Chapter XVI: Conclusion 395

Appendix 421

Index 429

* * * * *

PREFACE

The aim of the present book is twofold: to set forth the leading phases

of the historic socialism, and to attempt a criticism and interpretation

of the movement as a whole. In this edition the changes in the history

are concerned chiefly with the revival of the International, which,

since the Stuttgart Congress in 1907, may be regarded as an accomplished

fact.

I have made it no part of my plan to dwell on details. The interest and

significance of the history of socialism will be found, not in its

details and accidents, but in the development of its cardinal

principles, which I have endeavoured to trace. Readers desirous of

detail must be referred to the writings of the various socialists, or to

works that treat of special phases of the movement. Yet I hope that the

statement of the leading theories is sufficiently clear and adequate to

enable the reader to form his own judgment of the highly controversial

matters involved in the history of socialism. I may add that in every

case my account is drawn from an extensive study of the sources. These

sources I have given both in the text and in footnotes. For the more

recent development of the subject, however, the material is derived from

such a multitude of books, pamphlets, periodicals, and journals, as well

as from personal inquiry and observation, that it has not been found

practicable to indicate them.

But the purely historical part of such a work is far from being the most

difficult. The real difficulty begins when we attempt to form a clear

conception of the meaning and significance of the socialistic movement,

to indicate its place in history, and the issues to which it is tending.

In the concluding chapters I have made such an attempt. The good reader

who takes the trouble to go so far through my book can accept my

contribution to a hard problem for what it is worth. He may at least

feel assured that it is no hasty and ill-considered effort which is

placed before him. The present volume grew out of the articles on

socialism published in the ninth edition of the _Encyclopædia

Britannica_. The views advocated there were first set forth in my

_Inquiry into Socialism_, published in 1887. In this edition of the

_History_ they have in some points received such expansion and

modification as time and repeated, self-criticism have suggested. I beg

particularly to invite the attention of the reader to the last two

chapters, in which the present position of socialism and its relation to

some contemporary questions, such as those of Empire, are set forth.

To all thoughtful and discerning men it should now be clear that the

solution of the social question is the great task which has been laid

upon the present epoch in the history of the world. Socialism grew to be

a very important question during the nineteenth century; in all

probability it will be the supreme question of the twentieth. No higher

felicity can befall any man than to have thrown a real light on the

greatest problem of his time; and to have utterly failed is no disgrace.

In such a cause it is an honour even to have done efficient work as a

navvy or hodman.

For help with the notes on the recent progress of socialism I wish to

express special obligations to Mr. H. W. Lee, secretary of the Social

Democratic Party, to Mr. J. R. Macdonald, M.P., secretary of the Labour

Party, and to Mr. E. R. Pease, secretary of the Fabian Society.

London, _February_ 1909.

A HISTORY OF SOCIALISM

INTRODUCTION

Though much has been said and written about socialism for many years, it

still remains a questionable name which awakens in the mind of the

reader doubt, perplexity, and contradiction.

But there can be no question that it is a growing power throughout the

world. It is hardly an exaggeration to say that the most intelligent and

the best organised working-men of all civilised countries are passing

over to it. The opinions which are being accepted by the foremost of the

working-classes to-day will in all probability have the same attraction

for their less advanced brethren to-morrow. It is a subject, however,

which concerns all classes, and it is forcing to the front a wide group

of problems which are every day becoming more urgent.

In view of this there is only one right and safe course; we should seek

to know the truth about socialism. The discontent which tends to

disturbance and revolution can be removed only by satisfying the

legitimate needs and aspirations of those who suffer.

We all know that the propaganda of socialism has been attended with

intemperate and violent language, with wild opinions which are often

inconsistent with the first principles of social order, with

revolutionary outbreaks leading to bloodshed, desolation and

long-continued unrest and suspicion. These things are greatly to be

deplored. But we shall be wise if we regard them as symptoms of

wide-spread and deep-seated social disease. The best way to cure such

disease is to study and remove the causes of it. No physician will have

any success in combating a malady if he content himself with suppressing

its symptoms.

For the study of socialism two things are essential on the part of the

reader—good-will and the open mind. Socialism has at least a most

powerful provisional claim on our good-will, that it professes to

represent the cause of the sufferers in the world’s long agony, of the

working-classes, of women, and of the down-trodden nations and races. If

it can make any solid contribution in such a far-reaching cause it has

the strongest right to be heard.

Need we say that no new movement like socialism can be understood or

appreciated without some measure of the open mind? In the course of

history it has been proved over and over again that established ideas

and institutions are not always in the right in every respect, and that

novel opinions, though presented in extravagant and intemperate

language, are not always entirely wrong. Even the most prejudiced reader

will do well to consider that a cause which now numbers millions of

intelligent adherents, for which men have died and gladly suffered

imprisonment and privation of every kind, may contain elements of truth

and of well-justified hope for the future.

Above all things, it is essential to remember that socialism is not a

stereotyped system of dogma. It is a movement which springs out of a

vast and only partially shapen reality. It is therefore living and

liable to change. It has a history on which we can look back; but it is

above all things a force of the present and the future, and its

influence in the future for good or evil will depend on how we the men

of the present relate ourselves to it.

On the one hand, it would be a great wrong if we encouraged vain and

delusive expectations; but it would be a wrong even greater, on the

other hand, if from whim or prejudice or pessimism we did anything that

might be an obstacle to truth and progress. In a subject so momentous

the only right course is to eschew passion and prejudice, and to follow

truth with goodwill and an open mind.

The word ‘socialism’ appears to have been first used in _The Poor Man’s

Guardian_ in 1833. In 1835, a society, which received the grandiloquent

name of the Association of all Classes of all Nations, was founded under

the auspices of Robert Owen; and the words socialist and socialism

became current during the discussions which arose in connection with

it.[1] As Owen and his school had no esteem for the political reform of

the time, and laid all emphasis on the necessity of social improvement

and reconstruction, it is obvious how the name came to be recognised as

suitable and distinctive. The term was soon afterwards borrowed from

England, as he himself tells us, by a distinguished French writer,

Reybaud, in his well-known work the _Réformateurs modernes_, in which he

discussed the theories of Saint-Simon, Fourier, and Owen. Through

Reybaud it soon gained wide currency on the Continent, and is now the

accepted world-historic name for one of the most remarkable movements of

the nineteenth century.

The name was thus first applied in England to Owen’s theory of social

reconstruction, and in France to those also of Saint-Simon and Fourier.

The best usage has always connected it with the views of these men, and

with the cognate opinions which have since appeared. But the word is

used with a great variety of meaning, not only in popular speech and by

politicians, but even by economists and learned critics of socialism.

There is a growing tendency to regard as socialistic any interference

with property undertaken by society on behalf of the poor, the

limitation of the principle of _laissez-faire_ in favour of the

suffering classes, radical social reform which disturbs the present

system of private property as regulated by free competition. It is

probable enough that the word will be permanently used to express the

change in practice and opinion indicated by these phrases, as a general

name for the strong reaction that has now set in against the

overstrained individualism and one-sided freedom which date from the end

of the eighteenth century. The application is neither precise nor

accurate; but it is use and wont that determine the meaning of words,

and this seems to be the tendency of use and wont.

Even economic writers differ greatly in the meaning they attach to the

word. As socialism has been most powerful and most studied on the

Continent, it may be interesting to compare the definitions given by

some leading French and German economists. The great German economist

Roscher defines it as including ‘those tendencies which demand a greater

regard for the common weal than consists with human nature.’[2] Adolf

Held says that ‘we may define as socialistic every tendency which

demands the subordination of the individual will to the community.’[3]

Janet more precisely defines it as follows: ‘We call socialism every

doctrine which teaches that the State has a right to correct the

inequality of wealth which exists among men, and to legally establish

the balance by taking from those who have too much in order to give to

those who have not enough, and that in a permanent manner, and not in

such and such a particular case—a famine, for instance, a public

calamity, etc.’[4] Laveleye explains it thus: ‘In the first place, every

socialistic doctrine aims at introducing greater equality in social

conditions; and in the second place, at realising those reforms by the

law or the State.’[5] Von Scheel simply defines it as the ‘economic

philosophy of the suffering classes.’[6]

Of all these definitions it can only be said that they more or less

faithfully reflect current opinion as to the nature of socialism. They

are either too vague or they are misleading, and they quite fail to

bring out the clear and strongly marked characteristics that distinguish

the phenomena to which the name of socialism is properly applied. To say

that socialism exacts a greater regard for the common weal than is

compatible with human nature is to pass sentence on the movement, not to

define it. In all ages of the world, and under all forms and tendencies

of government and of social evolution, the will of the individual has

been subordinated to the will of society, often unduly so.

It is also most misleading to speak as if socialism must proceed from

the State as we know it. The early socialism proceeded from private

effort and experiment. A great deal of the most notorious socialism of

the present day aims not only at subverting the existing State in every

form, but all the existing political and social institutions. The most

powerful and most philosophic, that of Karl Marx, aimed at superseding

the existing Governments by a vast international combination of the

workers of all nations, without distinction of creed, colour, or

nationality.

Still more objectionable, however, is the tendency not unfrequently

shown to identify socialism with a violent and lawless revolutionary

spirit. As sometimes used, ‘socialism’ means nothing more nor less than

the most modern form of the revolutionary spirit with a suggestion of

anarchy and dynamite. This is to confound the essence of the movement

with an accidental feature more or less common to all great innovations.

Every new thing of any moment, whether good or evil, has its

revolutionary stage, in which it disturbs and upsets the accepted

beliefs and institutions. The Protestant Reformation was for more than a

century and a half the occasion of civil and international trouble and

bloodshed. The suppression of American slavery could not be effected

without a tremendous civil war. There was a time when the opinions

comprehended under the name of ‘liberalism’ had to fight to the death

for toleration; and representative government was at one time a

revolutionary innovation. The fact that a movement is revolutionary

generally implies only that it is new, that it is disposed to exert

itself by strong methods, and is calculated to make great changes. It is

an unhappy feature of most great changes that they have been attended

with the exercise of force, but that is because the powers in possession

have generally attempted to suppress them by the exercise of force.

In point of fact socialism is one of the most elastic and protean

phenomena of history, varying according to the time and circumstances in

which it appears, and with the character and opinions and institutions

of the people who adopt it. Such a movement cannot be condemned or

approved _en bloc_. Most of the current formulæ to which it has been

referred for praise or censure are totally erroneous and misleading. Yet

in the midst of the various theories that go by the name of ‘socialism’

there is a kernel of principle that is common to them all. That

principle is of an economic nature, and is most clear and precise.

