with Bakunin, supporting the anarchist view of the government of the
future. This was natural for Spaniards, among whom their own central
government had been long thoroughly detested, and their own communal
organization regarded with general satisfaction. The Spanish people,
even the humblest of them, are imbued beyond others with those
sentiments of personal dignity and mutual equality which are at the
bottom of democratic aspirations; and in their local communes, where
every inhabitant who can read and write has a voice in public council,
they have for ages been accustomed to manage their own affairs with
harmony and advantage. The revolutionary tradition of Spain has
accordingly always favoured communal autonomy, and the Federal rather
than the Central Republic. Castelar declares the Federal Republic to be
the most perfect form of State, though he thinks it for the present
impracticable; and the revolution of 1873, in which the International
played an active part, was excited for the purpose of establishing it.
The Federal Republicans are not all socialists. Many of them are for
making the agricultural labourers peasant proprietors, and even for
dividing the communal property among them; but in a country like Spain,
where communal property exists already to a large extent, the idea of
making all other property communal property lies ever at hand as a ready
resource of reformers. Nor, again, are all Spanish socialists
federalists. There is a Social Democratic Labour party in Spain which
broke off from the anarchists in 1882, and published a programme more on
Marxist lines, demanding (1) the acquisition of political power; (2) the
transformation of all private and corporate into the common property of
the nation; and (3) the reorganization of society on the basis of
industrial associations. This body is not very numerous, but at one of
its recent congresses it had delegates from 152 different branches, and
it has for the last four years had a party organ, _El Socialista_, in
Madrid.
The bulk of Spanish socialism still belongs, however, to the anarchist
wing. Little has been heard of the anarchists in Spain since the
revolution of 1873 and the fall of the International. They have usually
been blamed for the attempts on the life of the king in 1878, but they
have certainly never resorted to those promiscuous outrages which have
formed so much of the recent policy of the anarchists of other
countries; and except for participation in a few demonstrations of the
unemployed, they have maintained a surprisingly quiet and unobtrusive
existence. In 1881 they reconstituted themselves as the Spanish
Federation of the International Working Men's Association, which is said
by the author of "Socialismus und Anarchismus, 1883-86," apparently on
their own authority, to have 70,000 members in all Spain, who are
distributed in 800 branches, and hold regular district and national
congresses, but always under cover of secrecy. They have two journals in
Madrid, and others in the larger towns elsewhere. They are sorely
divided into parties and schools on very petty points, and fierce strife
rages between the tweedledums and tweedledees. One party has broken away
altogether and established a society of its own, under the name of the
Autonomists. The anarchists are in close alliance with an agrarian
organization called the Rural Labourers' Union, which has agitated since
1879 for the abolition of _latifundia_ in Andalusia, but they always
disclaim all connection with the more notorious Andalusian society, the
Black Hand, which committed so many outrages in 1881 and 1882, and is
often identified with the anarchists. The Black Hand is a separate
organization from the anarchists, and has, it is said, 40,000 members,
mostly peasants, in Andalusia and the neighbouring provinces; but their
principles are undoubtedly socialistic. Their views are confined to the
subject of land; but they declare that land, like all other property,
has been made by labour, that it therefore cannot in right belong to the
idle and rich class who at present own it, and that any means may be
legitimately employed to deprive this class of usurpers of their
possessions--the sword, fire, slander, perjury.
In Spain, unlike most other countries, the artisans of the towns show
less inclination to socialistic views than the rural labourers. They
have an active and even powerful labour movement of their own, carried
on through an extensive organization of trade unions which has risen up
rapidly within the last few years, especially in Catalonia, and they put
their whole trust in combination, co-operation, and peaceful agitation
for gradual reform under the present order of things, and will have
nothing to say to socialism or anarchism; so much so, that they
manifested the greatest reluctance to join in the eight hour
demonstrations of May-day, 1890, because they did not wish to be
confounded or in any way identified with the more extreme faction who
were getting those demonstrations up; and they actually held a rival
demonstration of their own on Sunday, the 4th of May, "in favour," as
they stated in the public announcement of it, "of State socialism and of
State legislation, both domestic and international, to improve the
general condition of the working classes without any revolutionary or
sudden change that could alarm the Sovereign and the governing classes."
Spain made a beginning in factory legislation in 1873, when an act was
passed restricting the labour of children and young people; but the act
remained dead-letter till 1884, when the renewal of agitation on the
social question by the various parties led the cabinet to issue an order
to have this law carried into effect, and a little later in the same
year to appoint a royal commission to institute a thorough inquiry into
the whole circumstances of the labouring classes, and the conditions of
their improvement. This commission, which received nothing but abuse
from the anarchists, who said the labour problem must be settled from
below and not from above, was welcomed very heartily by the trade
unionists, and with favour rather than otherwise even by the Social
Democrats; but it has as yet had little or no result, and men who know
the country express their opinion very freely that it will never lead to
anything but an act or two that will remain dead-letter like their
predecessors. The suffrage is high, only one person in seventeen having
a vote; and working-class legislation will continue lukewarm till the
working class acquires more real political power. A leading Spanish
statesman said lately: "The day for social questions has not yet come in
Spain, and we can afford to look on and see other countries make
experiments which may be of use some day when our politicians and
thinkers can find time to devote attention to these twentieth century
problems."
There seems much truth in the view that socialism, spite of the alarm
its spread caused to the Spanish Government in 1872, is really a disease
of a more advanced stage of industrial development than yet exists in
Spain, and therefore unlikely to grow immediately into anything very
formidable there. The country has few large industrial centres.
Two-thirds of the people are still engaged in agriculture; and though it
is among the agricultural classes socialism has broken out, the outbreak
has been local, and confined to provinces where the conditions of
agricultural labour are decidedly bad. But these conditions vary much
from province to province. In the southern provinces the cereal plains
and also the lower pasturages are generally possessed by large
proprietors, who work them by farmers on the _metayer_ principle, with
the help of bands of migratory labourers in harvest time; but in the
mountainous parts of these provinces the estates belong for the most
part to the communes. They are usually large, and as every member of the
commune has an undivided right of using them, he is able to obtain from
them the main part of his living without rent. Many of the inhabitants
of such districts engage in the carrying trade, to which they conjoin a
little cattle-dealing as opportunities offer; and as they are sober and
industrious, they are usually comparatively well off. In the northern
provinces the situation is in some respects better. Land is much
subdivided, and though the condition of the labouring class is not as a
rule unembarrassed, that result is due more to their own improvidence
and indolence than to anything else. A man of frugal and industrious
habits can always rise without much difficulty from the position of day
labourer to that of _metayer_ tenant, and from tenancy to
proprietorship, and some of the small proprietors are able to amass a
considerable competency. Besides, even the improvident are saved from
the worst by the communal organization. They have always a right of
pasturage on the commons, and a right to wood for fire, house and
furniture, and they get their children's education and medical
attendance in sickness gratuitously on condition of giving six days'
labour at the roads of the commune. The most active and saving part of
the population, north and south, is the class of migratory workmen, who
stay at home only during seed-time and harvest, and go for the rest of
the year to work in Castile, Andalusia, or Portugal, as masons or
carpenters, or waiters, and always come back with a store of money.
