One of the first duties of the people will obviously be to simplify the

cumbrous machinery of the Constitution, and to make it a more efficient

organ of their will. In the two great crises of American history,

nothing strikes us so forcibly as the high standard of character and

intelligence which was shown. It may be regarded as a symptom of a

really strong race, that they were so slow and reluctant to take

decisive measures in the struggle for Independence and at the time of

the Civil War. We may now see the same natural hesitation in deciding

how to handle a problem of surpassing gravity. Such crises are the

severest and truest tests of national character. All friends of freedom

in every part of the world will fervently hope that the people of

America may display their historic qualities of insight, high principle,

energy, and resolution in the mighty struggle of Commonwealth against

Wealth upon which they are entering.

According to Liebknecht, late leader of the German socialists, ‘the

social democracy is the party of the whole people, except 200,000 large

proprietors, squires, middle-class capitalists, and priests.’ We need

not discuss the exactitude of such figures in relation either to Germany

or any other country. It is a fact which no reasonable man can dispute

that economic and political power is in most civilised countries

actually wielded by a very small minority. Nor need we stay here to

inquire into the methods by which such power has been gained. Even as

regards England we have not yet an impartial and comprehensive account

of the rise of the present economic and political order since the

liquidation of the mediæval system began about the middle of the

fourteenth century. How labour legislation was carried on by the ruling

class in its own interests for five centuries after 1349; how Henry

VIII. took his courtiers and privy councillors into partnership for the

dividing of the church lands; how commons were inclosed; how even the

poor-law became an occasion for the subjection and degradation of

labour; how for generations bribery was a normal instrument of

government; how wealth was gained in the slave-trade, in the East

Indies, in the jobbing of government loans and contracts, and by the

imposition of corn-laws—all these we vaguely know, but they have not

yet been presented in a form which can satisfy the canons of scientific

history.

It is too soon, therefore, to determine how far the business of the

Standard Oil Company has been built up on its merits; how far its

success is due to efficient management and organisation by the shrewdest

and ablest men, and how far due to the illegal and immoral methods of

which they are accused. At the Chicago Convention in 1908 Senator Lodge

said that the great body of the people had come to believe more and more

that these vast fortunes, these vast combinations of capital, were

formed and built up by tortuous and dishonest means and with a cynical

disregard of the very laws which the mass of the people were compelled

to obey. On the other hand the _Reminiscences_ of Mr. Rockefeller reveal

a rare combination of insight and energy in founding and consolidating a

new industry which of itself is sufficient to account for success. In

any case, we in England, looking back on our history, have no right to

point the finger of reproach at our American kinsmen. There is indeed a

cynical theory that our ruling classes are free from such reproach only

because they have been sated with the wealth they have already gained.

With us the struggle has long been decided; whereas in America the dust

and heat of battle still blind the eyes of men.

The motives and merits of the agents by which great historic changes are

accomplished, whether they be Julius Cæsar, Henry VIII., or J. D.

Rockefeller, form a most interesting and important subject of study. But

far more important is the problem we must face regarding the forces and

the issues which they set in movement. Here we are concerned with live

forces and urgent issues.

Briefly we may describe the situation with which we have to deal as the

struggle now proceeding between various forms of autocracy, bureaucracy,

and plutocracy, on the one hand, and a social democracy which claims to

represent the mass of the people, on the other. The features of the

former powers we all know. The social democracy is still in its giant

and untried youth. Not very long ago, as we have seen, the German

working men had neither voice nor organisation nor insight into their

position and prospects. France, after the failures of 1848, was hardly

better. In most countries labour was dumb, or moaning under its burden

of hardship and sorrow. Now much is changed. The working men have the

foremost orators in the world to speak with their enemies in the gate,

and they have an organisation which the strongest statesmen have been

unable to break up or weaken. In previous chapters we have had frequent

occasion to characterise the democracy of which the workers are the vast

majority. We shall understand it better if we duly consider a few

special points.

On the 28th November 1905 the city of Vienna saw a new sight. The gay

city on the Danube has been the scene of many stirring events. It was

twice in vain besieged by the Turks, and twice taken by Napoleon. It was

the seat of two congresses which met to rearrange the map of Europe

after the downfall of the French conqueror. It witnessed many of the

most dramatic incidents of the mad year (_des tollen jahres_)—the year

of revolution, 1848.

To those who can see beneath the surface of things, the scene of

November 1905 was vastly more significant than any of the events we have

mentioned. A procession of working men and women, estimated by the

correspondent of the _Morning Post_ at 300,000, and by socialist organs

at 250,000, marched under the red flag through the streets. Work ceased

and traffic was stopped, while the serried ranks passed on. But there

was no tumult, no call for the interference of the police or the display

of military force. Not a shout was raised or song sung or voice heard

above a whisper. The silence, order, and discipline shown by this vast

host, which was about equal to either of the great armies that lately

contended in Manchuria, were even more striking than its numbers.

Members of parliament who witnessed the demonstration from the

Reichsrath declared that they were more impressed by it than by any

political event since Austria became a parliamentary state. Even the

most stubborn adherent of the old order was bound to feel that a new era

had come, and that the demand for universal suffrage, which was the

object of the demonstration, could no longer be refused. That very day

legislation based on universal suffrage was announced by the government.

The great demonstration was, indeed, a fit subject for meditation in

Austria, but not in that country only. The monition contained in such an

event should be taken to heart by all concerned in all lands. In the

ordering and organising intelligence, in the self-restraint and force of

character displayed by the working men of Vienna on that day, we see

qualities which are replete with meaning in their relation to the great

problems of the present century.

Or let us consider the matter from another point of view. It is now

about half a century since the socialist agitation began in Germany.

During that time the German workmen have received an education in social

politics such as no university in the world can furnish. They have been

accustomed to the freest and most thorough discussion of the widest

variety of topics in books and pamphlets, at public meetings and

debates, in private talks over their beer and coffee. Great strikes,

elections, and demonstrations have been object-lessons to them of the

most vivid and forcible description. A new move on the part of the

Kaiser, a new speech of Bebel or Liebknecht has given fresh food for

reflection and discourse. Above all, the matters so handled have come

near to their hearts, have touched them in their everyday life in the

closest and most real way. They were no hearsay, conventional, or

traditional subjects that thus appealed to them! Need we wonder that the

teaching of Marx, Lassalle, and Engels has become a possession to them,

a theme for mind and heart? The seed has taken root among millions of

men and women remarkable for intelligence, thoroughness, and

earnestness. And the process that has thus gone on in Germany goes on

more or less all over the world.

The men and women of the labouring democracy, let us remember, have,

many of them, known hunger and privation in every form, not only as an

exceptionally severe occurrence in times of strike and unemployment, but

as a chronic experience. Mothers have been obliged to work hard too long

before child-bearing, and too soon after it, to eke out a scanty family

income. For a society that has shown so little respect even for the

sacred function of motherhood, what can we say but that it is time to

repent? The children in the same competitive society have cried for

bread when there was none to give them, and have not had rags enough

decently to cover their nakedness.

In a moment of feeling at the Jena meeting of his party Bebel confessed

that for years it was his ideal for once to eat his fill of bread and

butter. During the sieges of Kimberley and Mafeking our countrymen had a

new experience; they found out what it meant never to have enough to

eat, to be always hungry. The leader of one of the strongest

organisations in the world, one of the foremost orators in Europe, to

whom all men listen when he makes a speech, had the experience for years

in the very heart of modern civilisation.

The same children who were thus early acquainted with hunger have gone

to be racked at the mill of labour before they were eight, or even six

years of age. We need not wonder that they were stunted and dwarfed in

growth, that they were wrinkled, deformed, attenuated, grey, and

decrepit before their time; and they have suffered all this hunger and

privation through a long agony of years, they and their fathers and

mothers before them, while the classes which have held economic and

political power have wasted the means so much needed for worthier uses

in war and in the preparation for war, in the luxury and extravagance of

society and of courts.

Nor has this condition of rags, hunger, and privation come to an end. We

may see it in the course of a casual walk in almost any quarter of any

of the towns of Great Britain to-day.

In many countries the democracy assumes a more serious and a menacing

form. Among the trade unions of France there is a pronounced distrust in

the efficacy of parliamentary action and a predilection for more direct

and energetic methods. We see a like tendency in a stronger form in

Italy. The new Italy has endeavoured to play a rôle as a great military

and naval power, for which she was hardly fitted by her natural

resources or her economic development. A large majority of her people

suffer all the miseries that flow from extreme ignorance, poverty, and

degradation. Strikes, riots, and other tumultuary outbreaks have been

put down by the police and the soldiers with a rough hand. The misery of

the people of Italy finds expression in a very large emigration. In a

single year as many as 270,000 go abroad, chiefly to the countries of

Central Europe, for a period of six months, while 350,000 leave the

country as permanent emigrants, chiefly to America. We must regard them

as driven by poverty and hunger rather than impelled by the spirit of

enterprise.

But the most active revolutionary centre of Europe has now shifted

eastwards. In Russia the development of modern methods of industry has

only added to the depth and intensity of the struggle. Great capitalists

have joined the great landlords in giving support to the Czardom and the

bureaucracy in the mighty conflict with the growing revolutionary

parties which represent rural and town workers. It has been an appalling

struggle, in which the oldest forms of rule have contended with the

newest forces of change. What the end may be no man can foresee. So long

as the Czardom receives adequate support from the military forces it may

continue to survive, but the course of the revolution has shown that the

loyalty of army and fleet has been seriously shaken. The Socialist

Revolutionary Party contemplate a victory of the working class led by

them, and in case of necessity the provisional establishment of its

revolutionary dictatorship. But we may fear that the anarchy which might

ensue on the overthrow of the Czardom might lead to the supremacy of a

military chief. In either case the danger to the neighbouring countries,

and especially to South-Eastern Europe, already distracted by racial

differences, is only too obvious.