The central aim of socialism is to terminate the divorce of the workers

from the natural sources of subsistence and of culture. The socialist

theory is based on the historical assertion that the course of social

evolution for centuries has gradually been to exclude the producing

classes from the possession of land and capital, and to establish a new

subjection, the subjection of workers who have nothing to depend on but

precarious wage-labour. Socialists maintain that the present system (in

which land and capital are the property of private individuals freely

struggling for increase of wealth) leads inevitably to social and

economic anarchy, to the degradation of the working man and his family,

to the growth of vice and idleness among the wealthy classes and their

dependants, to bad and inartistic workmanship, to insecurity, waste, and

starvation; and that it is tending more and more to separate society

into two classes, wealthy millionaires confronted with an enormous mass

of proletarians, the issue out of which must either be socialism or

social ruin. To avoid all these evils and to secure a more equitable

distribution of the means and appliances of happiness, socialists

propose that land and capital, which are the requisites of labour and

the sources of all wealth and culture, should be placed under social

ownership and control.

In thus maintaining that society should assume the management of

industry and secure an equitable distribution of its fruits, socialists

are agreed; but on the most important points of detail they differ very

greatly. They differ as to the form society will take in carrying out

the socialist programme, as to the relation of local bodies to the

central government, and whether there is to be any central government,

or any government at all in the ordinary sense of the word; as to the

influence of the national idea in the society of the future, etc. They

differ also as to what should be regarded as an ‘equitable’ system of

distribution. The school of Saint-Simon advocated a social hierarchy, in

which every man should be placed according to his capacity and rewarded

according to his works. In the communities of Fourier the minimum of

subsistence was to be guaranteed to each out of the common gain, the

remainder to be divided between labour, capital, and

talent—five-twelfths going to the first, four-twelfths to the second

and three-twelfths to the third. At the revolution of 1848 Louis Blanc

proposed that remuneration should be equal for all members of his

_social workshops_. In the programme drawn up by the united Social

Democrats of Germany (Gotha, 1875) it was provided that all shall enjoy

the results of labour according to their reasonable wants, all of course

being bound to work.

It is needless to say also that the theories of socialism have been held

in connection with the most varying opinions in philosophy and religion.

A great deal of the historic socialism has been regarded as a necessary

implicate of idealism. The prevailing socialism of the day is in large

part based on the frankest and most outspoken revolutionary materialism.

On the other hand, many socialists hold that their system is a necessary

outcome of Christianity, that socialism and Christianity are essential

the one to the other; and it should be said that the ethics of socialism

are closely akin to the ethics of Christianity, if not identical with

them.

Still, it should be insisted that the basis of socialism is economic,

involving a fundamental change in the relation of labour to land and

capital—a change which will largely affect production, and will

entirely revolutionise the existing system of distribution. But, while

its basis is economic, socialism implies and carries with it a change in

the political, ethical, technical, and artistic arrangements and

institutions of society, which would constitute a revolution greater

than has ever taken place in human history, greater than the transition

from the ancient to the mediæval world, or from the latter to the

existing order of society.

In the first place, such a change generally assumes as its political

complement the most thoroughly democratic organisation of society. The

early socialism of Owen and Saint-Simon was marked by not a little of

the autocratic spirit; but the tendency of the present socialism is more

and more to ally itself with the most advanced democracy. Socialism, in

fact, claims to be the economic complement of democracy, maintaining

that without a fundamental economic change political privilege has

neither meaning nor value.

In the second place, socialism naturally goes with an unselfish or

altruistic system of ethics. The most characteristic feature of the old

societies was the exploitation of the weak by the strong under the

systems of slavery, serfdom, and wage-labour. Under the socialistic

_régime_ it is the privilege and duty of the strong and talented to use

their superior force and richer endowments in the service of their

fellow-men without distinction of class, or nation, or creed. Whatever

our opinion may be of the wisdom or practicability of their theories,

history proves that socialists have been ready to sacrifice wealth,

social position, and life itself, for the cause which they have adopted.

In the third place, socialists maintain that, under their system and no

other, can the highest excellence and beauty be realised in industrial

production and in art; whereas under the present system beauty and

thoroughness are alike sacrificed to cheapness, which is a necessity of

successful competition.

Lastly, the socialists refuse to admit that individual happiness or

freedom or character would be sacrificed under the social arrangements

they propose. They believe that under the present system a free and

harmonious development of individual capacity and happiness is possible

only for the privileged minority, and that socialism alone can open up a

fair opportunity for all. They believe, in short, that there is no

opposition whatever between socialism and individuality rightly

understood, that these two are complements the one of the other, that in

socialism alone may every individual have hope of free development and a

full realisation of himself.

Having shown how wide a social revolution is implied in the socialistic

scheme of reconstruction, we may now state (1) that the economic basis

of the prevalent socialism is a collectivism which excludes private

possession of land and capital, and places them under social ownership

in some form or other. In the words of Schäffle, ‘the Alpha and Omega of

socialism is the transformation of private competing capital into a

united collective capital.’[7] Adolf Wagner’s more elaborate definition

of it[8] is entirely in agreement with that of Schäffle. Such a system,

while insisting on collective capital, is quite consistent with private

property in other forms, and with perfect freedom in the use of one’s

own share in the equitable distribution of the produce of the associated

labour. A thorough-going socialism demands that this principle should be

applied to the capital and production of the whole world; only then can

it attain to supreme and perfect realisation. But a sober-minded

socialism will admit that the various intermediate stages in which the

principle finds a partial application are so far a true and real

development of the socialistic idea.

Even the best definitions, however, are only of secondary importance;

and while we believe that those we have just mentioned give an accurate

account of the prevailing socialism, they are arbitrary, abstract, and

otherwise open to objection. As we have already seen, the system of

Fourier admitted of private capital under social control. The absolute

views of the subject now current are due to the excessive love of system

characteristic of German thought, and are not consistent either with

history or human nature.

(2) Socialism is both a theory of social evolution and a working force

in the history of the nineteenth century. The teaching of some eminent

socialists, such as Rodbertus, may be regarded as a prophecy concerning

the social development of the future rather than as a subject of

agitation. In their view socialism is the next stage in the evolution of

society, destined after many generations to supersede capitalism, as

capitalism displaced feudalism, and feudalism succeeded to slavery. Even

the majority of the most active socialists consider the question as

still in the stage of agitation and propaganda, their present task being

that of enlightening the masses until the consummation of the present

social development, and the declared bankruptcy of the present social

order, shall have delivered the world into their hands. Socialism,

therefore, is for the most part a theory affecting the future, more or

less remote, and has only to a limited degree gained a real and

practical footing in the life of our time. Yet it should not be

forgotten that its doctrines have most powerfully affected all the

ablest recent economic writers of Germany, and have even considerably

modified German legislation. Its influence is rapidly growing among the

lower and also among the most advanced classes in almost every country

dominated by European culture, following the development of capitalism,

of which it is not merely the negation, but in a far wider and more real

sense is also the goal.

(3) In its doctrinal aspects socialism is most interesting as a

criticism of the present economic order, of what socialists call the

capitalistic system, with which the existing land system is connected.

Under the present economic order land and capital (the material and

instruments without which industry is impossible) are the property of a

class employing a class of wage-labourers handicapped by their exclusion

from land and capital. Competition is the general rule by which the

share of the members of those classes in the fruits of production is

determined. Against this system critical socialism is a reasoned

protest; and it is at issue also with the prevailing political economy,

in so far as it assumes or maintains the permanence or righteousness of

this economic order. Of the economic optimism implied in the historic

doctrine of _laissez-faire_, socialism is an uncompromising rejection.

(4) Socialism is usually regarded as a phase of the struggle for the

emancipation of labour, for the complete participation of the working

classes in the material, intellectual, and spiritual inheritance of the

human race. This is certainly the most substantial and most prominent

part of the socialist programme, the working classes being the most

numerous and the worst sufferers from the present _régime_. This view,

however, is rather one-sided, for socialism claims not less to be in the

interest of the small capitalist gradually crushed by the competition of

the larger, and in the interest also of the large capitalist, whose

position is endangered by the vastness and unwieldiness of his success,

and by the world-wide economic anarchy from which even the greatest are

not secure. Still, it is the deliverance of the working class that

stands in the front of every socialistic theory; and, though the

initiative in socialist speculation and action has usually come from men

belonging to the middle and upper classes, yet it is to the workmen that

they generally appeal.

While recognising the great confusion in the use of the word

‘socialism,’ we have treated it as properly a phenomenon of the

nineteenth century, beginning in France with Saint-Simon and Fourier, in

England with Robert Owen, and most powerfully represented at the present

day by the school of Karl Marx. As we have seen, however, there are

definitions of the word which would give it a wider range of meaning and

a more ancient beginning, compared with which capitalism is but of

yesterday; which would, in fact, make it as old as human society itself.

In the early stages of human development, when the tribe or the village

community was the social unit, the subordination of the individual to

the society in which he dwelt was the rule, and common property was the

prevalent form. In the development of the idea of property, especially

as regards land, three successive historical stages are broadly

recognised—common property and common enjoyment of it, common property

and private enjoyment, private property and private enjoyment. The last

form did not attain to full expression till the end of the eighteenth

century, when the principle of individual freedom, which was really a

reaction against privileged restriction, was proclaimed as a positive

axiom of government and of economics. The free individual struggle for

wealth, and for the social advantages dependent on wealth, is a

comparatively recent thing.

At all periods of history the State has reserved to itself the right to

interpose in the arrangements of property—sometimes in favour of the

poor, as in the case of the English poor law, which may thus be regarded

as a socialistic measure. Moreover, all through history revolts in

favour of the rearrangement of property have been very frequent. From

the beginning there have existed misery and discontent, the

contemplation of which has called forth schemes of an ideal society in

the noblest and most sympathetic minds. Of these are the Utopias of

Plato and Thomas More, advocating a systematic communism. And in the

societies of the Catholic Church we have a permanent example of common

property and a common enjoyment of it.

How are we to distinguish the socialism of the nineteenth century from

these old-world phenomena, and especially from the communism which has

played so great a part in history? To this query it is not difficult to

give a clear and precise answer from the socialist point of view.

Socialism is a stage in the evolution of society which could not arrive

till the conditions necessary to it had been established. Of these, one

most essential condition was the development of the great industrialism

which, after a long period of preparation and gradual growth, began to

reach its culminating point with the inventions and technical

improvements, with the application of steam and the rise of the factory

system, in England towards the end of the eighteenth century. Under this

system industry was organised into a vast social operation, and was thus

already so far socialised; but it was a system that was exploited by the

individual owner of the capital at his own pleasure and for his own

behoof. Under the pressure of the competition of the large industry, the

small capitalist is gradually crushed out, and the working producers

become wage-labourers organised and drilled in immense factories and

workshops. The development of this system still continues, and is

enveloping the whole world. Such is the industrial revolution.

