Among those who call themselves Socialists, two kinds of persons may
be distinguished. There are, in the first place, those whose plans for
a new order of society, in which private property and individual
competition are to be superseded and other motives to action
substituted, are on the scale of a village community or township, and
would be applied to an entire country by the multiplication of such
self-acting units; of this character are the systems of Owen, of
Fourier, and the more thoughtful and philosophic Socialists generally.
The other class, who are more a product of the Continent than of Great
Britain and may be called the revolutionary Socialists, propose to
themselves a much bolder stroke. Their scheme is the management of the
whole productive resources of the country by one central authority,
the general government. And with this view some of them avow as their
purpose that the working classes, or somebody in their behalf, should
take possession of all the property of the country, and administer it
for the general benefit.
Whatever be the difficulties of the first of these two forms of
Socialism, the second must evidently involve the same difficulties and
many more. The former, too, has the great advantage that it can be
brought into operation progressively, and can prove its capabilities
by trial. It can be tried first on a select population and extended to
others as their education and cultivation permit. It need not, and in
the natural order of things would not, become an engine of subversion
until it had shown itself capable of being also a means of
reconstruction. It is not so with the other: the aim of that is to
substitute the new rule for the old at a single stroke, and to
exchange the amount of good realised under the present system, and its
large possibilities of improvement, for a plunge without any
preparation into the most extreme form of the problem of carrying on
the whole round of the operations of social life without the motive
power which has always hitherto worked the social machinery. It must
be acknowledged that those who would play this game on the strength of
their own private opinion, unconfirmed as yet by any experimental
verification--who would forcibly deprive all who have now a
comfortable physical existence of their only present means of
preserving it, and would brave the frightful bloodshed and misery that
would ensue if the attempt was resisted--must have a serene confidence
in their own wisdom on the one hand and a recklessness of other
people's sufferings on the other, which Robespierre and St. Just,
hitherto the typical instances of those united attributes, scarcely
came up to. Nevertheless this scheme has great elements of popularity
which the more cautious and reasonable form of Socialism has not;
because what it professes to do it promises to do quickly, and holds
out hope to the enthusiastic of seeing the whole of their aspirations
realised in their own time and at a blow.
The peculiarities, however, of the revolutionary form of Socialism
will be most conveniently examined after the considerations common to
both the forms have been duly weighed.
The produce of the world could not attain anything approaching to its
present amount, nor support anything approaching to the present number
of its inhabitants, except upon two conditions: abundant and costly
machinery, buildings, and other instruments of production; and the
power of undertaking long operations and waiting a considerable time
for their fruits. In other words, there must be a large accumulation
of capital, both fixed in the implements and buildings, and
circulating, that is employed in maintaining the laborers and their
families during the time which elapses before the productive
operations are completed and the products come in. This necessity
depends on physical laws, and is inherent in the condition of human
life; but these requisites of production, the capital, fixed and
circulating, of the country (to which has to be added the land, and
all that is contained in it), may either be the collective property of
those who use it, or may belong to individuals; and the question is,
which of these arrangements is most conducive to human happiness. What
is characteristic of Socialism is the joint ownership by all the
members of the community of the instruments and means of production;
which carries with it the consequence that the division of the produce
among the body of owners must be a public act, performed according to
rules laid down by the community. Socialism by no means excludes
private ownership of articles of consumption; the exclusive right of
each to his or her share of the produce when received, either to
enjoy, to give, or to exchange it. The land, for example, might be
wholly the property of the community for agricultural and other
productive purposes, and might be cultivated on their joint account,
and yet the dwelling assigned to each individual or family as part of
their remuneration might be as exclusively theirs, while they
continued to fulfil their share of the common labors, as any one's
house now is; and not the dwelling only, but any ornamental ground
which the circumstances of the association allowed to be attached to
the house for purposes of enjoyment. The distinctive feature of
Socialism is not that all things are in common, but that production is
only carried on upon the common account, and that the instruments of
production are held as common property. The _practicability_ then of
Socialism, on the scale of Mr. Owen's or M. Fourier's villages, admits
of no dispute. The attempt to manage the whole production of a nation
by one central organization is a totally different matter; but a mixed
agricultural and manufacturing association of from two thousand to
four thousand inhabitants under any tolerable circumstances of soil
and climate would be easier to manage than many a joint stock company.
