necessity of nature to the downfall of the small production, the basis
of which is the private property of the workman in his means of
production. It separates the workman from his means of production, and
transforms him into a proletarian without property, whilst the means of
production become the monopoly of a comparatively small number of
capitalists and great landowners.
‘This monopolising of the means of production is accompanied by the
supplanting of the scattered small production through the colossal great
production, by the development of the tool into the machine, and by
gigantic increase of the productivity of human labour. But all
advantages of this transformation are monopolised by the capitalists and
great landowners. For the proletariat and the sinking intermediate
grades—small tradesmen and peasant proprietors—it means increasing
insecurity of their existence, increase of misery, of oppression, of
servitude, degradation, and exploitation.
‘Ever greater grows the number of the proletarians, ever larger the army
of superfluous workmen, ever wider the chasm between exploiters and
exploited, ever bitterer the class struggle between _bourgeoisie_ and
proletariat, which divides modern society into two hostile camps, and is
the common characteristic of all industrial lands.
‘The gulf between rich and poor is further widened through the crises
which naturally arise out of the capitalistic method of production,
which always become more sweeping and destructive, which render the
general insecurity the normal condition of society, and prove that the
productive forces have outgrown the existing society, that private
property in the means of production is incompatible with their rational
application and full development.
‘Private property in the instruments of production, which in former
times was the means of assuring to the producer the property in his own
product, has now become the means of expropriating peasant proprietors,
hand-workers, and small dealers, and of placing the non-workers,
capitalists, and great landowners in the possession of the product of
the workmen. Only the conversion of the capitalistic private property in
the means of production—land, mines, raw material, tools, machines,
means of communication—into social property, and the transformation of
the production of wares into socialistic production, carried on for and
through society, can bring it about that the great production and the
continually increasing productivity of social labour may become for the
hitherto exploited classes, instead of a source of misery and
oppression, a source of the highest welfare and of all-sided harmonious
development.
‘This social transformation means the emancipation, not merely of the
proletariat, but of the entire human race which suffers under the
present conditions. But it can only be the work of the labouring class,
because all other classes, in spite of their mutually conflicting
interests, stand on the ground of private property in the means of
production, and have as their common aim the maintenance of the bases of
the existing society.
‘The struggle of the working class against capitalistic exploitation is
of necessity a political struggle. The working class cannot conduct its
economic struggle, and cannot develop its economic organisation, without
political rights. It cannot effect the change of the means of production
into the possession of the collective society without coming into
possession of political power.
‘To shape this struggle of the working class into a conscious and united
one, and to point out to it its inevitable goal, this is the task of the
Social Democratic party.
‘In all lands where the capitalistic method of production prevails, the
interests of the working classes are alike. With the extension of the
world commerce and of the production for the world market, the condition
of the workmen of every single land always grows more dependent on the
condition of the workmen in other lands. The emancipation of the working
class is therefore a task in which the workers of all civilised
countries are equally interested. Recognising this the Social Democratic
party of Germany feels and declares itself at one with the
class-conscious workers of all other countries.
‘The Social Democratic party of Germany therefore contends, not for new
class privileges and exclusive rights, but for the abolition of class
rule and of classes themselves, and for equal rights and equal duties of
all without distinction of sex and descent. Proceeding from these views
it struggles in the present society, not only against exploitation and
oppression of the wage-workers, but against every kind of exploitation
and oppression, whether directed against class, party, sex, or race.
‘Proceeding from these principles the Social Democratic party of Germany
now demands—
‘1. Universal, equal, and direct suffrage, with vote by ballot, for all
men and women of the Empire over twenty years of age. Proportional
electoral system; and, till the introduction of this, legal
redistribution of seats after every census. Biennial legislative
periods. Elections to take place on a legal day of rest. Payment of
representatives. Abolition of all limitation of political rights, except
in the case of disfranchisement.
‘2. Direct legislation through the people, by means of the right of
proposal and rejection. Self-government of the people in Empire, State,
Province, and Commune. Officials to be elected by the people;
responsibility of officials. Yearly granting of taxes.
‘3. Training in universal military duty. A people’s army in place of the
standing armies, decision on peace and war by the representatives of the
people. Settlement of all international differences by arbitration.
‘4. Abolition of all laws which restrict or suppress the free expression
of opinion and the right of union and meeting.
‘5. Abolition of all laws which, in public or private matters, place
women at a disadvantage as compared with men.
‘6. Religion declared to be a private matter. No public funds to be
applied to ecclesiastical and religious purposes. Ecclesiastical and
religious bodies are to be regarded as private associations which manage
their own affairs in a perfectly independent manner.
‘7. Secularisation of the school. Obligatory attendance at the public
people’s schools. Education, the appliances of learning, and maintenance
free in the public people’s schools, as also in the higher educational
institutions for those scholars, both male and female, who, by reason of
their talents, are thought to be suited for further instruction.
‘8. Administration of justice and legal advice to be free. Justice to be
administered by judges chosen by the people. Appeal in criminal cases.
Compensation for those who are innocently accused, imprisoned, and
condemned. Abolition of capital punishment.
‘9. Medical treatment, including midwifery and the means of healing, to
be free. Free burial.
‘10. Progressive income and property taxes to meet all public
expenditure, so far as these are to be covered by taxation. Duty of
making one’s own return of income and property. Succession duty to be
graduated according to amount and relationship. Abolition of all
indirect taxes, customs, and other financial measures which sacrifice
the collective interest to the interests of a privileged minority.
‘For the protection of the working class the Social Democratic party of
Germany demands—
‘1. An effective national and international protective legislation for
workmen on the following bases:—
‘(_a_) Fixing of a normal working day of not more than eight hours.
‘(_b_) Prohibition of money-making labour of children under fourteen
years.
‘(_c_) Prohibition of night work, except for those branches of industry
which from their nature, owing to technical reasons or reasons of public
welfare, require night work.
‘(_d_) An unbroken period of rest of at least thirty-six hours in every
week for every worker.
‘(_e_) Prohibition of the truck system.
‘2. Supervision of all industrial establishments, investigation and
regulation of the conditions of labour in town and country by an
imperial labour department, district labour offices, and labour
chambers. A thorough system of industrial hygiene.
‘3. Agricultural labourers and servants to be placed on the same footing
as industrial workers; abolition of servants’ regulations.
‘4. The right of combination to be placed on a sure footing.
‘5. Undertaking of the entire working men’s insurance by the Empire,
with effective co-operation of the workmen in its administration.’
If we consider the above programme we shall see that collectivism is set
forth as the goal of a long process of historical evolution. But this
goal is to be attained by the conscious, intelligent, and organised
action of the working class of Germany in co-operation with the working
classes of other lands. This is the twofold theme of the first part of
the programme. The second part is a detailed statement of the
social-political arrangements and institutions, by which on and from the
basis of the existing society the German Social Democracy may move
towards the goal. The goal, collectivism, is therefore the central point
of the programme.
The programme, it will be observed, is a lengthy one about which many
treatises might be written, and indeed it sums up a world of thought, on
which the Social Democratic mind has been exercised for more than a
generation. It will be seen that the materialistic conception of history
and the theory of surplus value of Marx are not expressed in the
programme, though they _may_ be taken as underlying it by those who
emphasise those two leading principles of Marx. The Social Democracy of
Germany, therefore, is not committed to the special theories of Marx to
the extent that is commonly supposed, though the general lines on which
the programme is constructed owe their elucidation greatly more to him
than to any other man. The various points of the programme will, we may
be assured, be subjects of discussion and of education for the
industrious and intelligent working class of Germany for many a year to
come. It embodies their thoughts and interests, their aspirations and
ideals, in the social economic and political sphere, but it represents
no fixed system of dogma. It is meant to be a living creed, mirroring a
living movement.
We have thus briefly sketched the rise of the German Social Democratic
party from 1863 to 1890. It is a short period, but full of change and
trouble. The party has come victoriously through a very hard school. We
have seen how low and feeble were the beginnings of the party. We have
seen also how hard at every step of its career has been its experience
of the German police. Indeed the Prussian and German executive has left
no means untried to suppress and destroy the movement.
Looking back on the development of the party we cannot doubt that at
certain decisive stages greater wisdom and insight might have been shown
by its leaders. The ascendency of Prussia should have been recognised as
an inevitable fact which unquestionably made for progress in the
unification of Germany. In this aspect at least the work of Bismarck was
profoundly progressive. We may safely assume that the unification and
regeneration of Germany would never have been accomplished by a talking
apparatus like the Frankfort Parliament of 1848; and we can see no other
force that could have succeeded except the military power of Prussia.
And we may further add that the present policy of the Social Democratic
party in refusing to vote for the budgets, if it were seriously to
weaken the German executive, would in the existing state of Europe be
disastrous in the last degree. That men like Liebknecht should hate the
Junker party as the hereditary oppressors of the poor was natural; but
the Junkers have had and still have a great historic function as the
heads of the forces political and military which have again made Germany
a nation. Their way of making the new Germany has not been the ideal
way, let us say; but it has been the way of fact, and no exercise of
revolutionary impatience of Marx or Liebknecht has been able to arrest
or reverse the fact.
Trained in the school of adversity, the German Social Democratic party
has been obliged to learn circumspection and to acquire all the virtues
of discipline, patience, sobriety, and self-control. Some of its
members, among whom Most and Hasselman were prominent, strongly urged a
policy of anarchic resistance to authority, but this tendency was
strenuously opposed by the vast majority. Most and Hasselman, on
refusing to submit to the party discipline, were eventually expelled.
Every attempt to encourage the theory or practice of anarchism in the
German Social Democratic party has been sternly and almost unanimously
suppressed by the party. It succeeded only to a slight degree in cases
where it was promoted by the agents of the German police for their own
evil ends.
A most wholesome effect of the adverse experience of the Social
Democratic party was that it sifted from their ranks all who were not
thoroughly in earnest in the cause of the working man. It is a grave
misfortune of new movements like socialism that it attracts from the
middle and upper classes all manner of faddists and crotchety
enthusiasts and adventurers, vapid and futile talkers, acrid and morbid
pessimists, who join the movement, not from real love of the cause, but
because it gives them an opportunity to scheme and harangue, and to lash
out at the vices of the existing society. From this dangerous class the
German Social Democratic party was saved by the anti-socialist
legislation at a time when socialism was becoming fashionable.