Parallel with this a revolution in the world of ideas, equally great and

equally necessary to the rise of socialism, has taken place. This change

of thought, which made its world-historic announcement in the French

Revolution, made reason the supreme judge, and had freedom for its great

practical watchword. It was represented in the economic sphere by the

school of Adam Smith. Socialism was an outcome of it too, and first of

all in Saint-Simon and his school professed to give the positive and

constructive corrective to a negative movement which did not see that it

was merely negative and therefore temporary. In other words, Saint-Simon

may be said to aim at nothing less than the completion of the work of

Voltaire, Rousseau, and Adam Smith.

Thus socialism professes to be the legitimate child of two great

revolutions,—of the industrial revolution which began to establish

itself in England towards the end of the eighteenth century, and of the

parallel revolution in thought which about the same time found most

prominent expression in France. Robert Owen worked chiefly under the

influence of the former; Saint-Simon and Fourier grew up under the

latter. The conspiracy of Babeuf, which took place in 1796, shortly

after the French Revolution, is properly to be regarded as a crude

revolutionary communism not essentially different from the rude efforts

in communism made in earlier periods of history. With Saint-Simon and

Owen historic socialism really begins, and is no longer an isolated

fact, but has had a continuous and widening development, the succession

of socialistic teaching and propaganda being taken up by one country

after another throughout the civilised world.

We have seen, then, that the rise of socialism as a new and reasoned

theory of society was relative to the industrial revolution and to the

ideas proclaimed in the French Revolution, prominent among which,

besides the much emphasised idea of freedom and the less easily realised

ideals of equality and fraternity, was the conception of the worth and

dignity of labour. Though Owen was most largely influenced by the former

and Saint-Simon and Fourier by the latter, it is certain that all three

were greatly affected by both the new movements. The motive power in

Owen’s career was the philanthropy and humanitarianism of the eighteenth

century. He had grown up in the midst of the industrial revolution; he

was one of the most successful pioneers in the improvement of the cotton

manufacture. No one could be more deeply conscious of the enormous

abuses of the factory system; and no one better knew the wonderful

services that might be rendered by technical improvement if only it were

made subordinate to human well-being. In the career of Owen we see the

new spirit of the eighteenth century seeking to bring the mechanism of

the new industrial system under the direction of a nobler principle, in

which the good of all should be the great and sole aim.

The position of Saint-Simon was considerably different, yet akin. As

Owen had before his eyes the evils of a young but gigantic

industrialism, Saint-Simon contemplated the hoary abuses of an idle and

privileged feudalism, fearfully shaken no doubt by the Revolution, but

still strong in Europe, and in France, as elsewhere, powerfully revived

during the period after Waterloo. Saint-Simon saw that a new world, an

industrial world resting on labour, had arisen, while the old feudal and

theological world—_fainéant_ courtiers and a clergy steeped in

ignorance—still ruled. All this array of parasites, who had no longer

any useful function to perform for society, Saint-Simon sought to

replace by the industrial chiefs and scientific leaders as the real

working heads of the French people. Only, he expected that these

exceptionally gifted men, instead of exploiting the labour of others,

should control an industrial France for the general good.

Neither Owen nor Saint-Simon was revolutionary in the ordinary sense.

Owen was most anxious that the English and other Governments should

adopt his projects of socialistic reform. Leading statesmen and royal

personages befriended him. He had no faith in the political reforms of

1832; he reckoned the political side of chartism as of no account, and

he preferred socialistic experiment under autocratic guidance until the

workmen should be trained to rule themselves. The same autocratic

tendency was very pronounced in Saint-Simon and his school. His first

appeal was to Louis XVIII. He wished to supersede the feudal aristocracy

by a working aristocracy of merit. His school claim to have been the

first to warn the Governments of Europe of the rise of revolutionary

socialism. In short, the early socialism arose during the reaction

consequent on the wars of the French Revolution, and was influenced by

the political tendencies of the time.

The beginning of socialism may be dated from 1817, the year when Owen

laid his scheme for a socialistic community before the committee of the

House of Commons on the poor law, the year also that the speculations of

Saint-Simon definitely took a socialistic direction. The outlines of the

history of socialism are very simple. Till 1850 there was a double

movement in France and England. In the former country, after Saint-Simon

and Fourier the movement was represented chiefly by Proudhon and Louis

Blanc. In England, after Owen the movement was taken up by the body of

Christian socialists associated with Maurice and Kingsley.

During the next stage in the development of socialism we see the

influence chiefly of German and also Russian thinkers, but it is

generally international both in its principles and sympathies. The

prevalent socialism found its first expression in the manifesto of the

Communist Party published in 1848. The same views were elaborated by

Marx in his _Kapital_ (1867), and have in later times been consolidated

and modified by many writers in many lands, in the programmes of

national parties and in the resolutions of international congresses.

In this Introduction we have tried to give a preliminary conception of

our subject, and we shall now proceed to present the leading views of

the men who have taken the chief part in originating and guiding the

socialist movement.

-----

[1] Holyoake, _History of Co-operation_, vol. i. p. 210, ed. 1875.

[2] Quoted by Adolf Held, _Sozialismus, Sozialdemokratie und

Sozialpolitik_, p. 30.

[3] _Ibid._ p. 29.

[4] _Les origines du socialisme contemporain_, p. 67.

[5] _Le socialisme contemporain_, p. iv.

[6] Schönberg’s _Handbuch der pol. Oekonomie_, art. ‘Socialism.’

[7] _Quintessenz des Socialismus_, p. 12.

[8] _Lehrbuch der pol. Oekonomie, Grundlegung_, p. 174.

CHAPTER II

EARLY FRENCH SOCIALISM

_SAINT-SIMON_

The founders of the early socialism grew up under the influence of the

too-confident optimism which characterised the early stages of the

French Revolution of 1789. They had an excessive faith in the

possibilities of human progress and perfectibility; they knew little of

the true laws of social evolution—in fact, did not sufficiently

recognise those aspects of life which Darwinism has brought out so

clearly. These faults the early socialists shared with many other

thinkers of the time in which they lived.

Comte Henri de Saint-Simon, the founder of French socialism, was born at

Paris in 1760. He belonged to a younger branch of the family of the

celebrated duke of that name. His education, he tells us, was directed

by d’Alembert. At the age of nineteen he went as volunteer to assist the

American colonies in their revolt against Britain.

From his youth Saint-Simon felt the promptings of an eager ambition. His

valet had orders to awake him every morning with the words, ‘Remember,

monsieur le comte, that you have great things to do’; and his ancestor

Charlemagne appeared to him in a dream, foretelling a remarkable future

for him. Among his early schemes was one to unite the Atlantic and the

Pacific by a canal, and another to construct a canal from Madrid to the

sea.

He took no part of any importance in the French Revolution, but amassed

a little fortune by land speculation—not on his own account, however,

as he said, but to facilitate his future projects. Accordingly, when he

was nearly forty years of age he went through a varied course of study

and experiment, in order to enlarge and clarify his view of things. One

of these experiments was an unhappy marriage, which after a year’s

duration was dissolved by the mutual consent of the parties. Another

result of his experiments was that he found himself completely

impoverished, and lived in penury for the remainder of his life.

The first of his numerous writings, _Lettres d’un Habitant de Genève_,

appeared in 1803; but his early works were mostly scientific and

political. It was not till 1817 that he began, in a treatise entitled

_L’Industrie_, to propound his socialistic views, which he further

developed in _L’Organisateur_ (1819), _Du Système industrial_ (1821),

_Catéchisme des Industriels_ (1823). The last and most important

expression of his views is the _Nouveau Christianisme_ (1825).

For many years before his death in 1825 Saint-Simon had been reduced to

the greatest straits. He was obliged to accept a laborious post for a

salary of £40 a year, to live on the generosity of a former valet, and

finally to solicit a small pension from his family. In 1823 he attempted

suicide in despair. It was not till very late in his career that he

attached to himself a few ardent disciples.

As a thinker Saint-Simon was entirely deficient in system, clearness,

and consecutive strength. His writings are largely made up of a few

ideas continually repeated. But his speculations are always ingenious

and original; and he has unquestionably exercised great influence on

modern thought, both as the historic founder of French socialism and as

suggesting much of what was afterwards elaborated into Comtism.

Apart from the details of his socialistic teaching, with which we need

not concern ourselves, we find that the ideas of Saint-Simon with regard

to the reconstruction of society are very simple. His opinions were

conditioned by the French Revolution and by the feudal and military

system still prevalent in France. In opposition to the destructive

liberalism of the Revolution he insisted on the necessity of a new and

positive reorganisation of society. So far was he from advocating social

revolt that he appealed to Louis XVIII. to inaugurate the new order of

things. In opposition, however, to the feudal and military system, the

former aspect of which had been strengthened by the Restoration, he

advocated an arrangement by which the industrial chiefs should control

society. In place of the Mediæval Church, the spiritual direction of

society should fall to the men of science. What Saint-Simon desired,

therefore, was an industrialist State directed by modern science. The

men who are best fitted to organise society for productive labour are

entitled to bear rule in it.

The social aim is to produce things useful to life; the final end of

social activity is ‘the exploitation of the globe by association.’ The

contrast between labour and capital, so much emphasised by later

socialism, is not present to Saint-Simon, but it is assumed that the

industrial chiefs, to whom the control of production is to be committed,

shall rule in the interest of society. Later on, the cause of the poor

receives greater attention, till in his greatest work, _The New

Christianity_, it becomes the central point of his teaching, and takes

the form of a religion. It was this religious development of his

teaching that occasioned his final quarrel with Comte.

Previous to the publication of the _Nouveau Christianisme_ Saint-Simon

had not concerned himself with theology. Here he starts from a belief in

God, and his object in the treatise is to reduce Christianity to its

simple and essential elements. He does this by clearing it of the dogmas

and other excrescences and defects that have gathered round both the

Catholic and Protestant forms of it, which he subjects to a searching

and ingenious criticism. The moral doctrine will by the new faith be

considered the most important; the divine element in Christianity is

contained in the precept that men should act towards one another as

brethren. ‘The new Christian organisation will deduce the temporal

institutions as well as the spiritual from the principle that all men

should act towards one another as brethren.’ Expressing the same idea in

modern language, Saint-Simon propounds as the comprehensive formula of

the new Christianity this precept: ‘The whole of society ought to strive

towards the amelioration of the moral and physical existence of the

poorest class; society ought to organise itself in the way best adapted

for attaining this end.’ This principle became the watchword of the

entire school of Saint-Simon; for them it was alike the essence of

religion and the programme of social reform.

During his lifetime the views of Saint-Simon had little influence, and

he left only a very few devoted disciples, who continued to advocate the

doctrines of their master, whom they revered as a prophet. An important

departure was made in 1828 by Bazard, who gave a ‘complete exposition of

the Saint-Simonian faith’ in a long course of lectures in the Rue

Taranne at Paris. In 1830 Bazard and Enfantin were acknowledged as the

heads of the school; and the fermentation caused by the revolution of

July of the same year brought the whole movement prominently before the

attention of France. Early next year the school obtained possession of

the _Globe_ through Pierre Leroux, who had joined the party, which now

numbered some of the ablest and most promising young men of France, many

of the pupils of the École Polytechnique having caught its enthusiasm.

