. A sharp check from the public authority generally brings out to the
front this extremer element in German socialism. After the repressive
legislation of 1878 the German socialists struck the restriction of
proceeding "by legal methods" out of their programme, and the wilder
spirits among them would be content with nothing short of a policy of
general destruction, and, being expelled from the party, started an
organization of their own on thoroughly anarchist lines.
Under these influences, the word socialism has come to contract a new
meaning, and is now generally defined in a way that would exclude the
very theories it was originally invented to denote. Its political
element--its demand on the public power in behalf of the labouring
class--is taken to be the pith and essence of the system. Mr. Cairnes,
for example, says that the circumstance which distinguishes socialism
from all other modes of social speculation is its invocation of the
powers of the State, and he finds fault with Mr. Mill for describing
himself in his "Autobiography" as a socialist, merely because his ideal
of ultimate improvement had more in common with the ideal of socialistic
reformers than with the views of those who in contradistinction would be
called orthodox. The passage from the "Autobiography" runs as
follows:--"While we repudiated with the greatest energy that tyranny of
society over the individual which most socialistic systems are supposed
to involve, we yet looked forward to a time when society will no longer
be divided into the idle and the industrious; when the rule that they
who do not work shall not eat will be applied, not to paupers only, but
impartially to all; when the division of the produce of labour, instead
of depending, as in so great a degree it now does, on the accident of
birth, will be made by concert on an acknowledged principle of justice;
and when it will no longer either be, or be thought to be, impossible
for human beings to exert themselves strenuously in procuring benefits
which are not to be exclusively their own, but to be shared with the
society they belong to." ("Autobiography," pp. 231-232). On this passage
Mr. Cairnes observes:--"If to look forward to such a state of things as
an ideal to be striven for is socialism, I at once acknowledge myself a
socialist; but it seems to me that the idea which 'socialism' conveys to
most minds is not that of any particular form of society to be realized
at a future time when the character of human beings and the conditions
of human life are widely different from what they now are, but rather
certain modes of action, more especially the employment of the powers of
the State for the instant accomplishment of ideal schemes, which is the
invariable attribute of all projects generally regarded as socialistic.
So entirely is this the case that it is common to hear any proposal
which is thought to involve an undue extension of the power of the State
branded as socialistic, whatever be the object it may seek to
accomplish. After all, the question is one of nomenclature merely; but
people are so greatly governed by words that I cannot but regret that a
philosophy of social life with which I so deeply sympathize should be
prejudiced by verbal associations fitted, as it seems to me, only to
mislead." ("Leading Principles of Political Economy," p. 316.)
Mr. Cairnes's objection is just; for a reformer's position ought to be
determined, not by the distant ideal he may think best, if the
conditions were ripe for its realization, but by the policy which he
counts to be of present importance under the conditions that exist. He
may cherish, as many orthodox economists do, the socialist hope. He may
look for a time when comfort and civilization shall be more universally
and securely diffused; when heads and hands in the world of labour shall
work together in amity; when competition and exclusive private property
and self-interest shall be swallowed up in love and common labour. But
he knows that the transformation must be gradual, and that the material
conditions of it must never be pushed on in advance of the intellectual
and moral. And this cuts him off by a whole diameter, from those who are
now known as socialists. In every question of the day he will be found
in an opposite camp from them. For he makes the ideal what it is and
ought to be--the goal of his action; they make it their starting-point,
and the peculiarity of the case is that with their view of the situation
they cannot make it anything else. For to their mind the struggle they
are engaged in is not a struggle for amelioration, but for plain and
elementary right. It is not a question of providing greater happiness
for the greatest number; it is a question of doing them bare justice, of
giving them their own, of protecting them against a disguised but very
real expropriation. They declare that, under the present industrial
arrangements, the labouring classes are in effect robbed of most of the
value of the work of their hands, and of course the suppression of
systematic robbery is an immediate obligation of the present. Justice is
a basis to start from now, if possible, and not a dream to await
hereafter. First let the labouring man have his rights, they cry, and
then, and then only, shall you have the way clear for any further parley
about his future. It is true that he is not the victim of individual
rapacity so much as of the system, and that he cannot get his rights
till the system is completely changed; but the system, they argue, can
never be completely changed except by the power of the State, and why
then not change it at once? Now, it is obvious how, to people who take
this view of the matter, there should seem no other alternative but an
instant reconstruction of industrial society at the hands of the State.
For if it is justice that has to be done, then it appears only natural
to conclude that it falls upon the State, as the organ of justice, to do
it, and that it cannot do it too soon. The demand for the immediate
accomplishment of their scheme by public authority is thus no accidental
accessory of it merely, but is really inseparable from the ideas on
which the scheme is founded. It is, in fact, so much, if I may use the
word, the _note_ of socialism wherever socialism makes itself heard in
the world now, that it can only produce confusion to give the name of
socialist to persons who hold this note in abhorrence, and virtually
desire no more than the gradual triumph of co-operation.
It may be answered that the latter, like the former, aim not at a mere
reform of the present industrial system, but at an essential change in
its fundamental principles--at an eventual suppression of exclusive
property and unrestricted competition--and that it is therefore only
proper to classify them with those who seek the like important end,
however they may differ from the latter as to the means and seasons of
action. This might be right, perhaps, if our only consideration were to
furnish a philosophical classification of opinions; but we have to deal
with a living and agitating party whose name and work are much
canvassed, and there is at any rate great practical inconvenience in
extending the current designation of that party so as to include persons
who object strongly to its whole immediate work.
The inconvenience has doubled since Mill's time, because socialism has
now become a much more definite programme of a much more definite party.