It is a most significant feature in the development of the German Social
Democracy that it has attained to its present advanced position without
the help of any leader of commanding talent. It has had many loyal
chiefs. For over fifty years, during which exile, privation,
discouragement, prosecution, and imprisonment were followed by a season
of comparative triumph, Liebknecht was at all times the consistent and
unflinching champion of the revolutionary cause. Bebel’s service for the
working man now extends to about forty years, and has been not less
consistent and courageous. Many others, such as Hasenclever, Auer, and
Vollmar, have served with ability for many years. But none of those
named can be considered men of remarkable gifts. Bernstein and Kautsky,
who may be described as the leading theorists of the party in recent
years, have shown wide knowledge, judgment, and clearness of vision, but
they would be the last to lay claim to the endowments that give Marx and
Lassalle their high place in the history of the working class. These
things being so, we must regard the German Social Democracy as a
movement which owes its rise no doubt to the initiative of two men of
original force, but which in its development finds its basis in the
minds and hearts of the proletariat of the Fatherland.
In the absence of other guidance the Social Democratic party has been a
centre and a rallying-point to the German workmen. While all else was
uncertain, dark, and hostile, the party could be relied upon to give
friendly and disinterested counsel. The strikes which from time to time
broke out among the German workmen received the most careful advice and
consideration from the Social-Democratic leaders, and those leaders soon
found that the strikes were the most impressive object-lessons in
arousing the class-consciousness of the workmen. Whole masses of the
working men went over to the Social Democracy under the severe practical
teaching of the strike.
The cause of the German Social Democracy has therefore called forth the
most entire devotion among all ranks of its members. When Liebknecht and
Bebel were condemned to two years’ imprisonment in a fortress after the
great trial at Leipzig, in 1872, they were glad, they said, to do their
two years because of the splendid opportunity it had given them for
socialistic propaganda in the face of Germany. During the fortnight the
trial had lasted they had in the course of their defence been able to
dispel prejudices and misunderstandings, and so to educate German
opinion in socialism.
But the 10th of March 1878 saw a demonstration which of all the events
and incidents in the history of the German Social Democracy may well be
regarded as the most deeply significant. It was the funeral of August
Heinsch. August Heinsch was a simple workman, a compositor; but he had
deserved well of the proletariat by organising its electoral victories
in Berlin. He had died of consumption, called by the socialists the
proletarian malady, because it is so frequently due to the insanitary
conditions under which work is carried on. In the case of August Heinsch
the malady was at least aggravated by his self-sacrificing exertions in
the common cause, and the workmen of Berlin resolved to honour his
memory by a solemn and imposing demonstration. As the body was borne to
the cemetery through the working men’s districts in East Berlin, black
flags waved from the roofs and windows, and the vast crowds of people,
reckoned by the hundred thousand, who filled the streets, bared their
heads in respectful sympathy. Many thousands of workmen followed the
bier in serried ranks to the last resting-place.
Of all the achievements of the German Social Democracy it may be
reckoned the most signal that it has so organised the frugal,
hard-working and law-abiding proletariat of the Fatherland, and has
inspired them with the spirit of intelligent self-sacrifice in their
common cause. The programme and principles of the party have received
modification in the past, and will no doubt receive it in the future,
for the German Social Democracy is a reality and a movement instinct
with vitality. The new times will bring new needs, which will require
new measures. They will bring also, we hope, a wider and clearer vision
and a mellower wisdom, as without wisdom even organised power is of
little avail.
In view of the loyalty and devotion of the working men, it is all the
more incumbent on the leaders of the German Social Democratic party that
they should now guide it along paths which will be wise, practical, and
fruitful. It has too long been their evil fortune or their own
deliberate choice to stand apart from the main movement of German life.
They have had little part in the work of State, municipality, or country
commune. The party began in opposition to the great co-operative
movement of Germany.
It is most important that the theories and ideals of the German Social
Democratic party should be fairly tested and corrected by their
application to the practical work of society. The leaders of the party
agree in their preference for legal and peaceful methods. In this point
they and the representatives of the existing order might find common
ground which may form a basis for better relations in the future.
-----
[1] The best authority for the facts connected with the development of
the German Social Democracy is Franz Mehring’s _Geschichte der Deutschen
Sozial-demokratie_.
[2] See Mehring, _Geschichte_.
[3] See Appendix.
[4] Our tr. of the programme is taken from the _Protokoll_ or shorthand
report of the party meeting at Stuttgart, 1898, to which it is prefixed.
CHAPTER X
ANARCHISM
It is agreed that anarchism as a form of socialism originated with
Proudhon; but the theory owes its fuller development chiefly to Russian
agitators. The great apostle of the system in its most characteristic
stage was Michael Bakunin.
Bakunin[1] belonged to the highest Russian aristocracy and was born at
Torshok, in the government of Twer, in 1814. In due time he entered the
army as an officer of artillery, which was a select department of the
service. While serving in Poland, however, he was so painfully impressed
with the horrors which he saw exercised under Russian despotic rule,
that he resigned his commission and entered on a life of study. In 1847
he visited Paris, and met Proudhon, who had a decisive influence on his
opinions.
The revolutionary movement of 1848 gave the first opportunity for the
activity of Bakunin as agitator. He was particularly concerned in the
rising at Dresden in 1849. But the hands of the reactionary Governments
and of their police were heavy on the baffled enthusiasts of the
revolution. Bakunin had a full share of their bitter experience. As he
tells us himself in his work on Mazzini, he was for nearly eight years
confined in various fortresses of Saxony, Austria, and Russia, and was
then exiled for life to Siberia. Fortunately, Muravieff, Governor of
Siberia, was a relative, who allowed him considerable freedom and other
indulgences. After four years of exile, Bakunin effected his escape, and
through the greatest hardships made his way to California, and thence to
London in 1860.
Bakunin thus passed in prison and in exile the dreary years of European
reaction which followed the revolutionary period of 1848. When he
returned to London he found that the forward movement had again begun.
It was a time of promise for his own country after the accession of
Alexander II. to the throne. In the _Kolokol_ he assisted Herzen to
rouse his countrymen and prepare them for a new era; but the impatient
temperament of Bakunin could not be satisfied with the comparatively
moderate counsels followed by his friend. The latter years of his life
he spent, chiefly in Switzerland, as the energetic advocate of
international anarchism. In 1869 he founded the Social Democratic
Alliance, which, however, dissolved in the same year, and entered the
main International. He attempted a rising at Lyons in September 1870,
soon after the fall of the Second Empire, but with no success whatever.
At the Hague Congress of the International he was outvoted and expelled
by the Marx party. His activity in later years was much impaired by
ill-health. He died at Berne in 1876.
In their preface to Bakunin’s work, _God and the State_, his friends
Cafiero and Elisée Reclus afford us some interesting glimpses of the
personality of the agitator. ‘Friends and enemies know that the man was
great by his thinking power, his force of will, and his persistent
energy; they know also what lofty disdain he felt for fortune, rank,
glory, and all the miserable prizes which the majority of men are base
enough to covet. A Russian gentleman belonging to the highest nobility
of the empire, he was one of the first to enter in that proud
association of the revolted, who knew to detach themselves from the
traditions, the prejudices, the interests of race and class—to contemn
their own happiness. With them he fought the hard battle of life,
aggravated by prison, by exile, by all the dangers, and all the
bitterness which devoted men have to undergo in their troubled
existence.’
They then go on to say how ‘in Russia among the students, in Germany
among the insurgents of Dresden, in Siberia among his brethren in exile,
in America, in England, in France, in Switzerland, in Italy, among men
of goodwill, his direct influence has been considerable. The originality
of his ideas, his picturesque and fiery eloquence, his untiring zeal in
propaganda, supported by the natural majesty of his appearance, and by
his strong vitality, gained an entrance for him in all the groups of
revolutionary socialists, and his activity left deep traces even among
those who, after having welcomed it, rejected it because of differences
in aim or method.’ But it was mainly by the voluminous correspondence
with the revolutionary world, in which he spent whole nights, that his
activity was to be explained. His published writings were the smallest
part of his work. His most important treatise, _God and the State_, was
only a fragment. ‘My life itself is a fragment,’ he said to those who
criticised his writings.
Nothing can be clearer or more frank and comprehensive in its
destructiveness than the socialism of Bakunin. It is revolutionary
socialism based on materialism, and aiming at the destruction of
external authority by every available means. He rejects all the ideal
systems in every name and shape, from the idea of God downwards; and he
rejects every form of external authority, whether emanating from the
will of a Sovereign or from universal suffrage. ‘The liberty of man,’ he
says in his _Dieu et l’Etat_, ‘consists solely in this, that he obey the
laws of Nature, because he has himself recognised them as such, and not
because they have been imposed upon him externally by any foreign will
whatsoever, human or divine, collective or individual.’ In this way will
the whole problem of freedom be solved: that natural laws be ascertained
by scientific discovery, and the knowledge of them be universally
diffused among the masses. Natural laws being thus recognised by every
man for himself, he cannot but obey them, for they are the laws also of
his own nature; and the need for political organisation, administration,
and legislation will at once disappear.
It follows that he will not admit of any privileged position or class,
for ‘it is the peculiarity of privilege and of every privileged position
to kill the intellect and heart of man. The privileged man, whether he
be privileged politically or economically, is a man depraved in
intellect and heart.’ ‘In a word, we object to all legislation, all
authority, and all influence, privileged, patented, official and legal,
even when it has proceeded from universal suffrage, convinced that it
must always turn to the profit of a dominating and exploiting minority,
against the interests of the immense majority enslaved.’
The following extracts taken from the programme of the International
Social Democratic Alliance, which he founded, will help to complete our
knowledge of the views of this extraordinary agitator. The Alliance
declares itself atheistic; it seeks the abolition of all religions, the
displacement of faith by science and of divine justice by human justice,
the abolition of marriage as a political, religious, legal, and
_bourgeois_ institution. The Alliance demands above all things the
definite and complete abolition of classes, and political, economic, and
social equality of individuals and sexes, and abolition of inheritance,
so that in the future every man may enjoy a like share in the produce of
labour; that land and soil, instruments of labour, and all other
capital, becoming the common property of the whole society, may be used
only by the workers—that is, by associations of cultivators and
industrialists. It looks forward to the final solution of the social
question through the universal and international solidarity of the
workers of all countries, and condemns every policy grounded on
so-called patriotism and national jealousy. It demands the universal
federation of all local associations through the principle of freedom.