Sometimes they remain abroad for a year or two, and sometimes they go to
Cuba or Mexico for twenty years, and return to settle on a property of
their own in their native village. This class forms the _personnel_ of
the small property in Spain, and they give by their presence a healthy
stimulus to the neighbourhoods they reside in. The small property is in
Spain, as elsewhere, too often turned from a blessing to a curse by its
subdivision, on the death of the proprietor, among the members of his
family, who in Spain are usually numerous, though it is interesting to
learn that in some of the Pyrenean valleys it has been preserved for
five hundred years by the habit of integral transmission to the eldest
child--son or daughter--coupled with the habit of voluntary celibacy on
the part of many of the other children. The economic situation of Spain,
then, is not free from defects; but there always exists a wide margin of
hope in a country where, as Frere said, "God Almighty has so much of the
land in His own holding," and its economic situation would not of itself
be likely to precipitate social revolution.
From Spain, socialism passed into Portugal; but from the first it has
worked very quietly there. Its adherents formed themselves into an
association in 1872, and held congresses, published newspapers, started
candidates, and actively promoted their views in every legitimate way.
Their programme was anarchism, like that of their Spanish allies; but,
unlike anarchists elsewhere, they repudiated all resort to violence,
for, as M. de Laveleye says, they are naturally "less violent than the
Spaniards, the economic situation of the country is better, and liberty
being very great, prevents the explosion of popular fury, which is worse
when exasperated by repression." Portugal is an agricultural country in
a good climate, where the people have few wants, and find it easy to
satisfy them fairly well. In the absence of any manner of acute
discontent, socialism could never have been much better than an abstract
speculation; and Portuguese socialism, if we may trust the complaints
made by the party elsewhere, seems now to have lost even the savour it
had. In March, 1888, one of the socialist newspapers of London reported
that the Portuguese working men's movement had, in the course of the
preceding ten years, given up the straightforward socialist character it
once had; that its leaders had entered into compromises with other
political parties, and threw themselves too much into experiments in
co-operation; that the party press was very lukewarm in its socialism,
and inclined more to mere Radicalism; and that one or two attempts that
had been made to start more extreme journals had completely failed; but
it announced with satisfaction, that at last, in January, 1888, a
frankly anarchist paper was published at Oporto--_A Revoluzao Social_.
About the same time the editor of a journal which had made some hostile
remarks on anarchism was shot, and anarchists were blamed and arrested
for the deed. There was a Socialist Congress at Lisbon in 1882, composed
of twelve delegates representing eight societies, all in Lisbon or
Oporto.
While the socialist cause has been thus rather retreating in the south
of Europe, it has been making some advances in the north. Of the three
Scandinavian countries, Denmark alone gave any early response to the
socialist agitation; but there are now socialist organizations in Sweden
and Norway, and the movement in Denmark has assumed considerable
dimensions. Attempts were made to introduce socialism into Norway as far
back as 1873 by Danish emissaries, and the International also founded a
small society of thirty-seven members in Christiania; but the society
seems to have died, and nothing more was heard of socialism there till
the commotion in favour of a Republic in 1883. A Social Democratic Club
was then established in Christiania, and a Social Democratic Congress
was held at Arendal in 1887; but even yet Norwegian social democracy is
of so mild a character that it would be counted conservatism by Social
Democrats elsewhere, for this Congress issued a programme for a new
labour party without a word of socialism in it, and merely asking for a
normal working day, for factory legislation and reform of taxation. In
Sweden there is more appearance of agitation, because there is one very
active agitator in the country, Palm, a tailor, who keeps socialism _en
evidence_ by making stump speeches, or getting up street processions
with the usual red flags, and sometimes--such was the easy indifference
of the Government to his work at first--with a military band in full
uniform at the head of them. The Swedish socialists had four newspapers
in 1888, but three of them were confiscated by the Government in
December of that year, and their editors arrested for offences against
religion and the throne. In May, 1890, they held their first Congress at
Stockholm, when delegates appeared from twenty-nine unions; but the
movement is very unimportant in Sweden and Norway, and the chief
conditions of success seem wanting to it in those countries. There is no
class of labourers there without property; no town residuum, and no
rural cottagers. There being few great manufacturers in the kingdom,
only fifteen per cent. of the people altogether live in towns. The rest
are spread sparsely over the rural districts on farms belonging to
themselves, and in the absence of roads are obliged to make at home many
of the ordinary articles of consumption. What with the produce of their
small properties and their own general handiness, they are unusually
independent and comfortable. M. de Laveleye considers them the happiest
people in Europe.
The circumstances of Denmark are different. The operatives of the town
are badly off. Mr. Strachey tells us in his report to the Foreign Office
in 1870 that every fourth inhabitant of Copenhagen was in receipt of
parochial relief in 1867, and he says that while the Danish operatives
are sober, and well educated, they fail in industry and thrift. "No fact
in my report," he states, "is more certain than that the Dane has yet to
learn the meaning of the word _work_; of entireness and thoroughness he
has seldom any adequate notion. This is why the Swedish artisan can so
often take the bread from his mouth." In the rural districts, too, the
economic situation, though in some respects highly favourable, is
attended by a shadow. The land is, indeed, widely diffused. There are in
all 280,000 families in the rural districts of Denmark, and of these
170,000 occupy independent freeholds, 30,000 farm hired land, and only
26,000 are agricultural labourers pure and simple. Seven-eighths of the
whole country is held by peasant proprietors, and as a rule no class in
Europe has improved more during the last half century than the Danish
peasant or Bonde. Mr. Strachey says: "The Danish landlord was till
recent times the scourge of the peasantry. Under his paternal care the
Danish Bonde was a mere hewer of wood and drawer of water; his lot was
no better than that of the most miserable ryot of Bengal. The Bonde is
now the freest, the most politically wise, the best educated of European
yeomen." But there is another side to the picture. In Denmark, as in
other places where the small property abounds, the property is often too
small for the proprietor's necessities, and there thus arises a kind of
proprietor-proletariat, unwilling to part with their land and unable to
extract a living out of it. This class, along with the rural labourers
who have no property, constitute a sort of fourth estate in the country,
and there as elsewhere their condition is preparing a serious social
question for the future. Then, among the influences favourable to the
acceptance of socialism in Denmark, must be counted the fact that one of
the two great political parties of the country is democratic. Curiously
enough that party consists of the peasantry, and the Conservatives of
Denmark are the commercial classes of the towns, with the artisans in
their wake, their Conservatism, however, being substantially identical
with the Liberalism of the same classes in other countries. This
democratic party seeks to make everything in the State conduce to the
interests of the peasantry, and keeps alive in the country the idea that
the State exists by the will of the people, and for their good alone.
The International was introduced into this exclusively Protestant
country by two militant Roman Catholics--Pio, a retired military
officer, who came to Denmark as religious tutor to a baroness who had
joined the Church of Rome, and Geleff, who wrote for an Ultramontane
journal. They pursued their new mission with great zeal and success.
