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A CRITICAL EXAMINATION OF SOCIALISM
by
W.H. MALLOCK
London
John Murray, Albemarle Street, W.
1908
Printed by
Hazell, Watson and Viney, Ld.,
London and Aylesbury.
PREFACE
The Civic Federation of New York, an influential body which aims, in
various ways, at harmonising apparently divergent industrial interests
in America, having decided on supplementing its other activities by a
campaign of political and economic education, invited me, at the
beginning of the year 1907, to initiate a scientific discussion of
socialism in a series of lectures or speeches, to be delivered under the
auspices of certain of the great Universities in the United States. This
invitation I accepted, but, the project being a new one, some difficulty
arose as to the manner in which it might best be carried out--whether
the speeches or lectures should in each case be new, dealing with some
fresh aspect of the subject, or whether they should be arranged in a
single series to be repeated without substantial alteration in each of
the cities visited by me. The latter plan was ultimately adopted, as
tending to render the discussion of the subject more generally
comprehensible to each local audience. A series of five lectures,
substantially the same, was accordingly delivered by me in New York,
Cambridge, Chicago, Philadelphia, and Baltimore. But whilst this plan
secured continuity of treatment, it secured it at the expense of
comprehensiveness. Certain important points had to be passed over. In
the present volume the substance of the original lectures has been
entirely rearranged and rewritten, and more than half the matter is new.
Even in the present volume, however, it has been impossible to treat the
subject otherwise than in a general way. At almost every point a really
complete discussion would necessitate a much fuller analysis of facts
than it has been practicable to give here. Arguments here necessarily
confined to a few pages or to a chapter, would each, for their complete
elucidation, require a separate monograph. Most readers, however, will
be able to supply much of what is missing, by the light of their own
common sense; and general arguments, in which, as in block plans of
buildings, many details are suppressed, have for practical purposes the
great advantage of being generally and easily intelligible, whereas, if
stated in fuller and more complex form, they might confuse rather than
enlighten a large number of readers.
The fact that the fundamental arguments of this volume were
disseminated throughout the United States, not only at the meetings
addressed, but also in all the leading newspapers, has had the valuable
result, by means of the mass of criticisms which they elicited, of
illustrating the manner in which socialists attempt to meet them; and
has enabled me to revise, with a view to farther clearness, certain
passages which were intentionally or unintentionally misunderstood, and
also to emphasise the curious confusions of thought into which various
critics have been driven in their efforts to controvert or get round
them. I may specially mention a small volume by Mr. G. Wilshire of New
York--a leading publisher and disseminator of socialistic
literature--which was devoted to examining my own arguments seriatim. To
the principal criticisms of this writer allusions will be found in the
following pages. Most of my socialistic opponents (though to this rule
there were amusing exceptions) wrote, according to their varying degrees
of intelligence and education, with remarkable candour, and also with
great courtesy. Mr. Wilshire, in particular, whilst seeking to refute my
arguments as a whole, admitted the force of many of them; and did his
best, in his elaborate _résumé_ of them, to state them all fairly.
The contentions, and even the phraseology of socialists are in all
countries (with the possible exception of Russia) identical. All are
vitiated by the same distinctive errors, and it is indifferent whether,
for purposes of detail criticism, we go to speakers and writers in this
country or America. Except for the correction of a few verbal errors
which have escaped my notice in the American edition, and which obscure
the meaning of perhaps four or five sentences, for the introduction of a
few additional notes, and for the translation of dollars and cents into
pounds and shillings, the English and the American editions are the
same.
W. H. M.
_January, 1908._
CONTENTS
CHAPTER I
THE HISTORICAL BEGINNING OF SOCIALISM AS AN OSTENSIBLY
SCIENTIFIC THEORY
Socialism an unrealised theory. In order to discuss it, it must
be defined.
Being of no general interest except as a nucleus of some general
movement, we must identify it as a theory which has united large
numbers of men in a common demand for change.
As the definite theoretical nucleus of a party or movement,
socialism dates from the middle of the nineteenth century, when
it was erected into a formal system by Karl Marx.
We must begin our examination of it by taking it in this, its
earliest, systematic form.
CHAPTER II
THE THEORY OF MARX AND THE EARLIER SOCIALISTS SUMMARISED
The doctrine of Marx that all wealth is produced by labour.