Bakunin’s methods of realising his revolutionary programme are suited to
his principles. He would make all haste to sweep away the political and
social institutions that prevent the realisation of his plans for the
future. The spirit of destruction reaches its climax in the
Revolutionary Catechism, which has been attributed to Bakunin, but which
contains extreme statements that do not consist with his acknowledged
writings. It is at least a product of the school of Bakunin, and as such
is worthy of attention. The spirit of revolution could not further go
than it does in this document. The revolutionist, as the Catechism would
recommend him to be, is a consecrated man, who will allow no private
interests or feelings, and no scruples of religion, patriotism, or
morality, to turn him aside from his mission, the aim of which is by all
available means to overturn the existing society. His work is merciless
and universal destruction. The future organisation will doubtless
proceed out of the movement and life of the people, but it is the
concern of coming generations. In the meantime all that Bakunin enables
us to see as promise of future reconstruction is the free federation of
free associations—associations of which we find the type in the Russian
commune.
The influence of Bakunin was felt chiefly on the socialist movement in
Southern Europe. The important risings in Spain in 1873 were due to his
activity. In the later revolutionary movement of Italy his influence
superseded that of Mazzini, for there, as elsewhere, the purely
political interest had yielded to the social in the minds of the most
advanced.
The doctrines of Bakunin have also left their mark on the recent social
history of France and French Switzerland. About 1879 the anarchist
propaganda showed signs of activity in Lyons and the surrounding
industrial centres. Some disturbances among the miners at
Montceau-les-Mines in 1882, also provoked the attention of the police
and Government, with the result that sixty-six persons were accused of
belonging to an international association with anarchist principles. Of
the accused the most notable was Prince Kropotkine, who, with the
eminent French geographer Elisée Reclus and the Russian Lavroff, may be
regarded as the greatest recent exponents of anarchism.
There is no more interesting figure in the recent revolutionary history
of Europe than Prince Kropotkine. Like Bakunin, he belongs by birth to
the highest aristocracy of Russia; his family, it was sometimes said
among his familiar friends, had a better right to the throne of that
country than the present dynasty. A man of science of European fame, of
kindly nature and courteous manners, it may seem strange that he should
be an avowed champion of the most destructive creed now extant. A few of
the leading facts of his life, as he gave them in his defence at the
trial at Lyons in 1883, may throw some light on that question.[2]
His father was an owner of serfs, and from his childhood he had been
witness to scenes like those narrated by the American novelist in _Uncle
Tom’s Cabin_. The sight of the cruelties suffered by the oppressed class
had taught him to love them. At sixteen he entered the school of pages
at the Imperial Court, and if he had learned in the cabin to love the
people, he learned at the Court to detest the great. In the army and the
administration he saw the hopelessness of expecting reforms from the
reactionary Russian Government. For some time afterwards he had devoted
himself to scientific work. When the social movement began, Kropotkine
joined it. The demands made by the new party for more liberty met with a
simple response from the Government: they were thrown into prison, where
their treatment was terrible. In the prison where the Prince was
detained nine lost their reason and eleven committed suicide. He fell
seriously ill, and was carried to the hospital, from which he made his
escape. In Switzerland, where he found refuge, he witnessed the
sufferings of the people caused by the crisis in the watch manufacture;
everywhere the like miseries, due to the like social and political
evils. Was it surprising that he should seek to remedy them by the
transformation of society?
The record[3] of the great anarchist trial at Lyons in 1883, to which we
have already referred, is an historical document of the first
importance. Every one who wishes to understand the causes, motives, and
aims of the anarchist movement should study it carefully. At the trial a
declaration of opinion was signed by the accused. The following extracts
which give the purport of this declaration may be useful in elucidating
the anarchist position. What they aim at is the most absolute freedom,
the most complete satisfaction of human wants, without other limit than
the impossibilities of Nature and the wants of their neighbours, equally
worthy of respect. They object to all authority and all government on
principle, and in all human relations would, in place of legal and
administrative control, substitute free contract, perpetually subject to
revision and cancelment. But, as no freedom is possible in a society
where capital is monopolised by a diminishing minority, they believe
that capital, the common inheritance of humanity, since it is the fruit
of the co-operation of past and present generations, ought to be at the
disposal of all, so that no man be excluded from it, and no man seize
part of it to the detriment of the rest. In a word, they wish equality,
equality of fact, as corollary, or rather as primordial condition of
freedom. From each one according to his faculties; to each one according
to his needs. They demand bread for all, science for all, work for all;
for all, too, independence and justice.
As one of the accused maintained, even a Government based on universal
suffrage gives them no scope for effective action in the deliverance of
the poor, as of the eight million electors of France only some half a
million are in a position to give a free vote. In such a state of
affairs, and in view of the continued misery and degradation of the
proletariat, they proclaim the sacred right of insurrection as the
_ultima ratio servorum_.
Perhaps the most striking feature of the trial was the defence of Émile
Gautier before the Court of Appeal. Gautier was described by the Public
Prosecutor as a serious intelligence gone astray, a licentiate in law
who had passed brilliant examinations, a powerful orator who might be
considered as the apostle of the anarchist idea in France. He was only
twenty-nine years of age. In his defence Gautier described with
passionate eloquence how he, the son of a law-officer (_huissier_), had
been converted to revolution and anarchism by the sight in court of the
daily miseries of debtors and bankrupts and other victims of a
capitalist society. As Voltaire is said to have had an attack of fever
at every anniversary of the massacre of St. Bartholomew, so he, far away
in Brittany, was seized with a fever of rage and of bitter indignation
when the calendar brought round the accursed dates at which bills and
rents became due.
The leading principles of anarchism are marked by great clearness and
simplicity, and may be summed up as the rejection of all external
authority and of all private appropriation of land and capital. All
human relations will depend on the free action and assent of the
individuals concerned. Free associations will be formed for industrial
and other purposes, and these associations will with a like freedom
enter into federal and other relations with each other. The process of
social reconstruction is, in short, the free federation of free
associations.
Considered as an historic socialist movement, anarchism may therefore be
set forth under these three heads: (1) Economically it is collectivism;
(2) it is a theory of revolutionary action, which is certainly its
characteristic feature; (3) it is a theory of the relation of the
individual to law or government.
As regards the first point, its collectivism is common to it with the
prevalent socialism, and therefore need not detain us here. Nor need
much be said in the way of criticism of the details of the
ultra-revolutionary programme of the anarchists. In our chapter on Marx
we have already indicated that the materialism which is common to both
schools cannot now be regarded as a tenable or admissible theory of the
world. The materialism of both schools sprang from the Hegelian left. It
should now be considered as dead, and should in all fairness be set
aside in discussion for or against socialism. With regard to religion
and marriage, it is hardly necessary to state that progress lies not in
the abolition, but in the purification and elevation of those great
factors of human life. Bakunin’s criticism of religion is simply a
tissue of confusion and misconception. Marriage is a fundamental
institution, on the purity and soundness of which social health and
social progress must above all things depend: in this matter, more than
almost any other, society must and should insist on the maintenance of
due safeguards and regulations. Free love is a specious and delusive
theory, which would tend to bring back social chaos. It would certainly
establish a new slavery of women, whose needs and rights would be
sacrificed in the name of a hollow and disastrous freedom.
With regard to the third leading principle above mentioned, the negation
of government and external authority, the anarchy of Bakunin is
essentially the same as that of Proudhon. But in Proudhon the principle
was set forth in paradox, whereas Bakunin expounds it with perfect
frankness and directness, and with a revolutionary energy which has
seldom been equalled in history. What they both contemplate is a
condition of human enlightenment and self-control in which the
individual shall be a law to himself, and in which all external
authority shall be abolished as a despotic interference with personal
freedom. It is an ideal to which the highest religion and philosophy
look forward as the goal of man, not as one, however, which can be
forthwith reached through the wholesale destruction of the present
framework of society, but through a long process of ethical and social
improvement. The error of the anarchists consists in their impatient
insistence on this proclamation of absolute freedom in the present
debased condition of the great mass of the people in every class. They
insist on taking the last step in social development before they have
quite taken the first.
Like its collectivism, the theory of freedom is not a special feature of
anarchism. Collectivism is simply the economic side of the prevalent
socialism generally. Its theory of freedom is a very old theory, which
has no necessary connection whatever with a revolutionary programme, and
we should not misunderstand it because of the strange company in which
we here find it. It is a high and long-cherished ideal of the best and
greatest minds. The good man does his duty, not from fear of the police
or the magistrate, but because it is his duty. And we must regard it as
the high-water mark of his probity and goodness that the right is so
wrought into the texture of his conscience and intelligence that the
doing of it has become as natural to him as breathing or locomotion.
It is an ideal, also, which we must cherish for society and for the
human race. And not in vain; for there is an ever-widening circle of
human action, in which good and reasonable men do the right without
pressure or stimulus from without, either from law or government. We are
therefore to regard a well-ordered, intelligent, and ethical freedom as
the goal of the social development of the human race.
But it is an ideal which must obviously depend for its realisation on
the moral and rational development of men. It cannot come till men and
the times are ripe for it. No doubt the realisation of it may be
hindered by evil institutions and reactionary Governments; yet these,
too, are merely the outcome of such human nature as was once prevalent
in the countries where we now find them. They have outlived their time.
We are certainly right to get rid of them, as of other evil habits and
conditions of the past, but it is best done when done wisely and
reasonably. And it cannot be done in any wise or effectual manner except
through a wide organic change in the human beings concerned.
A moral and rational freedom is therefore the goal of the social
development of the world, and it is a goal towards which we must strive
even now. But it is a goal that lies far ahead of us. For the present,
and in the future with which we have any practical concern, society
cannot be maintained without adequate laws, sanctioned and enforced by a
regular Government. The elimination of the baser elements from human
character and human society proceeds with most regrettable slowness. In
the meantime, therefore, we must hold them in check by the best
available methods. We may improve our laws, our police, and magistrates,
but we cannot do without them.
* * * * *
It is an interesting fact that socialism has taken its most aggressive
form in that European country whose civilisation is most recent. The
revolutionary opinions of Russia are not the growth of the soil, and are
not the natural and normal outcome of its own social development: they
have been imported from abroad. Falling on youthful and enthusiastic
temperaments which had not previously been inoculated with the principle
of innovation, the new ideas have broken forth with an irrepressible and
uncompromising vigour which has astonished the older nations of Europe.
Another peculiarity of the situation is that the Government is an
autocracy served or controlled by a camarilla which has often been
largely foreign both in origin and sympathy. In this case, then, we have
a revolutionary party inspired by the socialism of Western Europe
fighting against a Government which is also in many ways an exotic, and
is not rooted in the mass of the people.
The history of Russia turns on two great institutions, the Tzardom and
the mir. The Tzardom is the organ of Russian political life, while the
mir is the social form taken by the agricultural population, and is the
economic basis of the nation generally.