They opened branches of the association in most of the towns, started a
party newspaper, held open-air meetings, were sent to imprisonment for
sedition in 1873, and on their release in 1877 absconded to America with
the whole of the party funds, and disputed bitterly there over the
spoil. While they were in prison, the International was suppressed in
Denmark; but the members merely reconstituted the organization under the
name of the Socialist Labour Party, and the place of leader was taken
for a time by an authoress, Jacquette Lilyenkrantz, for, as in other
countries, women are in Denmark among the most active propagandists of
socialism. They kept up communications with the socialist leaders in
Germany, and the meeting of the German Socialist Congress at Copenhagen
in 1883 gave the movement a new impetus. They were able to return two
deputies, Holm and Hoerdun, to the Volkething in 1884, and they took
part, 80,000 strong, in the Copenhagen procession of 1886, in
commemoration of the fundamental law of the State. Their chief party
organ, the _Social Demokraten_, has a circulation of 26,000 daily, one
of the largest newspaper circulations in Denmark; and there are other
four socialist journals in the kingdom.
They belong to the moderate wing of social democracy, being opposed to
revolution and terrorism, and placing their confidence in constitutional
agitation. Their programme is substantially that of Gotha--the right of
the labourers to the full product of labour, State management of all
industry, free education, universal suffrage, normal working day,
abolition of class inequalities, single chamber in legislature, free
justice, no standing army, State provision for sick and aged, religions
to be a private affair. They turn their propaganda with most hope to the
land proletariat; and a recent writer, P. Schmidt, in an interesting
paper in the _Arbeiterfreund_ for 1889, says they are succeeding in
their mission, and that socialism is spreading more and more every day
among the rural labourers. At their last Congress, held at Copenhagen,
in June, 1890, and attended by seventy-one delegates from fifty-four
different branches, their attention was chiefly occupied with questions
about the land; provision of more land for the people by compulsory
acquisition of ecclesiastical property and uncultivated ground; State
advances of capital to agricultural labourers; agricultural schools;
better housing for farm servants, etc. In 1887 they held a socialist
exhibition in Copenhagen--an international exhibition of socialist
pamphlets, newspapers, books, magazines, and pictures; and in 1890 they
returned two members to the Landthing--the first time they secured
representatives in the Upper Chamber.
Belgium has many of the conditions of soil most favourable for
socialism--a dense population, large towns, an advanced productive
system, and an industrial class at once very numerous, very ill paid,
and very open, through their education, to new social ideas. For a time,
accordingly, socialism spread remarkably in that country. The
International had eight federations of branches in 1869, with 60,000
members and several newspapers. In the dispute between Marx and Bakunin,
the Belgian Internationalists seem to have sided as a body with Bakunin;
but they presently fell out among themselves, and, in spite of many
repeated efforts at reconciliation, they have never since succeeded in
composing their differences. The German socialist leaders tried to
reorganize them in 1879 at a special Congress at Brussels, under the
name of the Socialist Labour Party of Belgium, and with the Gotha
programme; but they were rent again in 1881 by a division which had then
entered into German socialism itself. The majority of the party adhered
to Liebknecht and Bebel; but an active minority, composed chiefly of
Walloons, followed the anarchist views of Most and Hasselman, withdrew
from the party, and founded another called the Revolutionary Union. The
anarchists have one journal--_Ni Dieu, Ni Maitre_--violent, as the name
indicates, but obscure and unimportant; but they believe most in the
less intellectual propaganda of deed, and make themselves conspicuous
from time to time by dynamite explosions and street fights with the
police or the military, or their own socialist rivals. The Belgian
socialists, on the other hand, look more to constitutional and
parliamentary action, and usually work with the Liberals at the
elections; but the Belgian voting qualification is high, and they have
never succeeded in returning a candidate of their own. In 1887 their
candidate for Brussels got 1,000 votes, while his successful rival had
3,000. They took an active part in the Republican agitation which was
raised by the School Law in 1884. They have capable leaders, and they
publish two journals, which, however, for want of funds, appear only at
distant and uncertain intervals. They have lately begun to hold many
open-air meetings, which the authorities had long forbidden, and they
held an International Socialist Exhibition at Ghent in 1887 like that
held in the same year at Copenhagen.
On the whole socialism, after twenty years' work, is making no way in
Belgium, notwithstanding the favourable character of the soil, because
the labour movement is choosing other directions and forms of
organization. Trade unions and co-operative societies have been
multiplying much during these twenty years, and in 1885 a strong Belgian
Labour Party was formed, with 120 branches and 100,000 members, which
aims at promoting the practical wellbeing of the working class by
remedial legislation--by in some cases vicious State-socialistic
legislation, it may be--but has no word of the right to the full product
of labour, of the nationalization of all industry, or of the social
revolution. One of the items of the programme is worded "collective
property"; but whether it contemplates the universal State-property of
collectivism or the corporate property of co-operation does not appear.
The other items are universal suffrage, direct legislation by the people
(presumably the _referendum_), free undenominational education,
abolition of standing army, abolition of budget of worship, normal work
day, normal wages, regulation of work of women and children, factory
inspection, employers' liability, workmen's chambers, courts of
conciliation, repeal of taxes on means of subsistence, increased income
tax, international labour legislation. M. de Laveleye attributes the ill
success of socialism in Belgium, and no doubt rightly, to the influence
of discussion and free institutions. Government has left it to stand or
fall on its own merits before public opinion. The socialists enjoy full
liberty of the platform and press; they can hold meetings and congresses
and form clubs in any town they please, and the result is that though
the movement, like all new movements, made a certain impression and
advance for a time at first, it got checked under the influence of
discussion and the application of solid practical judgment. Then, though
the Belgian Legislature has not yet done what it can and ought for
ameliorating the condition of the labourers, philanthropy has been very
active and useful in a number of ways in that kingdom. The Catholic
Church has always intervened to keep up a high ideal of employers'
responsibility--the old ideal of a patriarchal care; and there is a
strong organization in Belgium of Catholic Working Men's Clubs, which
were formed into one body in 1867, which were united with the Catholic
Working Men's Clubs of Germany in 1869, and with those of France in
1870, and which now constitute with these the International Catholic
Working Men's Association.
It ought perhaps to be mentioned that there is an old but small party of
Land Nationalizers in Belgium, the Colinsian Socialists, whose
principles have been warmly endorsed by Mr. Ruskin as "forming the most
complete system of social and political reform yet put forward." They
want the State to own all the soil, and let it out by auction; but they
are opposed to nationalizing any of the other instruments of production.
In Holland, wealth is very unequally divided, wages are low, and
taxation, being largely indirect, falls heavily on the working class;
but the people are phlegmatic, domestic, religious, and contrive on
small means to maintain a general appearance of comfort and decency.