The members formed themselves into an association arranged in three

grades, and constituting a society or family, which lived out of a

common purse in the Rue Monsigny.

Before long, however, dissensions began to arise in the sect. Bazard, a

man of logical and more solid temperament, could no longer work in

harmony with Enfantin, who desired to establish an arrogant and

fantastic sacerdotalism, with lax notions as to marriage and the

relations of the sexes. After a time Bazard seceded, and many of the

strongest supporters followed his example. A series of extravagant

entertainments given by the society during the winter of 1832 reduced

its financial resources and greatly discredited it in character. They

finally removed to Menilmontant, to a property of Enfantin, where they

lived in a communistic society, distinguished by a peculiar dress.

Shortly afterwards the chiefs were tried and condemned for proceedings

prejudicial to the social order; and the sect was entirely broken up in

1832. Many of its members became famous as engineers, economists, and

men of business. The idea of constructing the Suez Canal, as carried out

by Lesseps, proceeded from the school.

In the school of Saint-Simon we find a great advance both in the breadth

and firmness with which the vague and confused views of the master are

developed; and this progress is due chiefly to Bazard. In the philosophy

of history they recognise epochs of two kinds, the critical or negative,

and the organic or constructive. The former, in which philosophy is the

dominating force, is characterised by war, egotism, and anarchy; the

latter, which is controlled by religion, is marked by the spirit of

obedience, devotion, association. The two spirits of antagonism and

association are the two great social principles, and on the degree of

prevalence of the two depends the character of an epoch. The spirit of

association, however, tends more and more to prevail over its opponent,

extending from the family to the city, from the city to the nation, and

from the nation to the federation. This principle of association is to

be the keynote of the social development of the future. Hitherto the law

of humanity has been the ‘exploitation of man by man’ in its three

stages—slavery, serfdom, the proletariat; in the future the aim must be

‘the exploitation of the globe by man associated to man.’

Under the present system the industrial chief still exploits the

proletariat, the members of which, though nominally free, must accept

his terms under pain of starvation. This state of things is consolidated

by the law of inheritance, whereby the instruments of production, which

are private property, and all the attendant social advantages, are

transmitted without regard to personal merit. The social disadvantages

being also transmitted, misery becomes hereditary. The only remedy for

this is the abolition of the law of inheritance, and the union of all

the instruments of labour in a social fund, which shall be exploited by

association. Society thus becomes sole proprietor, entrusting to social

groups or social functionaries the management of the various properties.

The right of succession is transferred from the family to the State.

The school of Saint-Simon insists strongly on the claims of merit; they

advocate a social hierarchy in which each man shall be placed according

to his capacity and rewarded according to his works. This is, indeed, a

most special and pronounced feature of the Saint-Simon Socialism, whose

theory of government is a kind of spiritual or scientific autocracy,

culminating in the fantastic sacerdotalism of Enfantin.

With regard to the family and the relation of the sexes, the school of

Saint-Simon advocated the complete emancipation of woman and her entire

equality with man. The ‘social individual’ is man and woman, who are

associated in the triple function of religion, the State, and the

family. In its official declarations the school maintained the sanctity

of the Christian law of marriage. On this point Enfantin fell into a

prurient and fantastic latitudinarianism, which made the school a

scandal to France, but many of the most prominent members besides Bazard

refused to follow him.

Connected with the last-mentioned doctrines was their famous theory of

the ‘rehabilitation of the flesh,’ deduced from the philosophic theory

of the school, which was a species of pantheism, though they repudiated

the name. On this theory they rejected the dualism so much emphasised by

Catholic Christianity in its penances and mortifications, and held that

the body should be restored to its due place of honour. It is a vague

principle, of which the ethical character depends on the interpretation;

and it was variously interpreted in the school of Saint-Simon. It was

certainly immoral as held by Enfantin, by whom it was developed into a

kind of sensual mysticism, a system of free love with a religious

sanction.[1]

The good and bad aspects of the Saint-Simon socialism are too obvious to

require elucidation. The antagonism between the old economic order and

the new had only begun to declare itself. The extent and violence of the

disease were not yet apparent: both diagnosis and remedy were

superficial and premature. Such deep-seated organic disorder was not to

be conjured away by the waving of a magic wand. The movement was all too

utopian and extravagant in much of its activity. The most prominent

portion of the school attacked social order in its essential point—the

family morality—adopting the worst features of a fantastic, arrogant,

and prurient sacerdotalism, and parading them in the face of Europe.

Thus it happened that a school which attracted so many of the most

brilliant and promising young men of France, which was so striking and

original in its criticism of the existing condition of things, which was

so strong in the spirit of initiative, and was in many ways so noble,

unselfish, and aspiring, sank amidst the laughter and indignation of a

scandalised society.

-----

[1] An excellent edition of the works of Saint-Simon and Enfantin was

begun by survivors of the sect in (Paris) 1865, and now numbers forty

vols. See Reybaud, _Études sur les réformateurs modernes_ (7th edition,

Paris 1864); Janet, _Saint-Simon et le Saint-Simonisme_ (Paris, 1878);

A. J. Booth, _Saint-Simon and Saint-Simonism_ (London, 1871).

_FOURIER_

Considered as a purely literary and speculative product, the socialism

of Fourier was prior to those both of Owen and Saint-Simon. Fourier’s

first work, _Théorie des Quatre Movements_, was published as early as

1808. His system, however, scarcely attracted any attention and

exercised no influence till the movements originated by Owen and

Saint-Simon had begun to decline.

The socialism of Fourier is in many respects fundamentally different

from that of Saint-Simon; in the two schools, in fact, we find the two

opposing types of socialism which have continued to prevail ever since.

Saint-Simonism represented the principle of authority, of

centralisation; while Fourier made all possible provision for local and

individual freedom. With Saint-Simonism the State is the starting-point,

the normal and dominant power; in Fourier the like position is held by a

local body, corresponding to the commune, which he called the

_Phalange_. In the system of Fourier the _phalange_ holds the supreme

and central place, other organisation in comparison with it being

secondary and subordinate.

The deviser of the _phalange_, François Marie Charles Fourier[1] was a

very remarkable man. He was born at Besançon in 1772, and received from

his father, a prosperous draper, an excellent education at the academy

of his native town. The boy excelled in the studies of the school, and

regretfully abandoned them for a business career, which he followed in

various towns of France. As a commercial traveller in Holland and

Germany he enlarged his experience of men and things. From his father

Fourier inherited a sum of about £3000, with which he started business

at Lyons, but he lost all he had in the siege of that city by the

Jacobins during the Reign of Terror, was thrown into prison, and

narrowly escaped the guillotine. On his release he joined the army for

two years, and then returned to his old way of life.

At a very early age Fourier had his attention called to the defects of

the prevalent commercial system. When only five years old he had been

punished for speaking the truth about certain goods in his father’s

shop; and at the age of twenty-seven he had at Marseilles to superintend

the destruction of an immense quantity of rice held for higher prices

during a scarcity of food till it had become unfit for use. The

conviction grew within him that a system which involved such abuses and

immoralities must be radically evil. Feeling that it was his mission to

find a remedy for it, he spent his life in the discovery, elucidation,

and propagation of a better order; and he brought to his task a

self-denial and singleness of purpose which have seldom been surpassed.

For the last ten years of his life he waited in his apartments at noon

every day for the wealthy capitalist who should supply the means for the

realisation of his schemes. The tangible success obtained by his system

was very slight. His works found few readers and still fewer disciples.

It was chiefly after the decline of the Saint-Simon movement that he

gained a hearing and a little, success. A small group of enthusiastic

adherents gathered round him; a journal was started for the propagation

of his views; and in 1832 an attempt was made on lands near Versailles

to establish a _phalange_, which, however, proved a total failure. In

1837 Fourier passed away from a world that showed little inclination to

listen to his teaching. A singular altruism was in his character blended

with the most sanguine confidence in the possibilities of human

progress. Perhaps the weakest point in his teaching was that he so

greatly underestimated the strength of the unregenerate residuum in

human nature. His own life was a model of simplicity, integrity,

kindliness, and disinterested devotion to what he deemed the highest

aims.

The social system of Fourier was, we need not say, the central point in

his speculations. But as his social system was moulded and coloured by

his peculiar views on theology, cosmogony, and psychology, we must give

some account of those aspects of his teaching. In theology Fourier

inclined, though not decidedly, to what is called pantheism; the

pantheistic conception of the world which underlay the Saint-Simon

theory of the ‘rehabilitation of the flesh’ may be said to form the

basis also of the social ethics and arrangements of Fourier. Along with

this he held a natural optimism of the most radical and comprehensive

character. God has done all things well, only man has misunderstood and

thwarted His benevolent purposes. God pervades everything as a universal

attraction. Whereas Newton discovered that the law of attraction governs

one movement of the world, Fourier shows that it is universal, ruling

the world in all its movements, which are four—material, organic,

intellectual, and social. It is the same law of attraction which

pervades all things, from the cosmic harmony of the stars down to the

puny life of the minutest insect, and which would reign also in the

human soul and in human society, if the intentions of the Creator were

understood. In the elucidation of his system Fourier’s aim simply is to

interpret the intentions of the Creator. He regards his philosophy, not

as ingenious guesses or speculations, but as discoveries plainly

traceable from a few first principles; discoveries in no way doubtful,

but the fruit of clear insight into the divine law.

The cosmogony of Fourier is the most fantastic part of a fantastic

system. But as he did not consider his views in this department an

essential part of his system, we need not dwell upon them. He believed

that the world is to exist for eighty thousand years, forty thousand

years of progress being followed by forty thousand years of decline. As

yet it has not reached the adult stage, having lasted only seven

thousand years. The present stage of the world is civilisation, which

Fourier uses as a comprehensive term for everything artificial and

corrupt, the result of perverted human institutions, themselves due to

the fact that we have for five thousand years misunderstood the

intentions of the Creator. The head and front of this misunderstanding

consists in our pronouncing passions to be bad that are simply natural;

and there is but one way of redressing it—to give a free and healthy

and complete development to our passions.

This leads us to the psychology of Fourier. He recognised twelve radical

passions connected with three points of attraction. Five are sensitive

(tending to enjoyment)—sight, hearing, taste, smell, and touch. Four

are affective (tending to groups)—love, friendship, ambition, and

_familism_ or paternity. The meaning and function of these are obvious

enough. The remaining three, the _alternating_, _emulative_, and

_composite_ (which he calls _passions rectrices_, and which tend to

series or to unity), are more special to Fourier. Of the three the first

is connected with the need of variety; the second leads to intrigue and

jealousy; the third, full of intoxication and abandonment, is born of

the combination of several pleasures of the senses and of the soul

enjoyed simultaneously. The passions of the first two classes are so far

controlled by the _passions rectrices_, and especially by the composite

passion; but even the _passions rectrices_ obviously contain elements of

discord and war. All, however, are ultimately harmonised by a great

social passion, which Fourier calls _Unitéisme_. Out of the free play of

all the passions harmony is evolved, like white out of the combination

of the colours.