In a well-informed article on the rising of the Roumanian peasantry in

1907 the _Spectator_ said that their cause was the cause of a hundred

million of peasantry in Eastern Europe. The remark was a true one. The

revolt of labour in Russia is for the most part a rising of peasants for

‘land and liberty.’ It has been a rising full of terror, of omen, and of

warning to all who undertake the rule and guidance of men. In Eastern

Europe Enceladus has risen. Long buried under heavy mountain loads of

privation, of oppression, and of neglect even worse than oppression, he

has risen to claim his rights. If well guided he might have been a

kindly and beneficent giant, for the Russian peasant is essentially

good-humoured and well-disposed. But the powers that be have contented

themselves with the exaction of recruits and taxes, of labour and rent.

They have otherwise done nothing for him, and have given him no scope

for doing anything for himself. With little light or guidance, too

frequently suffering the worst privations of cold and famine, and goaded

by the sense of immemorial wrong, he could not be expected to resist the

fiery draughts from the winepress of the revolution, and he committed

such excesses as we know! The Czardom and its servants have prevailed.

The giant has been driven back to his prison. He is neither dead nor

asleep, but lies moaning and restless on his bed of pain. He will rise

again!

The Socialist Revolutionary Party declare that it is from no love for

sanguinary methods that they have taken up arms. It was their stern duty

before the revolution, before the cause of the workers. It was a

decision serious and full of responsibility. The party ‘will not cease

to employ terrorist tactics in the political struggle till the

establishment of institutions which will make the will of the people the

source of power and of legislation.’

Its task has been to lead the masses of the people in revolt, and it has

done so with a resolution and self-sacrifice seldom equalled in history.

Its members have been ready to kill and to be killed. There can be no

doubt that the revolutionary feeling in Russia has increased enormously

in depth and width since the days of Alexander II. The composition of

the second Duma, which was probably the most revolutionary assembly that

has ever met on this planet, was a proof and symptom of the extent to

which the spirit of revolt had spread. Out of 500 members 200 belonged

to the left, and of these 60 were social democrats, 40 socialist

revolutionaries, 15 populist socialists, and 60 were labour men, the

small remainder being independent radicals. But the same spirit of

revolution has pervaded rural and town workers, has penetrated to fleet

and army, to the teachers and the intellectual classes. We may be

assured that the drama of the revolution is not ended. The revolution

has been spreading among a population of 135,000,000 having racial

affinities with numerous peoples in Central and South-Eastern Europe.

The Ukase of November 1906, which gave the right to every member of a

village community to claim complete possession of his present allotment

as permanent private property, will, so far as it is operative, tend

greatly to aggravate the unrest. It will disintegrate the village

community, break up old forms of life, give more power to the village

usurer, and in many ways add to the violence of the revolutionary

forces. Enceladus will rise again, with results to Russia and to Europe

that no man can forecast.

The division into two nations of Rich and Poor, which the Earl of

Beaconsfield described in his novel, _Sybil_, as existing in England,

has become international. A chasm more or less wide and abrupt extends

throughout the civilised world. Even Japan now has an active socialist

party, and when the industrial revolution has fairly begun to run its

course in China we may expect to see its people among the foremost in

the social revolution. The real economic and political power still lies

in the hands of a small minority, while over against it stands the

democracy composed of workers who are every day advancing in

intelligence, in organisation, and in the resolute endeavour towards a

common goal. Wealth, power, and enjoyment go together. Labour is

attended by poverty and privation.

A great struggle is going on, and there can be no doubt that it will go

on. How is it to be fought out? This is the supreme question which the

twentieth century must try to solve.

It is of unspeakable importance that it should take a wise and peaceful

course. In all countries which have a genuine system of universal

suffrage fairly carried out, a peaceful solution is practicable. But for

such a peaceful solution it will be necessary that all autocratic and

bureaucratic government should cease, and that an executive, not only

formally responsible to the people but really responsive to their

wishes, and in close touch with them, should be established. Such a

government could accomplish a beneficent social and economic

transformation without violence, without spoliation or confiscation,

without even giving an undue shock to the reasonable claims and habits

of any section of the people. This might be effected by a truly

democratic government, or by the steady pressure of the democracy on the

old governments, which would be gradually changed. So much for the

peaceful transformation of the State.

May we not also expect that socialists will take a more serious and

enlightened view of their responsibilities in aspiring to lead organised

labour, and may we not in the course of time hope for a modification of

their aims and methods? If these were more reasonable, they would

obviously be more convincing, and the prospects of a peaceful as well as

a successful issue would be vastly increased. At present their demands

are often so put in elaborate programmes, in language more or less

technical, that they repel the sympathy even of reasonable men. To use a

common saying, socialism as frequently presented is such ‘a big order,’

expressed in alien language, that men with the best will in the world

cannot give it a hospitable welcome to their minds.

In fact, it is not a paradox but the plain truth that socialists are now

the greatest obstacle to the progress of their ideal. Nor is this at all

strange. The same thing has happened in the development of all great

ideals; men are too little for them, and in their love for forms and

dogmas forget and even repudiate or suppress the spirit. For the

progress of socialism the thing most needful now is to throw off the

technical dogmatic and ultra-revolutionary form which it has inherited

from the past, and to study the real needs and live issues of the

present.

Socialism is still coloured to its detriment by excessive loyalty to

Marx, and the views of Marx were shaped by a time which has passed away.

In the early forties, when the system of Marx was taking form, idealism

had declined, and a very crude dogmatic materialism was in the

ascendant. The very active speculation which had previously been

directed to the ideal, attempted to work in the real and material

without due preparation on a very inadequate basis of facts—with

strange results! A fierce militant revolutionary spirit, which in the

circumstances must be regarded as very natural, was preparing for the

troubles of 1848. Ricardo, a man singularly deficient in the requisite

historical and philosophical training, was the reigning power in

economic theory. Under such influences the views of Marx were

prematurely shaped into the dogmatic system which we know. He continued

to hold and develop them without any real attempt at self-criticism in

riper years, and he, an exile living in England, forcibly urged them

from his study on the socialist groups and parties of the Continent.

In his manifesto of the Communist party, Marx declares that the

proletariat has nothing to lose but its chains. It has been the

unfortunate destiny of him and his school to forge new chains for the

working class in the shape of dogmatic materialism, a rigid and abstract

collectivism, and ultra-revolutionary views, which still hamper it in

the task of emancipation. The promptitude with which the emancipators of

the human race have provided new chains is strange enough. Still

stranger is the readiness men have shown in putting them on! As we have

seen in a previous chapter, the followers of Marx have gone further in

this way than their chief.[3]

An ill service was done to the working class by utterances on marriage

and the family, which gave the ruling classes who keep the workers out

of their rights the plea that they were maintaining the fundamental

principles of social order. The abstract collectivism which is the

prominent economic feature of his school suggests two serious doubts: if

by a revolutionary act they took the delicate and complex social

mechanism to pieces, whether they would be able to put it together

again; and if they did succeed in putting it together, whether it would

work. The same devotion to abstract collectivism has made his followers

unable to draw up a reasonable agrarian policy suitable to the

peasantry. Their hostility to religion, expressed most freely in the

early years of the agitation in Germany and elsewhere, has been a

serious hindrance to their progress, both among Catholics and

Protestants, especially the former.

Thus in many directions their propaganda has been an obstacle to their

success in their proper task of emancipating the working class, and it

has at the same time been a hindrance to the peaceful solution of the

great struggle. The great central problem has been confused by side

issues and irrelevant matter. We can best show how tragic has been the

confusion of parts and of issues by reference to religion. Love,

brotherhood, mutual service, and peace are most prominent notes in the

teaching of Jesus. They must be woven into the moral texture of

socialism if it is to succeed and be a benefit to the world. If Marx and

his school had merely attacked what we may call the official and

professional representatives of the Christian Church, they would have

been within their rights. As it has been, the religion of love,

brotherhood, and mutual service has officially become part of a

government system by which the hereditary oppressors of the poor in

Germany and elsewhere claim to continue their unblest work. The

professional representatives of Christ’s teaching support and encourage

them in it, and so make themselves accomplices, not only in the

oppression and degradation of the poor, but in war and militarism, and

in all the waste, extravagance, and misdirection of class government.

How many of them are conscious of the profound incongruity of their

position?

In the history of human thought opinion has hardened often prematurely

into dogma, and dogma has usually degenerated into pedantry. Dogma has

often been simply the expression of egotism, which had not the saving

grace either to be loyal to truth or really helpful to mankind. So it

has been in the development of socialism. Its champions have too

frequently failed in keeping a single eye and mind on a task which

requires insight, self-restraint, loyalty, and consistency, as well as

energy and enthusiasm. A great cause demands the best and noblest

service. Such a cause as socialism demands from its supporters the

self-denial which will suppress the many phases of an excessive,

disorderly, morbid, and malignant egotism that has done so much harm in

the past—no easy task for human nature.

It is a very serious result alike of the past history and of the present

policy of socialists that the practical work of emancipating labour has

to such a degree been postponed to a remote and hypothetical future.

They form only a small minority in the legislatures of the leading

European countries. This minority is increasing, and is likely to

increase. But there is no present probability of an increase that would

win political power by parliamentary action.

According to the prevalent socialism the goal of the whole movement is

to acquire possession of the means of production. Such a conception lays

excessive stress on the dead and passive instruments of labour. It

ascribes too much importance to the economic factor. The economic factor

is most important, but the cardinal thing in socialism is the living and

active principle of association, and the essential thing for the working

man to acquire is the capacity and habit of association. In other words,

the motive power of socialism must be found in the mind and character of

men guided by science and inspired by the highest ethical ideals, and

who have attained to the insight and capacity requisite for associated

action.

But in making those criticisms let us remember that the social democracy

is still in its unformed youth. The socialist parties of most European

countries have sprung up since 1870. They have had, through much labour

and tribulation, to shape their organisation, principles, and policy.

How natural it was that they should follow a master mind like Marx, who

had manfully and unsparingly devoted his entire life to their cause! And

how natural too that they should have no trust in other classes, and

refuse all manner of compromise with them!