No reasonable man can doubt that the Tzardom has performed a most
important function in the historical development of Russia. It was the
central power which united the Russian people and led them in the long,
severe, and successful struggle against Tartars, Turks, Lithuanians,
Poles, and Swedes. Without it Russia would in all probability have
suffered the same fate as Poland, which was distracted, weakened, and
finally ruined by the anarchy and incurable selfishness of its nobles.
As in other countries, so in Russia, the central power was established
through the subjection of princes and lords who were crushed by the
strong and merciless rule of the Tzars. Among those Tzars, too, were men
of originality and courage like Peter the Great, who forced the people
out of the old-world grooves which they loved so much; and when other
means failed they did not hesitate to employ the cane, the knout, and
the axe of the executioner to urge their nobles into the paths of
Western progress. We need not say that the Tzars were not moved by
benevolent reasons thus to benefit their subjects. The historic Tzars
were not philanthropists or humanitarians. The aim of their reforms was
political, to provide the Russian nation with better means and
appliances for the struggle with her neighbours.
While the nobles were unable to make head against the Tzardom, the
clergy were neither able nor disposed so to do. In Russia the clergy
were not backed by a great international power like the Papacy. They
were nursed in the traditions of Eastern Greek despotism and had no
inclination to resist their rulers. The peasants were not a political
power, except at the rare intervals when desperation drove them into
rebellion.
Thus the circumstances of Russia have combined to establish an autocracy
which has performed the greatest historic functions, and which has had a
power and solidity without example in the rest of Europe. It has
maintained the national existence against fierce and powerful enemies,
it has in every generation extended the borders of the Russian power,
and has been a real centre of the national life, satisfying the needs
and aspirations of the people, not in a perfect manner by any means, yet
with a considerable measure of success. If we do not realise the supreme
importance of the work that the Tzardom has done for Russia, we cannot
understand its present position and the hold it has on the feelings of
the Russian people. The power of the Tzar has been such that it was
hardly an exaggeration, when the Emperor Paul stated to General
Dumouriez that there was no important man among his subjects except the
person he happened to speak to, and while he was speaking to him.
It is only another instance of the irony of human affairs, however, that
the really effective limit to the power of the Tzars is found in the
officials, who are intended to carry it into effect. These officials act
as the organs of the imperial authority from the centre to the farthest
extremities of the empire. Yet they can by delay, by passive resistance,
by suggestion, by falsehood, by the arts of etiquette and ceremonial,
and all the other methods familiar to the practised servants of
autocracy, mislead or thwart the will of their master or render it of no
effect.
Such is the central power. Let us now consider the body of the people.
In Russia, industry and city life have not formed a large part of the
national existence. The mass of the people still live directly from the
soil, and are organised in the mir. As is now well known, the mir is
merely the Russian form of the village community, which at one time
prevailed over all the countries of the world, as they attained to the
sedentary or agricultural stage of development. It was the natural
social form assumed by people settling down into agriculture. It was the
social unit as determined by obvious local economic and historic
conditions. In most countries the village community has been reduced to
a shadow of its former self, partly through the operation of natural
economic causes, but largely also because the central power and the
classes connected therewith have crushed it out. The local life of
England in particular has been repressed and starved through the want of
the most elementary resources and opportunities. It has been recognised
as a most pressing duty of statesmen to revive and restore it in
accordance with the prevalent conditions, but it will be long before the
capacity and habit of common action can be again adequately acquired.
Owing to a variety of causes, which we cannot explain here, the Russian
mir has continued to survive. It gave to the mass of the Russian people
their own form of social life and of self-government; and it was
economically self-sufficing. The mir drew from the soil, which it held
in common occupation, the means for its own support and for the support
of the nation as a whole. The relations of the members of the mir to
each other were substantially conducted on terms of equality and
freedom; but in view of the nobles and the Tzardom they were serfs till
their emancipation in 1801. The mir was a social-economic arrangement,
convenient both for the noble proprietors and for the Tzardom. It
afforded to the central Government the necessary taxes and the necessary
recruits; and therefore the Tzars did not disturb it, but rather sought
to fix and solidity it, and thereby make it more efficient as a source
of supply both of soldiers and material means. Thus for centuries, full
of movement in the political history of Russia, the mir has with little
change endured as the social and economic basis of the national life.
In Russia, therefore, we find only two institutions that have had a real
vitality and a specific influence, the Tzardom and the peasant
community. Nobles and priests have exercised a substantive power only
when the Tzardom has suffered a temporary lapse. The middle class has
always been inconsiderable.
It was into a nation thus constituted that the most advanced
revolutionary opinions of Western Europe at last found their way. The
spirit of revolt had indeed not been unknown in Russia in former times.
Among a peasantry sunk in immemorial ignorance and misery, and harassed
by the incessant tribute of men and taxes which they were forced to pay,
discontent had always been more or less prevalent, and it had sometimes
broken out in open rebellion. During the reigns of the great Catharine
and of Alexander I. a sentimental Liberalism had been fashionable in the
upper classes. But it was not a very practical matter, and was not a
serious danger to the autocracy. At the beginning of his reign Nicholas
had to face a rising among the Guards at St. Petersburg, led by Liberal
officers of high birth. He suppressed it in the speediest and most
summary manner. Till his death, 1855, Nicholas maintained a _régime_ of
repression at home, and was the champion of absolutism in Europe.
Many circumstances combined to render the accession of Alexander II. a
new departure in Russian history. The old methods of government had been
thoroughly discredited by the failures of the Crimean war. There was a
general feeling that the ideas and methods of the West, which had proved
their superiority during the struggle, must be tried in Russia. As the
young Emperor recognised the necessity of a new policy, great changes
were made, and all went well for a time. Alexander carried the
emancipation of the serfs, instituted new courts of law and a new system
of local government, and gave a real impetus to education. It was not
long, however, before the Emperor began to hesitate in view of the
Liberal forces which he had let loose, and which threatened to overturn
the whole fabric of Russian society. Like his uncle, Alexander I., the
young monarch had not resolution enough to persevere in a practical and
systematic course of reform.
The changes already made, and the prospect of changes still to come,
roused into action all the conservative instincts and prejudices of old
Russia. The insurrection of Poland in 1863, which called forth the
sympathies of many Russian Liberals, provoked also a powerful reaction
in old Russian circles. An attempt by Karakozoff on the Emperor’s life
in 1866 may be regarded as the turning-point of his reign. Ideas of
steady reform and of gradual temperate change have not yet become
familiar to the Russian temperament. Between those who wished to reform
everything, and those who wished no change at all or to change very
slowly, no compromise was possible in the circumstances and conditions
of Russian society. Thus a revolutionary movement soon declared itself
in full opposition to the policy of the Tzar. When we consider that the
new party menaced not only the special political institutions of Russia,
but the fundamental principles of the existing society
generally—property, religion, and the family—we can see that the
breach was inevitable.[4]
Three stages may be recognised in the history of the revolutionary
movement. The first covered the period from the accession of Alexander
II. in 1855 to about 1870. Its leading characteristic was negation, and
the name of Nihilism, which is often erroneously applied to the whole
revolutionary movement, should properly be restricted to this early
stage. In the main it was simply the spirit of the Hegelian left frankly
accepting the materialism of Büchner and Moleschott as the final
deliverance of philosophy. In a country where religion had little
influence among the educated classes, and where philosophy was not a
slow and gradual growth of the native mind, but a fashion imported from
abroad, the most destructive materialism made, an easy conquest. It was
the newest fashion; it was the prevalent form among those who were
reckoned the most advanced thinkers; it was clear, simple, and thorough.
It was particularly well suited to a state of culture which was
superficial, without experience or discipline.
In the words of Turgenief, who has portrayed the movement in his novel,
_Fathers and Sons_, the Nihilists were men who ‘bowed before no
authority of any kind, and accepted on faith no principle, whatever
veneration may surround it.’ They weighed political institutions and
social forms, religion and the family, in the balances of that negative
criticism, which was their prevailing characteristic, and they found
them all wanting. With revolutionary impatience they rejected everything
that had come down from the past, good and bad alike. They had no
respect for art or poetry, sentiment or romance. A new fact added to our
positive knowledge by the dissecting of a frog was more important than
the poetry of Goethe or a painting by Raphael.
Nihilism as represented by Bazarof, in the novel of Turgenief, is
certainly not an attractive picture. We may respect his courage,
honesty, thoroughness, and independence; but his roughness, cynicism,
and indifference to family feelings are very repellent. Through the
early death of the hero we are prevented from observing what might have
been the further development of his character. We feel sure that if the
story of this typical life had been continued, we should have seen very
considerable changes in a more positive direction. The mood of universal
negation can only be a temporary phase in individual or national
development. Negation may be the physic, it cannot be the diet, of the
mind.
No movement for emancipation can be a purely negative thing; and no
movement can be adequately described by reference to a single
characteristic. The Nihilists found a wider view of the world in the
writings of Darwin, Herbert Spencer and J. S. Mill; and they had also at
an early period felt the influence of Saint-Simon, Fourier, Robert Owen,
and latterly also of Lassalle and Marx. From the first, Nihilism seems
to have involved a broad and real sympathy with the suffering classes.
They wished to recall the attention of men from windy verbiage about art
and poetry, from a sentimentalism which was often spurious, and from the
clatter of the parliamentary machine, whose grinding was solely for the
benefit of the wealthier classes, to the question of ‘daily bread for
all,’ to the common people perishing for lack of elementary knowledge.
And they insisted strongly on the equal rights of women.
It is evident that Nihilism could only be a passing phase in the history
of Russia, and that it had a wholesome and beneficial side as well as a
repellent one. In a country which was oppressed by an enormous burden of
immemorial prejudices and abuses, a powerful dose of negation was
calculated to have a most salutary operation. But the movement could not
long live on negations merely. As time went on, the struggle for
emancipation in Russia began to assume a more positive character.
In this way the revolutionary movement entered on its second stage, the
stage of socialistic teaching and propaganda. Events in the West had
kindled the imagination of the youthful champions of liberty in Russia,
the rise and progress of the International, the terrible struggle at
Paris under the Commune, the growth of the German Social Democracy. A
positive and far-reaching ideal now drew the aspirations of the
enthusiasts for liberty, the deliverance of the proletariat, represented
in Russia by an ignorant and wretched peasantry. The anarchic socialism
of Bakunin was unquestionably the controlling element in the new Russian
movement. Beside it we must place the influence of Lavroff, another
eminent Russian exile, who represented the more temperate phase of
anarchism, shading off into the recognition of a constitutional and
gradual development of the theory. In its second stage also the
revolutionary movement of Russia was a mixed phenomenon. The anarchism
of Bakunin continued, however, to be the characteristic feature, and
thus the negative factor was still prominent enough.