His recognition that the possibilities of distribution rest on
the facts of production.
His theory of labour as the sole producer of wealth avowedly
derived from Ricardo's theory of value.
His theory of capital as consisting of implements of production,
which are embodiments of past labour, and his theory of modern
capitalism as representing nothing but a gradual abstraction by
a wholly unproductive class, of these implements from the men
who made them, and who alone contribute anything to their
present productive use.
His theory that wages could never rise, but must, under
capitalism, sink all over the world to the amount which would
just keep the labourers from starvation, when, driven by
necessity, they will rebel, and, repossessing themselves of
their own implements, will be rich forever afterwards by using
them for their own benefit.
CHAPTER III
THE ROOT ERROR OF THE MARXIAN THEORY.
ITS OMISSION OF DIRECTIVE ABILITY.
ABILITY AND LABOUR DEFINED
The theory of Marx analysed. It is true as applied to primitive
communities, where the amount of wealth produced is very small,
but it utterly fails to account for the increased wealth of the
modern world.
Labour, as Marx conceived of it, can indeed increase in
productivity in two ways, but to a small degree only, neither of
which explains the vast increase of wealth during the past
hundred and fifty years.
The cause of this is the development of a class which, not
labouring itself, concentrates exceptional knowledge and energy
on the task of directing the labour of others, as an author does
when, by means of his manuscript, he directs the labour of
compositors.
Formal definition of the parts played respectively by the
faculties of the labouring and those of the directing classes.
CHAPTER IV
THE ERRORS OF MARX, CONTINUED.
CAPITAL AS THE IMPLEMENT OF ABILITY
Two kinds of human effort being thus involved in modern
production, it is necessary for all purposes of intelligible
discussion to distinguish them by different names.
The word "labour" being appropriated by common custom to the
manual task-work of the majority, some other technical word must
be found to designate the directive faculties as applied to
productive industry. The word here chosen, in default of a
better, is "ability."
Ability, then, being the faculty which directs labour, by what
means does it give effect to its directions?
It gives effect to its directions by means of its control of
capital, in the form of wage-capital.
Ability, using wage-capital as its implement of direction, gives
rise to fixed capital, in the form of the elaborate implements
of modern production, which are the material embodiments of the
knowledge, ingenuity, and energy of the highest minds.
CHAPTER V
REPUDIATION OF MARX BY MODERN SOCIALISTS.
THEIR RECOGNITION OF DIRECTIVE ABILITY
The more educated socialists of to-day, when the matter is put
plainly before them, admit that the argument of the preceding
chapters is correct, and repudiate the doctrine of Marx that
"labour" is the sole producer.
Examples of this admission on the part of American socialists.
The socialism of Marx, however, still remains the socialism of
the more ignorant classes, and also of the popular agitator.
It is, moreover, still used as an instrument of agitation by
many who personally repudiate it. The case of Mr. Hillquit.
The doctrine of Marx, therefore, still requires exposure.
Further, it is necessary to understand this earlier form of
socialistic theory in order to understand the later.
CHAPTER VI
REPUDIATION OF MARX BY MODERN SOCIALISTS, CONTINUED.
THEIR RECOGNITION OF CAPITAL AS THE IMPLEMENT OF DIRECTIVE
ABILITY.
THEIR NEW POSITION, AND THEIR NEW THEORETICAL DIFFICULTIES
The more educated socialists of to-day, besides virtually
accepting the argument of the preceding chapters with regard to
labour, virtually accept the argument set forth in them with
regard to capital.
Mr. Sidney Webb, for example, recognises it as an implement of
direction, the only alternative to which is a system of legal
coercion.
Other socialists advocate the continued use of wage-capital as
the implement of direction, but they imagine that the situation
would be radically changed by making the "state" the sole
capitalist.
But the "state," as some of them are beginning to realise, would
be merely the private men of ability--the existing
employers--turned into state officials, and deprived of most of
their present inducements to exert themselves.
A socialistic state theoretically could always command labour,
for labour can be exacted by force; but the exercise of ability
must be voluntary, and can only be secured by a system of
adequate rewards and inducements.
Two problems with which modern socialism is confronted: How
would it test its able men so as to select the best of them for
places of power? What rewards could it offer them which would
induce them systematically to develop, and be willing to
exercise, their exceptional faculties?