And we should fail in an accurate presentation of our subject if we did

not emphasise the fact that the present position of labour is the result

of a vast effort of practical and constructive work. In all departments

labour had to start from the very beginning not many years ago. The

socialist parties with their programmes represent a strenuous and

painful process of thought and organisation. Through the trade unions

the ill-informed, untrained, suspicious, and turbulent democracy of

labour has been drilled into habits of common action. How much of

enthusiasm and high principle, of persevering toil and patient attention

to detail has been put into the co-operative movement!

There are now most significant symptoms that all the diverse forms of

working-class activity are being consolidated into one great movement.

We have seen how in Belgium trade unions and co-operative societies work

in harmony with the socialist party. So they also do in Denmark. In

Italy the three classic forms of labour activity, trade unionism,

co-operation, and the Friendly Society, have come to an understanding

which is inspired by socialist aims. Generally we may say that the

tendency in all countries is for organised labour to become socialistic.

In nearly all countries the interests of the rural workers have been by

socialists neglected or sacrificed for the industrial workers. This is

particularly observable in agrarian questions and questions of tariff.

They have not seen that at least temporary legislation has been required

to save the rural workers from ruin by the exceptional competition of

cheap farm products from America. Generally they have considered the

interests of the workers as consumers rather than as producers. The

Socialist Revolutionary Party in Russia have, however, seriously faced

the agrarian problem in their programme in language of carefully

calculated vagueness. Proceeding from the basis of the old communal

ownership, they advocate the socialisation of all land under an

administration of popular self-government, central and local. ‘The use

of the land will be based on labour and the principle of equality, that

is to say, it will guarantee the satisfaction of the needs of the

producer, working himself individually or in society.’ Rent will be used

for collective needs. The subsoil will belong to the State. In Finland,

which is the most socialistic country of Europe, the Social Democratic

Party has also specially dealt with the agrarian question.

While it has hitherto been the too general tendency of socialists to

distrust and oppose the existing system of government and

administration, they are now in point of fact taking a larger part in

the work of state and commune. Such work, like all other practical work,

will serve as a wholesome discipline for parties whose energies have

been too much expended and wasted in sterile opposition and unprofitable

criticism. And it may lead them to see that the antagonism of other

parties may be due to honest ignorance or well-justified doubt. Even in

Germany Bebel admits that so much intercourse in the Reichstag and its

committees between Social Democrats and the other parties has led to a

friendlier feeling among them. But the main point that we wish to bring

out here is that organised and progressive labour in all countries and

in all its departments, trade unions, co-operative societies, etc., is

being more and more inspired by socialistic aims, and tends more and

more to form a solid and organic movement on practical lines. How far

the movement may in the future conform or attain to the collectivist

type remains to be seen.

We must particularly emphasise the fact that nothing adverse to a

reasonable patriotism, to religion, marriage, or the family, is now

found in the programmes of parties or in the resolutions of congresses.

The International and the Socialist Parties clearly recognise that their

task is the emancipation of labour, and that it is of an economic and

political nature. Those who mix up this great problem with questions of

religion and marriage do so on their own responsibility. They have no

right to speak on behalf of socialism, and have no influence or

authority beyond what they may personally possess.

In our review we have had much to say of the possibilities of

revolution. To all who shrink from sudden change the experience of the

Labour Party in Australia should be reassuring. The Labour Party of the

Commonwealth attained to power in 1904 and again in 1908. But the Party

when in power can do very little. It is only one of three or four

parties. When in power it must depend on outside support. Thus do the

desires and ideals of men find their limitations in human nature and in

our environment. What men have most to fear as the greatest danger,

particularly in English-speaking lands, is not sudden change, but the

indifference and neglect which make change slow and inadequate. The

efforts of labour to raise itself deserve our entire sympathy and our

most careful study.

Force devoid of counsel, whether it be of the reaction or of the

revolution, will only result in increase of evil. Evil in itself each

tends to aggravate and perpetuate the other. We can avert the baneful

consequences of both only by pursuing with temperate energy the course

of well-considered and beneficent change. To guide the vast and

ever-growing labour movement of the world into paths which shall be

wise, righteous, peaceful, and happy, this is the task and, we hope,

will be the achievement of the twentieth century. Happy the men who have

the good-will, sympathy, and insight to make a worthy contribution to

this great work!

-----

[1] See p. 316.

[2] See _Inquiry into Socialism_, 3rd ed. p. 96.

[3] See p. 313.

CHAPTER XVI

CONCLUSION

In the last chapter we have seen how in many lands the social democracy

is seeking to reach its goal by parliamentary action, and how in France,

Italy, and Russia the socialist movement tends less or more to assume an

aggressive and violent form. We have seen how socialism is everywhere

becoming the creed of organised labour. The socialist parties and the

trade unions are the organised and articulate expression of the labour

of the world, and they are being combined into one great movement. We

must, therefore, understand the socialist movement as having its basis

and its background in a vast reality which as yet has only partially

found voice and organisation. One of the most striking features in

recent history is to be found in the symptoms which so frequently appear

of a latent and undefined socialism, which only needs a fitting occasion

to call it forth, and which forms a serious but incalculable quantity in

the forces of our time. In these symptoms the seeing eye can discern

labour moving uneasily under its chronic burden. The unorganised labour

breaks out in street riots and agrarian risings. Labour partially

organised in Russia shows an intense revolutionary energy. While the

prevalent socialism seeks to gain its ends by peaceful action the

situation contains serious possibilities of revolution, especially in

Eastern Europe.

It behoves all men of good-will in every country to ponder the extreme

gravity of the situation which is being established throughout the

civilised world. Are we to face a confused struggle of the old sort

between those who have and those who have not, or are we to see the

blessed and beneficent action of a great transforming principle? Is it

to be a contest for the possession of political power, carried on with

violence, and pregnant with incalculable disaster to all concerned? Or

may we expect to watch the peaceful progress of a new type of industry

gradually but effectually realised, under the guidance of men inspired

by high economic and ethical ideals?

In England we have good ground to hope for a peaceful solution. Among

our working classes there is a notable absence of rancour, and even of

bitterness. But it would be very unwise to count upon the continuance of

this spirit, and most unfair to make it an occasion or excuse for

further neglect. It should rather be a stimulus to a truer appreciation

of the position and needs of the working class. If we survey English

history to the beginning of the nineteenth century, our main difficulty

is to determine whether our sins of omission or commission have been the

greater. Both have been heinous and enormous. In the village community

as it existed long ago we see comprehended all that we now call land,

labour, and capital. For the worker it performed the services that are

now rendered by the trade union, the co-operative society, the friendly

and benefit society, and the insurance society. It stood also for local

government, and even to a large degree for what now is national

government, defence, justice, and for education so far as was possible

long ago. The economic, social, and political life of the men of those

earliest times was summed up in the village community.

On the rise of feudalism this village community was transformed into the

manor, and on the downfall of feudalism the manor was changed to the

modern parish, definable as ‘a distinct area, in which a separate

poor-rate is, or can be, levied.’ For a long period after the Black

Death in 1349 labour was scarce and had a great opportunity. Through the

conversion of small holdings into sheep-runs and the dissolution of the

monasteries, labour was made superfluous and helpless. It was a tragic

reversal of the situation which has had serious consequences during all

the centuries that have followed. The opportunities and advantages which

were offered to the worker in ancient times by the village community

were at the close of the reign of Elizabeth reduced to the miserable

privilege of poor relief! The worker could not be regarded as included

within the body politic or social. He was no longer a citizen or member

of the community. He was a landless serf, the subject of the landed

class, and his position was determined by class legislation and class

administration.

When the change came from class legislation to _laissez faire_, his

position was little improved. Centuries of oppression were followed by

generations of neglect. Thus the English workers have suffered in

succession from evils of two kinds, from the evils of oppression and

from the evils of neglect. This aspect of English history is summed up

and condemned in the single fact that we had no national system of

education till 1870, a fact all the more striking because Scotland,

though much later in its political and economic development, had an

enlightened system of education at a very early date.

Factory workers gained much dining the nineteenth century. But even yet

the State has hardly done anything substantial for the rural workers.

Scarcely a voice has been raised for a class which has borne the chief

burden of national industry, of colonisation and war, which for so many

centuries carried Church and State, aristocracy and squirearchy, on its

much-enduring shoulders. Some of us hoped that in 1885 the time had at

last come. We all know what happened to defer it again. Will the State

never give heed to such a duty till the demand grows clamorous and

agitation menacing? No class has done so much and received so little as

the rural workers. Every man connected with the ruling class in England

should be ashamed to look one of the peasantry in the face. It is the

continual neglect of the needs and claims of the people that makes a

peaceful change difficult and prepares for revolution.

There are however, many very promising symptoms. Among these we may note

a growing spirit of conciliation and of sympathy with the claims of

labour, shown particularly in the friendly and courteous reception

accorded to the newly founded Labour Party. In the ruling and possessing

classes we may observe an increasing recognition of the necessity to

make substantial concessions to the needs and aspirations of the

workers. One of the brightest of recent symptoms was the atmosphere,

enlightened, sympathetic, and generous, which pervaded the discussions

at the Pan-Anglican Congress in 1908. It was a sign of the times. No one

could accuse the Congress of being a revolutionary gathering. We may

expect that the influence of its members among the conservative and

influential classes all over the English-speaking world will have good

results.

We have abundant evidence that the American people have done much hard

thinking on social politics during recent years. A striking instance of

it appears in President Roosevelt’s message to Congress in December

1908. We may summarise as follows the proposals for social legislation

which it contained. Besides the general control of the great

corporations which he has all along urged, he advocated supervision of

corporate finance, a progressive inheritance tax on large fortunes,

lightening of the burden of taxation on the small man, prohibition of

child labour, diminution of woman labour, shortening of hours of all

mechanical labour, an eight hours’ day to be extended as soon and as far

as practicable to the entire work to be carried on by Government. He

particularly urges the immediate passing of an effective Employers’

Liability Act. This is a good beginning, and it is a happy omen that

such legislation should be advocated by a man with so fearless and

stainless a record as Mr. Roosevelt. If the American people are prepared

to follow him a beneficent solution of many grave problems is assured.