Above all, they enjoy free institutions; and, under freedom, socialism
has run the same course in Holland as in Belgium. The International made
rapid advances in 1869, founded branches in all the towns, and carried
on, after the Paris Commune, so active and successful an agitation that
the _bourgeoisie_ took alarm, and Government imposed some restrictions
on the disaffected press. But a general rise in wages happened about the
time, a strong co-operative movement was promoted under the lead of the
orthodox divines, a lively polemic against socialism broke out among the
working men themselves, and all interest in the social revolution seemed
to have died away, when, in 1878, it was revived again by D. Niewenhuis,
a retired Protestant minister, a man of capacity and zeal, who has been
unwearied in his advocacy of the cause ever since. He started in that
year a journal, _Recht Voor Allen_, which is still, I believe, the only
socialist organ in Holland, and appears now three times a week; and he
founded the Social Democratic Union in 1884, which is strongest in the
Hague and Amsterdam, but has branches in most of the other towns, and a
membership by no means inconsiderable, though much below the old numbers
of the Dutch International. After being imprisoned in 1887 for political
reasons, Niewenhuis was returned to the Legislature in 1888--the first
socialist who has sat there. The Dutch Socialists, to increase their
numbers, enrol a class of "secret" members, timid spirits who will only
come to them "by night, for fear of the Jews." There is also a handful
of anarchists in Holland, who have a newspaper in Amsterdam, and are
said to live harmoniously with the socialists, and, according to the
reports of the American consuls, nobody in the country thinks any harm
of either.
Switzerland has swarmed for a century with conspirators of all hues and
nations; but the Swiss--thanks again to free institutions--have been
steel against revolution. The "Young Germanys" and "Young Italys" whom
she sheltered in the past sought only, it is true, to win for their own
countries the political freedom which Switzerland already enjoyed; but
the socialist and anarchist refugees of the last twenty years have had
social principles to preach which were as new and as good for the Swiss
as for their own countrymen; and, speaking as they did the languages of
the Confederation, they have never ceased making active efforts for the
conversion of the Swiss. The old Jurassian Federation of the
International, still continues to exist in French-speaking Switzerland,
and to bear witness for the extremest kind of anarchist communism--no
force or authority whatever, and a collective consumption of products as
well as a collective production; but this body is not increasing, and
though Guesde, the French socialist, made a lecturing tour through that
division of Switzerland in 1885, he had quite as little success for his
branch of the revolutionary cause. There are numbers of Social
Democratic Clubs in the German-speaking cantons, but they consist mainly
of German refugees, and contain few native Swiss members. After the
Anti-Socialist Laws of 1879, the German socialists settled largely in
Switzerland. They transferred to Zurich their party organ, the _Social
Democrat_, and along with it, to use their own phrase, the entire
Olympus of the party, the body of writers and managers who moved the
shuttle of its operations. These propagandists naturally did not neglect
the country of their adoption, but used every opportunity to forward
their agitation by addresses and even by extended missionary journeys,
and a separate Swiss Social Democratic party was actually founded, with
a separate organ, the _Arbeiterstimme_; but it collapsed in 1884 from
internal dissensions. No attempt was made to revive it till 1888, when
the action of the Federal Council in May against the foreign socialists
resident in the Confederation led to the organization of a Swiss
socialist party in October. The Federal Government had already, in 1884
and 1885, taken measures against the political refugees, especially the
anarchists, who were thought to have abused the hospitality they
received by planning and preparing in Switzerland the series of crimes
which shocked all Europe in 1884, and even by trying to explode the
Federal Palace at Berne itself. The Government instituted an inquiry,
and finding the country absolutely riddled with anarchist clubs,
determined to keep the eye of the police on them, and in the meantime
expelled thirty or forty of their leading members from Switzerland
altogether. These were almost without exception either Austrians or
Germans, and included Neve, now a leading anarchist in London. The
Russian anarchists were apparently not thought so dangerous, their great
occupation being to invent new ways and means of smuggling newspapers
into Russia; but they disliked the police supervision to which they were
subjected, and very generally quitted Switzerland of their own accord
for London or Paris. The anarchist organ, the _Revolte_, was removed at
the same time to Paris, but its place in Geneva was taken by a new
paper--_L'Egalitaire_. In 1888 the police were ordered to report all
socialist meetings held in the country, and all arrivals or departures
of "foreigners whose means of subsistence was unknown, and whose
presence might, for other reasons, become dangerous to the safety of the
country"; and as this further turn of the screw was believed to be made
on the instigation of Germany, it provoked considerable opposition, one
result of which was the formation of the new Swiss socialist party.
This party, however, is not an affair of any magnitude, and does not
appear very likely to become so; for the working men of Switzerland have
the public power in their own hands already, and they have their own
organizations besides to look after their interests; and while they are
by no means averse to the use of the powers of the State, they are
disposed to move with inquiry and caution, and to see every step of
their way before running into speculative schemes of foreign origin.
Their political position satisfies them, because they know they are too
strong for Government to neglect their wishes, because some labour laws
have already been passed for their protection, and because the
authorities always show themselves ready to entertain any new proposals
for the same object, as, for example, they did in May, 1890, by
summoning an International Congress at Berne to discuss the length of
the working day and other conditions of labour.
Their economic position, moreover, is also comparatively satisfactory
for various reasons, among which Mr. Bonar, in his report to the Foreign
Office in 1870, gives a chief place to the general working of democratic
institutions and the prevalence of benevolent and charitable
associations. "In enumerating," he says, "the favourable circumstances
in which the Swiss working man is placed, prominence must be given to
the immense extension of the principle of democracy, which, whatever,
may be its defects and dangers from a political point of view when
pushed to extremes, serves in Switzerland in its economical effects to
advance the cause of the operative by removing the barriers dividing
class from class, and to establish among all grades the bonds of mutual
sympathy and goodwill, further strengthened by a widely-spread network
of associations organized with the object of securing the common
interests and welfare of the people." Masters and workmen are socially
more equal than in most European countries; they sit side by side at the
board of the Communal Council, they belong to the same choral societies,
they refresh themselves at the same _cafes_. In most cantons, too,
operatives are either owners of, or hold from the communes, small
pieces of land which they cultivate in their leisure hours, and which
thus serve them when work gets slack or fails altogether. The favourable
rural economy of the country is well known; its peasant proprietors
rival those of France. The Swiss societies of beneficence are
remarkable, and almost suggest the hope that the voluntary socialism of
a more enlarged and widely organized system of charity may be found to
furnish a substantial solution of the social question. Every canton of
Switzerland has its society of public utility, whose aims take an
extensive range; it gives the start to projects of improvement of every
description, infant schools, schools of design, savings banks, schemes
for the poor, the sick, the dumb, singing classes, halls for Sunday
recreation, popular lectures, workmen's houses, protection of animals,
even industrial undertakings which promise to be ultimately beneficial,
though they may not pay at first. The society of Basle has 900 members
and a capital of L6,000, and the Swiss Society of Public Utility is an
organization for the whole Republic, which holds an annual congress at
Zurich, and general meetings in the different cantons by turns. These
meetings pass off with every mark of enthusiasm, and gather together men
of all religious and political opinions in a common concern for the
progress and prosperity of the masses. One of the institutions which
these societies have largely promoted is what they call a hall of
industry, or a bazaar, where loans may be received by workmen on the
security of their wages, or of goods they may deposit. A labourer who
has made any article which he cannot get immediately sold, may deposit
it at one of these bazaars, and obtain an advance equal to a fixed
proportion of its value, and if the article is sold at the bazaar, the
proceeds are accounted for to the depositor, less the sum advanced and a
small charge for expenses. These institutions, Mr. Bonar says, have had
excellent effects, though he admits that the facilities of borrowing
have led the working men in some places into debt; but they are at any
rate a vast improvement on the pawnbroking system in vogue elsewhere.