The question to be considered is, whether this joint management is
likely to be as efficient and successful as the managements of private
industry by private capital. And this question has to be considered in
a double aspect; the efficiency of the directing mind, or minds, and
that of the simple workpeople. And in order to state this question in
its simplest form, we will suppose the form of Socialism to be simple
Communism, _i.e._ equal division of the produce among all the sharers,
or, according to M. Louis Blanc's still higher standard of justice,
apportionment of it according to difference of need, but without
making any difference of reward according to the nature of the duty
nor according to the supposed merits or services of the individual.
There are other forms of Socialism, particularly Fourierism, which do,
on considerations of justice or expediency, allow differences of
remuneration for different kinds or degrees of service to the
community; but the consideration of these may be for the present
postponed.
The difference between the motive powers in the economy of society
under private property and under Communism would be greatest in the
case of the directing minds. Under the present system, the direction
being entirely in the hands of the person or persons who own (or are
personally responsible for) the capital, the whole benefit of the
difference between the best administration and the worst under which
the business can continue to be carried on accrues to the person or
persons who control the administration: they reap the whole profit of
good management except so far as their self-interest or liberality
induce them to share it with their subordinates; and they suffer the
whole detriment of mismanagement except so far as this may cripple
their subsequent power of employing labor. This strong personal motive
to do their very best and utmost for the efficiency and economy of the
operations, would not exist under Communism; as the managers would
only receive out of the produce the same equal dividend as the other
members of the association. What would remain would be the interest
common to all in so managing affairs as to make the dividend as large
as possible; the incentives of public spirit, of conscience, and of
the honor and credit of the managers. The force of these motives,
especially when combined, is great. But it varies greatly in different
persons, and is much greater for some purposes than for others. The
verdict of experience, in the imperfect degree of moral cultivation
which mankind have yet reached, is that the motive of conscience and
that of credit and reputation, even when they are of some strength,
are, in the majority of cases, much stronger as restraining than as
impelling forces--are more to be depended on for preventing wrong,
than for calling forth the fullest energies in the pursuit of ordinary
occupations. In the case of most men the only inducement which has
been found sufficiently constant and unflagging to overcome the
ever-present influence of indolence and love of ease, and induce men
to apply themselves unrelaxingly to work for the most part in itself
dull and unexciting, is the prospect of bettering their own economic
condition and that of their family; and the closer the connection of
every increase of exertion with a corresponding increase of its
fruits, the more powerful is this motive. To suppose the contrary
would be to imply that with men as they now are, duty and honor are
more powerful principles of action than personal interest, not solely
as to special acts and forbearances respecting which those sentiments
have been exceptionally cultivated, but in the regulation of their
whole lives; which no one, I suppose, will affirm. It may be said that
this inferior efficacy of public and social feelings is not
inevitable--is the result of imperfect education. This I am quite
ready to admit, and also that there are even now many individual
exceptions to the general infirmity. But before these exceptions can
grow into a majority, or even into a very large minority, much time
will be required. The education of human beings is one of the most
difficult of all arts, and this is one of the points in which it has
hitherto been least successful; moreover improvements in general
education are necessarily very gradual because the future generation
is educated by the present, and the imperfections of the teachers set
an invincible limit to the degree in which they can train their pupils
to be better than themselves. We must therefore expect, unless we are
operating upon a select portion of the population, that personal
interest will for a long time be a more effective stimulus to the most
vigorous and careful conduct of the industrial business of society
than motives of a higher character. It will be said that at present
the greed of personal gain by its very excess counteracts its own end
by the stimulus it gives to reckless and often dishonest risks. This