CHAPTER VII
PROXIMATE DIFFICULTIES.
ABLE MEN AS A CORPORATION OF STATE OFFICIALS
How are the men fittest for posts of industrial power to be
selected from the less fit?
This problem solved automatically by the existing system of
private and separate capitals.
The fusion of all private capitals into a single state capital
would make this solution impossible, and would provide no other.
The only machinery by which the more efficient directors of
labour could be discriminated from the less efficient would be
broken. Case of the London County Council's steamboats.
Two forms which the industrial state under socialism might
conceivably take: The official directors of industry might be
either an autocratic bureaucracy, or they might else be subject
to elected politicians representing the knowledge and opinions
prevalent among the majority.
Estimate of the results which would arise in the former case.
Illustrations from actual bureaucratic enterprise.
Estimate of the results which would arise in the latter case.
The state, as representing the average opinion of the masses,
brought to bear on scientific industrial enterprise.
Illustrations.
The state as sole printer and publisher. State capitalism would
destroy the machinery of industrial progress just as it would
destroy the machinery by which thought and knowledge develop.
But behind the question of whether socialism could provide
ability with the conditions or the machinery requisite for its
exercise is the question of whether it could provide it with any
adequate stimulus.
CHAPTER VIII
THE ULTIMATE DIFFICULTY.
SPECULATIVE ATTEMPTS TO MINIMISE IT
Mr. Sidney Webb, and most modern socialists of the higher kind,
recognise that this problem of motive underlies all others.
They approach it indirectly by sociological arguments borrowed
from other philosophers, and directly by a psychology peculiar
to themselves.
The sociological arguments by which socialists seek to minimise
the claims of the able man.
These founded on a specific confusion of thought, which vitiated
the evolutionary sociology of that second half of the nineteenth
century. Illustrations from Herbert Spencer, Macaulay, Mr. Kidd,
and recent socialists.
The confusion in question a confusion between speculative truth
and practical.
The individual importance of the able man, untouched by the
speculative conclusions of the sociological evolutionists, as
may be seen by the examples adduced in a contrary sense by
Herbert Spencer. This is partially perceived by Spencer himself.
Illustrations from his works.
Ludicrous attempts, on the part of socialistic writers, to apply
the speculative generalisations of sociology to the practical
position of individual men.
The climax of absurdity reached by Mr. Sidney Webb.
CHAPTER IX
THE ULTIMATE DIFFICULTY, CONTINUED.
ABILITY AND INDIVIDUAL MOTIVE
The individual motives of the able man as dealt with directly by
modern socialists.
They abandon their sociological ineptitudes altogether, and
betake themselves to a psychology which they declare to be
scientific, but which is based on no analysis of facts, and
consists really of loose assumptions and false analogies.
Their treatment of the motives of the artist, the thinker, the
religious enthusiast, and the soldier.
Their unscientific treatment of the soldier's motive, and their
fantastic proposal based on it to transfer this motive from the
domain of war to that of industry.
The socialists as their own critics when they denounce the
actual motives of the able man as he is and as they say he
always has been. They attack the typically able man of all
periods as a monster of congenital selfishness, and it is men of
this special type whom they propose to transform suddenly into
monsters of self-abnegation.
Their want of faith in the efficacy of their own moral suasion
and their proposal to supplement this by the ballot.
CHAPTER X
INDIVIDUAL MOTIVE AND DEMOCRACY
Exaggerated powers ascribed to democracy by inaccurate thinkers.
An example from an essay by a recent philosophic thinker, with
special reference to the rewards of exceptional ability.
This writer maintains that the money rewards of ability can be
determined by the opinion of the majority expressing itself
through votes and statutes.
The writer's typical error. A governing body might enact any
laws, but they would not be obeyed unless consonant with human
nature.
Laws are obliged to conform to the propensities of human nature
which it is their office to regulate.
Elaborate but unconscious admission of this fact by the writer
here quoted himself.
The power of democracy in the economic sphere, its magnitude and
its limits. The demands of the minority a counterpart of those
of the majority.
The demand of the great wealth-producer mainly a demand for
power.
Testimony of a well-known socialist to the impossibility of
altering the character of individual demand by outside
influence.