In the foregoing pages we have discussed the State as a possible engine

of social amelioration. But we should not forget that the most hopeful

movement of recent times, the co-operative movement, owes little to the

State. The State has very great power, but it has no magical power. And

it is a grave mistake to regard it too much as the pivot of social

evolution. The State itself is only a phase of social evolution. We can

trace its rise and progress in history, and its record has not been a

good one. While it has been a decisive element of strength in the

struggle for existence, it has also too long and too much been an organ

for the exploiting of the mass of the people by the ruling minority.

Recent English socialism has given excessive prominence to the State; to

the prejudice of the question, and for two reasons. The State means

compulsion, and it suggests the official. Socialism carried out by the

State suggests bureaucracy, and is opposed to freedom. Such a conception

of the subject is most misleading and in the highest degree prejudicial

to progress.

In its propaganda the Fabian Society has too often interpreted socialism

in terms of the State and the municipality. Though most important, the

State and the municipality are only historic phases of deeper principles

and forces. It may be a way to make the subject intelligible. But this

convenience is more than counterbalanced by the tactical disadvantage

that orators on the other side find an easy way of ‘confuting’

socialism, by asking how the State or municipality can grapple with the

vast complexity of modern industry, and how freedom could be conserved

under the compulsory action of the State and its officials.

The proposal in the Fabian Basis to transfer industrial capital to the

community ‘without compensation’ is open to still wider and more serious

objection. The claim of socialism to be the future form of industrial

organisation rests on its superior efficiency. It claims to prevail

because it is best, and it needs no arbitrary exercise of power to carry

it through. Theoretically and practically, from an economic and

political, social, and moral point of view, it lays claim to superior

competence to do the best for mankind by giving fuller scope to the

free, many-sided development of the highest human life. In this and in

other points the language of the Fabian Basis is too suggestive of the

rigid and abstract collectivism set forth in the prevalent socialism.

If we are to understand the true inwardness of our subject we must go

behind the State. Rightly understood, socialism is concerned with

principles and tendencies which are more fundamental than the State. As

I have said in another place, ‘Socialism is a new type of social and

economic organisation, the aim and tendency of which are to reform the

existing society, the State included. It is a principle of social change

which goes beyond and behind the existing State, which will modify the

State, but does not depend upon it for its realisation.’[1] To be more

precise, socialism is a principle of economic organisation, with the

correlated social and ethical principles constituting a great ideal, to

which the State must be made to conform. How far the State may in this

way need to be transformed is a question which hardly concerns us at

present.

In the chapter on the Purified Socialism I attempted to show how ‘the

true meaning of socialism is given in the dominating tendencies of

social evolution.’[2] Through the fog of controversy we should clearly

see that the fundamental principle of socialism is marked by extreme

simplicity. The keynote of socialism is the principle of association.

Only by associating for the ownership and control of land and capital

can the people protect themselves against the evils of competition and

monopoly. Only by association can they control and utilise the large

industry for the general good. It means that industry should be carried

on by free associated workers utilising a joint capital with a view to

an equitable system of distribution. And in the political organisation

of society it has for complement a like ideal, namely, that the old

methods of force, subjection, and exploitation should give place to the

principle of free association. Through the application and development

of the principle of free association it seeks to transform State,

municipality, and industry in all their departments.

Socialism rests on the great ideals of freedom and justice, of

brotherhood and mutual service. It may well claim to be the heir of the

great ideals of the greatest races. The Hebrew ideal of truth,

righteousness, and mercy, which on its ethical side was widened and

deepened into the Christian ideals of love, brotherhood, and mutual

service, and the Greek ideal of the true, the good, and the beautiful,

all may and should be accepted by socialism, and they should be

supplemented by the Roman conceptions of law, order, and continuity, but

with far wider aims and meanings. In its law of mutual service, by which

it at once asserted the interdependence of the members of the social

organism and a profound conception of social duty, Christianity went

deeper, both in philosophy and practice, than the French Revolution with

its watchwords of liberty, equality, and fraternity. All these ideals,

though not seldom abused and discredited in the rough school of human

experience, are in their essence profoundly true and real, and they all

meet and are summed up in a worthy conception of the great socialistic

ideal.

These ideals, it will be seen, go together; and it should be specially

observed that freedom for the mass of mankind can be won and maintained

only by association. In the competitive struggle the victors are few;

the many are defeated and become subject. It is a delusion to suppose

that freedom and competition are really compatible.

This truth has received striking exemplification in the recent history

of America. In the course of a single generation the country has passed

under a system of competition from industrial freedom to what looks very

like industrial oligarchy. The men who could best adapt themselves to

the conditions of competition have won; and the trusts which they have

organised are the natural results. The oligarchy appears to be the very

unwelcome but very natural result of the free struggle for success which

has been the accepted system and the ideal of the American people.

Rightly understood, socialism will thus be seen to embody the highest

conceptions of life, ancient and modern, and the highest aspirations of

Christian ethics interpreted and applied by the experience of centuries.

The failures which we have experienced in realising our ideals are no

excuse for lowering them. They are far-reaching; they are limited by

obvious natural facts, and cannot be realised in a day. But we should

remember that every step forward brings us nearer to the goal.

This great ideal remains, therefore, as a far-shining goal to provoke

and encourage the endeavours of men to attain it. We cannot lower it,

but we should be grateful for every sincere attempt to reach it, for

every successful step towards it. For the rise and growth of socialism a

lower and, as some would reckon, a more solid foundation is all that we

need. The necessary minimum is an enlightened self-interest. Socialism

does not aim at the extinguishing or superseding of the self-regarding

principle—that is impossible and absurd. It seeks to regulate it, to

place it under social guidance and control. When and so far as the mass

of the people in any particular country and throughout the world gain a

moderate, rational, and enlightened view of their real needs and

interests, then and so far will socialism tend to be realised. While the

elect souls have been and are ready to go far in deeds of heroism and

self-sacrifice, nothing more is demanded of the average mass of mankind

than to learn to understand their true interests. On this prosaic basis

much has already been done.

While the competitive system still holds the field, we have very good

grounds for thinking that it should pass away, and is passing away. We

have seen how, in accordance with the fundamental principles of

socialism, the State is becoming, not in name only, but in reality, an

association for the promotion of common national interests, in so far as

they can well be furthered by the central organ; and we have also seen

how the municipality or commune is really beginning to perform the same

functions for local purposes. In the co-operative system, in the growth

of trade unions, of arbitration, boards of conciliation, and similar

forms of organisation, we see partial efforts towards a comprehensive

system of social control over the industrial processes. And the natural

development of the company is providing the mechanism whereby it may

also be placed under social management. It is clear that along these

lines the movement may spread till it cover the whole field of our

social-economic life and place the competitive spirit under an effective

and reasonable regulation.

It may be well here to speak more at length regarding the functions of

the State under a rational socialism. Of all the absurdities entertained

about socialism by its critics, and apparently also by some of its

adherents, the most grotesque is the idea that everything will be done

by the direct action of the State. It will rather be the aim of a

reasonable socialism to diminish and lighten the pressure of the State

as an engine of compulsion and coercion, and to offer suitable scope for

the free action of the individual and the family, for free association

and voluntary agreement. For this reason one of the most urgent needs of

such a socialism will be to promote local autonomy, and also to foster

what we may call the autonomy of the individual and the family, but in a

living organic relation to the whole community.

We must therefore regard social action as proceeding not only from above

downwards, but also from below upwards, and indeed mutually and

reciprocally through all the members and departments of society, from

the centre to the extremities and from the extremities to the centre.

But even this is only a very imperfect explanation of an organic process

which expresses itself in a consensus of life and action.

The federal idea also very imperfectly expresses the relation that the

parts may bear to each other and to the whole in a great society, but it

helps us to understand. This federal conception may have a great future,

in Austria-Hungary, in Russia, and in the Balkan Peninsula, for the

solution of political difficulties. The British Empire is being

transformed into a free association of free States. And we may add that

the highest directing agency in the Empire, the British Cabinet, is a

combination of the leading men of the strongest party for the time

being, who in the main hold the same political views, and who are

united, not according to a statute or a written constitution, or any

kind of formal contract, but by what for want of a better name we may

call a gentlemen’s agreement. The British Cabinet may be regarded as a

free association of gentlemen, the Premier presiding _primus inter

pares_.

As regards socialism, one of the most urgent needs for the promoting of

local and individual autonomy is fully to reconstitute the homestead and

the village community. The homestead will satisfy the most natural

craving for individual property and for a family and ancestral home,

with all the beneficent and sacred association implied in such a home.

‘The area of the homestead should be sufficient to employ and support a

family.’ In my book _Progress and the Fiscal Problem_ (p. 172) I have

spoken of such a homestead as a freehold. But it matters comparatively

little what legal term we employ, provided the occupancy be permanent

and not dependent on the will of officials connected with the central

government. There should, however, be some guarantee that the social

conditions of occupancy be fulfilled. Tax or rent might reasonably be

paid into a social fund for collective needs. Here, as in other matters,

one of the difficulties in elucidating a reasonable socialism lies in

the fact that we have to use old words to express facts and institutions

that may be expected to become new, or at least to undergo a material

change in the course of social development. For such words, it should be

observed, have not a final and conclusive meaning which can be

stereotyped and put into a definition in a dictionary or legal

enactment, but can only be unfolded in actual human use and in the

process of changing human history. It is meant that the homestead and

the village community be restored to a full and beneficent life under

modern conditions and to serve modern needs.