it does, and under Communism that source of evil would generally be
absent. It is probable, indeed, that enterprise either of a bad or of
a good kind would be a deficient element, and that business in general
would fall very much under the dominion of routine; the rather, as the
performance of duty in such communities has to be enforced by external
sanctions, the more nearly each person's duty can be reduced to fixed
rules, the easier it is to hold him to its performance. A circumstance
which increases the probability of this result is the limited power
which the managers would have of independent action. They would of
course hold their authority from the choice of the community, by whom
their function might at any time be withdrawn from them; and this
would make it necessary for them, even if not so required by the
constitution of the community, to obtain the general consent of the
body before making any change in the established mode of carrying on
the concern. The difficulty of persuading a numerous body to make a
change in their accustomed mode of working, of which change the
trouble is often great, and the risk more obvious to their minds than
the advantage, would have a great tendency to keep things in their
accustomed track. Against this it has to be set, that choice by the
persons who are directly interested in the success of the work, and
who have practical knowledge and opportunities of judgment, might be
expected on the average to produce managers of greater skill than the
chances of birth, which now so often determine who shall be the owner
of the capital. This may be true; and though it may be replied that
the capitalist by inheritance can also, like the community, appoint a
manager more capable than himself, this would only place him on the
same level of advantage as the community, not on a higher level. But
it must be said on the other side that under the Communist system the
persons most qualified for the management would be likely very often
to hang back from undertaking it. At present the manager, even if he
be a hired servant, has a very much larger remuneration than the other
persons concerned in the business; and there are open to his ambition
higher social positions to which his function of manager is a
stepping-stone. On the Communist system none of these advantages would
be possessed by him; he could obtain only the same dividend out of the
produce of the community's labor as any other member of it; he would
no longer have the chance of raising himself from a receiver of wages
into the class of capitalists; and while he could be in no way better
off than any other laborer, his responsibilities and anxieties would
be so much greater that a large proportion of mankind would be likely
to prefer the less onerous position. This difficulty was foreseen by
Plato as an objection to the system proposed in his Republic of
community of goods among a governing class; and the motive on which he
relied for inducing the fit persons to take on themselves, in the
absence of all the ordinary inducements, the cares and labors of
government, was the fear of being governed by worse men. This, in
truth, is the motive which would have to be in the main depended upon;
the persons most competent to the management would be prompted to
undertake the office to prevent it from falling into less competent
hands. And the motive would probably be effectual at times when there
was an impression that by incompetent management the affairs of the
community were going to ruin, or even only decidedly deteriorating.
But this motive could not, as a rule, expect to be called into action
by the less stringent inducement of merely promoting improvement;
unless in the case of inventors or schemers eager to try some device
from which they hoped for great and immediate fruits; and persons of
this kind are very often unfitted by over-sanguine temper and
imperfect judgment for the general conduct of affairs, while even when
fitted for it they are precisely the kind of persons against whom the
average man is apt to entertain a prejudice, and they would often be
unable to overcome the preliminary difficulty of persuading the
community both to adopt their project and to accept them as managers.
Communistic management would thus be, in all probability, less
favorable than private management to that striking out of new paths
and making immediate sacrifices for distant and uncertain advantages,
which, though seldom unattended with risk, is generally indispensable
to great improvements in the economic condition of mankind, and even
to keeping up the existing state in the face of a continual increase
of the number of mouths to be fed.
We have thus far taken account only of the operation of motives upon
the managing minds of the association. Let us now consider how the
case stands in regard to the ordinary workers.
These, under Communism, would have no interest, except their share of
the general interest, in doing their work honestly and energetically.