Even in the old romantic schools the ruling characteristic of socialism
was always its effort to realize some wrong view of distributive
justice. It was more than merely an impracticable plan for the
extinction of poverty, or the more equable diffusion of wealth, or the
correction of excessive inequalities, although that seems to be so
prevailing an impression that persons who have what they conceive more
feasible proposals to offer for these purposes put them forward under
the name of Practicable Socialism. But so far as these purposes go, they
are common to almost all schools of social reformers, even the most
individualist. If socialism meant only feeling earnestly about those
inequalities, or desiring earnestly their redress, or even strongly
resenting their inconsistency with an ideal of justice, then Mr. Herbert
Spencer is as much a socialist as either Marx or Lassalle. "The fates of
the great majority," says he, "have ever been, and doubtless still are,
so sad that it is painful to think of them. Unquestionably the existing
type of social organization is one which none who care for their kind
can contemplate with satisfaction; and unquestionably men's activities
accompanying this type are far from being admirable. The strong
divisions of rank and the immense inequalities of means are at variance
with that ideal of human relations on which the sympathetic imagination
likes to dwell; and the average conduct, under the pressure and
excitement of social life as at present carried on, is in sundry
respects repulsive." ("A Plea for Liberty," p. 4.) Socialists are far
from being the only persons whose sense of justice is offended by much
in the existing _regime_, and many very moderate politicians have held
that the policy of the law should always favour the diffusion of wealth
rather than its concentration; that it should always favour the active
business interest rather than the idle interest; that it should always
favour the weaker and more unprotected interest rather than the more
powerful and the more contumelious. The socialism comes in not with the
condemnation of the existing order of things, but with the policy
recommended for its correction. There is no socialism in recognising the
plain fact that the gifts of fortune, whether riches or talents, are not
distributed in the world according to merit. There is no socialism in
declaring that the rich, by reason of their riches, have
responsibilities towards the poor; or that the poor, by reason of their
poverty, have claims upon the rich. Nor is there any socialism in
holding that the State has responsibilities towards the poor, and that
the law ought, when necessary, to assert the reasonable claims of
poverty, or enforce the reasonable duties and obligations of wealth. All
that merely says that justice and humanity ought to govern in economic
affairs, as they ought to govern in all other affairs of life; and this
is an axiomatic position which nobody in the world denies. Only,
axiomatic though it is, it seems to dawn on many minds like a revelation
late in life, and they feel they are no longer as other men, and that
they must henceforth call themselves socialists. This awakening to the
injustice or inhumanity of things is not socialism, though socialism may
often proceed out of it. Socialism is always some scheme for the removal
of one injustice by the infliction of a greater--some scheme which, by
mistaking the rights and wrongs of the actual situation, or the natural
operation of its own provisions, or any other cause, would leave things
more inequitable and more offensive to a sound sense of justice than it
found them. The rich idler, for example, is always a great offence to
the socialist, because, according to the socialist sense of justice, no
man ought to be rich without working for his riches; and many other
people will possibly agree with the socialist in that. But then the
socialist proposes to abolish the rich idler by a scheme which would
breed the poor idler in overwhelming abundance, and for the sake of
equalizing poverty and wealth, would really equalize indolence and
industry--at once a more fatal and a more offensive form of injustice
than that which it was designed to redress. Socialists find fault with
the present order of things because the many workers support the few
idlers; but most of the old socialist communities of France and America
failed because of the opposite and greater injustice, that the few
workers found themselves supporting the many idlers, and the consequence
was a more harrowing sense of unfairness and a more universal
impoverishment than prevailed under the old system. The rich idler who
merely lives on what he has inherited may not belong to an ideal state
of society; but the poor idler, who shirks and dawdles and malingers,
because an indulgent community relieves him of the necessity of harder
exertion, is equally unideal, and he is much more hurtful in the
reality.
But the socialists, in their mistaken ideas of justice, do not stop at
the rich idler. The rich idler is, in their view, a robber; but the rich
worker is a greater robber still. It is characteristic of socialist
thought to hold the accumulations of the rich to be in some sort of way
unjustly acquired by spoiling the poor. The poor are always represented
as the disinherited; their property is declared to have been taken from
them perforce by bad laws and bad economic arrangements and delivered
without lien into the hands of the capitalists. This view lived and
moved in the old socialism, but it has been worked into a reasoned and
professedly scientific argument as a basis and justification for the
new. The old socialism usually exclaimed against the justice of
interest, rent, property, and all forms of labourless income; but the
new socialism pretends to prove the charge by economic principles. It
alleges that all these forms of income are so many different forms of
plundering the working classes, who are the real producers of wealth,
and it sets up a claim on behalf of those classes to the whole value of
the things they produce without any deductions for rent, interest, or
profit--the right, as they call it, of the labourer to the whole produce
of his labour. Now this is a very distinct and definite claim of right
and justice, and the whole final object of the socialist organizations
of the present day is to get it realized, and realized at once, as
claims of right and justice ought, and must, by the powers of the State.