The condition of Switzerland shows us clearly enough that democracy
under a _regime_ of freedom lends no ear to socialism, but sets its face
in entirely different directions.
The United States of America have done more for experimental socialism
than any other country. Owenites, Fourierists, Icarians have all
established communities there, but these communities have failed long
ago, except one of the Icarian, and the only other socialist experiments
now existing in America are seventy or eighty religious communities,
Shakers and Rappists, whose success has been due to their religious
discipline and their celibacy, and whose members amount to no more than
5,000 souls all told. There is indeed a Russian Commune in California,
but it remains a solitary Russian Commune still, the "new formula of
civilization," as Russian reformers used to call it, showing no sign of
further adoption. Nor has the new or political socialism found any
better success in the States. There are various indigenous forms of
it--such as the agrarian socialism of Mr. Henry George, and the
nationalism of Mr. E. Bellamy--but in point of following they are of
little importance, and the socialism of the American socialist and
revolutionary parties is a mere German import, with as yet a purely
German consumption. It has been pushed vigorously in the American market
for twenty years, but taken singularly little hold of the American
taste. There is one revolutionary socialist body composed chiefly of
English-speaking members, the International Workmen's Association, which
was founded in 1881 in one of the western states; but Mr. Ely says its
membership would be generously estimated at 15,000, and it considers the
great work of the present should be popular education, so as to prepare
the people for the revolution when it comes.
The Boston Anarchists, perhaps, ought not, strictly speaking, to be
included in any account of socialism, for, unlike most contemporary
anarchists, they are not socialist, but extremely individualist; but
historically, it is worth noting, Boston Anarchism is the doctrine of a
disenchanted socialist, Josiah Warren, who had lived with Robert Owen at
New Harmony, and came to the conclusion that that experiment failed
because the individual had been too much sunk in the community, and no
room was left for the play of individual interests, individual rights,
and individual responsibilities. From Owen's communism, Warren ran to
the opposite extreme, and thought it impossible to individualize things
too much. He would abolish the State, and have the work of police and
defence done by private enterprise, like any other service. He issued
some books, tried to carry out his views by practical experiment, and,
though they failed, he has still a small band of believing disciples at
Boston, who publish a newspaper called _Liberty_, but have no
organization and no importance.
Henry George and his followers, too, perhaps ought not in strictness to
be classified among socialists. He would certainly repudiate such a
classification himself, and the United Labour Party, which he founded in
1886 to promote his views by political action, expelled the socialists
from membership in 1887. His actual practical proposal is nothing more
than a narrow and illusory plan of taxation; but he puts it forward so
expressly as the keystone of a new social system, as the remedy
prescribed by economic science itself for the complete regeneration of
society and the simultaneous removal of all existing social evils, that
he is not improperly placed among Utopian socialists. Does he not
promise us a new heaven and a new earth? And if he believes the State
can call the new heaven and the new earth into being by a mere turn in
the incidence of taxation, while most other contemporary socialists
think the State must first pull down all that now is and reconstruct the
whole on a new plan, is he, on account of this greater credulity of his,
to be considered a more, and not rather a less, sober and rational
speculator than they? He wants to abolish landlordism, while they want
to abolish landlordism and all other capitalism besides; and his views
may fairly be called partial or agrarian socialism. The United Labour
Party was founded mainly to promote Mr. George's panacea of the single
tax on such land values as arise from the growth of society apart from
individual exertion; but it includes other articles in its
programme--the municipalization of the supply of water, light, and heat;
the nationalization of all money, note issue, post, telegraphs,
railways, and savings banks; reduction of the hours of labour,
prohibition of child labour, suppression of the competition of prison
labour with honest labour; sanitary inspection of houses, factories, and
mines; simplification of legal procedure; secret ballot; payment of
election expenses. The United Labour Party is not strong. When Mr.
George stood for the Mayoralty of New York, he had 68,000 votes to his
opponent's 90,000; but he had on that occasion the assistance of the
Socialistic Labour Party, who are said by Mr. Ely to number about 25,000
in New York, and who certainly constituted a very considerable element
in the United Labour Party, for they were expelled at the Party
Convention only by a vote of 94 to 54. On the other hand, Mr. Ely's
estimate of the strength of the socialists is possibly too high, for
they ran a candidate for the Mayoralty of New York themselves in 1888, a
leading man of the party, one Jones, and he only secured 2,000 votes.
However that may be, the United Labour Party was certainly much weakened
by the loss of the socialists, and they were disabled entirely in the
following year by a division on the question of Free Trade and the
secession of Father McGlynn and the Protectionist members.
Nationalism is the name of a new movement, the fruit of the remarkable
and very popular novel of Mr. Edward Bellamy, "Looking Backward," which
may be said to be the latest description of Utopia as it now stands with
all the most modern improvements. Mr. Bellamy would have all industry
organized and conducted by the nation on the basis of a common
obligation of work and a general guarantee of livelihood, all men to get
exactly the same wages, and to do exactly the same quantity of work, due
allowance being made for differences in severity, and the State to
enlarge indefinitely its free public provision of the means of common
enjoyment and culture. Mr. Bellamy's charming pictures of the new
country naturally engendered a general wish to be there, and many little
societies have been established to hasten the hour; but as the movement
has not been more than a year in being, little account can yet be given
of its success. The Nationalists have quite recently issued an organ,
_The New Nation_, which announces its programme to be (1) the
nationalization of post, telegraphs, telephone, railways and coal mines;
(2) municipalization of gas and water supply, and the like; and (3) the
equalization of educational opportunities as between rich and poor, and
the promotion of all reforms tending towards humaner, more fraternal,
and more equal conditions. Nationalism out of Utopia, therefore, means
merely a little State-socialism.
The strongest socialist organizations in the United States are the
Socialistic Labour Party, corresponding to the Social Democrats of
Europe, and the International Working People's Association,
corresponding to the anarchists; but both are composed almost
exclusively of Germans. There are more Germans in the North American
Republic than in any State of Germany except Prussia; and as many of
them have fled from their own country for political reasons--to escape
the conscription, or to escape prosecution for sedition--they bear no
goodwill to the old system of government, and harbour revolutionary
ideas almost from the nature of things. A socialist propaganda began
among them so far back as 1848, when Weitling, of whom more will be said
presently, published a socialist newspaper; and a Socialist Gymnastic
Union was established in New York in 1850, which succeeded in forming a
kind of federal alliance, apparently for socialistic purposes, with a
number of other local German gymnastic societies throughout the States;
but though these societies still exist, they seem to have dropped their
socialism. It was taken up again, however, in 1869, by the
International, which transferred its General Council to New York in
1872, held congresses from time to time in the country, and eventually,
at the Newark Convention of 1877, adopted the name of the Socialistic
Labour Party, with a programme formed after the Gotha lines. The numbers
of the party were strengthened in the years immediately following by the
arrival of German refugees, expelled from their own land by the
Socialist Laws; but the new members brought with them elements of
dissension which speedily came to a head after the arrival of the
incendiary spirit, John Most, in 1882, and led, in 1883, to the entire
separation of the Anarchists from the Social Democrats. The latter held
a separate Congress at Baltimore in the latter year, attended by 16
delegates, representing 23 branches and 10,000 members, and it reported
that altogether 38 branches adhered to them. The anarchists held a
Congress at Pittsburg, and formed themselves into the International
Working People's Association, with the following principles:--
"What we would achieve is therefore plainly and simply--
"1st. Destruction of the existing class rule by all means; _i.e._, by
energetic, relentless, revolutionary, and international action.