But in this respect matters would be no worse than they now are in
regard to the great majority of the producing classes. These, being
paid by fixed wages, are so far from having any direct interest of
their own in the efficiency of their work, that they have not even
that share in the general interest which every worker would have in
the Communistic organization. Accordingly, the inefficiency of hired
labor, the imperfect manner in which it calls forth the real
capabilities of the laborers, is matter of common remark. It is true
that a character for being a good workman is far from being without
its value, as it tends to give him a preference in employment, and
sometimes obtains for him higher wages. There are also possibilities
of rising to the position of foreman, or other subordinate
administrative posts, which are not only more highly paid than
ordinary labor, but sometimes open the way to ulterior advantages. But
on the other side is to be set that under Communism the general
sentiment of the community, composed of the comrades under whose eyes
each person works, would be sure to be in favor of good and hard
working, and unfavorable to laziness, carelessness, and waste. In the
present system not only is this not the case, but the public opinion
of the workman class often acts in the very opposite direction: the
rules of some trade societies actually forbid their members to exceed
a certain standard of efficiency, lest they should diminish the number
of laborers required for the work; and for the same reason they often
violently resist contrivances for economising labor. The change from
this to a state in which every person would have an interest in
rendering every other person as industrious, skilful, and careful as
possible (which would be the case under Communism), would be a change
very much for the better.
It is, however, to be considered that the principal defects of the
present system in respect to the efficiency of labor may be corrected,
and the chief advantages of Communism in that respect may be obtained,
by arrangements compatible with private property and individual
competition. Considerable improvement is already obtained by
piece-work, in the kinds of labor which admit of it. By this the
workman's personal interest is closely connected with the quantity of
work he turns out--not so much with its quality, the security for
which still has to depend on the employer's vigilance; neither does
piece-work carry with it the public opinion of the workman class,
which is often, on the contrary, strongly opposed to it, as a means of
(as they think) diminishing the market for laborers. And there is
really good ground for their dislike of piece-work, if, as is alleged,
it is a frequent practice of employers, after using piece-work to
ascertain the utmost which a good workman can do, to fix the price of
piece-work so low that by doing that utmost he is not able to earn
more than they would be obliged to give him as day wages for ordinary
work.
But there is a far more complete remedy than piece-work for the
disadvantages of hired labor, viz., what is now called industrial
partnership--the admission of the whole body of laborers to a
participation in the profits, by distributing among all who share in
the work, in the form of a percentage on their earnings, the whole or
a fixed portion of the gains after a certain remuneration has been
allowed to the capitalist. This plan has been found of admirable
efficacy, both in this country and abroad. It has enlisted the
sentiments of the workmen employed on the side of the most careful
regard by all of them to the general interest of the concern; and by
its joint effect in promoting zealous exertion and checking waste, it
has very materially increased the remuneration of every description of
labor in the concerns in which it has been adopted. It is evident that
this system admits of indefinite extension and of an indefinite
increase in the share of profits assigned to the laborers, short of
that which would leave to the managers less than the needful degree of
personal interest in the success of the concern. It is even likely
that when such arrangements become common, many of these concerns
would at some period or another, on the death or retirement of the
chief's pass, by arrangement, into the state of purely co-operative
associations.
It thus appears that as far as concerns the motives to exertion in the
general body, Communism has no advantage which may not be reached
under private property, while as respects the managing heads it is at
a considerable disadvantage. It has also some disadvantages which seem
to be inherent in it, through the necessity under which it lies of
deciding in a more or less arbitrary manner questions which, on the
present system, decide themselves, often badly enough but
spontaneously.
It is a simple rule, and under certain aspects a just one, to give
equal payment to all who share in the work. But this is a very
imperfect justice unless the work also is apportioned equally. Now the
many different kinds of work required in every society are very
unequal in hardness and unpleasantness. To measure these against one
another, so as to make quality equivalent to quantity, is so difficult
that Communists generally propose that all should work by turns at
every kind of labor. But this involves an almost complete sacrifice of
the economic advantages of the division of employments, advantages
which are indeed frequently over-estimated (or rather the counter
considerations are under-estimated) by political economists, but which
are nevertheless, in the point of view of the productiveness of labor,
very considerable, for the double reason that the co-operation of
employment enables the work to distribute itself with some regard to
the special capacities and qualifications of the worker, and also that
every worker acquires greater skill and rapidity in one kind of work
by confining himself to it. The arrangement, therefore, which is
deemed indispensable to a just distribution would probably be a very
considerable disadvantage in respect of production. But further, it is
still a very imperfect standard of justice to demand the same amount
of work from every one. People have unequal capacities of work, both
mental and bodily, and what is a light task for one is an
insupportable burthen to another. It is necessary, therefore, that
there should be a dispensing power, an authority competent to grant
exemptions from the ordinary amount of work, and to proportion tasks
in some measure to capabilities. As long as there are any lazy or
selfish persons who like better to be worked for by others than to
work, there will be frequent attempts to obtain exemptions by favor or
fraud, and the frustration of these attempts will be an affair of
considerable difficulty, and will by no means be always successful.