I shall have better opportunities at a later part of this work of
proving how absolutely unfounded and unjust is this claim; but I mention
it here merely to show that the essence of modern socialism is more and
more unmistakably revealing itself as an effort to realize some false
ideal of social or distributive justice. This is the deepest and most
ruling feature of socialism, and it really necessitated the advance of
the movement from the philanthropic to the political stage. The Owenites
were content with the idea of a voluntary equality of wealth; but that
is now dismissed as the mere children's dream, for popular rights are
things to be enforced by law, and questions of justice are for the
State. The political character of the movement has only brought forward
into stronger relief the distorted ideal of justice which gave it being;
and it has therefore become much more confusing than it formerly was for
one to call himself a socialist merely because he dreams of better
things to come, or because he would like to extinguish poverty, or to
diffuse property, or to extend the principle of progressive taxation, or
promote co-operation or profit-sharing, or any other just or useful
measures of practical social reform. That is shown very well by a simple
little tidemark. In the old days it was still possible, though it never
was a happy choice, for Maurice and the promoters of the new
co-operation movement to assume the designation of Christian Socialists;
but although Schultze-Delitzsch was working on the same lines with even
greater _eclat_ at the time when the present socialistic movement began
in Germany, he was left so far behind that he was thought the great
anti-socialist, and the people to whom it was now considered appropriate
to transfer the name of socialists were a set of university professors
and others who advocated a more extended use of the powers of the State
for the solution of the social question and the satisfaction of
working-class claims.
The Socialists of the Chair and the Christian Socialists of Germany
contemplate nothing beyond correctives and palliatives of existing
evils; but then they ask the State to administer them. They ask the
State to inspect factories, or to legalize trades unions, or to organize
working-class insurance, or to fix fair wages. Their requests may be
wise or foolish, but none of them, nor all of them together, would
either subvert or transform the existing industrial system; and those
who propound them are called socialists merely because they make it part
of the State's business to deal with social questions, or perhaps more
particularly because they make it the State's business to deal with
social questions in the interest of the working class. This idea of
socialism seems largely to govern the current employment of the term. We
often hear any fresh extension of the functions of the State condemned
as socialistic even when the extension is not supposed to be made in the
interests of the working class, or to be conducive to them. The purchase
of the telegraphs was socialistic; the proposal to purchase the railways
is socialistic; a national system of education is socialistic; and an
ecclesiastical establishment, if it were now brought forward as a new
suggestion, would be pronounced socialistic too. Since, in a socialistic
community, all power is assigned to the State, any measure which now
increases the power of the State gets easily represented as an approach
to socialism, especially in the want--and it is one of our chief wants
at present--of a rational and discriminating theory of the proper limits
and sphere of public authority.
But in the prevailing use of the word, there is generally the idea that
the intervention of authority to which it is applied is undertaken to
promote the well-being of the less fortunate classes of society. Since
socialism seeks to construct what may be called a working class State,
where the material welfare of each shall be the great object of the
organization of all, it is common to represent as socialistic any
proposal that asks the State to do something for the material well-being
of the working class, and to describe any group of such proposals, or
any theory that favours them, by the name of socialism. The so-called
State-socialism of Prince Bismarck, for example, is only, as he has
himself declared, a following-out of the traditions of the House of
Hohenzollern, the princes of that dynasty having always counted it one
of their first duties as rulers to exercise a special protection and
solicitude over the poorer classes of their subjects. The old ideas of
feudal protection and paternal government have charms for many minds
that deplore the democratic spirit of modern society. In Germany they
have been maintained by the feudal classes, the court, and the clergy;
their presence in the general intellectual atmosphere there has probably
facilitated the diffusion of socialistic views; and they have certainly
led to the curious phenomenon of a Conservative socialism, in which the
most obstinately Conservative interests in the country go to meet the
Social Democrats half way, and promise to do everything to get them
better wages if they will but come to church again and pray for the
Kaiser. The days of feudal protection and paternal government are gone;
as idealized by Carlyle, they perhaps never existed; at any rate, in an
age of equality they are no longer possible, but their modern
counterparts are precisely the ideas of social protection and fraternal
government which find their home among socialists. On the strength of
this analogy, Prince Bismarck and the German Emperor are sometimes
spoken of as socialists, because they believe, like the latter, that the
State should exercise a general or even a particular providence over the
industrial classes. But socialism is more than such a belief. It is not
only a theory of the State's action, but a theory of the State's action
founded on a theory of the labourer's right. It is at bottom, as I have
said, a mistaken demand for social justice. It tells us that an
enlargement of social justice was made when it was declared that every
man shall be free--or, in other words, that every man shall possess
completely his own powers of labour; and it claims that a new
enlargement of social justice shall be made now, to declare that every
man shall possess the whole produce of his labour. Now those who are
known as Conservative Socialists, in patronizing the working people, do
not dream of countenancing any such claim, or even of admitting in the
least that there is anything positively unjust in the present industrial
system. None of them would go further than to say that the economic
position of the labourer is insufficient to satisfy his legitimate
aspirations in a civilized community; few of them would go so far. It is
therefore highly confusing to class them among socialists.
M. Limousin, again, speaks of a "minimum of socialism." He would call no
man a socialist who does not hold this minimum, and he would call every
man a socialist who does hold it. And the minimum of socialism, in his
opinion, is this, that the State owes a special duty of protection to
labourers because they are poor, and that this duty consists in securing
to them a more equitable part in the product of general labour. The
latter clause might have been better expressed in less general terms,
but that may pass. The definition recognises at any rate that the
paternal or the fraternal theory of government does not of itself
constitute socialism, and that this must be combined with the demand for
a new distribution of wealth, on supposed grounds of justice or equity,
before we have even the minimum of socialism. But it would have been
more correct if it had recognised that the demand for a better
distribution must be made not merely on _supposed_, but on _erroneous_
grounds of justice or equity. If the proposed distribution is really
just and equitable, nothing can surely be more proper than to ask the
State to do its best to realize it and any practicable intervention for
that purpose is only a matter of the ordinary expansion of the law. What
is law, what is right, but a protection of the weak? and all legal
reform is a transition from a less equitable to a more equitable system
of arrangements. The equitable requirements of the poor are the natural
concern of the State on the narrowest theory of its functions, and M.