From Bakunin also proceeded the practical watchword at this stage of the
revolutionary movement, ‘to go among the people’ and spread the new
doctrines. And this course was unwittingly furthered by the action of
the Government. Early in the _seventies_, hundreds of young Russians of
both sexes were studying in Western Europe, particularly at Zürich in
Switzerland. As their stay there exposed them to constant contact with
revolutionary Russian exiles, and to infection with all the unsettling
ideas of the West, an imperial ukase of 1873 recalled them home. They
returned home, but they carried their new ideas with them. ‘Going among
the people’ was adopted as a systematic principle, a passion and a
fashion among the youthful adherents of anarchism. In accordance with
their creed they had no appointed organisation, no very definite plan of
action. They ‘went among the people’ as the apostles of a new theory,
each one as his heart moved him.
They went to be teachers or midwives or medical helps in the villages.
In order the better to identify themselves with the common folks, some
learned the humblest occupations. The trades of carpenter or shoemaker
were most usually chosen, as being the easiest to master. Others toiled
for fifteen hours a day in the factories, that they might have an
opportunity of saying a word in season to their fellow-workers. Ladies
and gentlemen, connected with the aristocracy and nurtured in all the
refinement of civilisation, patiently endured the nameless trials of
living with the Russian peasant. They endeavoured to adopt the rough
hands and swarthy weather-beaten complexion, as well as the dress of the
peasant, that they might not excite his distrust, for the gulf between
the lower classes and the gentlemen in Russia is wide and fixed. The
peasants had experience of the gentleman only as the representative of
the Government coming with the knout and the police to extort taxes and
recruits. No wonder that the sight of a shirt underneath the sheepskin
of the socialist missionary was enough to arouse the unconquerable
suspicion of the poor people of the country.
The success of the missionaries was limited. With all his strong
suspicion and his narrow range of ideas, the peasant could not easily
understand the meaning and purpose of those strange men teaching strange
things. The traditions of the past, as they came down to him dim and
confused, contained many a bitter memory of disappointed hopes. He was
apathetic as well as suspicious. Moreover, the teacher often delivered
his message in half-digested formulas which had a meaning only as
connected with the economic development of Western Europe, and which did
not rightly attach themselves to anything within the experience of the
Russian Peasantry.
Above all, the propaganda enjoyed only a very brief period of activity.
The teachers went about their work with very little circumspection, in
the careless free-and-easy way which seems so natural to the Russian
temperament. Consequently, the Government had no difficulty in
discovering and following up the traces of the propagandists. Before the
year 1876 had ended, nearly all of them were in prison. More than 2000
were arrested during the period 1873-76! Many were detained in prison
for years, till the investigations of the police resulted in 50 being
brought to trial at Moscow and 193 at St. Petersburg at the end of 1877.
Most were acquitted by the courts, yet the Government sent them into
exile by administrative process.
The adverse experiences which we have recorded brought the attempts at
peaceful propaganda to a close, and the revolutionary party decided on
the propaganda of action. They resolved to settle among the people and
prepare them for a rising against the Government. Where peaceful
teaching had failed, they sought to force a way by violent methods. It
was a desperate policy to pursue among a people who had not been able
even to understand the aims of the revolutionary party.
It is very characteristic of the circumstances of Russia that the most
successful attempt at thus organising a scheme for revolutionary action
could gain the adhesion of the peasantry only by pretending that it had
the sanction of the Tzar. Jacob Stephanovitz, one of the prominent
members of the revolutionary party, gave it out in South-Western Russia
that he had an order from the Tzar to form a secret society among the
common people against the nobles, priests and officials who were
opposing the imperial wishes to confer land and freedom on the peasants.
Those to whom he addressed himself could hardly believe that the Emperor
was so powerless, but he did eventually succeed in forming a society of
about a thousand members. When the plot was discovered by the police,
the peasants were naturally enraged at the deception which had been
practised on them. It should be added that such a method of action did
not meet with the approval of the party as a whole.
Like the peaceful propaganda, the propaganda of action failed to gain a
firm footing among the people.
At every step the revolutionary party found the organs of the central
power ready to suppress their efforts in the most summary way. They were
now convinced that they must directly attack the autocracy and its
servants, and as they had received no mercy they decided to show none;
and thus began the resolute, systematic, and merciless struggle of the
revolutionary party against the Tzardom. For this end they naturally
made a great change in their mode of action. They adopted a strong
organisation instead of the lax discipline or total want of discipline
commended by Bakunin. Affairs were conducted by a secret central
committee, who with unsparing energy carried out the new aims of the
party. The first great act in this the third stage of the Russian
revolutionary movement was the assassination of General Trepoff, Prefect
of Police, by Vera Sassoulitsch, at St. Petersburg, in 1878. The
occasion of the deed was the flogging, by command of Trepoff, of a
political prisoner personally unknown to her. Her object was to avenge
the cause of outraged humanity on the servant of the autocracy. At the
trial she was acquitted by the jury, to the great surprise of the
Imperial Court. An attempt by the police to apprehend her on leaving the
place of trial was frustrated by the mob, and she succeeded in making
her escape to Switzerland.
The public gave the most unmistakable proofs of sympathy with Vera
Sassoulitsch; and the event naturally excited great enthusiasm and
emulation among the eager spirits of the revolutionary party. Police
officials and spies of the Government were cut off without mercy.
General Mezentseff, Chief of Police, was stabbed in the streets of the
capital in broad daylight. Prince Kropotkin, Governor of Charkoff, a
relative of the revolutionist, was shot. General Drenteln was also
openly attacked in the streets. After thus assailing the officers of the
executive, they proceeded systematically to plan the assassination of
the Tzar himself, as the head of the central power which they abhorred
so much. Solovieff fired five shots at the Tzar without doing any harm;
three attempts were made to wreck the imperial train, one of them
failing because the Tzar had made a change in his arrangements; and he
escaped the terrible explosion at the Winter Palace only because he was
later than usual in entering his dining-room. These failures did not
prevent the executive committee from prosecuting its desperate work, and
on March 13, 1881, followed the tragic death of Alexander II.
We need not say that the violent death of Alexander II. sent a thrill of
horror throughout Europe. It was felt to be a most lamentable and
regrettable ending to a reign which had begun with such high and
generous aspirations, and with so much promise of good to the Russian
people. There was a natural difficulty in understanding how a Sovereign,
benevolent in character and not unwilling to pursue a liberal policy,
should be the victim of a forward movement among his people. The
explanation must be found in the special circumstances of Russia, for
Alexander was merely the representative of a political system which, by
its historic evolution, its nature and position, has exercised an
absolute and often merciless mastery over its subjects, and the men that
cut him off were youthful enthusiasts, who with revolutionary impatience
were eager to apply to the belated circumstances of Russia the most
extreme theories of the West.
The historian has often to regret that more wisdom is not available for
the management of human affairs, and we may believe that a moderate
measure of wisdom and patience might have prevented the fatal collision
between the Tzar and the revolutionary party. The Tzardom, as we have
seen, has performed a great and indispensable function in the national
life of Russia. It still seems to be the only practicable form of
government in such a country. No class is advanced or powerful enough to
take its place. The mass of the Russian people are not yet capable of
self-government on a wide scale. There is no large educated class. The
middle and industrial class, in the modern sense of the word, are still
comparatively small and unimportant; and it is probable enough that if
there had been an influential middle class, and if the abolition of
serfdom had been effected under their auspices, the peasants would have
received less favourable treatment than they experienced from the
autocracy. The best available form of government for Russia seems to be
an enlightened Tzardom, and the Emperor Alexander II. was personally
both enlightened and well-intentioned.
At the same time the position of the Tzardom cannot very long be tenable
in its present form. Russia lies where it is, in close proximity to
progressive countries. In the past the Russian people have been largely
disciplined by Germans; they have learned much from England, and have
perhaps shown the greatest social and spiritual affinity to the French.
This intercourse will go on. The strongest and most watchful Tzar cannot
maintain a Chinese wall of separation between his country and the rest
of Europe. Nor can the Tzars expect to have the benefit of the science
of Western Europe for military purposes, and at the same time succeed in
shutting it out from influencing the social and political life of their
people. It is inevitable, therefore, that the liberal ideas of the West
will continue to dissolve and disintegrate the old fabric of Russian
ideas and institutions. One of two results appears necessary, either
that the Tzars must strenuously follow the path of reasonable and
energetic reform, or they may risk a revolution which will sweep away
the present central power.
For Russia, as for other countries, there are but two alternatives,
progress or revolution. If the latter consummation were to happen, it
does not, however, follow that the cause of freedom would have any great
direct and immediate furtherance. In the circumstances of Russia the man
who wields the military power must be supreme. A new ruler resting on
the army might be not less an autocrat than the old. We can but say that
the present policy of the Tzardom is seriously retarding and arresting
the natural and national development of Russia, and that it tends to
provoke a catastrophe which may endanger its own existence. The
industrial progress now being made in the country renders it only the
more necessary that her political institutions should make a
corresponding advance.
It remains now to say a word about the revolutionists who have played so
remarkable a part in the recent history of Russia. The members of the
Russian revolutionary party have been drawn from nearly all classes of
the people. Some, as we have seen, belonged to highly placed
aristocratic families; some have been sons of priests and of the lower
officials. More recently the rural classes supplied active adherents to
the militant party. One of the most notable features of the movement is
the influence exerted in it by women. It was Vera Sassoulitsch who
opened the death-struggle with the autocracy in 1878. A lady of high
birth, Sophia Perovskaia, by the waving of a veil guided the men who
threw the fatal bombs at the assassination of Alexander II.
But whether aristocrats or peasants, men or women, the members of the
Russian revolutionary party have been remarkable for their youth. The
large majority of those engaged in the struggle had not attained to the
age of twenty-five. In view of their extreme youth, therefore, we need
not say that they had more enthusiasm than wisdom, and more of the
energy that aims at immediate success than of the considerate patience
that knows how to wait for the slowly maturing fruits of the best and
surest progress. Having regard to the very subversive theories which
they tried to sow broadcast among the masses of the Russian people, we
see clearly enough that no autocracy in the world could avoid taking up
the challenge to authority which they so rudely threw down. Only the
Government of an enlightened people long familiar with the free and open
discussion of every variety of opinion, can afford to give unlimited
opportunity of propaganda to such views as were entertained by the
Russian revolutionary party.