These inconveniences would be little felt, for some time at least, in
communities composed of select persons, earnestly desirous of the
success of the experiment; but plans for the regeneration of society
must consider average human beings, and not only them but the large
residuum of persons greatly below the average in the personal and
social virtues. The squabbles and ill-blood which could not fail to be
engendered by the distribution of work whenever such persons have to
be dealt with, would be a great abatement from the harmony and
unanimity which Communists hope would be found among the members of
their association. That concord would, even in the most fortunate
circumstances, be much more liable to disturbance than Communists
suppose. The institution provides that there shall be no quarrelling
about material interests; individualism is excluded from that
department of affairs. But there are other departments from which no
institutions can exclude it: there will still be rivalry for
reputation and for personal power. When selfish ambition is excluded
from the field in which, with most men, it chiefly exercises itself,
that of riches and pecuniary interest, it would betake itself with
greater intensity to the domain still open to it, and we may expect
that the struggles for pre-eminence and for influence in the
management would be of great bitterness when the personal passions,
diverted from their ordinary channel, are driven to seek their
principal gratification in that other direction. For these various
reasons it is probable that a Communist association would frequently
fail to exhibit the attractive picture of mutual love and unity of
will and feeling which we are often told by Communists to expect, but
would often be torn by dissension and not unfrequently broken up by
it.
Other and numerous sources of discord are inherent in the necessity
which the Communist principle involves, of deciding by the general
voice questions of the utmost importance to every one, which on the
present system can be and are left to individuals to decide, each for
his own case. As an example, take the subject of education. All
Socialists are strongly impressed with the all-importance of the
training given to the young, not only for the reasons which apply
universally, but because their demands being much greater than those
of any other system upon the intelligence and morality of the
individual citizen, they have even more at stake than any other
societies on the excellence of their educational arrangements. Now
under Communism these arrangements would have to be made for every
citizen by the collective body, since individual parents, supposing
them to prefer some other mode of educating their children, would
have no private means of paying for it, and would be limited to what
they could do by their own personal teaching and influence. But every
adult member of the body would have an equal voice in determining the
collective system designed for the benefit of all. Here, then, is a
most fruitful source of discord in every association. All who had any
opinion or preference as to the education they would desire for their
own children, would have to rely for their chance of obtaining it upon
the influence they could exercise in the joint decision of the
community.
It is needless to specify a number of other important questions
affecting the mode of employing the productive resources of the
association, the conditions of social life, the relations of the body
with other associations, &c., on which difference of opinion, often
irreconcilable, would be likely to arise. But even the dissensions
which might be expected would be a far less evil to the prospects of
humanity than a delusive unanimity produced by the prostration of all
individual opinions and wishes before the decree of the majority. The
obstacles to human progression are always great, and require a
concurrence of favorable circumstances to overcome them; but an
indispensable condition of their being overcome is, that human nature
should have freedom to expand spontaneously in various directions,
both in thought and practice; that people should both think for
themselves and try experiments for themselves, and should not resign
into the hands of rulers, whether acting in the name of a few or of
the majority, the business of thinking for them, and of prescribing
how they shall act. But in Communist associations private life would
be brought in a most unexampled degree within the dominion of public
authority, and there would be less scope for the development of
individual character and individual preferences than has hitherto
existed among the full citizens of any state belonging to the
progressive branches of the human family. Already in all societies the
compression of individuality by the majority is a great and growing
evil; it would probably be much greater under Communism, except so far
as it might be in the power of individuals to set bounds to it by
selecting to belong to a community of persons like-minded with
themselves.