Limousin's definition would really include all rational social reformers
under the name of socialist.
If we are in this way to stretch the word socialism first to the one
side, till it takes in J. S. Mill and Maurice and the co-operators, who
repudiate authority and State help, and then on the other side, till it
takes in Prince Bismarck, and our own aristocratic Conservative Young
England Party, and all social reformers who want the State to do its
ordinary duty of supplying the working classes with better securities
for the essentials of all humane living, how can there be any rational
and intelligible use of the word at all? Mill holds a more or less
socialistic idea of what a just society would be; Bismarck holds a more
or less socialistic view of the functions of the State; but neither of
these ideas separately make up the minimum of socialism; and it would
therefore be misleading to call either of them by that name, while to
call both by it would be hopeless confusion, since the one politician
holds exactly what the other rejects, and no more. But, after all, it is
of less importance to define socialism in the abstract than to describe
the actual concrete socialism that has organization and life, especially
as the name is only transferred in common speech to all these varying
shades of opinion, because they are thought to resemble that concrete
socialism in one feature or another.
Having now ascertained the general nature of the contemporary
socialistic movement, we shall be in a better position to judge of its
bearings and importance. We have seen that the only form of socialism
which has come to life again since 1848 is the political and
revolutionary phase of Social Democracy. Now, this was also the original
form in which socialism first appeared in modern Europe at the time of
the earlier Revolution of 1789. The tradition it represents is
consequently one of apparently vigorous vitality. It has kept its place
in European opinion for a hundred years, it seems to have grown with the
growth of the democratic spirit, and it has in our own day broken out
simultaneously in most of the countries of the Continent, and in some of
them with remarkable energy. A movement like this, which seems to have
taken a continuous and extensive hold of the popular mind, and which
moreover has a consciousness of right, a passion for social justice,
however mistaken, at the heart of it, cannot be treated lightly as a
political force; but at the same time its consequence is apt to be
greatly overrated both by the hopes of sanguine adherents and by the
apprehensions of opponents. Socialists are incessantly telling us that
their system is the last word of the Revolution, that the current which
broke loose over Europe in 1789 is setting, as it could not help
setting, in their direction, and that it can only find its final level
of repose in a democratic communism. Conservative Cassandras tell us
the same thing, for the Extreme Right takes the same view as the Extreme
Left does of the logical tendency of measures. They feel things about
them moving everywhere towards equality, they feel themselves helpless
to resist the movement, and they are sure they shall waken one morning
in a social revolution. Stahl, for example, thought democracy
necessarily conducted to socialism, and that wherever democracy entered,
socialism was already at the door. A few words will therefore be still
necessary towards explaining, first, the historical origin of modern
socialism; second, the relations of socialism to democracy, and,
finally, the extent and character of the spread of the present movement.
Respecting the first of these three points, modern socialism was
generated out of the notions about property and the State which appeared
towards the close of last century in the course of the speculations then
in vogue on the origin and objects of civil society, and which were
proclaimed about the same time by many different writers--by Brissot, by
Mably, by Morelly, and above all by Rousseau. Their great idea was to
restore what they called the state of nature, when primitive equality
still reigned, and the earth belonged to none, and the fruits to all.
They taught that there was no foundation for property but need. He who
needed a thing had a right to it, and he who had more than he needed was
a thief. Rousseau said every man had naturally a right to whatever he
needed; and Brissot, anticipating the famous words of Proudhon, declared
that in a state of nature "exclusive property was theft." It was so in a
state of nature, but it was so also in a state of society, for society
was built on a social contract, "the clauses of which reduce themselves
to one, viz., the total transfer of each associate, with all his rights,
to the community." The individual is thus nothing; the State is all in
all. Property is only so much of the national estate conditionally
conceded to the individual. He has the right to use it, because the
State permits him, while the State permits him, and how the State
permits him. So with every other right; he is to think, speak, train his
children, or even beget them, as the State directs and allows, in the
interest of the common good.
These ideas circulated in a diffuse state till 1793. They formed as yet
neither system nor party. But when Joseph Baboeuf, discarding his
Christian name of Joseph (because, as he said, he had no wish for
Joseph's virtues, and so saw no good in having him for his patron
saint), and taking instead the ominous name of Caius Gracchus, organized
the conspiracy of the _Egaux_ in that year, then modern socialism began,
and it began in the form in which it still survives. Baboeuf's ambition
was to found what he called a true democratic republic, and by a true
democratic republic he meant one in which all inequalities, whether of
right or of fact, should be abolished, and every citizen should have
enough and none too much. It was vain, he held, to dream of making an
end of privilege or oppression until all property came into the hands of
the Government, and was statedly distributed by the Government to the
citizens on a principle of scrupulous equality. Misled by the name Caius
Gracchus, people thought he wanted an agrarian law and equal division.
But he told them an agrarian law was folly, and equal division would not
last a twelvemonth, if the participants got the property to themselves.
What he wanted, he said, was something much more sublime--it was
community of goods. Equality could only be made enduring through the
abolition of private property. The State must be sole proprietor and
sole employer, and dispense to every man his work according to his
particular skill, and his subsistence in honourable sufficiency
according to his wants. An individual who monopolized anything over and
above such a sufficiency committed a social theft. Appropriation was to
be strictly limited to and by personal need.