CHAPTER XI
CHRISTIAN SOCIALISM AS A SUBSTITUTE FOR SECULAR DEMOCRACY
The meaning of Christian socialism, as restated to-day by a
typical writer.
His just criticism of the fallacy underlying modern ideas of
democracy. The impossibility of equalising unequal men by
political means.
Christian socialism teaches, he says, that the abler men should
make themselves equal to ordinary men by surrendering to them
the products of their own ability, or else by abstaining from
its exercise.
The author's ignorance of the nature of the modern industrial
process. His idea of steel.
He confuses the production of wealth on a great scale with the
acquisition of wealth when produced.
The only really productive ability which he distinctly
recognises is that of the speculative inventor.
He declares that inventors never wish to profit personally by
their inventions. Let the great capitalists, he says, who merely
monopolise inventions, imitate the self-abnegation of the
inventors, and Christian socialism will become a fact.
The confusion which reigns in the minds of sentimentalists like
the author here quoted. Their inability to see complex facts and
principles, in their connected integrity, as they are. Such
persons herein similar to devisers of perpetual motions and
systems for defeating the laws of chance at a roulette-table.
All logical socialistic conclusions drawn from premises in which
some vital truth or principle is omitted. Omission in the
premises of the earlier socialists. Corresponding omission in
the premises of the socialists of to-day.
Origin of the confusion of thought characteristic of Christian
as of all other socialists. Temperamental inability to
understand the complexities of economic life. This inability
further evidenced by the fact that, with few exceptions,
socialists themselves are absolutely incompetent as producers.
Certain popular contentions with regard to modern economic life,
urged by socialists, but not peculiar to socialism, still remain
to be considered in the following chapters.
CHAPTER XII
THE JUST REWARD OF LABOUR AS ESTIMATED BY ITS ACTUAL PRODUCTS
Modern socialists admit that of the wealth produced to-day
labour does not produce the whole, but that some part is
produced by directive ability. But they contend that labour
produces more than it gets. We can only ascertain if such an
assertion is correct by discovering how to estimate with some
precision the amount produced by labour and ability
respectively.
But since for the production of the total product labour and
ability are both alike necessary, how can we say that any
special proportion of it is produced by one or the other?
J.S. Mill's answer to this question.
The profound error of Mill's argument.
Practically so much of any effect is due to any one of its
causes as would be absent from this effect were the cause in
question taken away. Illustrations.
Labour itself produces as much as it would produce were there no
ability to direct it.
The argument which might be drawn from the case of a community
in which there was no labour.
Such an argument illusory; for a community in which there was no
labour would be impossible; but the paralysis of ability, or its
practical non-existence possible.
Practical reasoning of all kinds always confines itself to the
contemplation of possibilities. Illustrations.
Restatement of proposition as to the amount of the product of
labour.
The product of ability only partially described by assimilating
it to rent.
Ability produces everything which would not be produced if its
operation were hampered or suspended.
Increased reward of labour in Great Britain since the year 1800.
The reward now received by labour far in excess of what labour
itself produces.
In capitalistic countries generally labour gets, not less, but
far more than its due, if its due is to be measured by its own
products.
It is necessary to remember this; but its due is not to be
measured exclusively by its own products.
As will be seen in the concluding chapter.
CHAPTER XIII
INTEREST AND ABSTRACT JUSTICE
The proposal to confiscate interest for the public benefit, on
the ground that it is income unconnected with any corresponding
effort.
Is the proposal practicable? Is it defensible on grounds of
abstract justice?
The abstract moral argument plays a large part in the
discussion.
It assumes that a man has a moral right to what he produces,
interest being here contrasted with this, as a something which
he does not produce.
Defects of this argument. It ignores the element of time. Some
forms of effort are productive long after the effort itself has
ceased.
For examples, royalties on an acted play. Such royalties herein
typical of interest generally.
Industrial interest as a product of the forces of organic
nature. Henry George's defence of interest as having this
origin.
His argument true, but imperfect. His superficial criticism of
Bastiat.
Nature works through machine-capital just as truly as it does in
agriculture.
Machines are natural forces captured by men of genius, and set
to work for the benefit of human beings.
Interest on machine-capital is part of an extra product which
nature is made to yield by those men who are exceptionally
capable of controlling her.