From these various considerations I do not seek to draw any inference
against the possibility that Communistic production is capable of
being at some future time the form of society best adapted to the
wants and circumstances of mankind. I think that this is, and will
long be an open question, upon which fresh light will continually be
obtained, both by trial of the Communistic principle under favorable
circumstances, and by the improvements which will be gradually
effected in the working of the existing system, that of private
ownership. The one certainty is, that Communism, to be successful,
requires a high standard of both moral and intellectual education in
all the members of the community--moral, to qualify them for doing
their part honestly and energetically in the labor of life under no
inducement but their share in the general interest of the
association, and their feelings of duty and sympathy towards it;
intellectual, to make them capable of estimating distant interests and
entering into complex considerations, sufficiently at least to be able
to discriminate, in these matters, good counsel from bad. Now I reject
altogether the notion that it is impossible for education and
cultivation such as is implied in these things to be made the
inheritance of every person in the nation; but I am convinced that it
is very difficult, and that the passage to it from our present
condition can only be slow. I admit the plea that in the points of
moral education on which the success of communism depends, the present
state of society is demoralizing, and that only a Communistic
association can effectually train mankind for Communism. It is for
Communism, then, to prove, by practical experiment, its power of
giving this training. Experiments alone can show whether there is as
yet in any portion of the population a sufficiently high level of
moral cultivation to make Communism succeed, and to give to the next
generation among themselves the education necessary to keep that high
level permanently If Communist associations show that they can be
durable and prosperous, they will multiply, and will probably be
adopted by successive portions of the population of the more advanced
countries as they become morally fitted for that mode of life. But to
force unprepared populations into Communist societies, even if a
political revolution gave the power to make such an attempt, would end
in disappointment.
If practical trial is necessary to test the capabilities of Communism,
it is no less required for those other forms of Socialism which
recognize the difficulties of Communism and contrive means to surmount
them. The principal of these is Fourierism, a system which, if only as
a specimen of intellectual ingenuity, is highly worthy of the
attention of any student, either of society or of the human mind.
There is scarcely an objection or a difficulty which Fourier did not
forsee, and against which he did not make provision beforehand by
self-acting contrivances, grounded, however, upon a less high
principle of distributive justice than that of Communism, since he
admits inequalities of distribution and individual ownership of
capital, but not the arbitrary disposal of it. The great problem which
he grapples with is how to make labor attractive, since, if this
could be done, the principal difficulty of Socialism would be
overcome. He maintains that no kind of useful labor is necessarily or
universally repugnant, unless either excessive in amount or devoid of
the stimulus of companionship and emulation, or regarded by mankind
with contempt. The workers in a Fourierist village are to class
themselves spontaneously in groups, each group undertaking a different
kind of work, and the same person may be a member not only of one
group but of any number; a certain minimum having first been set apart
for the subsistence of every member of the community, whether capable
or not of labor, the society divides the remainder of the produce
among the different groups, in such shares as it finds attract to each
the amount of labor required, and no more; if there is too great a run
upon particular groups it is a sign that those groups are
over-remunerated relatively to others; if any are neglected their
remuneration must be made higher. The share of produce assigned to
each group is divided in fixed proportions among three elements--labor,
capital, and talent; the part assigned to talent being awarded by the
suffrages of the group itself, and it is hoped that among the variety
of human capacities all, or nearly all, will be qualified to excel in
some group or other. The remuneration for capital is to be such as is
found sufficient to induce savings from individual consumption, in
order to increase the common stock to such point as is desired. The
number and ingenuity of the contrivances for meeting minor
difficulties, and getting rid of minor inconveniencies, is very
remarkable. By means of these various provisions it is the expectation
of Fourierists that the personal inducements to exertion for the public
interest, instead of being taken away, would be made much greater than
at present, since every increase of the service rendered would be much