Baboeuf saw no difficulty in working the scheme; was it not practised
every day in the army, with 1,200,000 men? If it were said, the soil of
France is too small to sustain its population in the standard of
sufficiency contemplated, then so much the worse for the superfluous
population; let the greater landlords first, and then as many
sansculottes as were redundant, be put out of the way for their
country's good. He actually ascribed this intention to Robespierre, and
spoke of the Terror as if it were an excellent anticipation of
Malthusianism. Did any one say that, without inequalities, progress
would cease and arts and civilization decay, Baboeuf was equally
prepared to take the consequences. "Perish the arts," said a manifesto
discovered with him at his apprehension, "but let us have real
equality." "All evils," he said in his newspaper, "are on their trial.
Let them all be confounded. Let everything return to chaos, and from
chaos let there rise a new and regenerated world."
We have here just the revolutionary socialist democracy that is still
rampant over Europe. Socialists now, indeed, generally make light of the
difficulty of over-population which Baboeuf solved so glibly with the
guillotine, and they contend that their system would humanize
civilization instead of destroying it. They follow, too, a different
tradition from Baboeuf regarding the right of property. While he built
that right on need, they build it on labour. He said the man who has
more than he needs is a thief; they say the man who has more than he
wrought for is a thief. He would have the State to give every man an
honourable sufficiency right off, according to his need; they ask the
State to give every man according to his work, or, if unfit for work,
according to his need, and they hold that this rule would afford every
one an honourable sufficiency. But these differences are only
refinements on Baboeuf's plan, and its main features remain--equality of
conditions, nationalization of property, democratic tyranny, a uniform
medium fatal to progress, an omnipresent mandarin control crushing out
of the people that energy of character which W. von Humboldt said was
the first and only virtue of man, because it was the root of all other
excellence and advancement. In short, socialists now seek, like Baboeuf,
to establish a democratic republic--a society built on the equal manhood
of every citizen--and, like Baboeuf, they think a true democratic
republic is necessarily a socialistic one.
This brings me to the next point I mentioned, the interesting problem of
the true relations of socialism to democracy. Is socialism, as Stahl and
others represent, an inevitable corollary of democracy? If so, our
interest in it is very real and very immediate. For democracy is already
here, and is at present engaged in every country of Europe in the very
work of reorganizing the social system into harmony with democratic
requirements. Its hammer may make little sound in some places, but the
work proceeds none the less effectually for the silence, and it will
proceed, slowly or more rapidly, until all the institutions of the
country have been renovated by the democratic spirit. Will the social
system, which will result from the process, be socialism? "The gradual
development of the principle of equality," says De Tocqueville, "is a
providential fact. It has all the characteristics of such a fact. It is
universal; it is durable; it constantly eludes all human interference;
and all events, as well as all men, contribute to its progress. Would it
be wise to imagine that a social movement, the causes of which lie so
far back, can be checked by the efforts of one generation? Can it be
believed that the democracy which has overthrown the feudal system and
vanquished kings will retreat before tradesmen and capitalists? Will it
stop now that it has grown so strong, and its adversaries so weak?" If,
then, the natural tendency of democracy is to socialism, to socialism we
must eventually go.
But the natural tendency of democracy is not to socialism. A single
plain but remarkable fact suffices to establish that. Democracy has been
in full bloom in America for more than a century, and there are no
traces of socialism there except among some German immigrants of
yesterday; for, of course, the communism of the eccentric religious
sects of America proceeds from religious ideals, and has no bearing one
way or other on the social tendency of democracy. The labouring class is
politically everything in that country--everything, at least, that
electoral power can make them in an elective republic; and they have
never shown any desire to use their political power to become socially
everything or to interfere with the freedom of property. Had this been
in any way the necessary effect of democratic institutions, it must have
by this time made its appearance in the United States. De Tocqueville,
indeed, maintains that so far from there being any natural solidarity
between democracy and socialism, they are absolutely contrary the one to
the other. "Democracy," he said in a speech in the Republican Parliament
of France in 1849, "extends the sphere of individual independence;
socialism contracts it. Democracy gives every individual man his utmost
possible value; socialism makes every man an agent, an instrument, a
cipher. Democracy and socialism coincide only in the single word
equality, but observe the difference: democracy desires equality in
liberty; socialism seeks equality in compulsion and servitude."
That is so far substantially true, but it cannot be received altogether
without qualification. We have had experience in modern times of two
different forms of democracy, which may be called the American and the
Continental. In America equality came as it were by nature, without
strife and without so much as observation; the colonists started equal.
But freedom was only won by sacrifice; the first pilgrims bought it by
exile; the founders of the Republic bought it a second time by blood.
Liberty therefore was their treasure, their ark, their passion; and
having been long trained in habits of self-government, they acquired in
the daily exercise of their liberty that strong sense of its practical
value, and that subtle instinct of its just limits, which always
constitute its surest bulwarks. With them the State was nothing more
than an association for mutual protection--an association, like any
other, having its own definite work to do and no more, and receiving
from its members the precise powers needed for that work and no more;
and they looked with a jealousy, warm from their history and life, on
any extension of the State's functions or powers beyond those primary
requirements of public safety or utility which they laid upon it. In the
United States property is widely diffused; liberty has been long enjoyed
by the people as a fact, as well as loved by them as an ideal; the
central authority has ever been held in comparative check; and
individual rights are so general a possession that any encroachment upon
them in the name of the majority would always tread on interests
numerous and strong enough to raise an effectual resistance. Democracy
has in America, accordingly, a soil most favourable to its healthy
growth; the history, the training, and the circumstances of the people
all concur to support liberty.