Of the State for the near future the most desirable type undoubtedly is

one which, while providing a strong and efficient central organisation,

gives a real and substantial autonomy to the various parts and members

of which it may be composed. And it will be one of the noblest functions

of such a State to train to a higher social and political life the

peoples which are now subject and by some are reckoned inferior. This

duty Great Britain is performing in India and Egypt. The United States

of America have undertaken a like office in Cuba and the Philippine

Islands. It might even be possible under wise guidance to lead peoples

like the Kaffirs direct from the warlike and tribal stage into the

industrial and co-operative stage. Some day, perhaps, the best solution

for racial difficulties in America may be to give some kind of special

autonomy to the negroes in the hot regions where they are most thickly

planted near the Gulf of Mexico.

Progress in these high matters will obviously depend on the growing

insight and sympathy of the rulers, as well as on the increasing

enlightenment, self-control, and political experience of the subject

races. It is a most important matter that the task has been worthily

begun. Such work is in quality like mercy—

It is twice blest:

It blesseth him that gives and him that takes.

It will most effectually tend to cultivate the nobler political life in

the States that have undertaken it, and we may believe that it will in

the course of time train the more backward races in the higher life of

self-government, and introduce among them the co-operative organisation

of industry which is required by modern conditions. In all this we see a

striking contrast to the older empires, in which the domination of race,

nation, and class was twice cursed, a curse alike to rulers and ruled,

to master and slave, to lord and serf. In these matters generally a

reasonable socialism demands the transformation of empire into a free

association of free States bound by ties of mutual service. For a fuller

treatment of this idea I may refer my readers to the chapter ‘Bonds of

Empire’ in my book _South Africa Old and New_ (p. 95).

Referring to questions which were raised in other parts of this book, we

believe that recent modifications in the Iron Law of Wages, which have

been alleged in confutation of Lassalle’s position, are really symptoms

of the decline of capitalism. Such modifications are due to influences

which are inconsistent with the continued predominance of capitalism.

And here we may say explicitly that socialism has no controversy with

the prevalent political economy in so far as it is a correct description

and analysis of the prevalent economic system. The aim of socialism is

to show why and how that system should and must pass away, and is

passing away; and we may believe that this is a much worthier task, from

the point of view both of science and the public good, than the

microscopic investigation of the conditions of the competitive system,

which constitutes so large a portion of the current political economy.

Anyhow the practical aim of socialism is to remove and abolish the

conditions under which the so-called laws of political economy had their

validity. Regarding the assumption so often made by economists that

individual self-interest is the solid basis on which science must build,

we can only say that it is not science, but a one-sided and erroneous

conception of human nature, of human society, and of social evolution,

which obviously requires the most serious correction.

With regard to the population question, and the question of the struggle

for existence so intimately connected with it, we can no longer ignore

the practice of limitation of families, which has now become so

prevalent. It cannot be regarded as a satisfactory solution of the

population question. In the past it has been one of the surest signs of

a stagnant and decadent nation. No race or nation, in which the rights

and duties of motherhood or the family moralities are slightly valued,

can hope permanently to maintain a high standard of life and worth. We

may most surely forecast the future of a class or nation from the manner

in which the rights and duties of motherhood are observed by it. To use

the language of biology, race suicide is the most unfavourable variation

which classes and nations can inflict upon themselves. But we are not in

this book concerned with the general question. What we have to note here

is that the practice of limiting families, having become so prevalent,

will tend to diminish the intensity of the struggle for existence, which

it is the aim of socialism to regulate. For this reason we must

recognise it as a fact which has an important bearing on our subject.

It was a theory of the Marx school that the _bourgeoisie_, in the course

of the development of capitalism, would be ‘no longer capable of

controlling the industrial world.’[3] The recent development of the

trust system in America and Germany has shown that the _bourgeoisie_ are

only too capable of doing so on the vastest scale. The leaders of the

trusts are showing that they can regulate production, wages, prices, and

the markets, not for nations only but for the world. Oligarchies showed

their capacity in Rome, Carthage, Venice, and Holland for centuries.

They came to ruin at last, but the causes of their ruin were wider and

deeper than mere want of capacity. With these we are not concerned here.

The concern of socialism is that the oligarchy or plutocracy which is

foreshadowed in the gigantic trust system should not be allowed to gain

a permanent footing, but should be regulated and transformed in the way

required by the public good. The trust is a menace alike to labour and

to society. With the growth of the trust system free competition really

ceases to exist, and the alternative lies between a gigantic system of

monopoly and socialism.

We believe also that Marx made a serious mistake in holding that the

further development of capitalism will be marked by the growing

‘wretchedness, oppression, slavery, degeneracy, and exploitation’[4] of

the working class. Facts and reasonable expectations combine clearly to

indicate that the democracy, on which the social evolution of the future

depends, is marked by a growing intellectual, moral, and political

capacity, and by an increasing freedom and prosperity; and all these

things make it only more ardent and capable for further progress and for

the great tasks that lie before it. Social progress must in the last

resort depend on the character and capacity of the human beings

concerned in it. The democracy, the representative and promoter of the

new order, shows a growing fitness for its world-historic mission. The

claim of socialism to be the dominant form of social organisation in the

future must ultimately be its efficiency to fulfil the great ends of

social union, and the decisive element in this efficiency must be the

fitness of the agents who are to realise it.

This is a point of supreme and far-reaching importance which it will be

well for us to ponder. All social problems in the long run resolve

themselves into the question of human character. The moral forces

control the world and the course of history. It has been the special

function of socialism to show that a real and durable freedom can be

established only on an economic basis. We should also not forget that

such freedom can be attained and secured only by loyalty to reason and

especially to moral law. Freedom and social progress, reason and

morality, are correlated and organic conceptions which go together and

can thrive only in harmony.

Government of State and municipality is only a mechanism, of which the

action for good or evil will depend on the spirit by which it is moved.

The nationalisation of railways may merely open up a new field of

corruption, if there is not integrity to manage them for the public

good. Noble ideals are of no avail, if they remain outside of our

spiritual framework: they must be assimilated and become part of us.

Fine sentiments, unless they are consolidated into character and

translated into habitual action, may become an insidious and harmful

form of self-indulgence. Let it be understood that in the great struggle

for a really free commonwealth against organised wealth, called

plutocracy, on which men are now entering, we shall achieve victory only

by deserving it. The sacred cause of freedom will not be maintained by

mammon-worshippers, parasites, and pedants. No nation or class whose

women are slaves of self-indulgence and of fashion can expect to be

free. We cannot hope that freedom will thrive among the base and mean,

or the hysterical, irresponsible, frivolous, and apathetic.

To use the words of John Milton, it was a ‘strenuous liberty’ which was

cherished and maintained by our Puritan forefathers, the fathers and

founders of the American Commonwealth. We know with what solemnity and

earnestness, with what gravity, deliberation, and foresight they entered

on the long struggle against Stuart tyranny. If the Americans and we are

to succeed in the coming struggle against plutocracy, an abundant

measure of the high and virile qualities which characterised their

forefathers and ours will be needed.

Happily signs are not wanting that a spirit and character strenuous and

capable of the task of reformation will be forthcoming. In all civilised

countries, and especially in America, men have been accomplices in the

sin of mammon-worship: success in the struggle for wealth, with its many

base and unscrupulous incidents, has been far too highly esteemed. There

has been, especially in America, a great moral awakening, which we may

expect to have good results among all classes. As regards the working

classes, we have seen how long and hard in most countries has been their

discipline of privation and sorrow. The representatives of labour have

for generations undergone a stern and severe training in prison and

exile. In Russia to-day they have been suffering and inflicting horrors

which have been far worse.

But as we have repeatedly had occasion to point out in this book, their

training in constructive work, in political organisation, in trade

unions, and co-operative societies has been vastly more efficacious.

Most promising of all; as we have seen, is the co-operative movement,

because it best combines the collective use of the means of production

and exchange with individual freedom and responsibility. In the vast and

ever-widening co-operative movement we can see a new society rising in

the midst of the old. Every year it widens and grows, and we hope it

will grow and widen till the old, with all its false and base ideals,

its unreason, its militarism, its mismanagement, waste, and extravagance

has been put away. Hearts have been burning with the sacred fire of

noble ideals in the promoting of this grand work. Imaginations have been

haunted with beautiful dreams, which have not been vain. But we should

prize not less the patient and persevering integrity which, through a

multitude of petty and prosaic details, is bearing the movement onward

to an ever higher position in the world. At Ghent and other places we

may already see both in spirit and material outline the city that is to

be, the new society that is rising to make life happy and beautiful for

the people who have mourned so long! In the application of the

co-operative principle to agriculture we can at last see an ending to

the oppression of the tiller of the soil by the usurer and middleman,

which has been a stain on civilisation since it began thousands of years

ago in the valleys of the Euphrates and the Nile.

The day is coming, perhaps it may be near at hand, when we shall be able

to discover and to apply the true tests of greatness. When, with their

help, we are able to write history in a really scientific manner, we

shall find that the Napoleons and the others, the records of whose

doings now fill our libraries, were not great at all, but the reverse of

it, and that the true heroes and benefactors of the nineteenth century

were the poor weavers of Rochdale and Ghent, who started and carried

forward the co-operative movement. All honour to them for what they have

done!

And yet all that they have done is only the solid and hopeful beginning

of the realisation of our dreams. For the ideal is superb and exacting.

Men are slow to move towards it. They find it hard even to understand

and appreciate its beauty and excellence. Let us fervently hope that

after the way towards a good and beautiful life for humanity has been so

clearly pointed out, an ever-increasing multitude may have the wisdom to

walk in it.

We believe that the transition to a reasonable socialism will be marked

by a long and testing process of social selection. From the beginning of

the movement socialist theories have been subjected to the tests of

discussion and of experience. Socialist parties have also undergone very

severe trial in debate, organisation, and action. Trade unions and

labour parties have been obliged to go through a very hard course of

discipline and of suffering.