The speedy passage from social chaos to universal harmony contemplated

by Fourier can, as we have seen, be accomplished only by one method, by

giving to the human passions their natural development. For this end, a

complete break with civilisation must be made. We must have new social

arrangements suitable to human nature and in harmony with the intentions

of the Creator. These Fourier provides in the _phalange_. In its normal

form the _phalange_ was to consist of four hundred families or eighteen

hundred persons, living on a square league of land, self-contained and

self-sufficing for the most part, and combining within itself the means

for the free development of the most varied likings and capacities. It

was an institution in which agriculture, industry, the appliances and

opportunities of enjoyment, and generally of the widest and freest human

development, are combined, the interests of individual freedom and of

common union being reconciled in a way hitherto unknown and unimagined.

While the _phalange_ is the social unit, the individuals composing it

will arrange themselves in groups of seven or nine persons; from

twenty-four to thirty-two groups form a series, and these unite to form

a _phalange_—all according to principles of attraction, of free

elective affinity. The dwelling of the _phalange_ was the _phalanstère_,

a vast, beautiful, and commodious structure, where life could be

arranged to suit every one, common or solitary, according to preference;

but under such conditions there would be neither excuse nor motive for

the selfish seclusion, isolation, and suspicion so prevalent in

civilisation.

In such an institution it is obvious that government under the form of

compulsion and restraint would be reduced to a minimum. The officials of

the _phalange_ would be elected. The _phalange_, itself was an

experiment on a local scale, which could easily be made, and once

successfully made would lead to world-wide imitation. They would freely

group themselves into wider combinations with elected chiefs, and the

_phalanges_ of the whole world would form a great federation with a

single elected chief, resident at Constantinople, which would be the

universal capital.

In all the arrangements of the _phalange_ the principle of free

attraction would be observed. Love would be free. Free unions should be

formed, which could be dissolved, or which might grow into permanent

marriage.

The labour of the _phalange_ would be conducted on scientific methods;

but it would, above all things, be made _attractive_, by consulting the

likings and capacities of the members, by frequent change of occupation,

by recourse to the principle of emulation in individuals, groups, and

series. On the principle that men and women are eager for the greatest

exertion, if only they like it, Fourier bases his theory that all labour

can be made attractive by appealing to appropriate motives in human

nature. Obviously, also, what is now the most disgusting labour could be

more effectually performed by machinery.

The product of labour was to be distributed in the following

manner:—Out of the common gain of the _phalange_ a very comfortable

minimum was assured to every member. Of the remainder, five-twelfths

went to labour, four-twelfths to capital, and three-twelfths to talent.

In the _phalange_, individual capital existed, and inequality of talent

was not only admitted, but insisted upon and utilised. In the actual

distribution the _phalange_ treated with individuals. With regard to the

remuneration of individuals under the head of capital no difficulty

could be felt, as a normal rate of interest would be given on the

advances made. Individual talent would be rewarded in accordance with

the services rendered in the management of the _phalange_, the place of

each being determined by election. Labour would be remunerated on a

principle entirely different from the present. Hard and common or

necessary work should be best paid; useful work should come next, and

pleasant work last of all. In any case the reward of labour would be so

great that every one would have the opportunity of becoming a

capitalist.

One of the most notable results of the _phalange_ treating with each

member individually is, that the economic independence of women would be

assured. Even the child of five would have its own share in the produce.

The system of Fourier may fairly be described as one of the most

ingenious and elaborate Utopias ever devised by the human brain. But in

many cardinal points it has been constructed in complete contradiction

to all that experience and science have taught us of human nature and

the laws of social evolution. He particularly underestimates the force

of human egotism. From the beginning progress has consisted essentially

in the hard and strenuous repression of the beast within the man,

whereas Fourier would give it free rein. This applies to his system as a

whole, and especially to his theories on marriage. Instead of supplying

a sudden passage from social chaos to universal harmony, his system

would, after entirely subverting such order as we have, only bring us

back to social chaos.

Yet his works are full of suggestion and instruction, and will long

repay the study of the social economist. His criticisms of the existing

system, of its waste, anarchy, and immorality, are ingenious, searching,

and often most convincing. In his positive proposals, too, are to be

found some of the most sagacious and far-reaching forecasts of the

future landmarks of human progress. Most noteworthy are the guarantees

he devised for individual and local freedom. The _phalange_ was on the

one hand large enough to secure all the benefits of a scientific

industry and of a varied common life; on the other it provides against

the evils of centralisation, of State despotism, of false patriotism and

national jealousy. Fourier has forecast the part to be played in the

social and political development of the future by the local body,

whether we call it commune, parish, or municipality. The fact that he

has given it a fantastic name, and surrounded it with many fantastic

conditions, should not hinder us from recognising his great sagacity and

originality.

The freedom of the individual and of the minority is, moreover,

protected against the possible tyranny of the _phalange_ by the

existence, under reasonable limits and under social control, of

individual capital. This individual capital, further, is perfectly

_mobile_; that is, the possessor of it, if he thinks fit to migrate or

go on travel, may remove his capital, and find a welcome for his labour,

talent, and investments in any part of the world. Such arrangements of

Fourier may suggest a much-needed lesson to many of the contemporary

adherents of ‘scientific socialism.’

While, therefore, we believe that Fourier’s system was as a whole

entirely utopian, he has with great sagacity drawn the outlines of much

of our political and social progress; and while we believe that the full

development of human passions as recommended by him would soon reduce us

to social chaos, a time may come in our ethical and rational growth when

a widening freedom may be permitted and exercised, not by casting off

moral law, but by the perfect assimilation of it.

-----

[1] Fourier’s complete works (6 vols., Paris, 1840-46; new ed. 1870).

The most eminent expounder of Fourierism was Victor Considérant,

_Destinée sociale_; Gatti de Gammont’s _Fourier et son système_ is an

excellent summary.

CHAPTER III

FRENCH SOCIALISM OF 1848

The year 1830 was an important era in the history of socialism. During

the fermentation of that time the activity of the Saint-Simon school

came to a crisis, and the theories of Fourier had an opportunity of

taking practical shape. But by far the greatest result for socialism of

the revolutionary period of 1830 was the definite establishment of the

contrast between the _bourgeoisie_ and proletariat in France and

England, the two countries that held the foremost place in the modern

industrial, social, and political movement. Hitherto the men who were

afterwards destined consciously to constitute those two classes had

fought side by side against feudalism and the reaction. Through the

restricted franchise introduced at this period in the two countries just

mentioned the middle class had become the ruling power.

Excluded from political privileges and pressed by the weight of adverse

economic, conditions, the proletariat now appeared as the revolutionary

party. The first symptom in France of the altered state of things was

the outbreak at Lyons in 1831, when the starving workmen rose to arms

with the device, ‘Live working, or die fighting.’ Chartism was a larger

phase of the same movement in England. The theories of Saint-Simon and

Fourier had met with acceptance chiefly or entirely among the educated

classes. Socialism now directly appealed to the working men.

In this chapter our concern is with the development of the new form of

socialism in France. Paris, which had so long been the centre of

revolutionary activity, was now, and particularly during the latter half

of the reign of the _bourgeois_ King, Louis Philippe, the seat of

socialistic fermentation. In 1839 Louis Blanc published his

_Organisation du travail_, and Cabet his _Voyage en Icarie_. In 1840

Proudhon brought out his book on property. Paris was the school to which

youthful innovators went to learn the lesson of revolution. At this

period she counted among her visitors Lassalle, the founder of the

Social Democracy of Germany; Karl Marx, the chief of scientific

international socialism; and Bakunin, the apostle of anarchism.

The socialistic speculation associated with the three men last mentioned

was to have a far-reaching influence; but it did not attain to full

development till a later period. The socialistic activity of Louis Blanc

and Proudhon culminated during the revolution of 1848, and exercised

considerable influence on the course of events in Paris at that time.

_LOUIS BLANC_

The socialism of Saint-Simon and Fourier was, as we have seen, largely

imaginative and Utopian, and had only a very remote connection with the

practical life of their time. With Louis Blanc the movement came into

real contact with the national history of France. In Louis Blanc’s

teaching the most conspicuous feature was that he demanded the

democratic organisation of the State as preparatory to social

reorganisation. His system, therefore, had a positive and practical

basis, in so far as it allied itself to a dominant tendency in the

existing State.

It is unnecessary here to recapitulate in detail the life of Louis

Blanc. He was born in 1811 at Madrid, where his father was

inspector-general of finance under Joseph during his uncertain tenure of

the Spanish throne. At an early age he attained to eminence as a

journalist in Paris, and in 1839 established the _Revue du progrès_, in

which he first brought out his celebrated work on Socialism, the

_Organisation du travail_. It was soon published in book form, and found

a wide popularity among the workmen of France, who were captivated by

the brilliancy of the style, the fervid eloquence with which it exposed

existing abuses, and the simplicity and democratic fitness of the

schemes for the regeneration of society which it advocated.

The greater part of the book is taken up with unsparing denunciations of

the evils of competition, which, as common to Louis Blanc with other

socialists, need not detain us. More interesting are the practical

measures for their removal, proposed in his treatise.[1] Like the

socialists that preceded him, L. Blanc cannot accept the views which

teach a necessary antagonism between soul and body; we must aim at the

harmonious development of both sides of our nature. The formula of

progress is double in its unity: moral and material amelioration of the

lot of all by the free co-operation of all, and their fraternal

association.[2] He saw, however, that social reform could not be

attained without political reform. The first is the end, the second is

the means. It was not enough to discover the true methods for

inaugurating the principle of association and for organising labour in

accordance with the rules of reason, justice, and humanity. It was

necessary to have political power on the side of social reform,

political power resting on the Chambers, on the tribunals, and on the

army: not to take it as an instrument was to meet it as an obstacle.

For these reasons he wished to see the State constituted on a thoroughly

democratic basis, as the first condition of success. The emancipation of

the proletarians was a question so difficult that it would require the

whole force of the State for its solution. What is wanting to the

working class are the instruments of labour; the function of Government

is to furnish them. If we had to define what we consider the State to

be, we should reply, ‘The State is the banker of the poor.’

Louis Blanc demanded that the democratic State should create industrial

associations, which he called _social workshops_, and which were

destined gradually and without shock to supersede individual workshops.

The State would provide the means; it would draw up the rules for their

constitution, and it would appoint the functionaries for the first year.