But on the Continent democracy sprang from very different antecedents,
and possesses a very different character. Equality was introduced into
France by convulsion, and has engrossed an undue share of her attention
since. Freedom, on the other hand, has been really less desired than
power. The Revolution found the affairs of that country administered by
a strong centralized organization, with its hand everywhere and on
everything, and the Revolution left them so. Revolution has succeeded
revolution; dynasties and constitutions have come and gone; almost every
part of the political and social system has suffered change; the form of
government has been republic, empire, monarchy, empire and republic
again; but the authority of government, its sphere, its attributes, have
remained throughout the same. Each party in succession has seized the
power of the State, but none has sought to curb its range. On the
contrary, their temptation lay the other way; they have been always so
bent on using the authority and mechanism of government to impair or
suppress the influence of their adversaries, whom they regarded as at
the same time the adversaries of the State, that they could only wish
that authority to be larger and that mechanism more perfect than they
already were. Even the more popular parties are content to accept the
existing over-government as the normal state of affairs, and always
strive to gain the control of it rather than to restrain its action. And
so it has come about that, while they sought liberty for themselves,
they were afraid to grant it to their opponents, for fear their
opponents should be able to get the authority of this too powerful
administration into their hands and serve them in the same way. The
struggle for freedom has thus been corrupted into a struggle for power.
That is the secret of the pathetic story of modern France. That is why,
with all her marvellous efforts for liberty, she has never fully
possessed it, and that is why she seems condemned to instability.
A growing minority of the democratic party in France is indeed opposed
to this unfortunate over-government, but the democratic party in general
has always countenanced it, perhaps more than any other party, because
to their minds government represents the will of the people, and the
people cannot be supposed to have any reason to restrain its own will.
Besides, they are still dominated by the doctrines of Rousseau and the
other revolutionary writers who looked with the utmost contempt on the
American idea of the State being a kind of joint-stock association
organized for a circumscribed purpose and with limited powers, and who
held the State, on the contrary, to be the organ of society in all its
interests, desires, and needs, and to be invested with all the powers
and rights of all the individuals that compose it. Under the social
contract, by which they conceived the State to be constituted,
individuals gave up all their rights and possessions to the community,
and got them back immediately afterwards as mere State concessions,
which there could be no injustice in withdrawing again next day for the
greater good of the community. Instead of enjoying equal freedom as men,
the great object was to make them enjoy equal completeness as citizens.
From historical conditions like these there has sprung up on the
Continent--in Germany as well as France--a quite different type of
democracy from the American, and this type of democracy, while it may
not be the best, the truest, or the healthiest type of it, has a
tendency only too natural towards socialism. It contains in its very
build and temperament organic conditions that predispose it to socialism
as to its peculiarly besetting disease. It evinced this tendency very
early in the history of the Revolution. As Ledru-Rollin reminded De
Tocqueville, in replying to his speech, the right to labour on the part
of the strong and the right to assistance on the part of the weak were
already acknowledged by the Convention of 1793. Claims like these
constitute the very A B C of socialism, and they have always moved with
more or less energy in the democratic tradition of the Continent.
Democracy, guided by the spirit of freedom, will resist socialism; but
authoritative democracy, such as finds favour abroad, leans strongly
towards it. A democratic despotism is obviously more dangerous to
property than any other, inasmuch as the despot is, in this case, more
insatiable, and his rapacity is so easily hid and even sanctified under
the general considerations of humanity that always mingle with it.
It is therefore manifest that the question whether political democracy
must end in social, is one that cannot be answered out of hand by
deduction from the idea. The development will differ in different
countries, for it depends on historical conditions, of which the most
important is that I have now touched on, whether the national character
and circumstances are calculated to guide that development into the form
of democratic liberty, or into the form of democratic tyranny. A second
condition is scarcely less important, viz., whether the laws and
economic situation of the country have conduced to a dispersion or to a
concentration of property. For even in the freest democracy individual
property can only be permanently sustained by diffusion, and, if
existing conditions have isolated it into the hands of the few, the many
will lie under a constant, and, in emergencies, an irresistible
temptation to take freedom in their hand and force the distribution of
property by law, or nationalize it entirely by a socialistic
reconstruction. It used to be a maxim in former days that power must be
distributed in some proportion to property, but with the advent of
democracy the maxim must be converted, and the rule of health will now
be found in having property distributed in some proportion to power.
That is the natural price of stability under a democratic _regime_. A
penniless omnipotence is an insupportable presence. When supreme power
is vested in a majority of the people, property cannot sit securely till
it becomes so general a possession that a majority of the people has a
stake in its defence, and this point will not be reached until at least
a large minority of them are actually owners, and the rest enjoy a
reasonable prospect of becoming so by the exercise of care and diligence
in their ordinary avocations.