"2nd. Establishment of a free society based upon co-operative
organization of production.
"3rd. Free exchange of equivalent products by and between the productive
organizations without commerce and profit-mongery.
"4th. Organization of education on a secular, scientific, and equal
basis for both sexes.
"5th. Equal rights for all without distinction of sex or race.
"6th. Regulation of all public affairs by free contracts between the
autonomous (independent) communes and associations resting on a
federalistic basis." (Ely's "Labour Movement in America," p. 231.)
They differ from the Socialistic Labour Party, as this programme shows,
in their exclusive devotion to revolution, and their opposition to all
central government.
The Socialistic Labour Party has several newspapers, the principal being
the _Sozialist_ and the _Neu Yorker Volkszeitung_ of New York, and the
_Tageblatt_ of Philadelphia; and the anarchists have more, the best
known being Most's notorious _Freiheit_. Mr. Ely mentions sixteen
socialist newspapers and ten sympathizing with socialism, and says that
the majority of these support the anarchist side. The anarchists,
moreover, have one journal in English--the _Alarm_; the Socialistic
Labour Party started one in 1883, but it died. With that exception the
press of both parties is entirely German, and neither party seems to
have done almost anything in the way of an English propaganda from the
platform. Dr. and Mrs. Aveling state that before they made their
lecturing tour on the subject through the States in 1886, the American
public had never heard socialism preached to them in their own tongue;
yet books like Mr. Gronlund's "Co-operative Commonwealth," giving a very
effective exposition of socialism, had already appeared from the
American press. Dr. and Mrs. Aveling say, moreover, they met with more
hostility to their mission from the anarchists than from any other
source in America. The American people, while firmly stamping out the
dynamite policy of the anarchists, have naturally nothing to say
against an academic propaganda of any system of doctrine.
The trend of the labour movement in America seems away from socialism.
That movement is in many respects more powerful there than in any
European country. There are some five hundred labour newspapers in the
United States, and an immense number of trade organizations of all
kinds. Political power, moreover, both in the States and in the Union,
is in the hands of the working class; and that class has now very nearly
the same grievances there as it has in Europe, and the same aspirations
after a better order of things. But their tendencies are not nearer
socialism, but further from it. They simply cannot understand people who
tell them they have no power to work out their own salvation under the
system that is, and that nothing can be done, as Marx assures them,
until every capital in Europe is ready for a simultaneous revolution
with New York and Chicago. The trade unions accordingly ignore
socialism. The Knights of Labour expressly repudiate it, and in the
course of a very long programme they hardly make a demand which has a
taint even of State-socialism. This "Noble Order of the Knights of
Labour" is a general association of working men to promote the cause of
labour, partly by their own efforts and partly through the Government.
By their own efforts they are to promote co-operation till, if possible,
it supersedes the present wages system entirely; equality of wages for
men and women for equal work; a general eight hours day through a
general strike; and a system of arbitration in trade quarrels. From the
Union Legislature they want merely a few general reforms, none bearing
directly on the situation of labour, except the abolition of foreign
contract labour. The others are, reform of the currency, nationalization
of telegraphs and railways, and the institution of banking facilities of
various kinds in connection with the Post Office. From the State
Legislatures they ask the reservation of public lands to actual
settlers, the simplification of the administration of justice, factory
legislation, graduated income tax, and the following provisions for
labour: weekly payment of wages in money, mechanic's lien on the product
of his labour for his wages, compulsory arbitration in trade disputes,
prohibition of labour of children under fifteen. In 1886 they were
702,884 strong, but they have declined sorely since then. Their great
weapon was to be an extension of strikes and boycotting beyond what was
possible to single trades; but it was found that this policy was
double-edged, and caused more hurt to some sections of the working class
than any good it could do to others; and people lost faith in the
principle of such huge miscellaneous organizations. Dr. Aveling contends
that the Knights of Labour, in spite of Mr. Powderly's disclaimer, are
really, though it may be unconsciously, socialists, because they want to
supersede the wages system, if they can, by establishing co-operative
institutions without State aid; and this, he holds, "is pure and
unadulterated socialism." Indeed! then where is the man who is not a
pure and unadulterated socialist? and what need for any mission to the
States to preach the socialist message to the Americans for the first
time in their own tongue?
England was the country last reached by the present wave of
revolutionary socialism, although the system has been largely conceived
upon a study of English circumstances, and is claimed to be peculiarly
adapted to them. England is alternately the hope and the despair of
Continental socialists. Every requisite of revolution is there, and yet
the people will not rise. The yeomanry are gone. The land has come into
the hands of a few. Industry is carried on by great centralized capital.
The large system of production has almost finished its work. The mass of
the people is a proletariat; they are thronged in large towns; every
tenth person is a pauper; and the great mansions of the rich cast an
evil shadow into the crowded dens of the wretched. "The English," says
Eugene Dupont, a leading member of the old International, "possess all
the materials necessary for the social revolution; but they lack the
generalizing spirit and the revolutionary passion." Any proletariat
movement in which the English proletariat takes no part, said Karl Marx,
is "no better than a storm in a glass of water"; yet, though Marx
himself resided in England for most of his life, no organized attempt
was made to gain over the English proletariat to socialism till
1883--the year he died. There was before that, indeed, a small English
section in a foreign socialist club in Soho; and, after the fall of the
Paris Commune, hopes were for a time entertained of starting a serious
socialist movement in our larger towns; but these hopes proved so
delusive that Karl Marx said more than once to Mr. Hyndman, as we are
told by the latter, that he despaired "of any great movement in England,
unless in response to some violent impetus from without." But in 1883 a
socialist movement seemed to break out spontaneously in England, the air
hummed for a season with a multifarious social agitation, and we soon
had a fairly complete equipment of socialist organizations--social
democratic, anarchist, dilettante--which have ever since kept up a busy
movement with newspapers, lectures, debates, speeches, and
demonstrations in the streets.
In 1883 the Democratic Federation, which had been established two years
before to promote measures of Radical reform, including, among other
things, the nationalization of the land, adopted the socialistic
principles of Karl Marx, and changed its name to the Social Democratic
Federation. Its programme is long, and includes, besides the
nationalization of land and all means of production, direct legislation
by the people, direct election of all functionaries by adult suffrage,
gratuitous justice, gratuitous, compulsory, and equal education,
abolition of standing armies, Home Rule for Ireland, an eight hours day,
State erection of workmen's dwellings, to be let at bare cost,
progressive income tax, proportional representation, abolition of House
of Lords, separation of Church and State, etc. Its principal founders
were Mr. William Morris, an artist, a great poet, and a manufacturer
exceptionally excellent in his arrangements with his workpeople; Mr. H.