But, once founded and set in movement, the social workshop would be

self-supporting, self-acting, and self-governing. The workmen would

choose their own directors and managers, they would themselves arrange

the division of the profits, and would take measures to extend the

enterprise commenced.

In such a system where would there be room for arbitrary rule or

tyranny? The State would establish the social workshops, would pass laws

for them, and supervise their execution for the good of all; but its

_rôle_ would end there. Is this, can this be tyranny? Thus the freedom

of the industrial associations and of the individuals composing them

would not only remain intact; it would have the solid support of the

State. The intervention of a democratic Government on behalf of the

people, whom it represented, would remove the misery, anarchy, and

oppression necessarily attendant on the competitive system, and in place

of the delusive liberty of _laissez-faire_, would establish a real and

positive freedom.

With regard to the remuneration of talent and labour L. Blanc takes very

high ground. ‘Genius,’ he said, ‘should assert its legitimate empire,

not by the amount of the tribute which it will levy on society, but by

the greatness of the services which it will render.’ This is no mere

flourish of eloquence; it is to be the principle of remuneration in his

association. Society could not, even if it would, repay the genius of a

Newton; Newton had his just recompense in the joy of discovering the

laws by which worlds are governed. Exceptional endowments must find

development and a fitting reward in the exceptional services they render

to society.

L. Blanc therefore believed in a hierarchy according to capacity;

remuneration according to capacity he admitted in the earlier editions

of his work, but only provisionally and as a concession to prevalent

anti-social opinion. In the edition of 1848, the year when his theories

attained for a time to historic importance, he had withdrawn this

concession. ‘Though the false and anti-social education given to the

present generation makes it difficult to find any other motive of

emulation and encouragement than a higher salary, the wages will be

equal, as the ideas and character of men will be changed by an

absolutely new education.’[3] Private capitalists would be invited to

join the associations, and would under fixed conditions receive interest

for their advances; but as the collective capital increased, the

opportunities for so placing individual capital would surely diminish.

The tyranny of capital would, in fact, receive a mortal wound.

The revolution of 1848 was an important stage in the development of

democracy. In ancient and also in mediæval times the democracy was

associated with city life; the citizens personally appeared and spoke

and voted in the Assemblies. The modern democracy has grown in large

States, extending over wide territories, and the citizen can exercise

political power only through elected representatives. Hence the

importance of the franchise in modern politics. The evolution of the

modern democracy has gone through a long succession of phases, beginning

with the early growth of the English Parliament, and continued in the

struggles of the Dutch against the Spaniards, in the English Revolutions

of 1642 and 1688, in the American Revolution of 1776, and the French

Revolution of 1789. In the early struggles, however, the mass of the

people had no very great share. It was hardly till 1848 that the working

class made its entrance on the stage of history—in Europe at least.

The revolutionary disturbances of 1848 affected nearly the whole of

western and central Europe. It was a rising of the peoples against

antiquated political forms and institutions; against the arrangements of

the Treaty of Vienna, whereby Europe was partitioned according to the

convenience of ruling houses; against irresponsible Governments, which

took no account of the wishes of their subjects.

In France, the country with which we are now specially concerned, the

revolution was a revolt of the people against a representative monarchy

with a very restricted franchise. It was not a deeply-planned rising,

and, indeed, was a surprise to those who wished it and accomplished it.

Yet it marked a most important stage in the progress of the world, for,

as a result of it, men for the first time saw the legislature of a great

country established on principles of universal suffrage, and the cause

of the working men recognised as a supreme duty of government.

Louis Blanc was the most prominent actor in what may be called the

social-democratic side of the French Revolution of 1848. Through his

influence with the working classes, and as representing their feelings

and aspirations, he obtained a place in the Provisional Government. He

was supported there by others like-minded with himself, including one

working man, whose appearance in such a capacity was also a notable

event in modern history. But though circumstances were so far

favourable, he did not accomplish much. It cannot be said that his plans

obtained a fair hearing or a fair trial. He was present in the

Provisional Government as the pioneer of a new cause whose time had not

yet come.

The schemes for social reconstruction which he contemplated were

certainly not carried out in the _national workshops_ of that year. From

the report of the Commission of Inquiry into the subject, subsequently

instituted by the French Government, and from the _History of the

National Workshops_, written by their director, Emile Thomas, it is

perfectly clear that the _national workshops_ were simply a travesty of

the proposals of Louis Blanc, established expressly to discredit them.

They were a means of finding work for the motley proletariat thrown out

of employment during the period of revolutionary disturbance, and those

men were put to unproductive labour; whereas, of course, Louis Blanc

contemplated nothing but productive work, and the men he proposed

inviting to join his associations were to give guarantees of character.

It was intended, too, by his opponents that the mob of workmen whom they

employed in the so-called _national workshops_ would be ready to assist

their masters in the event of a struggle with the socialist party.

A number of private associations of a kind similar to those proposed by

Louis Blanc were indeed subsidised by the Government. But of the whole

sum voted for this end, which amounted to only £120,000, the greater

part was applied to purposes quite foreign from the grant. It was not

the intention of the moving spirits of the Government that they should

succeed. Moreover, the months following the revolution of February were

a period of industrial stagnation and insecurity, when any project of

trade, either on the old or on the new lines, had little prospect of

success. Under these circumstances, the fact that a few of the

associations did prosper very fairly may be accepted as proof that the

scheme of Louis Blanc had in it the elements of vitality. The history of

the whole matter fully justifies the exclamation of Lassalle that ‘lying

is a European power.’[4] It has been the subject of endless

misrepresentation by writers who have taken no pains to verify the

facts.

As one of the leaders during this difficult crisis, Louis Blanc had

neither personal force nor enduring political influence sufficient to

secure any solid success for his cause. He was an amiable, genial, and

eloquent enthusiast, but without weight enough to be a controller of men

on a wide scale. The Labour Conferences at the Luxembourg, over which he

presided, ended also, as his opponents desired, without any tangible

result.

The Assembly, elected on the principle of universal suffrage, which met

in May, showed that the peasantry and the mass of the French people were

not in accord with the working classes of Paris and of the industrial

centres. It did not approve of the social-democratic activity urged by a

section of the Provisional Government. The national workshops also were

closed, and the proletariat of Paris rose in armed insurrection, which

was overthrown by Cavaignac in the sanguinary days of June. Louis Blanc

was in no way responsible for the revolt, which can be called

socialistic only in the sense that the proletariat was engaged in it,

the class of which socialism claims to be the special champion.

-----

[1] _Organisation du travail._ Fifth edition. 1848.

[2] Preface to fifth edition, _Organisation du travail_.

[3] _Organisation du travail_, p. 103.

[4] Lassalle, _Die französischen Nationalwerkstätten von 1848_.

_PROUDHON_

Pierre Joseph Proudhon was born in 1809 at Besançon, France, the native

place also of the socialist Fourier. His origin was of the humblest, his

father being a brewer’s cooper, and the boy herded cows and did such

other work as came in his way. But he was not entirely self-educated; at

sixteen he entered the college of his native place, though his family

was so poor that he could not procure the necessary books, and had to

borrow them from his mates in order to copy the lessons. There is a

story of the young Proudhon returning home laden with prizes, but to

find that there was no dinner for him.

At nineteen he became a working compositor, and was afterwards promoted

to be a corrector for the press, reading proofs of ecclesiastical works,

and thereby acquiring a considerable knowledge of theology. In this way

he also came to learn Hebrew, and to compare it with Greek, Latin, and

French. It was the first proof of his intellectual audacity that on the

strength of this he wrote an _Essai de grammaire générale_. As Proudhon

knew nothing whatever of the true principles of philology, his treatise

was of no value.

In 1838 he obtained the _pension Suard_, a bursary of 1500 francs a year

for three years, for the encouragement of young men of promise, which

was in the gift of the Academy of Besançon. Next year he wrote a

treatise _On the Utility of Keeping the Sunday_, which contained the

germs of his revolutionary ideas. About this time he went to Paris,

where he lived a poor, ascetic, and studious life, making acquaintance,

however, with the socialistic ideas which were then fermenting in the

capital.

In 1840 he published his first work, _Qu’est-ce que la propriété?_ (What

is Property?) His famous answer to this question, _La propriété c’est le

vol_ (Property is theft), naturally did not please the academy of

Besançon, and there was some talk of withdrawing his pension; but he

held it for the regular period.[1]

For his third memoir on property, which took the shape of a letter to

the Fourierist, M. Considérant, he was tried at Besançon, but was

acquitted. In 1846 he published his greatest work, the _Système des

contradictions économiques, ou philosophie de la misère_. For some time

Proudhon carried on a small printing establishment at Besançon, but

without success; and afterwards held a post as a kind of manager with a

commercial firm at Lyons. In 1847 he left this employment, and finally

settled in Paris, where he was now becoming celebrated as a leader of

innovation.

He regretted the sudden outbreak of the revolution of February, because

it found the social reformers unprepared; but he threw himself with

ardour into the conflict of opinion, and soon gained a national

notoriety. He was the moving spirit of the _Représentant du Peuple_ and

other journals, in which the most advanced theories were advocated in

the strongest language; and as member of Assembly for the Seine

department he brought forward his celebrated proposal for exacting an

impost of one-third on interest and rent, which of course was rejected.

His attempt to found a bank which should operate by granting gratuitous

credit, was also a complete failure; of the five million francs which he

required, only seventeen thousand were offered. The violence of his

utterances led to an imprisonment at Paris for three years, during which

he married a young working woman.

As Proudhon aimed at economic rather than political innovation, he had

no special quarrel with the Second Empire, and he lived in comparative

quiet under it till the publication of his work, _De la justice dans la

révolution et dans l’église_ (1858), in which he attacked the Church and

other existing institutions with unusual fury. This time he fled to

Brussels to escape imprisonment. On his return to France his health

broke down, though he continued to write. He died at Passy in 1865.

Personally, Proudhon was one of the most remarkable figures of modern

France. His life was marked by the severest simplicity and even

puritanism; he was affectionate in his domestic relations, a most loyal

friend, and strictly upright in conduct. He was strongly opposed to the

prevailing French socialism of his time because of its utopianism and

immorality; and, though he uttered all manner of wild paradox and

vehement invective against the dominant ideas and institutions, he was

remarkably free from feelings of personal hate. In all that he said and

did he was the son of the people, who had not been broken to the usual

social and academic discipline; hence his roughness, his one-sidedness,

and his exaggerations. But he is always vigorous, and often brilliant

and original.