The belief of Marx and modern socialists, that the large system of
production, with its centralized capital and its aggregation of
workpeople in large centres, must, by necessary historical evolution,
end in the socialist State, is, as Professor A. Menger has pointed out,
not justified by history. The latifundia and slavery of the decline of
the Roman empire were not succeeded by any system of common property,
but by the institutions of mediaeval law which made the rights of private
property more absolute and exclusive. And in our own time the tendency
to concentration of property in the hands of a few great capitalists is
being corrected by the newer tendency to joint stock management, _i.e._,
to the union and multiplication of small capitalists; and this is of
course a tendency back from, and not on towards, the social revolution
Marx conceived to be imminent. But though the modern concentration of
wealth may not for the moment be increasing, and if it were, may not on
that account necessarily spell socialism, it certainly spells social
peril; and the future, therefore, stands before us with a solemn choice:
either property must contrive to get widely diffused peacefully, or it
will be diffused by acts of popular confiscation, or perhaps be
nationalized altogether; and the fate of free institutions hangs upon
the dilemma. For in a democratic community the peril is always near. De
Tocqueville may be right in saying that such communities, if left to
themselves, naturally love liberty; but there are other things they love
more, and this profound political philosopher has himself pointed out
with what exceptional vigour they nourish two powerful passions, either
of which, if it got the mastery, would prove fatal to freedom. One is
the love of equality. "I think," says he, "that democratic communities
have a natural taste for freedom; left to themselves they will seek to
cherish it, and view every privation of it with regret. But for equality
their passion is ardent, insatiable, insistent, invincible; they call
for equality in freedom, and if they cannot obtain that, they still call
for equality in slavery. They will endure poverty, servitude, pauperism,
but they will not endure aristocracy." The other is the unreined love of
material gratification. By this De Tocqueville does not mean sensual
corruption of manners, for he believes that sensuality will be more
moderate in a democracy than in other forms of society. He means the
passion for material comfort above all other things, which he describes
as the peculiar passion of the middle classes; the complete absorption
in the pursuit of material well-being and the means of material
well-being, to the disparagement and disregard of every ideal
consideration and interest, as if the chief end and whole dignity of man
lay in gaining a conventional standard of comfort. When a passion like
this spreads from the classes whose vanity it feeds to the classes
whose envy it excites, social revolution is at the gates, and this is
one of De Tocqueville's gravest apprehensions in contemplating the
advance of democracy. For he says that the passion for material
well-being has no check in a democratic community except religion, and
if religion were to decline--and the pursuit of comfort undoubtedly
impairs it--then liberty would perish. "For my part," he declares, "I
doubt whether man can ever support at once complete religious
independence and entire public freedom; and I am inclined to think that
if faith be wanting in him he must serve, and if he be free he must
believe." It is impossible, therefore, in an age when the democratic
spirit has grown so strong and victorious, to avoid taking some
reasonable concern for the future of liberty, more especially as at the
same time the sphere and power of government are being everywhere
continually extended, the devotion to material well-being, and what is
called material civilization, is ever increasing, and religious faith,
particularly among the educated and the working classes, is on the
decline.
This is exactly the rock ahead of the modern State, of which we have
been long warned by keen eyes aloft, and which seems now to stand out
plainly enough to ordinary observers on the deck. Free institutions run
continual risk of shipwreck when power is the possession of the many,
but property--from whatever cause--the enjoyment of the few. With the
advance of democracy a diffusion of wealth becomes almost a necessity of
State. And the difficulty only begins when the necessity is perceived.
For the State cannot accomplish any lasting or effective change in the
matter without impairing or imperilling the freedom which its
intervention is meant to protect--without, in short, becoming socialist,
for fear of socialism; and when it has done its best, it finds that the
solution is still subject to moral and economic conditions which it has
no power to control. In trade and manufactures which occupy such vast
and increasing proportions of the population of modern countries, the
range of the State's beneficial or even possible action is very little;
and in these branches the natural conditions at present strongly favour
concentration or aggregation of capital. The small masters have simply
been worsted in ordinary competition with the large producers, and so
long as the large system of production continues the cheapest system of
production, no other result can be expected. The social problem,
therefore, so far as these branches are concerned, is to discover some
form of co-operative arrangement which shall reconcile the large system
of production with the interests of the labouring class, unless,
indeed--what is far from impossible--the large system of production is
itself to be superseded in the further advance of industrial
development. The economic superiority of that system depends greatly on
the circumstance that the power now in use--water or steam--necessitates
the concentration of machinery at one spot. Mr. Babbage predicted fifty
years ago that if a new power were to be discovered that could be
generated in a central place in quantities sufficient for the
requirements of a whole community, and then distributed, as gas is,
wherever it was wanted, the age of domestic manufactures would return.
Every little community might then find it cheaper, by saving carriage,
and availing itself of cheaper local labour, to manufacture for itself
many of the articles now made for it at the large mills; and the small
factory or workshop, so suitable, among other advantages, for
co-operative enterprise, would multiply everywhere. Now, have we such a
power in electricity? If so, not the least important effect of the new
agent will be its influence on the diffusion of wealth, and its aid
towards the solution of the social problem of the nineteenth century.
With land and agriculture the situation is somewhat different. The
distribution of landed property has always depended largely on legal
conditions; and since these conditions have--in this country at
least--wrought for two centuries in favour of the aggregation of
estates, their relaxation may reasonably be expected to operate to some
extent in the contrary direction. Too much must not be built on this
expectation, however, for the natural conditions are at present, at
least, as partial to the large property as the legal. The abolition of
entail and primogeniture, by emancipating the living proprietor from the
preposterous tyranny of the dead, and by bringing to the burdened the
privilege of sale, must necessarily throw greater quantities of land
into the market than reach it now, but the redistribution of that land
will as necessarily conform to the existing social and economic
circumstances of the country; and England will never cease to be
characterized by the large property, so long as its social system lends
exceptional consideration to the possession of land, and its commercial
system is continually creating an exceptional number of large fortunes.