Yet while the theories of the party were from the first of a most
subversive nature, it is right to emphasise the fact that they did not
proceed to violent action till they were goaded into it by the police
and the other officials of the central Government. Indeed, the measures
of the Government and its representatives have often directly tended to
the stirring up of the revolutionary mood. By their irritating measures
of repression they provoked, among the students at the universities,
disturbances which they quelled by most brutal methods. Young men
arrested on suspicion, and kept in vile prisons for years while awaiting
investigation, were naturally driven to hostile reflection on the
iniquity of a Government from which they received such treatment.
In speaking of a country like Russia, we need not say that the most
elementary political rights were denied the revolutionists. They had no
right of public meeting, no freedom of the press, no freedom of
utterance anywhere. They were surrounded with spies ready to give to
every word and deed the worst interpretation. The peasants whom they
desired to instruct in the new teaching might inform upon them. Their
comrades in propaganda might be induced or coerced to betray them. It
was often fatal even to be suspected, as the police and the other organs
of Government were only too disposed to take the most rigorous measures
against all who were charged with revolutionary opinion. Nor could the
accused appeal to the law with any confidence, for the ordinary
tribunals might be set aside, and his fate be decided by administrative
procedure; that is, he could be executed, or condemned to prison or
exile in Siberia, without the pretence of a legal trial. In such
circumstances it was natural that resolute champions of liberty should
be driven to secret conspiracy in its extremest form, and to violent
action of the most merciless character.
While, therefore, historical accuracy obliges us to emphasise the fact
that the aims of the revolutionary party far exceeded all that is
included in liberalism and constitutional government, it is only just to
explain that they resorted to violent methods only because the most
elementary political rights were denied them. In the fiercest mood of
their terrible struggle with the autocracy, they were still ready to
throw aside their weapons.
In the address sent by the Executive Committee to Alexander III., after
the death of his father, in March 1881, they offered to give up their
violent mode of action, and submit unconditionally to a National
Assembly freely elected by the people. They meant under a constitutional
government to have recourse only to constitutional methods.
With regard to the number of those concerned in the Russian
revolutionary movement, it is not easy to speak with precision. There is
no proof that the anarchist opinions have gained a large body of
adherents in the country. The numerical strength of the party directly
engaged in the struggle with the Tzardom has always been comparatively
small. On the other hand, the movement has evidently met with a very
wide sympathy in Russian society. In the absence of precise information,
we may quote the words of one who has a good right to speak for the
revolutionary party:—
‘The Russian revolutionary movement is really a revolution _sui
generis_, carried on, however, not by the mass of the people or those
feeling the need of it, but by a kind of delegation, acting on behalf of
the mass of the people with this purpose.
‘No one has ever undertaken, and perhaps no one could with any certainty
undertake, to calculate the numerical strength of this party—that is to
say, of those who share the convictions and aspirations of the
revolutionists. All that can be said is, that it is a very large party,
and that at the present moment it numbers hundreds of thousands, perhaps
even millions of men, disseminated everywhere. This mass of people,
which might be called the Revolutionary Nation, does not, however, take
a direct part in the struggle. It entrusts its interests and its honour,
its hatred and its vengeance, to those who make the revolution their
sole and exclusive occupation; for under the conditions existing in
Russia, people cannot remain as ordinary citizens and devote themselves
at the same time to Socialism and the Revolution.
‘The real revolutionary party, or rather the militant organisation, is
recruited from this class of revolutionary leaders.’[5]
-----
[1] The detailed Life of Bakunin, promised by Cafiero and Elisée Reclus
in the preface to _God and the State_, has apparently not yet been
published. Hence the above meagre account of life.
[2] _Procés des Anarchistes_, p. 97.
[3] _Le Procés des Anarchistes_, Lyons, 1883.
[4] For the revolutionary movement in Russia under Alexander II. see
Alphons Thun’s _Geschichte der revolutionären Bewegungen in Russland_.
See also Stepniak’s _Underground Russia_, and _Russia under the Tzars_.
[5] Stepniak, _Underground Russia_, p. 264.
CHAPTER XI
THE PURIFIED SOCIALISM
We have, in the preceding chapters, sketched the rise and the principles
of the leading schools of historic socialism. The history we have
reviewed is a most protean one, and very prolific in theories which are
more or less akin.
It is easy to trace certain general features of resemblance in the
development of socialism. In the experiments conducted by the followers
of Saint-Simon, Fourier, and Owen, we see a desire forthwith to create a
ready-made and complete socialism, which almost always ended in failure.
Louis Blanc and Lassalle agreed in demanding the organisation of society
on democratic principles, and the establishment of productive
associations by a State thus constituted. The resemblance in type
between the community of Owen, the _phalange_ of Fourier, and the free
commune of Bakunin is obvious; and it is not going too far to say that
all of them have interesting points of analogy with the village
community, which has its survival in the Russian mir.
Throughout the history of socialism we naturally also observe the
contrast between the tendency which more or less emphasises State
authority and the need of centralisation, and that other tendency which
regards the local body as cardinal and decisive. As we have seen, that
contrast was perfectly clear in the earliest French socialism, in the
schools of Saint-Simon and Fourier. While calling on the State to
furnish credit for productive associations, both L. Blanc and Lassalle
strongly insisted that these associations should be self-governing and
self-developing. The centralising tendency was very marked in Rodbertus.
Though it cannot be maintained that the Marx school insist excessively
on the claims of authority, yet in the conduct of the International they
had a severe struggle with the anarchist following of Bakunin. It is
simply the old question of authority and order in relation to individual
and local freedom, which always reappears under the newest conditions,
and which cannot be solved on absolute principles.
Notwithstanding those general features of resemblance, it would be a
serious mistake to identify socialism with any of its forms, past or
present. They are only passing phases of a movement which will endure.
If socialism has given proof of a persistent vitality, it has also
undergone many transformations, and will in all probability undergo many
more. Our task now is to inquire into the significance, tendency, and
value of the general movement.
The problem before us is one of historical interpretation in the widest
sense of the word. It is not an academic question which can be settled
by the scholarly comparison of texts and systems.
If the socialistic movement were complete and finished, it would be
merely a subject of sympathetic analysis and generalisation by the
historian. But the socialistic movement is not complete; it is in
process of making—probably only in its early stage. It is a question,
therefore, which must be treated not only in the light of history and
human nature, but with special reference to the now prevailing
forces—industrial, political, social, and ethical. For on these will
depend the future course of the movement and its prospects of success.
While socialism has a past, it has also a profound significance for the
present and the future. The great task for the student is to find out
the rational meaning and purport of socialism, its probable significance
for the present time and the time coming.
For the rational interpretation of socialism we cannot too often
emphasise the fact that it is not an abstract system, but a thing in
movement. It is not wedded to any stereotyped set of formulas, whether
of Marx or any other, but must be rooted in reality, and, while moulding
facts, it must adapt itself to them. Above all, we must ever remember
that it claims to represent the aspirations after a better life of the
toiling and suffering millions of the human race.
Even a cursory review of the historic socialism is enough to show that,
while it has been prolific of new thought in economics, it has been
disfigured by every kind of extravagance. In general, it has been far
too artificial, arbitrary, and absolute in its treatment of social
questions. As we have seen, the early theorists especially were
profoundly ignorant of the laws governing the evolution of society. Many
later socialists of great influence have laid excessive stress on
revolution as the lever of social progress. Few of them have really
appreciated the bearings of the population question on the great
problems of society. Most of them have been far too absolute in their
condemnation of competition. In fact, their general position consists
far too much in a sweeping condemnation of the present society,
forgetful the while that it is only out of the present that the future,
in which they place their hopes, can proceed.
The current socialism, too, has very prematurely shown a tendency to
degenerate into a stiff and barren orthodoxy, which seeks to apply
narrow and half-digested theories, without adapting or even reasonably
understanding them, to circumstances for which they are not suited. This
is particularly apparent in the attempts to introduce into England and
America formulas and modes of action which have grown up in the very
different atmosphere of the European continent. It has not sufficiently
recognised the fluent and many-sided variety of modern life, which
cannot be embodied in any formula, however comprehensive and elastic.
Finally, socialistic speculation has in many cases tended, not to reform
and humanise, but to subvert the family, on the soundness of which
social health above all things depends. It has not understood the
solidity and value of the hereditary principle in the development of
society. Socialists have, in short, been far too ready to attack great
institutions, which it must be the aim of all rational progress, not to
subvert, but to reform and purify.
In the socialistic treatment of other questions, such as capital, rent
and interest, the same defects of arbitrariness and absoluteness are
apparent. But the extravagances of the historic socialism are so obvious
that they confute themselves, and we shall not dwell on this aspect of
our subject. We must remember that most historic systems have had to run
themselves clear of the turbid elements with which they were originally
mixed. Socialism, considered both as a movement and as a system of
economic thought, is still in process of development. Its theories must
undergo the rough-hewing of continual controversy, discussion, and
criticism. The whole movement must pass through the test, the tear and
wear of experience, under the conditions prescribed by history and the
fundamental laws of human nature, before its ideals can hope to be
wedded to fact. We might add that it will receive the purification of
experience; only, we have to lament that it is the fate of our ideals to
submit also to the degradation of experience.
A like charge of abstractness may justly be brought against the two
great German economists, Adolf Wagner and Schäffle, whose writings have
so largely promoted a better comprehension of socialism. Their economic
works are monuments of learning and lucidity, but their exposition and
interpretation of the subject are marked by that excessive love of
system which is usually characteristic of German specialists. They have
brought to the discussion of the historic socialism the same
systematising spirit with which German economists have treated Adam
Smith. The economists of the Fatherland have reduced the teaching of
Adam Smith to a set of abstract propositions, and so have transformed it
beyond recognition. In like manner Adolf Wagner laboriously sums up
socialism in abstract language, whereas it is above all things a
concrete movement, instinct with change and with human passion. In his
_Bau und Leben des sozialen Körpers_ Schäffle’s construction of
socialism is an elaborate attempt to conceive society as transformed and
dominated by a single principle.
Such a point of view can never accord with the actual development of
historic forces. In the past the great economic eras have been
remarkable for the endless variety of forms which they have assumed.
Feudalism was not a stereotyped system, but took a special form in each
European country, and in each country it changed from age to age. The
competitive system has never entirely and exclusively dominated any
society, and has been endlessly modified by custom and the traditions of
the past, by national and social interests, and by moral considerations.