It would obviously be impossible to reduce the ideas of such an

irregular thinker to systematic form. In later years Proudhon himself

confessed that ‘the great part of his publications formed only a work of

dissection and ventilation, so to speak, by means of which he slowly

makes his way towards a superior conception of political and economic

laws.’ Yet the groundwork of his teaching is clear and firm; no one

could insist with greater emphasis on the demonstrative character of

economic principles as understood by himself. He strongly believed in

the absolute truth of a few moral ideas, with which it was the aim of

his teaching to mould and suffuse political economy. Of these

fundamental ideas, justice, liberty, and equality were the chief. What

he desiderated, for instance, in an ideal society was the most perfect

equality of remuneration. It was his principle that service pays

service, that a day’s labour balances a day’s labour—in other words,

that the duration of labour is the just measure of value. He did not

shrink from any of the consequences of this theory, for he would give

the same remuneration to the worst mason as to a Phidias; but he looks

forward also to a period in human development when the present

inequality in the talent and capacity of men would be reduced to an

inappreciable minimum.

From the great principle of service as the equivalent of service he

derived his axiom that property is the right of _aubaine_. The _aubain_

was a stranger not naturalised; and the right of _aubaine_ was the right

in virtue of which the Sovereign claimed the goods of such a stranger

who had died in his territory. Property is a right of the same nature,

with a like power of appropriation in the form of rent, interest, etc.

It reaps without labour, consumes without producing, and enjoys without

exertion.

Proudhon’s aim, therefore, was to realise a science of society resting

on principles of justice, liberty, and equality thus understood; ‘a

science, absolute, rigorous, based on the nature of man and of his

faculties, and on their mutual relations; a science which we have not to

invent, but to discover.’ But he saw clearly that such ideas, with their

necessary accompaniments, could be realised only through a long and

laborious process of social transformation. As we have said, he strongly

detested the prurient immorality of the schools of Saint-Simon and

Fourier. He attacked them not less bitterly for thinking that society

could be changed off-hand by a ready-made and complete scheme of reform.

It was ‘the most accursed lie,’ he said, ‘that could be offered to

mankind.’

In social change he distinguishes between the transition and the

perfection or achievement. With regard to the transition he advocated

the progressive abolition of the right of _aubaine_, by reducing

interest, rent, etc. For the goal he professed only to give the general

principles; he had no ready-made scheme, no Utopia. The positive

organisation of the new society in its details was a labour that would

require fifty Montesquieus. The organisation he desired was one on

collective principles, a free association which would take account of

the division of labour, and which would maintain the personality both of

the man and the citizen. With his strong and fervid feeling for human

dignity and liberty, Proudhon could not have tolerated any theory of

social change that did not give full scope for the free development of

man. Connected with this was his famous paradox of _anarchy_, as the

goal of the free development of society, by which he meant that through

the ethical progress of men government should become unnecessary. Each

man should be a law to himself. ‘Government of man by man in every

form,’ he says, ‘is oppression. The highest perfection of society is

found in the union of order and _anarchy_.’

Proudhon’s theory of property as the right of _aubaine_ is substantially

the same as the theory of capital held by Marx and most of the later

socialists. Property and capital are defined and treated as the power of

exploiting the labour of other men, of claiming the results of labour

without giving an equivalent. Proudhon’s famous paradox, ‘Property is

theft,’ is merely a trenchant expression of this general principle. As

slavery is assassination inasmuch as it destroys all that is valuable

and desirable in human personality, so property is theft inasmuch as it

appropriates the value produced by the labour of others in the form of

rent, interest, or profit without rendering an equivalent. For property

Proudhon would substitute individual possession, the right of occupation

being equal for all men.

With the bloodshed of the days of June French socialism ceased for a

time to be a considerable force; and Paris, too, for a time lost its

place as the great centre of innovation. The rising removed the most

enterprising leaders of the workmen and quelled the spirit of the

remainder, while the false prosperity of the Second Empire relieved

their most urgent grievances. Under Napoleon III. there was consequently

comparative quietness in France. Even the International had very little

influence on French soil, though French working men had an important

share in originating it.

-----

[1] A complete edition of Proudhon’s works, including his posthumous

writings, was published at Paris, 1875. See _P. J. Proudhon, sa vie et

sa correspondance_, by Sainte-Beuve (Paris, 1875), an admirable work,

unhappily not completed; also _Revue des Deux Mondes_, Jan. 1866 and

Feb. 1873.

CHAPTER IV

EARLY ENGLISH SOCIALISM

Compared with the parallel movement in France the early socialism of

England had an uneventful history. In order to appreciate the

significance of Robert Owen’s work it is necessary to recall some of the

most important features of the social condition of the country in his

time. The English worker had no fixed interest in the soil. He had no

voice either in local or national government. He had little education or

none at all. His dwelling was wretched in the extreme. The right even of

combination was denied him till 1824. The wages of the agricultural

labourer were miserably low.

The workman’s share in the benefits of the industrial revolution was

doubtful. Great numbers of his class were reduced to utter poverty and

ruin by the great changes consequent on the introduction of machinery;

the tendency to readjustment was slow and continually disturbed by fresh

change. The hours of work were mercilessly long. He had to compete

against the labour of women, and of children brought frequently at the

age of five or six from the workhouses. These children had to work the

same long hours as the adults, and they were sometimes very cruelly

treated by the overseers. Destitute as they so often were of parental

protection and oversight, with both sexes huddled together under immoral

and insanitary conditions, it was only natural that they should fall

into the worst habits, and that their offspring should to such a

lamentable degree be vicious, improvident, and physically degenerate.

In a country where the labourers had neither education nor political or

social rights, and where the peasantry were practically landless serfs,

the old English poor law was only a doubtful part of an evil system. All

these permanent causes of mischief were aggravated by special causes

connected with the cessation of the Napoleonic wars, which are well

known. It was in such circumstances, when English pauperism had become a

grave national question, that Owen first brought forward his scheme of

socialism.

Robert Owen, philanthropist, and founder of English socialism, was born

at the village of Newtown, Montgomeryshire, North Wales, in 1771.[1] His

father had a small business in Newtown as saddler and ironmonger, and

there young Owen received all his school education, which terminated at

the age of nine. At ten he went to Stamford, where he served in a

draper’s shop for three or four years, and, after a short experience of

work in a London shop, removed to Manchester.

His success at Manchester was very rapid. When only nineteen years of

age he became manager of a cotton-mill, in which five hundred people

were employed, and by his administrative intelligence, energy, industry,

and steadiness, soon made it one of the best establishments of the kind

in Great Britain. In this factory Owen used the first bags of American

Sea-Island cotton ever imported into the country; it was the first

cotton obtained from the Southern States of America. Owen also made

remarkable improvement in the quality of the cotton spun. Indeed there

is no reason to doubt that at this early age he was the first

cotton-spinner in England, a position entirely due to his own capacity

and knowledge of the trade, as he had found the mill in no well-ordered

condition and was left to organise it entirely on his own

responsibility.

Owen had become manager and one of the partners of the Chorlton Twist

Company at Manchester, when he made his first acquaintance with the

scene of his future philanthropic efforts at New Lanark. During a visit

to Glasgow he had fallen in love with the daughter of the proprietor of

the New Lanark mills, Mr. Dale. Owen induced his partners to purchase

New Lanark; and after his marriage with Miss Dale he settled there, in

1800, as manager and part owner of the mills. Encouraged by his great

success in the management of cotton-factories in Manchester, he had

already formed the intention of conducting New Lanark on higher

principles than the current commercial ones.

The factory of New Lanark had been started in 1784 by Dale and

Arkwright, the water-power afforded by the falls of the Clyde being the

great attraction. Connected with the mills were about two thousand

people, five hundred of whom were children, brought, most of them, at

the age of five or six from the poorhouses and charities of Edinburgh

and Glasgow. The children especially had been well treated by Dale, but

the general condition of the people was very unsatisfactory. Many of

them were the lowest of the population, the respectable country-people

refusing to submit to the long hours and demoralising drudgery of the

factories. Theft, drunkenness, and other vices were common; education

and sanitation were alike neglected; most families lived only in one

room.

It was this population, thus committed to his care, which Owen now set

himself to elevate and ameliorate. He greatly improved their houses, and

by the unsparing and benevolent exertion of his personal influence

trained them to habits of order, cleanliness, and thrift. He opened a

store, where the people could buy goods of the soundest quality at

little more than cost price; and the sale of drink was placed under the

strictest supervision. His greatest success, however, was in the

education of the young, to which he devoted special attention. He was

the founder of infant schools in Great Britain; and, though he was

anticipated by Continental reformers, he seems to have been led to

institute them by his own views of what education ought to be, and

without hint from abroad.

In all these plans Owen obtained the most gratifying success. Though at

first regarded with suspicion as a stranger, he soon won the confidence

of his people. The mills continued to prosper commercially, but it is

needless to say that some of Owen’s schemes involved considerable

expense, which was displeasing to his partners. Wearied at last of the

restrictions imposed on him by men who wished to conduct the business on

the ordinary principles, Owen, in 1813, formed a new firm, whose

members, content with 5 per cent of return for their capital, would be

ready to give freer scope to his philanthropy. In this firm Jeremy

Bentham and the well-known Quaker, William Allen, were partners.

In the same year Owen first appeared as an author of essays, in which he

expounded the principles on which his system of educational philanthropy

was based. From an early age he had lost all belief in the prevailing

forms of religion, and had thought out a creed for himself, which he

considered an entirely new and original discovery. The chief points in

this philosophy were that man’s character is made not by him but for

him; that it has been formed by circumstances over which he had no

control; that he is not a proper subject either of praise or

blame—these principles leading up to the practical conclusion that the

great secret in the right formation of man’s character is to place him

under the proper influences, physical, moral, and social, from his

earliest years. These principles, of the irresponsibility of man and of

the effect of early influences, are the keynote of Owen’s whole system

of education and social amelioration. As we have said, they are embodied

in his first work, _A New View of Society; or, Essays on the Principle

of the Formation of the Human Character_, the first of these essays

(there are four in all) being published in 1813. It is needless to say

that Owen’s new views theoretically belong to a very old system of

philosophy, and that his originality is to be found only in his

benevolent application of them.

For the next few years Owen’s work at New Lanark continued to have a

national and even a European significance. His schemes for the education

of his workpeople attained to something like completion on the opening

of the institution at New Lanark in 1816. He was a zealous supporter of

the factory legislation resulting in the Act of 1819, which, however,

greatly disappointed him. He had interviews and communications with the

leading members of Government, including the Premier, Lord Liverpool,

and with many of the rulers and leading statesmen of the Continent. New

Lanark itself became a much-frequented place of pilgrimage for social

reformers, statesmen, and royal personages, amongst whom was Nicholas,

afterwards Emperor of Russia. According to the unanimous testimony of

all who visited it, the results achieved by Owen were singularly good.

The manners of the children, brought up under his system, were

beautifully graceful, genial, and unconstrained; health, plenty, and

contentment prevailed; drunkenness was almost unknown, and illegitimacy

was extremely rare. The most perfect good-feeling subsisted between Owen

and his workpeople; all the operations of the mill proceeded with the

utmost smoothness and regularity; and the business still enjoyed great

prosperity.