The market for the large estate is among the wealthy, who buy land as an
instrument of enjoyment, of power, of social ambition; and what with the
wealth made at home and the wealth made in the colonies, the number of
this class is ever on the increase; the natural market for the small
estate, on the other hand, is among the farming class, to whom land is a
commercial investment, and the farmers of England, unlike those of other
countries, unlike those of our own country in former days, are as a rule
positively indisposed to purchase land, finding it more profitable to
rent it. This aversion, however, is much more influential with large
farmers than with small ones. It is commonly argued as if a small farmer
who has saved money will be certain to employ it in taking a more
extensive holding, but that is not so. On the contrary, he more usually
leaves it in the bank; in some parts of Scotland many small farmers have
deposits of from L500 to L1000 lying there at interest; they studiously
conceal the fact, lest their landlords should hear of it, and raise
their rent, and they submit to much inconvenience rather than withdraw
any portion of it, once it is deposited. Their ruling object is security
and not aggrandisement, and consequently if land were in the market in
lots to suit them, they would be almost certain to become purchasers of
land. In forecasting the possibility of the rise of a peasant
proprietary in this country, it is often forgotten that, whether land is
a profitable investment for the farmer or not, the class of farmers from
whom such a proprietary would be generated is less anxious for a
profitable investment than for a safe one, and that to many of them, as
of other classes, independence will always possess much more than a
commercial value.
But, however this may be, land is distributed by holdings as well as by
estates, and in connection with our present subject the distribution by
holdings is perhaps the more important thing of the two. "The magic of
property" is no exclusive prerogative of the soil; ownership in stock
will carry the same political effects as ownership in anything else; and
a satisfactory system of tenant right may yield all the social and
economic advantages of a peasant proprietary. In fact, tenant right, so
far as it goes, is proprietorship, and it has before now developed into
proprietorship even in name. The old lamented yeomanry of England were,
the great majority of them, copyholders, and a copyholder was simply a
tenant-at-will whose tenant right was consolidated by custom into a
perpetual and hereditary property; and if the soil of England will ever
again become distributed among as numerous a body of owners as held it
in former ages, it will most likely occur through a similar process of
consolidation of tenant right. But as it is--and though this is a
truism, it is often overlooked in discussions on the subject--the
tenants are owners as well as the landlords; their interests enlist them
on the side of stability; they have a stake in the defence of property;
and even though the prevailing tendency to the accumulation of estates
continues unchecked, its peril to the State may be mitigated by the
preservation and multiplication of small and comfortable holdings, which
shall nourish a substantial and independent peasantry, and supply a hope
and ambition to the rural labourers. This is so far well. We know that
it is an axiom with Continental socialists that a revolution has no
chance of success, however well supported it may be by the artisans of
the towns, if the peasantry are contented and take no part in it; and
the most serious feature in more than one of the great countries of
Europe at this moment is the miserable condition into which their
agricultural labourers have been suffered to fall, and their practical
exclusion from all opportunities of raising themselves out of it. The
stability of Europe may be said to rest on the number of its comfortable
peasantry; the dam of the Revolution is the small farm. This is not less
true of England than of the Continent, for although the agricultural
population is vastly outnumbered by the industrial in this country, that
consideration really increases rather than diminishes the political
value of sustaining and multiplying a contented tenantry.
Now England is the classical country of the large farm as well as of
the large estate. Its holdings have always been larger than those of
other nations; they were so when half of them were owned by their
occupiers, they are so still when they are rented from great landlords.
The large farms have grown larger; a holding of 200 acres was counted a
very large farm in the time of the Commonwealth; it would be considered
a very moderate one in most English counties now. But yet the small farm
has not gone the way of the small estate. The effects of consolidation
have been balanced to such a degree by a simultaneous extension of the
area of cultivation that the number of holdings in England is probably
more considerable than it ever was before. If we may trust Gregory
King's estimate, there were, 200 years ago, 310,000 occupiers of
holdings in England, 160,000 owners, and 150,000 tenants; in 1880 there
were, exclusive of allotments, which are now numerous, 295,313 holdings
of 50 acres and under, and 414,804 holdings altogether. Moreover, the
future of the small farm is much more hopeful than the future of the
small estate or the small factory. All admit the small holding to be
preferable to the large for dairy farming and market gardening; and
dairy farms and market gardens are two classes of holdings that must
continue to multiply with the growth of the great towns. But even with
respect to corn crops, it is now coming to be well understood that the
existing conditions of high farming would be better satisfied by a
smaller size of holding than has been in most favour with agricultural
reformers hitherto; because then, and then only, can the farmer be
expected to bestow upon every rood of his ground that generous
expenditure of capital, and that sedulous and minute care which are now
necessary to make his business profitable. Without entering on the
disputed question of the comparative productiveness of large and small
farms, it ought to be remembered, in the first place, that the economic
advantage of the large farm--the reason why the large farmer has been
able to offer a higher rent than the smaller--is not so much because he
produces more, as because he can afford to produce less; and, in the
next place, that the small farmer has heretofore wrought, not only with
worse appliances than the large--which perhaps he must always do--but
also with less knowledge of the theory of his art, and worse conditions
of tenure--in both of which respects we may look for improvement in the
immediate future. Even as it is, we find small farmers equalling the
highest production of the country. In the evidence before the Duke of
Richmond's Commission, there is a case of a farmer of three acres
producing 45 bushels per acre, or about twice the average of the season
in those bad years that impoverished the larger farmers. The same body
of evidence seems to prove that the small farmer has more staying
power--a better capacity of weathering an agricultural crisis--than the
large; for he has much less frequently petitioned for a reduction of
rent--an advantage which landlords may be expected not to overlook. He
enjoys, too, a monopoly of the superior efficiency of interested labour,
and as the personal efficiency of the labourer--his skill, his
knowledge, his watchfulness, his care--are becoming not less, but more
important with the growth of scientific farming, whether in corn raising
or cattle rearing, the small farm system will probably continue to hold,
if not to enlarge, its place in modern agriculture; and if it is able to
do so, it will constitute one of the best buttresses against the social
revolution.
It remains to mark the spread of socialism in the various countries of
Europe and America, and to describe its present position; but this I
shall reserve for next chapter.