more certain of leading to increase of reward than it is now, when
accidents of position have so much influence. The efficiency of labor,
they therefore expect, would be unexampled, while the saving of labor
would be prodigious, by diverting to useful occupations that which is
now wasted on things useless or hurtful, and by dispensing with the
vast number of superfluous distributors, the buying and selling for the
whole community being managed by a single agency. The free choice of
individuals as to their manner of life would be no further interfered
with than would be necessary for gaining the full advantages of
co-operation in the industrial operations. Altogether, the picture of a
Fourierist community is both attractive in itself and requires less
from common humanity than any other known system of Socialism; and it
is much to be desired that the scheme should have that fair trial which
alone can test the workableness of any new scheme of social life.[9]
The result of our review of the various difficulties of Socialism has
led us to the conclusion that the various schemes for managing the
productive resources of the country by public instead of private
agency have a case for a trial, and some of them may eventually
establish their claims to preference over the existing order of
things, but that they are at present workable only by the _elite_ of
mankind, and have yet to prove their power of training mankind at
large to the state of improvement which they presuppose. Far more, of
course, may this be said of the more ambitious plan which aims at
taking possession of the whole land and capital of the country, and
beginning at once to administer it on the public account. Apart from
all consideration of injustice to the present possessors, the very
idea of conducting the whole industry of a country by direction from a
single centre is so obviously chimerical, that nobody ventures to
propose any mode in which it should be done; and it can hardly be
doubted that if the revolutionary Socialists attained their immediate
object, and actually had the whole property of the country at their
disposal, they would find no other practicable mode of exercising
their power over it than that of dividing it into portions, each to be
made over to the administration of a small Socialist community. The
problem of management, which we have seen to be so difficult even to a
select population well prepared beforehand, would be thrown down to be
solved as best it could by aggregations united only by locality, or
taken indiscriminately from the population, including all the
malefactors, all the idlest and most vicious, the most incapable of
steady industry, forethought, or self-control, and a majority who,
though not equally degraded, are yet, in the opinion of Socialists
themselves as far as regards the qualities essential for the success
of Socialism, profoundly demoralised by the existing state of society.
It is saying but little to say that the introduction of Socialism
under such conditions could have no effect but disastrous failure, and
its apostles could have only the consolation that the order of society
as it now exists would have perished first, and all who benefit by it
would be involved in the common ruin--a consolation which to some of
them would probably be real, for if appearances can be trusted the
animating principle of too many of the revolutionary Socialists is
hate; a very excusable hatred of existing evils, which would vent
itself by putting an end to the present system at all costs even to
those who suffer by it, in the hope that out of chaos would arise a
better Kosmos, and in the impatience of desperation respecting any
more gradual improvement. They are unaware that chaos is the very most
unfavorable position for setting out in the construction of a Kosmos,
and that many ages of conflict, violence, and tyrannical oppression
of the weak by the strong must intervene; they know not that they
would plunge mankind into the state of nature so forcibly described by
Hobbes (_Leviathan_, Part I. ch. xiii.), where every man is enemy to
every man:--
"In such condition there is no place for industry, because the
fruit thereof is uncertain, and consequently no culture of the
earth, no navigation, no use of the commodities that may be
imported by sea, no commodious building, no instruments of
moving and removing such things as require much force, no
knowledge of the face of the earth, no account of time, no arts,
no letters, no society; and, which is worst of all, continual
fear and danger of violent death; and the life of man solitary,
poor, nasty, brutish, and short."
If the poorest and most wretched members of a so-called civilised
society are in as bad a condition as every one would be in that worst
form of barbarism produced by the dissolution of civilised life, it
does not follow that the way to raise them would be to reduce all
others to the same miserable state. On the contrary, it is by the aid
of the first who have risen that so many others have escaped from the
general lot, and it is only by better organization of the same process
that it may be hoped in time to succeed in raising the remainder.