Hitherto Owen’s work had been that of a philanthropist, whose great

distinction was the originality and unwearying unselfishness of his

methods. His first departure in socialism took place in 1817, and was

embodied in a report communicated to the Committee of the House of

Commons on the Poor Law. The general misery and stagnation of trade

consequent on the termination of the great war were engrossing the

attention of the country. After clearly tracing the special causes

connected with the war which had led to such a deplorable state of

things, Owen pointed out that the permanent cause of distress was to be

found in the competition of human labour with machinery, and that the

only effective remedy was the united action of men, and the

subordination of machinery. His proposals for the treatment of pauperism

were based on these principles.

He recommended that communities of about twelve hundred persons should

be settled on spaces of land of from 1000 to 1500 acres, all living in

one large building in the form of a square, with public kitchen and

mess-rooms. Each family should have its own private apartments, and the

entire care of the children till the age of three, after which they

should be brought up by the community, their parents having access to

them at meals and all other proper times. These communities might be

established by individuals, by parishes, by counties, or by the State;

in every case there should be effective supervision by duly qualified

persons. Work, and the enjoyment of its results, should be in common.

The size of his community was no doubt partly suggested by his village

of New Lanark; and he soon proceeded to advocate such a scheme as the

best form for the reorganisation of society in general. In its fully

developed form—and it cannot be said to have changed much during Owen’s

lifetime—it was as follows. He considered an association of from 500 to

3000 as the fit number for a good working community. While mainly

agricultural, it should possess all the best machinery, should offer

every variety of employment, and should, as far as possible, be

self-contained. In other words, his communities were intended to be

self-dependent units, which should provide the best education and the

constant exercise of unselfish intelligence, should unite the advantages

of town and country life, and should correct the monotonous activity of

the factory with the freest variety of occupation, while utilising all

the latest improvements in industrial technique. ‘As these townships,’

as he also called them, ‘should increase in number, unions of them

federatively united shall be formed in circles of tens, hundreds, and

thousands,’ till they should embrace the whole world in one great

republic with a common interest.

His plans for the cure of pauperism were received with great favour. The

_Times_ and the _Morning Post_, and many of the leading men of the

country, countenanced them; one of his most steadfast friends was the

Duke of Kent, father of Queen Victoria. He had indeed gained the ear of

the country, and had the prospect before him of a great career as a

social reformer, when he went out of his way at a large meeting in

London to declare his hostility to all the received forms of religion.

After this defiance to the religious sentiment of the country, Owen’s

theories were in the popular mind associated with infidelity, and were

henceforward suspected and discredited.

Owen’s own confidence, however, remained unshaken, and he was anxious

that his scheme for establishing a community should be tested. At last,

in 1825, such an experiment was attempted under the direction of his

disciple, Abram Combe, at Orbiston, near Glasgow; and in the same year

Owen himself commenced another at New Harmony, in Indiana, America.

After a trial of about two years both failed completely. Neither of them

was a pauper experiment; but it must be said that the members were of

the most motley description, many worthy people of the highest aims

being mixed with vagrants, adventurers, and crotchety wrong-headed

enthusiasts.

After a long period of friction with William Allen and some of his other

partners, Owen resigned all connection with New Lanark in 1828. On his

return from America he made London the centre of his activity. Most of

his means having been sunk in the New Harmony experiment, he was no

longer a flourishing capitalist, but the head of a vigorous propaganda,

in which socialism and secularism were combined. One of the most

interesting features of the movement at this period was the

establishment in 1832 of an equitable labour exchange system, in which

exchange was effected by means of labour notes, the usual means of

exchange and the usual middlemen being alike superseded. The word

‘socialism’ first became current in the discussions of the Association

of all Classes of all Nations, formed by Owen in 1835.

During these years also his secularistic teaching gained such influence

among the working classes as to give occasion, in 1839, for the

statement in the _Westminster Review_ that his principles were the

actual creed of a great portion of them. His views on marriage, which

were certainly lax, gave just ground for offence. At this period some

more communistic experiments were made, of which the most important were

that at Ralahine, in the county of Clare, Ireland, and that at Tytherly,

in Hampshire. It is admitted that the former, which was established in

1839, was a remarkable success for three and a half years, till the

proprietor, who had granted the use of the land, having ruined himself

by gambling, was obliged to sell out. Tytherly, begun in 1839, was an

absolute failure. By 1846 the only permanent result of Owen’s agitation,

so zealously carried on by public meetings, pamphlets, periodicals, and

occasional treatises, was the co-operative movement, and for the time

even that seemed to have utterly collapsed. In his later years Owen

became a firm believer in spiritualism. He died in 1858 at his native

town at the age of eighty-seven.

The causes of Owen’s failure in establishing his communities are obvious

enough. Apart from the difficulties inherent in socialism, he injured

the social cause by going out of his way to attack the historic

religions and the accepted views on marriage, by his tediousness,

quixotry, and over-confidence, by refusing to see that for the mass of

men measures of transition from an old to a new system must be adopted.

If he had been truer to his earlier methods and retained the autocratic

guidance of his experiments, the chances of success would have been

greater. Above all, Owen had too great faith in human nature, and he did

not understand the laws of social evolution. His great doctrine of the

influence of circumstances in the formation of character was only a very

crude way of expressing the law of social continuity so much emphasised

by recent socialism. He thought that he could break the chain of

continuity, and as by magic create a new set of circumstances, which

would forthwith produce a new generation of rational and unselfish men.

The time was too strong for him, and the current of English history

swept past him.

Even a very brief account of Owen, however, would be incomplete without

indicating his relation to Malthus. Against Malthus he showed that the

wealth of the country had, in consequence of mechanical improvement,

increased out of all proportion to the population. The problem,

therefore, was not to restrict population, but to institute rational

social arrangements and to secure a fair distribution of wealth.

Whenever the number of inhabitants in any of his communities increased

beyond the maximum, new ones should be created, until they should extend

over the whole world. There would be no fear of over-population for a

long time to come. Its evils were then felt in Ireland and other

countries; but that condition of things was owing to the total want of

the most ordinary common sense on the part of the blinded authorities of

the world. The period would probably never arrive when the earth would

be full; but, if it should, the human race would be good, intelligent,

and rational, and would know much better than the present irrational

generation how to provide for the occurrence. Such was Owen’s

socialistic treatment of the population problem.

Robert Owen was essentially a pioneer, whose work and influence it would

be unjust to measure by their tangible results. Apart from his

socialistic theories, it should, nevertheless, be remembered that he was

one of the foremost and most energetic promoters of many movements of

acknowledged and enduring usefulness. He was the founder of infant

schools in England; he was the first to introduce reasonably short hours

into factory labour, and zealously promoted factory legislation—one of

the most needed and most beneficial reforms of the century; and he was

the real founder of the co-operative movement. In general education, in

sanitary reform, and in his sound and humanitarian views of common life,

he was far in advance of his time. Like Fourier, also, he did the great

service of calling attention to the advantages which might be obtained

in the social development of the future from the reorganisation of the

commune, or self-governing local group of workers.

Still, he had many serious faults; all that was quixotic, crude, and

superficial in his views became more prominent in his later years, and

by the extravagance of his advocacy of them he did vital injury to the

cause he had at heart. In his personal character he was without

reproach—frank, benevolent, and straightforward to a fault; and he

pursued the altruistic schemes in which he spent all his means with more

earnestness than most men devote to the accumulation of a fortune.

In England the reform of 1832 had the same effect as the revolution of

July (1830) in France: it brought the middle class into power, and by

the exclusion of the workmen emphasised their existence as a separate

class. The discontent of the workmen now found expression in Chartism.

As is obvious from the contents of the Charter, Chartism was most

prominently a demand for political reform; but both in its origin and in

its ultimate aim the movement was more essentially economic. As regards

the study of socialism, the interest of this movement lies greatly in

the fact that in its organs the doctrine of ‘surplus value,’ afterwards

elaborated by Marx as the basis of his system, is broadly and

emphatically enunciated. While the worker produces all the wealth, he is

obliged to content himself with the meagre share necessary to support

his existence, and the surplus goes to the capitalist, who, with the

king, the priests, lords, esquires, and gentlemen, lives upon the labour

of the working man (_Poor Man’s Guardian_, 1835).

After the downfall of Owenism began the Christian socialist movement in

England (1848-52), of which the leaders were Maurice, Kingsley, and Mr.

Ludlow. The abortive Chartist demonstration of April 1848 excited in

Maurice and his friends the deepest sympathy with the sufferings of the

English working class—a feeling which was intensified by the

revelations regarding ‘London Labour and the London Poor’ published in

the _Morning Chronicle_ in 1849. Mr. Ludlow, who had in France become

acquainted with the theories of Fourier, was the economist of the

movement, and it was with him that the idea originated of starting

co-operative associations.

In _Politics for the People_, in the _Christian Socialist_, in the

pulpit and on the platform, and in _Yeast_ and _Alton Locke_, well-known

novels of Kingsley, the representatives of the movement exposed the

evils of the competitive system, carried on an unsparing warfare against

the Manchester School, and maintained that socialism, rightly

understood, was only Christianity applied to social reform. Their

labours in insisting on ethical and spiritual principles as the true

bonds of society, in promoting associations, and in diffusing a

knowledge of co-operation, were largely beneficial. In the north of

England they joined hands with the co-operative movement inaugurated by

the Rochdale pioneers in 1844 under the influence of Owenism. Productive

co-operation made very little progress, but co-operative distribution

soon proved a great success.

-----

[1] Of R. Owen’s numerous works in exposition of his system, the most

important are the _New View of Society_; the _Report_ communicated to

the Committee on the Poor Law; the _Book of the New Moral World_; and

_Revolution in the Mind and Practice of the Human Race_. See _Life of

Robert Owen written by himself_, London, 1857, and _Threading my Way,

Twenty-seven Years of Autobiography_, by Robert Dale Owen, his son,

London, 1874. There are also _Lives_ of Owen by A. J. Booth (London,

1869), W. L. Sargant (London, 1860), and F. Podmore (London, 1906). For

works of a more general character see G. J. Holyoake, _History of

Co-operation in England_, London, 1875; Adolf Held, _Zwei Bücher zur

socialen Geschichte Englands_, Leipsic, 1881.

CHAPTER V

_FERDINAND LASSALLE_

I. Life

In 1852 the twofold socialist movement in France and England had come to

an end, leaving no visible result of any importance. From that date the

most prominent leaders of socialism have been German and Russian.

German socialists also played a part in the revolution of 1848 and in

the years that preceded it; but as the work that makes their names

really historical was not performed till a later period, we have

postponed the consideration of it till now, when we can treat it as a

whole. The most conspicuous chiefs of German socialism have been Karl

Marx, Friedrich Engels, Lassalle, and Rodbertus. Of these, Lassalle[1]

was the first to make his mark in history as the originator of the

Social Democratic movement in Germany.