By capturing natural forces, one man of genius may add more to
the wealth of the world in a year than an ordinary man could add
to it in a hundred lifetimes.
The claim of any such man on the products of his genius is
limited by a variety of circumstances; but, as a mere matter of
abstract justice, the whole of it belongs to him.
Abstract justice, however, in a case like this, gives us no
practical guidance, until we interpret it in connection with
concrete facts, and translate the just into terms of the
practicable.
CHAPTER XIV
THE SOCIALISTIC ATTACK ON INTEREST AND THE NATURE OF ITS SEVERAL
ERRORS
The practical outcome of the moral attack on interest is
logically an attack on bequest.
Modern socialism would logically allow a man to inherit
accumulations, and to spend the principal, but not to receive
interest on his money as an investment.
What would be the result if all who inherited capital spent it
as income, instead of living on the interest of it?
Two typical illustrations of these ways of treating capital.
The ultimate difference between the two results.
What the treatment of capital as income would mean, if the
practice were made universal. It would mean the gradual loss of
all the added productive forces with which individual genius has
enriched the world.
Practical condemnation of proposed attack on interest.
Another aspect of the matter.
Those who attack interest, as distinct from other kinds of
money-reward, admit that the possession of wealth is necessary
as a stimulus to production.
But the possession of wealth is desired mainly for its social
results far more than for its purely individual results.
Interest as connected with the sustentation of a certain mode of
social life.
Further consideration of the manner in which those who attack
interest ignore the element of time, and contemplate the present
moment only.
The economic functions of a class which is not, at a given
moment, economically productive.
Systematic failure of those who attack interest to consider
society as a whole, continually emerging from the past, and
dependent for its various energies on the prospects of the
future.
Consequent futility of the general attack on interest, though
interest in certain cases may be justly subjected to special but
not exaggerated burdens.
CHAPTER XV
EQUALITY OF OPPORTUNITY
Equality of opportunity, as an abstract demand, is in an
abstract sense just; but it changes its character when applied
to a world of unequal individuals.
Equality of opportunity in the human race-course. To multiply
competitors is to multiply failures.
Educational opportunity. Unequal students soon make
opportunities unequal.
Opportunity in industrial life. Socialistic promises of equal
industrial opportunities for all. Each "to paddle his own
canoe."
These absurd promises inconsistent with the arguments of
socialists themselves.
A socialist's attempt to defend these promises by reference to
employés of the state post-office.
Equality of industrial opportunity for those who believe
themselves possessed of exceptional talent and aspire "to rise."
Opportunities for such men involve costly experiment, and are
necessarily limited.
Claimants who would waste them indefinitely more numerous than
those who could use them profitably.
Such opportunities mean the granting to one man the control of
other men by means of wage-capital.
Disastrous effects of granting such opportunities to all or even
most of those who would believe themselves entitled to them.
True remedy for the difficulties besetting the problem of
opportunity.
Ruskin on human demands. Needs and "romantic wishes." The former
not largely alterable. The latter depend mainly on education.
The problem practically soluble by a wise moral education only,
which will correlate demand and expectation with the personal
capacities of the individual.
Relative equality of opportunity, not absolute equality, the
true formula.
Equality of opportunity, though much talked about by socialists,
is essentially a formula of competition, and opposed to the
principles of socialism.
CHAPTER XVI
THE SOCIAL POLICY OF THE FUTURE
THE MORAL OF THIS BOOK
This book, though consisting of negative criticism and analysis
of facts, and not trenching on the domain of practical policy
and constructive suggestion, aims at facilitating a rational
social policy by placing in their true perspective the main
statical facts and dynamic forces of the modern economic world,
which socialism merely confuses.
In pointing out the limitations of labour as a productive
agency, and the dependence of the labourers on a class other
than their own, it does not seek to represent the aspirations of
the former to participate in the benefits of progress as
illusory, but rather to place such aspirations on a scientific
basis, and so to remove what is at present the principal
obstacle that stands in the way of a rational and scientific
social policy.