It should be particularly observed that these tests more and more belong

to the domain of intelligence, of moral character, and of skilled

organisation. Success in the struggle for existence depends on fitness

or adaptation to surrounding conditions. In the lower stages of the

struggle for existence, as we saw in Chap. XII., the conditions were of

a lower order. In the ascending struggle for a higher existence the

conditions are higher and offer a severer and more exacting test. Labour

which aspires to a higher life must stand those higher tests. Socialist

programmes and resolutions are therefore perfectly right in dwelling on

the urgent need for agitation, education, and organisation as a means of

training the working class for its great duties and its high career. And

we may repeat that the most urgent need of all is the capacity, moral

and intellectual, for association.

Thus the transition to socialism can be made only by increasing and

widening adaptation to the higher conditions of intelligence, character,

and organisation. Once made, the change to socialism will place men in a

higher moral and economic environment. As we saw, two vital human

interests will under socialism be no longer subject to the conditions of

competition, the working day and the ‘daily bread.’ Every able man will

be under obligation to perform reasonable service for a competent

livelihood; but beyond this his time and faculties will be his own. In

this better environment men will find the rights and the opportunities

which will give them the basis and scope for a better life. There will

be corresponding duties and obligations. And for those who, from vices

and defects of temperament or of habit, are not disposed to fulfil such

obligations suitable measures of social discipline will need to be

devised. The weak and disabled will receive suitable guidance and

support. But we may be assured that all normally constituted men will be

ready to respond to all natural and reasonable calls.

Social service will be the main field for emulation, rivalry, and

ambition, and here the struggle for a higher life may be carried on

under the better conditions which will prevail. We may call it

competition if we will, but it will be competition on terms that differ

entirely from those which exist under the present system. It will be

competition for social distinction and rewards. The reticence, secrecy,

and hypocrisy, the jealousy and detraction, which are now so common will

pass away. Men will be able to live sincerely and openly. Their record

will be an open and public one, which their fellow-citizens will be able

to read and estimate fairly. And we should avoid the grave mistake of

confounding the human qualities that make for success in the present

competition with the qualities that would meet with approval under the

new system. The qualities that command success at present we all know.

The qualities that would meet with favour under a reasonable socialism

will be those which answer to the great ideals we have spoken of, and

particularly those which fit men for the best social service.

The waste and demoralisation, the injustice and cruelty, which are so

rife under the present system will pass away. But the new era will work

for much more than the mere abolition of evil. It will make for the

positive and integral development of the highest human life. Natural

capacity in all the forms that are consistent with social good will have

free scope for unfolding itself. We may believe that in the majority of

lives the exercise of natural endowment will be in direct conformity

with the requirements of social service. It will obviously be for the

good of society that each will do the work for which he is best fitted.

Spiritual teaching, scientific discovery, literature, art, and music

will all be duly prized and rewarded as modes of social service. But if

the aspirant wishes to do his share of social work in the form of some

ordinary craft, in order to devote his ample leisure to a special

pursuit entirely of his own choosing, he will be free to do so. In this

matter freedom will be an interest of the first order.

The lesson taught by much recent experience and the goal of many

convergent tendencies seem undoubtedly to be, that society should

control industry in its own interest. An industry carried on by free

associated men would be in perfect accord with other forms and methods

of progress, ethical, political, and economic. The purified socialism

may be regarded as the co-ordination and consummation of every other

form of human progress, inasmuch as it applies to the use of man all the

factors of scientific, mechanical, and artistic development in harmony

with the prevailing political and ethical ideas.

It is therefore a most desirable form of organisation. And many large

and growing symptoms show that it is practicable. It is a type of

organisation which may take shape in a thousand diverse ways, according

to the differences in historic conditions and in national temperament.

Within its limits, as we have seen, there will be reasonable scope for

individual development and for every variety of liking and capacity

consistent with the well-being of others; but exceptional talent and the

generous enthusiasm which is its fitting accompaniment will more and

more find their proper field in the service of society, an ideal which

is already largely realised in the democratic state.

In a rational socialism we may therefore see a long and widening avenue

of progress, along which the improvement of mankind may be continued in

a peaceful and gradual, yet most hopeful, sure, and effective way. Such

a prospect offers the best remedy for the apathy and frivolity, cynicism

and pessimism, which are now so prevalent; and it is the most effectual

counteractive to restlessness, discontent, and all the evils and

excesses of the revolutionary spirit. Under it the social forces will

consciously and directly work for social ideals. The ideal will be made

real, and might and right will be reconciled. The real forces which

operate in modern history will be shaped by beneficent ideals, till, as

Tennyson sings,

Each man find his own in all men’s good,

And all men work in noble brotherhood.

May we not with Saint-Simon hope that the golden age is not behind but

before us?

-----

[1] _Inquiry into Socialism_, 3rd edition, p. 133.

[2] See pp. 287, 288.

[3] See p. 148.

[4] _Kapital_, p. 790.

APPENDIX

After the Revolution of 1830 the Saint-Simonists were referred to in the

French Chamber of Deputies as a sect who advocated community of goods

and of women. The following communication in their defence was addressed

to the Chamber by Bazard and Enfantin, October 1, 1830:—

‘The Saint-Simonists undoubtedly do profess ideas on the future of

property and of women which are special to themselves, and which are

connected with views entirely new and special on religion, authority,

liberty—in short, on all the great problems which are now being

agitated over the whole of Europe with so much disorder and violence;

but these ideas are very different from the opinions which men attribute

to them.

‘The system of community of goods is always understood to mean equal

division among all the members of society, either of the means of

production or of the fruit of the labour of all.

‘The Saint-Simonists reject this equal division of property, which in

their eyes would constitute a greater violence, a more revolting

injustice, than the unequal division, which was originally effected by

force of arms, by conquest.

‘For they believe in the natural inequality of men, and regard this

inequality as the very basis of association, as the indispensable

condition of social order.

‘They reject the system of community of goods, for this would be a

manifest violation of the first of all the moral laws, which it is their

mission to teach, and which enjoins that in the future each man should

be placed according to his capacity, and rewarded according to his work.

‘But in virtue of this law they demand the abolition of all the

privileges of birth without exception, and consequently the destruction

of the right of inheritance, the greatest of those privileges, which at

present comprehends them all, and of which the effect is to leave to

chance the distribution of social privileges amongst the small number of

those who can lay claim to them, and to condemn the most numerous class

to depravation, ignorance, and misery.

‘They demand that all the instruments of labour, land, and capital,

which at present form the divided stock of private proprietors, should

be exploited by associations with a suitable gradation of functions, so

that the task of each may be the expression of his capacity, and his

riches the measure of his services.

‘The Saint-Simonists do not attack the institution of private property,

except in so far as it consecrates for some the impious privilege of

idleness—that is to say, of living on the labour of others; except as

it leaves to the accident of birth the social status of individuals.

‘Christianity has delivered women from slavery, but it has nevertheless

condemned them to an inferior position, and in Christian Europe we still

see them everywhere deprived of religious, political, and civil rights.

‘The Saint-Simonists announce their final liberation, their complete

emancipation, but they do not aim at abolishing the sacred law of

marriage proclaimed by Christianity; on the contrary, they desire to

fulfil this law, to give it a new sanction, to add to the authority and

inviolability of the union which it consecrates.

‘Like Christians they demand that a single man be united to a single

woman; but they teach that the wife should become the equal of the

husband, and that, according to the special grace with which God has

endowed her sex, she should be associated in the exercise of the triple

function of religion, the State, and the family, so that the social

individual, which hitherto has been the man only, may henceforward be

man and woman.

‘The religion of Saint-Simon seeks only to abolish the shameful traffic,

the legal prostitution, which, under the name of marriage, at present so

frequently consecrates the unnatural union of self-sacrifice and

egotism, of intelligence and ignorance, of youth and decrepitude.

‘Such are the most general ideas of the Saint-Simonists on the changes

which they demand in the arrangements of property and in the social

condition of women.’

PROGRAMME OF THE SOCIALISTIC WORKING MEN’S PARTY OF GERMANY

Gotha, _May_ 1875.

I. Labour is the source of all wealth and all culture, and as useful

work in general is possible only through society, so to society, that is

to all its members, the entire product belongs; while as the obligation

to labour is universal, all have an equal right to such product, each

one according to his reasonable needs.

In the existing society the instruments of labour are a monopoly of the

capitalist class; the subjection of the working class thus arising is

the cause of misery and servitude in every form.

The emancipation of the working class demands the transformation of the

instruments of labour into the common property of society and the

co-operative control of the total labour, with application of the

product of labour to the common good and just distribution of the same.

The emancipation of labour must be the work of the labouring class, in

contrast to which all other classes are only a reactionary mass.

II. Proceeding from these principles, the socialistic working men’s

party of Germany aims by all legal means at the establishment of the

free state and the socialistic society, to destroy the Iron Law of Wages

by abolishing the system of wage-labour, to put an end to exploitation

in every form, to remove all social and political inequality.

The socialistic working men’s party of Germany, though acting first of

all within the national limits, is conscious of the international

character of the labour movement, and resolved to fulfil all the duties

which this imposes on the workmen, in order to realise the universal

brotherhood of men.

* * * * *

In order to prepare the way for the solution of the social question, the

socialistic working men’s party of Germany demands the establishment of

socialistic productive associations with State help under the democratic

control of the labouring people. The productive associations are to be

founded on such a scale both for industry and agriculture that out of

them may develop the socialistic organisation of the total labour.

The socialistic working men’s party of Germany demands as the basis of

the State:—

I. Universal, equal, and direct right of electing and voting, with

secret and obligatory voting, of all citizens from twenty years of age,

for all elections and deliberations in the State and local bodies. The

day of election or voting must be a Sunday or holiday.

II. Direct legislation by the people. Questions of war and peace to be

decided by the people.

III. Universal military duty. A people’s army in place of the standing

armies.

IV. Abolition of all exceptional laws, especially as regards the press,

unions, and meetings, and generally of all laws which restrict freedom

of thought and inquiry.

V. Administration of justice by the people. Free justice.

VI. Universal and equal education by the State. Compulsory education.

Free education in all public places of instruction. Religion declared to

be a private concern.