M. Hyndman, a journalist of standing and ability; Mr. J. Stuart Glennie,
and Mr. Belfort Bax, both authors of repute; Dr. Aveling, a popular
lecturer on science, and son-in-law of Karl Marx; Miss Helen Taylor,
step-daughter of John Stuart Mill; and the Rev. Stewart Headlam. In
January, 1884, they started a weekly newspaper, _Justice_, and a monthly
magazine, _To-Day_, both of which still appear, and began the active
work of lecturing and founding branches. But before the year was out,
the old enemy of socialists, the spirit of division, entered among them,
and Mr. Morris, with Dr. Aveling and Mr. Bax, seceded and set up an
independent organization called the Socialist League, with a separate
weekly organ, _The Commonweal_. The difference seems to have arisen out
of the common socialist trouble about the propriety of mixing in current
politics. The same disruptive tendency has persisted in the two parts,
and in the end of 1890, Mr. William Morris seceded from the Socialist
League with his local following at Hammersmith.
Neither of these revolutionary bodies has a complete organization like
those of continental countries. They have never held a Congress, either
national or provincial. They consist of a central committee in London,
and detached local groups in the provinces, and their membership is not
accurately known, but it is not extensive. It is in both cases
declining, and it has always been variable, young men joining for a year
or two, and then leaving. Their chief success has been among the miners
of the North of England, and they have returned three members to the
School Board of Newcastle. There is one socialist member in Parliament,
Mr. Cunningham Graham, but he has not been returned on socialist
principles or by a socialist vote; and hitherto the party has failed to
obtain any serious support at the elections. At the election of 1885,
Mr. John Burns, socialist candidate for Nottingham, had only 598 votes
out of a total poll of 11,064, and Mr. J. Williams, the socialist
candidate for Hampstead, had only 27 out of a total of 4,722. Mr. Burns,
however, has since been returned to the London County Council, and will
not improbably succeed in being returned to Parliament at next election.
He is a working engineer, but is much the strongest leader English
socialism has produced, an orator of great power, an excellent
organizer, and the head and representative of a new labour movement
which is likely to play a considerable part in the immediate future, and
which is certainly fermented with a good measure of socialistic leaven.
The New Unionism, as this movement is sometimes called, represents
mainly the opinion of the new trade unions of unskilled labour--dockers
and others--which have sprung into existence recently, and it was strong
enough at the Trade Union Congress in 1890 to carry the day against the
old unionism of the skilled trades by a considerable majority in favour
of the compulsory and universal eight hours day. But, as Mr. T. Burt,
M.P., the miners' parliamentary representative, said in his speech to
the Eighty Club two months afterwards, the New Unionism is, after all,
only the young and inexperienced unionism, and must needs run now
through the same kind of errors which the older trade unions have gone
through before, but will, like the older unions, learn, by discussion
and experiment, to keep within the lines of practicable and beneficial
action. However that may be, for the moment, at any rate, the fortunes
of English socialism seem to lie with Mr. John Burns and his labour
movement, and not with the two socialist organizations which appear to
have already reached their height, and to be now on the decline.
A well-informed German writer lately warned us that anarchism had
brought its headquarters to London, that it was coming into relations
with the English population through its clubs and newspapers, and he
ventured to prophesy that we should certainly have soon an anarchist
fire to extinguish on our own hearth much more serious than Germany or
Austria has had to encounter. So far, however, there is little to
support such a prophecy. There are four small anarchist clubs in
London--three of them German clubs, which live at strife with one
another, and the fourth a Russian or Polish club, whose members have few
or no dealings with the Germans. The German anarchists publish two
weekly newspapers in German, which it is their great business to smuggle
into the Fatherland, and the Russian or Polish anarchists publish one in
Yedish--the German-Hebrew _patois_ of the Polish Jews--which is printed
for the entertainment of the Polish tailors of the East End. Some of the
principal anarchist leaders, it is true, live amongst us--for example,
Prince Krapotkin and Victor Dave--and under their influence a group of
English anarchists has grown up during the last few years; but this
group has already, after the manner of modern revolutionists, split on a
point of doctrine into two opposite camps, which,--if we may judge from
their respective organs, _The Anarchist_ and _Freedom_--expend a
considerable share of their destructive energies upon one another. The
English anarchists have no permanent organization of any kind, and the
one group are for socialist anarchism, and the other for individualist
anarchism. On the whole the conversion of the English by the anarchist
refugees is not an idea worthy of serious consideration; a better and
more likely result would be that they would themselves, like Alexander
Herzen, the leading anarchist of the past generation, be converted in
England to more rational ideas of politics. Our safety lies, however,
not so much in the practical character of our people, as in their habits
of free and open discussion. What is called practicality is no safeguard
against delusive ideas outside one's own immediate field of activity,
and there is perhaps no country, except the still more practical country
of America, where more favour is shown than here to fanaticism of any
kind, if there seems to be heart in it. Besides, when we hear it said,
We have indeed an enormous proletariat, but they are too practical to
think of insurrection, we ought to reflect that, to the miserable, the
practical test of a scheme will not be, Shall we be any the better for
the change? but Shall we be any the worse for it? But under free
institutions grievances always come to be ventilated; ventilation leads
to more or less remedial measures, and discontent is removed altogether,
or, at any rate, appeased for the time; and although under free
institutions ill-considered schemes which inflate that discontent with
delusive hopes may raise for a season a boom of earnest discussion, the
discussion eventually kills them. So it seems to be with the fortunes of
revolutionary socialism in England to-day. It has been much discussed
for six years, but the height of the tide has been reached already, and
the movement is now apparently on the ebb.
Besides these manifestations of revolutionary socialism, we have various
societies representing an amateur and appreciative interest in
socialism. There is the Christian Socialist Society, a small body of
less than 150 adherents, including many clergymen and other members of
the learned professions. They must not be confounded with the Christian
Socialists of forty years ago, Maurice, Kingsley, and their allies, for
the survivors of this earlier movement, such as Judge Thomas Hughes, Mr.
Vansittart Neale, and Mr. J. M. Ludlow, do not belong to the present
Christian Socialist Society, and would repudiate its principles. They
wanted to promote co-operation without State interference, and they take
a leading part in the co-operative movement still; but the Christian
Socialist Society of the present day is all for State interference, and
the articles of its organ, the _Christian Socialist_, strongly support
the doctrines of Karl Marx, and declare that "the command, 'Thou shalt
not steal,' if impartially applied, must absolutely prohibit the
capitalist, as such, from deriving any revenue whatever from the
labourer's toil." But with all their will to believe with the Marxists,
the latter are not sure of them, and the socialist organs, _Justice_ and
_To-Day_, twit them one day for not being Christians, and the next for
not being socialists. They are not men of the same mark as the earlier
body of English Christian socialists, Canon Shuttleworth and Mr. Stewart
Headlam being the two best known of them. The Guild of St. Matthew,
which is composed to some extent of the same _personnel_ as the
Christian Socialist Society, has published a compendium of Christian
socialism, and strives, among other branches of its activity, to
cultivate good relations between socialists and the Church.