A CRITICAL EXAMINATION OF SOCIALISM
CHAPTER I
THE HISTORICAL BEGINNING OF SOCIALISM AS AN OSTENSIBLY SCIENTIFIC THEORY
Socialism, whatever may be its more exact definition, stands for an
organisation of society, and more especially for an economic
organisation, radically opposed to, and differing from, the organisation
which prevails to-day. So much we may take for granted; but here, before
going further, it is necessary to free ourselves from a very common
confusion. When socialism, as thus defined, is spoken of as a thing that
exists--as a thing that has risen and is spreading--two ideas are apt to
suggest themselves to the minds of all parties equally, of which one
coincides with facts, while the other does not, having, indeed, thus far
at all events, no appreciable connection with them; and it is necessary
to get rid of the false idea, and concern ourselves only with the true.
The best way in which I can make my meaning clear will be by referring
to a point with regard to which the earlier socialistic thinkers may be
fairly regarded as accurate and original critics. The so-called orthodox
economists of the school of Mill and Ricardo accepted the capitalistic
system as part of the order of nature, and their object was mainly to
analyse the peculiar operations incident to it. The abler among the
socialists were foremost in pointing out, on the contrary, a fact which
now would not be denied by anybody: that capitalism in its present form
is a comparatively modern phenomenon, owing its origin historically to
the dissolution of the feudal system, and not having entered on its
adolescence, or even on its independent childhood, till a time which may
be roughly indicated as the middle of the eighteenth century. The
immediate causes of its then accelerated development were, as the
socialists insist, the rapid invention of new kinds of machinery, and
more especially that of steam as a motor power, which together
inaugurated a revolution in the methods of production generally.
Production on a small scale gave way to production on a large. The
independent weavers, for example, each with his own loom, were wholly
unable to compete with the mechanisms of the new factory; their looms,
by being superseded, were virtually taken away from them; and these men,
formerly their own masters, working with their own implements, and
living by the sale of their own individual products, were compelled to
pass under the sway of a novel class, the capitalists; to work with
implements owned by the capitalists, not themselves; and to live by the
wages of their labour, not by their sale of the products of it.
Such, as the socialists insist, was the rise of the capitalistic system;
and when once it had been adequately organised, as it first was, in
England, it proceeded, they go on to observe, to spread itself with
astonishing rapidity, all other methods disappearing before it, through
their own comparative inefficiency. But when socialists or their
opponents turn from capitalism to socialism, and speak of how socialism
has risen and spread likewise, their language, as thus applied, has no
meaning whatever unless it is interpreted in a totally new sense. For in
the sense in which socialists speak of the rise and spread of
capitalism, socialism has, up to the present time, if we except a number
of small and unsuccessful experiments, never risen or spread or had any
existence at all. Capitalism rose and spread as an actual working
system, which multiplied and improved the material appliances of life in
a manner beyond the reach of the older system displaced by it. It
realised results of which previously mankind had hardly dreamed.
Socialism, on the other hand, has risen and spread thus far, not as a
system which is threatening to supersede capitalism by its actual
success as an alternative system of production, but merely as a theory
or belief that such an alternative is possible. Let us take any country
or any city we please--for example, let us say Chicago, in which
socialism is said to be achieving its most hopeful or most formidable
triumphs--and we shall look in vain for a sign that the general
productive process has been modified by socialistic principles in any
particular whatsoever. Socialism has produced resolutions at endless
public meetings; it has produced discontent and strikes; it has hampered
production constantly. But socialism has never inaugurated an improved
chemical process; it has never bridged an estuary or built an ocean
liner; it has never produced or cheapened so much as a lamp or a
frying-pan. It is a theory that such things could be accomplished by the
practical application of its principles; but, except for the abortive
experiments to which I have referred already, it is thus far a theory
only, and it is as a theory only that we can examine it.
What, then, as a theory, are the distinctive features of socialism? Here
is a question which, if we address it indiscriminately to all the types
of people who now call themselves socialists, seems daily more
impossible to answer; for every day the number of those is increasing
who claim for their own opinions the title of socialistic, but whose
quarrel with the existing system is very far from apparent, while less
apparent still is the manner in which they propose to alter it. The
persons to whom I refer consist mainly of academic students, professors,
clergymen, and also of emotional ladies, who enjoy the attention of
footmen in faultless liveries, and say their prayers out of
prayer-books with jewelled clasps. All these persons unite in the
general assertion that, whatever may be amiss with the world, the
capitalistic system is responsible for it, and that somehow or other
this system ought to be altered. But when we ask them to specify the
details as to which alteration is necessary--what precisely are the
parts of it which they wish to abolish and what, if these were
abolished, they would introduce as a substitute--one of them says one
thing, another of them says another, and nobody says anything on which
three of them could act in concert.