Adam Smith, the great expounder of natural liberty, did not put it forth
as an abstract and exclusive principle, but set it in the light of
historic fact, and reserved a large sphere where private enterprise
needed to be supplemented by the action of the State. We can only say of
the competitive system that it has been normal or prevalent over the
most advanced countries of the world for a considerable time. We must
conceive socialism in the same way as claiming, when certain historical
conditions have been realised, to be the normal or prevalent type of
economic and social organisation.
In fact, they have had too exclusively in view the theories of Marx and
Rodbertus. In his conception of socialism Wagner has been chiefly
influenced by Rodbertus. Schäffle, in his _Quintessenz des Socialismus_,
appears as the interpreter of the Marx socialism. Even the less absolute
presentation of the socialistic theories by Lassalle should have been
sufficient to bring out the contrast between socialism in movement and
socialism in the abstract.
This is very nearly equivalent to saying that both economists have been
too much influenced by the Prussian type of government and theory of the
State. With regard to the two socialists, Rodbertus and Marx, we are not
surprised that the former should be Prussian throughout in his way of
thinking, but it is a notable instance of the irony of circumstances
that Marx should be so largely controlled by habits of speculation which
he had learned in Germany in his youth. He was to a great degree
Prussian and Hegelian in his political and philosophical habit of mind
till the end of his life. It is natural enough that the conception of
socialism formed by Wagner and Schäffle should be of a similar
character. For them socialism is a system of centralisation, of
management from above (_von oben herab_) under a bureaucracy. Such a
view may suit people that are used to a centralising autocracy and
bureaucracy associated with militarism, but it is entirely opposed to
English ideas. An industrial and economic system which would remind us
at every step of the Prussian army, the Prussian police and Prussian
officialism, is not attractive to those who have breathed a freer air.
Prussia has had a great mission to perform in modern history. From its
geographical position and the circumstances attendant on its rise and
progress, we can see that it required a powerful army, a strongly
centralised government, and an industrial system entirely different from
_laissez-faire_. We must respect the great vocations of the different
historic peoples, among which Prussia has been one of the first. But
that is no reason for expressing socialism in terms suggested by the
Prussian form of government, or for supposing that the claim of
socialism to control the economic organisation of the future will depend
on its conforming to the Prussian type of State. It is to be devoutly
hoped that the type of government rendered necessary by the struggle for
existence among the nations on the European continent will not become
universal.
* * * * *
But we must now consider a question which is vastly more important than
any of the criticisms now offered. What may be regarded as the solid and
permanent contribution to human progress made by socialism?
There should be no doubt that socialism has largely contributed to the
following results:—
_First_, It has greatly helped to give prevalence to the historical
conception of Political Economy. The very conception of socialism has
been based on the idea of social-economic change. Their subject has
naturally led socialists to study the rise, growth, decline, and fall of
economic institutions. And, as we shall see later on, the influence of
Hegel and Darwin has taught them to merge the idea of historical
economics in the wider and more fundamental conception of evolution. In
England socialists are now the chief promoters of the advance in
economic study from the ordinary standpoint to the historical, and from
the historical to the evolutionary point of view.
_Secondly_, Socialism has greatly deepened and widened the ethical
conception of Political Economy. It has, in season and out of season,
taught that the entire technical and economic mechanism of society
should be made subordinate to human well-being, and that moral principle
should be supreme over the whole field of industrial and commercial
activity. The charge sometimes brought against socialism, that it
appeals only to the lower appetites and instincts of humanity, is most
unjust. It would be a more reasonable criticism to say that it
inculcates an unselfishness unattainable by any probable development of
human nature.
_Thirdly_, Socialism has brought the cause of the poor most powerfully
before the civilised world. It is one of the enduring results of
socialistic agitation and discussion that the interests of the suffering
members of the human race, so long ignored and so fearfully neglected,
have become a question of the first magnitude, the foremost question in
all progressive countries. It is this question which gives a substantial
basis and a real meaning to the great democratic movement, which it
would be the gravest of all errors to regard as a merely political
struggle. The cause of the poor is likely to be the burning question for
generations, lending to political questions their interest, seriousness,
and unspeakable importance.
_Fourthly_, Socialism has given us a searching criticism of the existing
social-economic system. It may be said to have laid its diagnosing
finger on all the sores of society. The only objection that can be
rationally taken is that the diagnosis has been an exaggerated one. All
fair-minded judges will, however, admit that the socialistic criticism
of the existing competitive system is largely, if not substantially,
justified on the following points:—
1. The position of the working people, who are the overwhelming majority
in every society, is not in harmony with ethical ideas. It has often and
largely been a position of degradation, demoralisation, and misery.
Normally, it is not consistent with what must be striven after as a
desirable condition for the mass of humanity, for it is insecure,
dependent and to a large degree servile. The workmen have no reasonable
control of their dearest interests; have no guarantee of a settled home,
of daily bread, and of provision for old age. It is a delusive freedom
that has no solid economic basis.
2. The prevailing competitive system is to a large degree anarchy, and
this is not an accident, but a necessity of its nature. This anarchy has
two great and baneful modes of expression: strikes, which are a form of
industrial war, carrying misery and insecurity over large sections of
population, and sometimes menacing the industrial and social life of a
whole nation; and the great crises, which at times have even a more
disastrous influence, spreading like a storm over the entire civilised
world, overthrowing honourable houses of business, and exposing to
hopeless ruin and starvation millions of honest people who are in no
wise responsible for their fate. And the times of crash are succeeded by
protracted periods of stagnation, which for all concerned are scarcely
better than the crises which caused it.
3. The phenomena of waste, which are always more or less a feature of
the competitive system, are particularly manifest during the great
industrial and commercial crises. Not only are the products of industry
intended for consumption wasted in vast masses, but the productive
forces themselves, such as machinery and shipping, are sacrificed
enormously, whilst great numbers of people are idle and starving.
4. The prevailing system also leads to the large development of an idle
class of the most motley description. Those conversant with the history
of revolutions know how influential an overgrown idle class has often
been in forcing them on.
5. The existing competitive system also necessarily leads to a vast
amount of inferior, inartistic production in all departments. Cheapness
is too conspicuous a feature of every branch of industry.
6. Our moral standards in every department of the national life have
been lowered and corrupted by the excessive prevalence of a commercial
and mercenary spirit. No rank, profession, or calling has escaped its
influence.
7. Thus we are led to the general result, that inequalities of
condition, and the too prevalent anarchy and insecurity as well as the
unworthy status of the workers under the competitive system, are a
permanent source of trouble and even danger to society. The
circumstances of the workmen have improved; but it is doubtful whether
the improvement has kept pace with their advancing enlightenment and the
growing sense of their rights and needs. Here again we must emphasise
the fact that the progress of democracy is not merely a political
matter. It means still more the continual development of intelligence
and of higher and finer needs in the mass of the people, a fuller
consciousness of the claims of labour, a greater capacity for
organisation, a wider moral and intellectual horizon. In the contrast
between their moral and intellectual growth on the one hand, and their
insecure and inferior position as precarious wage-labourers on the
other, we may at one and the same time discover a great danger to our
present social order and a splendid guarantee of further progress. Now,
as ever, progress must be, attained through struggle, and perfection
through suffering.
Scarcely any reasonable man therefore will deny that socialism has done
excellent service to mankind in so strongly emphasising the necessity
for further progress. While it has largely helped to rouse the working
classes out of their apathy, it has also done much to dispel the
comfortable optimism of those who had succeeded in the competitive
struggle for existence.
* * * * *
This criticism of society is valuable, but its effect is mainly
negative. We may go on to claim, however, that socialism, when purified
from materialism, from the too revolutionary, absolute, and abstract
elements with which it has been associated in history, can render a
positive and substantial service to human improvement that would be
vastly more valuable than any criticism. It may be maintained that in
its main aim and tendency socialism is perfectly sound and right. For
amidst much error and exaggeration it has brought out the type of social
economic organisation which in the future should and will prevail.
In previous chapters it has been made abundantly clear that the
characteristic feature of the present economic order lies in the fact
that industry is carried on by private competing capitalists served by
wage-labour. According to socialism the industry of the future should be
carried on by free associated workers rationally utilising a united
capital with a view to an equitable system of distribution. As we have
already had occasion to say, no formal statement can rightly give
expression to the meaning of a great historical movement. But in such
language we believe the contrast between the old order and the new can
be most simply and at the same time with due adequacy expressed.
The same type of industrial organisation has been well set forth by J.
S. Mill in these words: “The form of association, however, which, if
mankind continue to improve, must be expected in the end to predominate,
is not that which can exist between a capitalist as chief and workpeople
without a voice in the management, but the association of the labourers
themselves on terms of equality, collectively owning the capital with
which they carry on their operations, and working under managers elected
and removable by themselves.”[1] Mill’s view of the subject, it may be
remarked in passing, was derived from the study of French and English
socialists. His good sense saved him from the utopian extravagance of
these writers, and as he had little sympathy with the peculiarly German
ways of thought, he shows no tendency to the abstractness of the
specialists of the Fatherland. The result is a conception of socialism
which is at once intrinsically more reasonable, more adapted to the
English mind and to universality, than any other offered by prominent
economists. And in this connection we need hardly add that by the
English mind we mean the mind of the English-speaking people; also,
notwithstanding all that may be said to the contrary, that the English
type of society has the best claim to universality, because it has best
succeeded in reconciling and realising the fundamental requirements of
order and freedom.
The simple expression of the socialistic theory will, no doubt, in the
course of propaganda and discussion, long continue to be overlaid and
obscured by a mass of detail, sometimes utopian, sometimes all too
abstract and systematic. It will be well, therefore, to keep the
simplicity of the type in view, but a few explanations may be necessary
more fully to elucidate it.
The true meaning of socialism, when rationally understood, is given in
the dominating tendencies of social evolution. On the one hand, the
effect of the industrial revolution has been to concentrate the means
both of production and distribution in immense masses. Capital can now
be moved and controlled only on a large scale. The day for the small
capital, and the successful control of it by individuals, has passed
away. It may continue under exceptional circumstances, but it can no
longer expect to be the normal or prevalent form of industry. On the
other hand, the body of the people, represented by the modern democracy,
can legitimately claim that they shall no longer be excluded from the
control of their own economic and social interests. It is a rational and
equitable demand that the prevalent divorce of the workers from land and
capital should cease. This divorce can be terminated, and the mass of
the people can be restored to a participation in the ownership and
control of land and capital, only through the principle of association.