The socialistic working men’s party demands within the existing society:

(1) Greatest possible extension of political rights and liberties in the

sense of the above demands.

(2) A single progressive income-tax for State and commune, instead of

the existing taxes, and especially of the indirect taxes that oppress

the people.

(3) Unrestricted right of combination.

(4) A normal working-day corresponding to the needs of society.

Prohibition of Sunday labour.

(5) Prohibition of labour of children, and of all women’s labour that is

injurious to health and morality.

(6) Laws for the protection of the life and health of workmen. Sanitary

control of workmen’s dwellings. Inspection of mines, of factories,

workshops, and home industries by officials chosen by the workmen. An

effective Employers’ Liability Act.

(7) Regulation of prison labour.

(8) Workmen’s funds to be under the entire control of the workmen.

PROGRAMME OF THE KNIGHTS OF LABOUR OF AMERICA, 1885

I. To make industrial and moral worth, not wealth, the true standard of

individual and national greatness.

II. To secure to the workers the full enjoyment of the wealth they

create; sufficient leisure in which to develop their intellectual,

moral, and social faculties; all the benefits, recreation, and pleasures

of association; in a word, to enable them to share in the gains and

honours of advancing civilisation.

In order to secure these results, we demand of the State:

III. The establishment of Bureaus of Labour Statistics, that we may

arrive at a correct knowledge of the educational, moral, and financial

condition of the labouring masses.

IV. That the public lands, the heritage of the people, be reserved for

actual settlers; not another acre for railroads or speculators: and that

all lands now held for speculative purposes be taxed to their full

value.

V. The abrogation of all laws that do not bear equally upon capital and

labour, and the removal of unjust technicalities, delays, and

discriminations in the administration of justice.

VI. The adoption of measures providing for the health and safety of

those engaged in mining, manufacturing, and building industries; and for

indemnification to those engaged therein for injuries received through

lack of necessary safeguards.

VII. The recognition by incorporation of trades-unions, orders, and such

other associations as may be organised by the working masses to improve

their condition and protect their rights.

VIII. The enactment of laws to compel corporations to pay their

employees weekly, in lawful money, for the labour of the preceding week,

and giving mechanics and labourers a first lien upon the product of

their labour to the extent of their full wages.

IX. The abolition of the contract system on national, State, and

municipal works.

X. The enactment of laws providing for arbitration between employers and

employed, and to enforce the decision of the arbitrators.

XI. The prohibition by law of the employment of children under fifteen

years of age in workshops, mines, and factories.

XII. To prohibit the hiring out of convict labour.

XIII. That a graduated income-tax be levied.

And we demand at the hands of the Congress:

XIV. The establishment of a national monetary system, in which a

circulating medium in necessary quantity shall issue direct to the

people, without the intervention of banks; that all the national issue

shall be full legal tender in payment of all debts, public and private;

and that the Government shall not guarantee or recognise any private

banks, or create any banking corporations.

XV. That interest-bearing bonds, bills of credit or notes shall never be

issued by the Government, but that, when need arises, the emergency

shall be met by issue of legal tender, non-interest-bearing money.

XVI. That the importation of foreign labour under contract be

prohibited.

XVII. That in connection with the post-office, the Government shall

organise financial exchanges, safe deposits and facilities for deposit

of the savings of the people in small sums.

XVIII. That the Government shall obtain possession, by purchase, under

the rights of eminent domain, of all telegraphs, telephones, and

railroads, and that hereafter no charter or licence be issued to any

corporation for construction or operation of any means of transporting

intelligence, passengers or freight.

And while making the foregoing demands upon the State and National

Government, we will endeavour to associate our own labours:

XIX. To establish co-operative institutions such as will tend to

supersede the wage system, by the introduction of a co-operative

industrial system.

XX. To secure for both sexes equal pay for equal work.

XXI. To shorten the hours of labour by a general refusal to work for

more than eight hours.

XXII. To persuade employers to agree to arbitrate all differences which

may arise between them and their employees, in order that the bonds of

sympathy between them may be strengthened and that strikes may be

rendered unnecessary.

BASIS OF THE FABIAN SOCIETY

The Fabian Society consists of socialists.

It therefore aims at the reorganisation of society by the emancipation

of Land and Industrial Capital from individual and class ownership, and

the vesting of them in the community for the general benefit. In this

way only can the natural and acquired advantages of the country be

equitably shared by the whole people.

The Society accordingly works for the extinction of private property in

land and of the consequent individual appropriation, in the form of rent

of the price paid for permission to use the earth, as well as for the

advantages of superior soils and sites.

The Society, further, works for the transfer to the community of the

administration of such industrial capital as can conveniently be managed

socially. For, owing to the monopoly of the means of production in the

past, industrial inventions and the transformation of surplus income

into capital have mainly enriched the proprietary class, the worker

being now dependent on that class for leave to earn a living.

If these measures be carried out, without compensation (though not

without such relief to expropriated individuals as may seem fit to the

community), rent and interest will be added to the reward of labour, the

idle class now living on the labour of others will necessarily

disappear, and practical equality of opportunity will be maintained by

the spontaneous action of economic forces with much less interference

with personal liberty than the present system entails.

For the attainment of these ends the Fabian Society looks to the spread

of socialist opinions, and the social and political changes consequent

thereon, including the establishment of equal citizenship for men and

women. It seeks to promote these by the general dissemination of

knowledge as to the relation between the individual and society in its

economic, ethical, and political aspects.

The work of the Fabian Society takes, at present, the following forms:—

(1) Meetings for the discussion of questions connected with socialism.

(2) The further investigation of economic problems, and the collection

of facts contributing to their elucidation.

(3) The issue of publications containing information on social

questions, and arguments relating to socialism.

(4) The promotion of socialist lectures and debates in other societies

and clubs.

(5) The representation of the Society in public conferences and

discussions on social questions.

INDEX

Alexander II., great hopes at his accession, 256;

rise of the revolutionary party during his reign, 257;

assassination, 265.

Alexander III., and the revolutionary party, 270, 325.

Allen, W., 62.

Altruism, 11.

America, no class divisions till the middle of the nineteenth century,

334; great transformation in industrial conditions, 335;

organised capital confronted with organised labour, 335-336;

the plutocracy and Rockefeller, 371;

problem before the American people, 372, etc.

Anarchism, first taught by Proudhon, 56;

the Marx school and the anarchist, 151;

its relation to the International, 190-192;

Michael Bakunin, its great apostle, 237;

set forth by Bakunin, 240, etc.;

and at the trial at Lyons, 243-245;

summed up and criticised, 246;

a leading form of socialism in Russia, 257-272;

France, Italy, 243, 324;

in Spain, 324.

Anarchy, socialism wrongly identified with, 7.

Art as related to socialism, 11.

Association of all classes of all nations founded by Owen, 3.

Association, productive, with State help, 108, 110, 119.

Australia, Labour Party in, 334;

its power limited by circumstances, 393-394.

Austria, 325, 377-378.

Babeuf, his communism, 18.

Bakunin, Michael, at Paris, 42;

activity in the International, 190, 191;

his life, 237;

opinions, 240;

his influence in Russia, 260.

Bax, Belfort, 329.

Bazard, 26.

Bebel, 208, 212, 218, 315, etc., 380.

Belgium, 319.

Bentham, Jeremy, 62.

Bernstein, 220, 314.

Bismarck, his work in German history, 79;

his historic insight, 94;

his relation to the German Social Democracy, 216, etc.;

his State socialism, 347.

Blanc, Louis, his method of remuneration, 9;

his activity during the Revolution of 1848, 42;

life and theories, 43;

points of agreement with Lassalle, 273, 274.

_Bourgeoisie_, the middle or capitalist class, 41, 98, 139, etc., 172,

etc.;

its position in Russia, 255, 266;

a theory of Marx, 411.

Capital, aim of socialism with regard to it, 8, 9, 10, etc.;

contrast between labour and capital, 25;

individual capital, an institution in Fourier’s system, 38, 40;

how regarded by L. Blanc, 45, 46;

by Proudhon, 56;

how to be obtained by the productive associations of Lassalle, 108;

a historic category, 113;

word wrongly used by socialists, 114;

exposition of capital by Marx, 138, etc.;

its international relation to labour, 171, etc.;

its place in anarchism, 241, 245;

its place in a reasonable socialism, 290, etc.

Capitalism, correct name for the prevalent economic order as controlled

by capitalists, 115, 141, 145.

Catholic Church, its societies and their property, 16;

how related to Saint-Simon, 25, 29;

its social activity, 340.

Chartism, its import, 42, 70.

Christian socialism, in England, 71;

in Germany, 342.

Christian Social Union, 343.

Christianity, relation to socialism, 10, 71, 339, 389.

Clifford, 343.

Collectivism, economic basis of the prevalent socialism, 12;

its place in L. Blanc’s system, 46;

goal of Lassalle’s scheme, 111;

economic basis of anarchism, 247, 249;

goal of the social democratic movement, 229;

its abstractness criticised, 290;

the goal of international socialism, 369.

Colonial system, 368.

Commune, the, its place in Fourier’s system, 31;

at Paris, 188;

its place in anarchism, 243, 273;

its general place in socialism, 289, 346.

Communism, its relation to socialism, 16, 18.

Communist Party, formation, 133, 172;

its manifesto, 173, etc., 366, etc.

Conjunctures, Lassalle’s theory of, 112.

Co-operative movement, really founded by Owen, 70;

promoted by Christian socialists in England, 71;

movement in Germany and its relation to Lassalle, 84, 106, 107, 116;

commended by the International, 180, 184, 185;

its recent progress, 350, etc.

Darwin, relation of his doctrine of development to economics, 281;

relation of his teaching to that of Marx, 294;

relation of his theory to socialism, 295, etc.

Democracy, socialism its economic complement, 10;

one of the conditions necessary for the growth of socialism, 18;

the political basis of L. Blanc’s schemes, 43, etc.;

development of, 47;

democracy of workers, 99, 120;

how trained for its great task, 148, 160;

its importance, 284, 287, 288;

its place in social evolution, 357, 381, etc.