The Fabian Society, again, is a debating club of mixed socialism. It
contains socialists of all feathers--revolutionary socialists and
philosophical socialists, Christian socialists and un-Christian
socialists--who meet together under its auspices and exchange their
views, without having any recognised end beyond the discussion. They
intervened lately, however, in the eight hours day controversy, and
drafted a bill for a compulsory measure on the subject which attracted
some public attention. Among the principal members are Mr. Sidney Webb,
a well-known writer and lecturer on economic subjects, Mr. G. Bernard
Shaw, journalist, Mrs. Besant, and Mr. W. Clarke. They have published a
volume of Fabian Essays, which has had a large sale.
No account of English socialism would be complete that made no mention
of the writings of Mr. Ruskin, which have probably done more than any
other single influence to imbue English minds with sentiments and
principles of a socialistic character. But they have produced nothing in
the nature of a school or party more than perhaps some detached local
group; such, for example, as the Sheffield Socialists, a small body
formed under Ruskinian inspiration, and the leadership of Mr. E.
Carpenter.
The outburst of socialist agitation in England in 1883 and 1884 was
immediately preceded by a revival of popular interest in an old and
favourite subject of English speculation, the nationalization of the
land. Mr. Henry George had published his "Progress and Poverty" in 1881,
and in the same year the Democratic Federation was established in London
with land nationalization for one of its principles, and Mr. A. R.
Wallace, the eminent naturalist, founded the Land Nationalization
Society. In 1882, Mr. Wallace contributed still further to awaken
discussion of the question by publishing his work on "Land
Nationalization," and the discussion was spread everywhere in 1883 by
the appearance of a sixpenny edition of Mr. George's remarkable work.
Land nationalization in the hands of Mr. Wallace has little in common
with any form of contemporary socialism. He does not contemplate any
interference with the present system of agricultural production; that is
still to be conducted by capitalists and hired labourers, as it is now.
He merely proposes to abolish what is called landlordism by the
compulsory conversion of the present tenant farmers into a body of
yeomanry or occupying owners, and his scheme differs from the more
ordinary proposals for the creation of peasant proprietors merely in two
points: 1st--which is a very good proposal--that he would leave part of
the price of the property to be paid in the form of a permanent annual
quitrent to the State; and 2nd--which is a more doubtful proposal--that
this part should represent, as nearly as it is possible now to calculate
it, the original value of the soil apart from improvements of any
kind--or, in other words, the unearned part of the present value of the
property--and that it should be subject to periodical revision, with a
view to recovering from the holder any further unearned increments of
value that may accrue to his holding from time to time. Mr. Wallace,
like Mr. George, has very utopian expectations from his scheme; but he
would honestly buy up the rights of the existing landlords, while Mr.
George would merely confiscate them by exceptional taxation. This
difference broke up the Land Nationalization Society in 1883, and the
partisans of Mr. George's view seceded and formed themselves into the
English Land Restoration League, which has established branches in most
of the larger towns, and has now probably a more numerous membership
than the original society. It is especially strong in Scotland, and ran
three candidates for Glasgow at the last general election; but the three
only got 2,222 votes between them, out of a total of 23,800 polled in
the three divisions they contested. The ideas of the League have a
certain vogue among the Highland crofters, where they blend very readily
with the universal peasant doctrines that the earth is the Lord's, and
that all other lords should be abolished.
In Scotland there are a good many branches of the two regular socialist
organizations. The Scottish Emancipation League joined the Social
Democratic Federation, and the Scottish Land and Labour League joined
the Socialist League; but it is remarkable that there is no socialism in
Ireland, except in a small branch of the Socialist League in Dublin,
called the Dublin Socialist Club, although it seems a miracle for a
country seething for centuries with political and economic discontent to
escape such a visitation. Probably, as with the Poles, the minds of the
discontented are already too much pre-occupied with other political and
social solutions. The land nationalization views of Mr. George are, of
course, spread widely through the influence of Mr. Michael Davitt in the
agrarian movement of Ireland.
But while the recent wave of socialism has passed over discontented
Ireland, and left it, like Gideon's fleece, quite dry, much more
susceptibility has been shown by those parts of the Empire where the lot
of labour is, perhaps in all the world, the happiest--the Australian
colonies. Here, too, the susceptibility has been created to some extent
by the land questions of the country. Mr. George, in his recent
lecturing tour through these colonies, met with a warm welcome in almost
all the towns he visited, made many converts to his ideas, and gave rise
to a considerable agitation. In South Australia three of his disciples
were returned to the Legislature in 1887, and their views are supported
by several newspapers in Adelaide. In a new colony the argument for
keeping the land in the hands of the State has in some respects more
point and force than in an old. Mr. George's disciples in Sydney publish
a paper called the _Land Nationalizer_, and his views are advocated by
one of the most influential papers in the colony, the _Bulletin_ of
Sydney. In New Zealand a bill has actually been brought in for the
purpose of nationalizing the land. But apart from Mr. George altogether,
there is a flourishing Australian Socialist League in Sydney,
established in 1887, and with a membership of 7,000 in 1888. It has a
journal called the _Radical_, and keeps up a busy agitation with
lectures and discussions. As a method of temporary policy it promotes
associations of labourers for the purpose of undertaking Government and
municipal contracts. In Melbourne, again, people are more advanced. They
have no socialist organization, but they have an anarchist club,
established in 1886 for the purpose of aiding social reform on the lines
of liberty, equality, and fraternity. It circulates the works of
Proudhon, Tucker, the Boston anarchist, Bakunin, and Mr. Auberon
Herbert; and it publishes a newspaper called _Honesty_, which appeared
at first once a month, and latterly once in two months. The ideas of the
party are not easy to ascertain exactly from the pages of their journal.
The State is, of course, the enemy, and land monopoly is one of the
State's worst creations; but some of the writers advocate land
nationalization, while others propound a scheme of what they call
"constructive anarchy," under which every man is to own the land he
occupies. They have started a new form of co-operative store, a kind of
mutual production society, whose members bind themselves to produce for
one another, and exchange their products for the bare cost of
production; and they have started a co-operative home, in which the
members get better and cheaper accommodation through their combination.
Melbourne anarchism, however, has no harm in it: it is a mere spark of
eccentric speculation. The working class of Melbourne is probably the
most powerful and the best organized working class in the world. In
their Trades Hall they have had for thirty years a workmen's chamber of
their own creating like what German socialists are vainly asking from
the State, and much more effective, because more independent. They have
secured the eight hours day to fifty-two different trades without
receiving a finger's help from the law, and without losing a shilling of
wages. They have, moreover, the voting power in their own hands. In
fact, they are, as nearly as any working class can be, in the precise
condition socialists require for revolutionary action. They are entirely
dependent on a handful of capitalists for their employment, and they
have the whole power of the State substantially under their own control;
so that they might, if they chose, march to the Parliament House with a
red flag, and instal the socialist State to-morrow. But they do not
choose. They propose no change in the present industrial system, and
make surprisingly few demands of any sort upon the State. The world goes
very well with them as it is, and they will not risk the comforts they
really enjoy to try any sweeping and problematical solutions. While the
socialist movement, in the countries where it is most advanced and
powerful, seems settling into a practical labour movement, the labour
movement, in the countries where it is most advanced and powerful, is
steering furthest and clearest from socialism.