Now, if socialism were confined to such persons as these, who are in
America spoken of as the "parlour socialists," it would not only be
impossible to tell what socialism actually was, but what it was or was
not would be immaterial to any practical man. As a matter of fact,
however, between socialism of this negligible kind--this sheet-lightning
of sentiment reflected from a storm elsewhere--and the socialism which
is really a factor to be reckoned with in the life of nations, we can
start with drawing a line which, when once drawn, is unmistakable.
Socialism being avowedly a theory which, in the first instance at all
events, addresses itself to the many as distinct from and opposed to the
few, it is only or mainly the fact of its adoption by the many which
threatens to render it a practical force in politics. Its practical
importance accordingly depends upon two things--firstly, on its
possessing a form sufficiently definite to unite what would otherwise be
a mass of heterogeneous units, by developing in all of them a common
temper and purpose; and, secondly, on the number of those who can be
taught to adopt and welcome it. The theory of socialism is, therefore,
as a practical force, primarily that form of it which is operative among
the mass of socialists; and when once we realise this, we shall have no
further difficulty in discovering what the doctrines are with which, at
all events, we must begin our examination. We are guided to our
starting-point by the broad facts of history.
The rights of the many as opposed to the actual position of the few--a
society in which all should be equal, not only in political status, but
also in social circumstances; ideas such as these are as old as the days
of Plato, and they have, from time to time in the ancient and the modern
world, resulted in isolated and abortive attempts to realise them. In
Europe such ideas were rife during the sixty or seventy years which
followed the great political revolution in France. Schemes of society
were formulated which were to carry this revolution further, and
concentrate effort on industrial rather than political change. Pictures
were presented to the imagination, and the world was invited to realise
them, of societies in which all were workers on equal terms, and groups
of fraternal citizens, separated no longer by the egoisms of the private
home, dwelt together in palaces called "phalansteries," which appear to
have been imaginary anticipations of the Waldorf-Astoria Hotel. Here
lapped in luxury, they were to feast at common tables; and between meals
the men were to work in the fields singing, while a lady accompanied
their voices on a grand piano under a hedge. These pictures, however,
agreeable as they were to the fancy, failed to produce any great effect
on the multitudes; for the multitudes felt instinctively that they were
too good to be true. That such was the case is admitted by socialistic
historians themselves. Socialism during this period was, they say, in
its "Utopian stage." It was not even sufficiently coherent to have
acquired a distinctive name till the word "socialism" was coined in
connection with the views of Owen, which suffered discredit from the
failure of his attempts to put them into practice. Socialism in those
days was a dream, but it was not science; and in a world which was
rapidly coming to look upon science as supreme, nothing could convince
men generally--not even the most ignorant--which had not, or was not
supposed to have, the authority of science at the back of it.
Such being the situation, as the socialists accurately describe it, an
eminent thinker arose who at last supplied what was wanting. He provided
the unorganised aspirations, which by this time were known as socialism,
with a formula which was at once definite, intelligible, and
comprehensive, and had all the air of being rigidly scientific also. By
this means thoughts and feelings, previously vague and fluid, like salts
held in solution, were crystallised into a clear-cut theory which was
absolutely the same for all; which all who accepted it could accept with
the same intellectual confidence; and which thus became a moral and
mental nucleus around which the efforts and hopes of a coherent party
could group themselves.
Such was the feat accomplished by Karl Marx, through his celebrated
treatise on Capital, which was published between fifty and sixty years
ago, and which has, since then, throughout all Europe and America, been
acclaimed as the Magna Charta, or the Bible, of "scientific socialism."
Whatever may be the change which, as a theory, socialism has
subsequently undergone--and changes there have been which will presently
occupy our attention--it is with the theory of Marx, and the temper of
mind resulting from it, that socialism, regarded as a practical force,
begins; and among the majority of socialists this theory is predominant
still. In view, therefore, of the requirements of logic, of history, and
of contemporary facts, our own examination must begin with the theory of
Marx likewise.