This is the basis of socialism as given in the normal and dominant
forces of the social evolution of our time. As we said in the
introduction, socialism is the child of two great revolutions—the
industrial revolution, and the vast social and political change embodied
in the modern democracy.
Socialism, rationally interpreted, is therefore simply a movement for
uniting labour and capital through the principle of association. It
seeks to combine labour and capital in the same industrial and social
groups. In such a group the present distinction between labourers and
capitalists would cease, and the workers become producers, equitably
disposing of the entire produce.
Such an industrial association would be self-governing. Socialism is an
attempt to establish a free self-governing type of industry, and would
therefore seek to realise in the social-economic sphere the principles
already recognised in the political. It is a free self-governing form of
industry, corresponding in the economic sphere to the democratic system
in politics; industry of the people, by the people, for the people. But
while a rational socialism seeks to establish industrial freedom, it
aims also at promoting and securing industrial peace by terminating the
struggle between labour and capital, for, as we have seen, its aim is to
unite them in the same group.
Under such a system the workers will have full control of their economic
interests. They will have the sobering and steadying discipline of
responsibility. They will no doubt make mistakes, as all bodies of men
have done since the beginning of the world; but as they will suffer by
them, so they will have the power of correcting them. It will be a
self-reforming and self-developing system of industry.
And it is hardly necessary to state that these associations will subsist
in organic relation to one another. The State is, in idea or principle,
such an association on the wide scale, just as the municipality or
commune is the local form of association; and their relations to each
other may in various degrees and forms represent the principle of
federalism or centralisation.
In the history and condition of the working people it is a pathetic fact
that their sons, who have been gifted with exceptional capacity,
generally go over to the richer classes. Their services are thus lost to
the class from which they sprang. It must be the aim of the socialist
movement also to terminate this incessant divorce between labour and
intelligence, by providing within the groups of associated workers due
scope for the best talent.
Socialism claims to be the normal and prevalent type of organisation in
the future. The methods of production, distribution, and exchange will
be under social control. This being so, it may surely be regarded as a
special instance of the arbitrariness and absoluteness of the current
socialism, when it maintains that all capital must pass out of
individual ownership. It may safely be maintained that such a condition
of things is not possible, and that, if it were possible, it is entirely
undesirable, because most likely to repress individual freedom, and
affording indefinite scope for social tyranny. Under any conceivable
system of society the free development of man is likely to be promoted
by the possession of reasonable private means. The only objection that
can be rationally alleged against private property is when it involves
injustice to others—a possibility which, under socialism, is amply
provided against by the prevalence of social control over economic
processes.
The views just stated are not unwarranted by the historic socialism.
Amidst much that is most extravagant, Fourier has the merit at least of
offering the strongest safeguards for individual and local freedom.
Fourier provided that every worker should have the opportunity of
gaining and maintaining a capital of his own, but under such social
regulation that it would no longer involve wrong to others; and further,
he arranged that the owner should have perfect freedom to transfer his
services and his capital from one association to another. These are
features of Fourier’s system which have been too much neglected by
scientific socialists so called; and in these respects he is much less
utopian than his critics.
In no question is the arbitrariness of the historic socialism more
apparent than in the artificial attempts made to formulate a just method
of distribution or remuneration. We have in previous chapters indicated
the different methods proposed in the schools of Saint-Simon, Fourier,
and Louis Blanc. Nothing has so much tended to give a utopian air to
socialistic speculation. Our ideas of justice cannot well be expressed
in a single formula, however comprehensive. It has been the endeavour
more or less of all moralists and legislators since the origin of human
society to elucidate it and reduce it to some kind of reasonable form,
but with only very imperfect results; and socialists are not now likely
to succeed in a task which is really impracticable. Progress in the
realising of justice can be attained only through the collective
enlightenment and moral experience of the race; and it will always fall
short of our ideals, for our ideals rise as we approximate towards a
realisation of them, and so ever leave us behind in the race after
perfection.
We need not say, however, that it is an obvious implicate in every
equitable theory of distribution that remuneration must generally depend
on work or desert. The normal income of the future must be based on
service rendered to society by all able members. Regard will be had to
the needs of the disabled.
It should be emphasised, moreover, that socialism must assert the
supremacy of morality over all the economic processes—production and
exchange as well as distribution. Production should be rational and
systematic. Above all, distribution should be equitable. In these
respects socialism is fundamentally opposed to the one-sided conception
of competition which has been so prevalent. It seeks to supersede the
existing competitive system of industry by a new order, in which reason
and equity shall prevail.
It should also be clear that socialism supplies the much-needed
complement and corrective of the principle of natural liberty advocated
by Adam Smith. The principle of natural liberty had a great historical
value, and when rightly understood must always be regarded as a prime
factor in every theory of social progress. But it can be applied only
under obvious limits, prescribed by reason and morality. The natural
liberty of struggling individuals would, if unchecked, land us in social
chaos. The true freedom of human beings is a rational and ethical
freedom. Such principles ought to prevail in the commercial relations of
nations with each other, as well as in every other department of our
industrial and social life.
Socialism, then, simply means that the normal social organisation of the
future will and should be an associated or co-operative one. It means
that industry should be carried on by free associated workers. The
development of socialism will follow the development of the large
industry; and it will rationally, scientifically, and systematically use
the mechanical appliances evolved during the industrial revolution for
the promotion of a higher life among the masses of the people.
It is a new type of industry and economic organisation the
practicability of which must be decided by the test of experience. It
cannot be introduced mechanically. We cannot force or improvise such a
change in the constitution of society. No revolutionary violence can
avail to carry through a transformation which runs counter to the
fundamental laws of human nature or the great prevailing tendencies of
social evolution. This will be especially manifest when we consider that
its realisation will above all things depend on the ethical advance of
the mass of the people. Character cannot be improved by magic; it can be
substantially ameliorated only by an organic change, external
circumstances co-operating with an inward moral spirit. The present
competitive system must therefore be regarded as holding the field until
socialism has given adequate proof of the practicability of the theory
which it offers.
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[1] Mill’s _Political Economy_, People’s Edition, p. 465.
CHAPTER XII
SOCIALISM AND THE EVOLUTION THEORY
The idea of evolution has had a great influence in the history of
socialistic speculation. Beginning with Saint-Simon most socialists have
recognised three stages in the economic development of mankind—slavery,
serfdom, and wage-labour—which last they believe will be displaced by
an era of associated labour with a collective capital. The idea of
development may indeed be regarded as essential to socialism, inasmuch
as it must contemplate a succession of social-economic changes in
history.
Marx and Lassalle were both trained in the school of Hegel, and
naturally applied to the problems of society the Hegelian theory of
development. The principle that economic categories are historical
categories, so much emphasised by Lassalle, was by him, as it was by his
fellow-labourers, merged in the wider and more fundamental conception of
evolution, historical economics thus becoming evolutionary economics.
Some of the later socialists see in the theory of evolution associated
with the name of Darwin a suitable expression of their ideas of
development. Followers of Marx have found special points of attraction
in Darwinism. Darwin himself was, of course, not a materialist; but many
speculators have not unreasonably recognised in his teachings an
affinity with materialism, which obviously accorded well with the
materialistic conception of history held by Marx. The struggle of
classes, which Marx regards as the key to history, is, we need not say,
also an allied feature.
But the Darwinian conception of development has to many students
suggested the strongest reasons for doubt and hostility with reference
to socialism. How does the theory of the struggle for existence consist
with the harmony of interests contemplated by socialism? Is it not
utopian of the Marx school to believe that the struggle of classes,
which has hitherto characterised the course of history, can be brought
to a close by a great revolutionary act?
Competition, that _bête noire_ of the socialists, is simply the
social-economic form of the struggle for existence. Is not competition,
therefore, the prime condition of social progress? And is not socialism,
therefore, inconsistent with progress?
Thus we are confronted with the twofold problem, whether socialism does
not deny the cardinal principles of evolution, and thereby also deny the
prime condition of social progress?
These questions are of considerable complexity. And their import will be
better understood it we consider them in relation to another question
with which they are intimately connected, and which is even more
fundamental—the population question. The Darwinian theory of evolution
rests on the Malthusian theory of population, and can be fully
appreciated only by reference to it.
In this place we need not discuss the theory of population as a whole,
but merely in so far as it bears on our present inquiry. The theory of
Malthus is so remarkable for its simplicity that no worthy excuse can be
offered for the misconceptions regarding it which have been prevalent.
The seeds of life, so runs the theory of Malthus, have been scattered
throughout the world with a profuse and liberal hand. All living things
tend to multiply indefinitely. Animals—even the least prolific—would,
if their increase were not checked, fill the entire world. But as the
means of subsistence are limited, the struggle for existence inevitably
ensues, which is obviously all the more intense because so many animals
are themselves the means of subsistence to others.
So with man. If his natural powers of increase were exercised without
check, it is only a question of time when the globe itself would be too
small for the numbers of human beings, even though equipped with the
most effective means of cultivation. In point of fact, population has
almost always pressed on the available means of subsistence. The only
important exceptions are found in new countries, when opened up to
colonists who have brought with them the superior methods of
exploitation developed in more advanced civilisations.
Thus the history of the human race is largely the record of a struggle
for the means of subsistence caused by the pressure of population. Not
that the population is necessarily dense. Some of the most thinly
scattered peoples have had the greatest difficulty in making a living,
simply because the available means of subsistence were exceptionally
scanty, as the North American Indians, and above all in the continent of
Australia before its settlement by Europeans. The study of human history
shows that if the population was small, it was not owing to any defect
in the natural powers of increase of human beings.
It will be seen that the Malthusian theory rests on two great facts: (1)
on the physiological fact, viz. that all human beings are capable of
indefinite increase; and (2) on a natural economic fact, that the means
of subsistence are not capable of a corresponding indefinite increase,
the ultimate reason of this being nothing else than the limited size of
the planet on which we live. The inevitable result is the struggle for
existence. The Darwinian theory of the struggle for existence has the
widest application to human society and human history.
This struggle has gone on through a great variety of stages. In the
earliest phases of human history it generally resulted in the
extermination of the vanquished, and was often associated with
cannibalism. As society advanced from the hunting and pastoral into the
agricultural state, the victors saw that it would be their interest to
spare the vanquished that they might enjoy the benefit of their labour
as slaves. In this way began the institution of slavery, on which
ancient civilisation rested. The warlike tribes that overturned the
Roman Empire found that they could more easily and conveniently utilise
the labour of the vanquished under the various forms of serfdom. In
modern times free workers, destitute of capital, are ready under a
system of competition to perform the labour of society for a wage that
renders them the customary subsistence.