Denmark, 318.

Distribution, problem of, how solved in various schools of socialism, 9;

such methods criticised, 291;

moral and scientific basis of, 360.

Dönniges, Fraulein von, 91.

Empire, the conception of, and socialism, 406-409.

Enfantin, 26, 27, 29.

Engels, Fr., 73, 130, 132, 135;

his exposition of the function of the State, 150.

Fabian Society, origin and aims, 329, 330;

some of its views criticised, 331, 400, 401;

its basis, 427.

Feudalism, in relation to socialism, 11, 19, 24;

its overthrow by the capitalist class, 97, 142;

not a stereotyped system, 278;

evolved by the struggle for existence, 298.

Fourier, method of remuneration, 9;

admitted private capital, 13;

a founder of socialism, 15;

grew up under the immediate influence of the French Revolution, 18;

life and opinions, 31;

contrast to Saint-Simon and the centralising socialism, 31, 273, 274;

his safeguards for individual and local freedom, 290.

George, Henry, 328.

Hegel, influence on Lassalle, 74;

on Marx, 131, 151, 152, 161, 279;

his doctrine of development, 294.

Held, Adolf, definition of socialism, 5.

Holland, 318.

Homestead, its place in a reasonable socialism, 407.

Hyndman, 328.

Independent Labour Party, 330, 332.

India, 368, 408.

Individuality under socialism, 11, 307, 406, 420.

International, its aim, 6;

Marx and the International, 166;

history, 168;

influence in it of Bakunin, 190;

influence of it on the Russian revolutionary movement, 260;

revival, 363, etc.

Italy, 322, 381, 391.

Janet, Paul, definition of socialism, 5.

Jaurèz, 321.

Keir Hardie, Mr., 333.

Kent, Duke of, 66.

Ketteler, Bishop, 88, 340.

Kingsley, 71.

Kropotkin, Prince, 243, 244.

Labour Party in Britain, how founded, 332-333;

its strength and character, 333.

_Laissez-faire_, 4;

economic optimism implied in it, 14;

entirely unsuitable to Prussia, 280;

its adherents in England, 347;

influence on labour, 398.

Lassalle, at Paris, 42;

on the power of lying, 49;

his life, 73;

his theories, 95;

his relations to Marx, 95;

Rodbertus, 95, 124;

position of the Social Democratic Party at his death, 203;

Bismarck’s relation to him, 216;

his influence on the revolutionary party in Russia, 259;

points of agreement with L. Blanc, 273, 274;

his presentation of socialism, 279;

exaggerated estimate of the influence of the social principle, 306;

his Iron Law of Wages, considered in relation to the evolution of

capitalism, 409.

Laveleye, definition of socialism, 5.

Lavroff, 243, 260.

Leroux, Pierre, 26.

Liebknecht, W., 208, 210, 218, 233, etc., 316.

Lodge, Senator, on the very serious situation established by the trusts,

372, 376.

Ludlow, 71.

Malthus, relation to Owen, 69;

his theory and the population question, 296;

struggle for existence, 297.

Manchester theory of the State, 102.

Marx, Karl, his relation to the existing State, 6;

his school the most influential form of contemporary socialism, 15;

Proudhon’s right of _aubaine_, compared with the theory of capital,

56;

his theory of surplus value enunciated by the Chartists, 71;

comparison of his character with Lassalle’s, 92;

relation of his theory of surplus value to Lassalle’s Iron Law of

Wages, 103;

collectivism common to him with Lassalle and Rodbertus, 111;

use of the word _capital_, 114;

life and theories, 130;

criticism of his theories, 154;

compared with Adam Smith, 162;

his place in history, 166;

founding of the Communist League, 172;

influence on the International, 179, etc.;

influence on the Social Democratic movement in Germany, 230;

influence on the revolutionary movement in Russia, 259;

socialist movement should not be identified with his views, 275;

his abstractness, 279;

in England, 328;

his views criticised, 386, etc., 411, etc.

Materialism, relation to socialism, 10;

as held by Marx, 151, 158, etc.;

held by Bakunin, 240;

socialism purified from it, 285.

Maurice, 71.

Mazzini, 179, 243.

Militarism, 368.

Mill, J. S., his conception of socialism, 286.

Milton, 414.

Mir, the Russian form of the village community, 251, etc.;

its analogy to the community of Owen, the _phalange_ of Fourier, and

the free commune of Bakunin, 273;

its possible disintegration, 384;

the starting-point of agrarian reform, 392.

More, Thomas, 16.

Municipality, or commune, as a factor in the evolution of socialism,

189, 346, etc.

Napoleon I., 169.

Napoleon III., 57, 178.

New Christianity of Saint-Simon, 25.

New Harmony, 66.

New Lanark, 60.

New Zealand, a democratic State, 349.

Nicholas, Emperor, 63.

Nihilism, the correct name for the early stage of the revolutionary

movement in Russia, 257, etc.

Orbiston, 96.

Owen, Robert,

founder of the association of all classes of all nations, 3;

one of the historic founders of socialism, 4, etc.;

the influences that conditioned his work, 19;

life and theories, 59;

doctrine of surplus value held in his school, 137;

influence on Russian revolutionary movement, 259;

desire for a ready-made socialism, 273.

_Phalange_, 31, 33, 273.

Plato, 16.

Political economy, its relation to socialism, 14;

historical and ethical conception of, promoted by socialism, 281;

its relation to socialism again considered, 338, 339, 409-410.

Progressist party in Germany, 79, 83, 208.

Proletariat, the class excluded from land and capital and dependent on

wage-labour, 8;

brought into active historic contrast to the _bourgeoisie_, 41;

its share in the risings at Paris, 1848, 50;

its position conditioned by the development of capitalism, 139;

and necessary to it, 141;

its great _rôle_ in the final dissolution of capitalism, 148, etc.;

its emancipation, the great aim of international socialism, 172;

Marx the scientific expounder of the conditions of its existence and

of its emancipation, 173, etc.;

the Commune at Paris considered as a struggle for its deliverance,

189;

how existing in Russia, 260;

the democracy still mainly a proletariat, 357;

Marx’s theory of its future development, 412.

Proudhon, one of the leaders of the socialism of 1848, 42;

life and theories, 51;

theory of surplus value underlies his extravagances, 137;

the founder of anarchism, 56, 237;

his influence in the International, 183;

his exposition of anarchism, 248.

Ralahine, 67.

Reybaud, 4.

Rockefeller, 371, 376.

Rodbertus, his general conception of socialism, 13;

relation to Lassalle, 95, 96;

life and theories, 123;

relation to Lassalle and Marx, 137;

too abstract and Prussian, 279.

Roosevelt, his proposals for social reform, 399.

Roscher, 5.

Rousseau, 18.

Russia, the development of socialistic opinion, 21;

anarchism, 237;

revolutionary opinion, 250, etc.;

renewal of revolutionary activity, 325-327;

its repression, 382-384.

Saint-Simon, one of the historic founders of socialism, 4, 15, etc.;

his life and opinions, 22;

represented the principle of authority in the development of

socialism, 274;

the golden age, 420.

Schäffle, definition of socialism, 12;

too abstract and Prussian in his conception of socialism, 277;

his high rank as an economist, 339.

Scheel, 6.

Schulze-Delitzsch, his schemes, 84;

Lassalle’s treatment of him, 86;

Lassalle’s criticism of his schemes, 107;

the same examined, 115, etc.

Schweitzer, 203, 207, etc.

Shaw, G. B., 330.

Smith, Adam, in relation to freedom, 17;

compared with Marx, 162;

his principle of natural liberty, 278, 292.

Social Democracy, its programme in Germany, 9;

as taught by L. Blanc, 48;

by Lassalle, 84, etc.;

German, 197, etc., 311, etc.;

its general aim, 363, etc.

Social Democratic Federation, 329.

Social selection, 304, 416.

Social workshops of Louis Blanc, 45, 48.

Socialist League, 329.

Socialist Revolutionary Party in Russia, 326, 382.

_Spectator_, 382.

State, in relation to socialism, 6;

historic relation to property, 16;

its place in Saint-Simon, 31;

in Louis Blanc, 44;

in Lassalle, 101, etc.;

in Rodbertus, 127;

its _rôle_ as explained by Fr. Engels, 150;

Bakunin’s relation to it, 240;

two opposing tendencies with regard to it in socialist movement, 274;

its place in socialism, 345, etc.;

further discussed, 400, 401, 405-409.

Stepniak’s estimate of the numbers of the Russian Revolutionary Party,

271.

Strike, general, advocated by Bebel to meet certain emergencies, 316.

Surplus value, theory of, as held by Chartists, 71;

as held by Owenites, Rodbertus, Proudhon, etc., 137;

its development by Marx, 138, etc.;

criticism of Marx’s theory of it, 154.

_Times_, the, and the International, 187.

Trade unions and socialism, 367, 369, 391-405.

Trusts, how they have grown in America, 335-337;

a remedy for the evils of competition, 354-355;

not confined to America, 355;

a proof of the inadequacy of competition, 359, but a natural result of

it, 404;

a menace to labour and to society, 411.

Turgenief, his novel, _Fathers and Sons_, 258.

Tytherley, 67.

Tzardom, its great function in Russian history, 251, 266, etc.

Vienna, great demonstration, 377.

Village community, its place in history, 253;

in English history, 397;

should be restored to life under modern conditions, 407.

Voltaire, 18, 246.

_Vooruit_, at Ghent, 352.

Wages, Iron Law of, 103, etc., 384.

Wagner, definition of socialism, 12;

justly charged with abstractness, 277.

Webb, Sidney, 330.

Wells, H. G., 330.

Westcott, 343.

William I., Emperor, 79.

William II., Emperor, 121, 195.

THE END

_Printed by_ R. & R. Clark, Limited, _Edinburgh_.