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SOCIALISM

Works by the same Author

HISTORICAL PHILOSOPHY IN FRANCE
AND FRENCH BELGIUM AND
SWITZERLAND, 1894.

VICO (Blackwood's Philosophical Classics),
1884.

THEISM (Baird Lectures for 1876), 8th edition,
1893.

ANTI-THEISTIC THEORIES (Baird Lec-
tures for 1877), 5th edition, 1894.

WILLIAM BLACKWOOD AND SONS

LONDON AND EDINBURGH

SOC IALISM

BY

ROBERT FLINT

I*

PROFESSOR IN THE UNIVERSITY OF EDINBURGH

LONDON
ISBISTER AND COMPANY LIMITED

15 & 16 TAVISTOCK STREET COVENT GARDEN
1894

Printed by BALLANTYNE, HANSON & Co
London and Edinburgh.

PREFACE

K l.v:

THE first eight chapters of the following work are
an enlarged and otherwise considerably altered form
of a series of eight papers on Socialism contributed
to Good Words in 1890-1.

The series itself originated in, and partly repro-
duced, a course of lectures delivered in Edinburgh
a few winters previously before an audience chiefly
of working men.

More than half of the work, however, is new ;
and has been written at intervals during the last
two summers.

A book thus composed must necessarily have
defects from which one written only with a view to
publication in book form would have been free.

The author has been prevented by more urgent
demands on his time from adding to it two
chapters for which he had prepared notes, one

215155

vi PREFACE

on " Socialism and Art," and another on " Socialism
and Science."

He trusts that, notwithstanding these and other
defects, its publication may not be considered
wholly unwarranted.

JOHNSTONS LODGE, CRAIQMILLAR PAEK,
EDINBURGH.

December, 1894.

CONTENTS

CHAP. PAGE

I. WHAT IS SOCIALISM? 9

SUPPLEMENTARY NOTE 23

II. HISTORY OF SOCIALISM 28

SUPPLEMENTARY NOTE — BRITISH SOCIALISM . . 47

III. COMMUNISM, COLLECTIVISM, INDIVIDUALISM, AND STATE

INTERVENTION 55

SUPPLEMENTARY NOTE 8 1

IV. SOCIALISM AND LABOUR IOI

SUPPLEMENTARY NOTE — MARXIAN DOCTRINE OF

LABOUR 136

\ . SOCIALISM AND CAPITAL 157

SUPPLEMENTARY NOTE — MARXIAN DOCTRINE OF

CAPITAL 183

VI. NATIONALISATION OF THE LAND 2O2

VII. THE COLLECTIVISATION OF CAPITAL 23!

SUPPLEMENTARY NOTE 250

VIII. SOCIALISM AND SOCIAL ORGANISATION .... 256

IX. SOCIALISM AND DEMOCRACY 2Q9

X. SOCIALISM AND MORALITY 344

XI. SOCIALISM AND RELIGION 427

SUPPLEMENTARY NOTE 493

INDEX 499

CHAPTER I.

WHAT IS SOCIALISM?

SOCIALISM is undoubtedly spreading. It is, therefore,
right and expedient that its teachings, its claims, its
tendencies, its accusations and promises, should be
honestly and seriously examined. There may, indeed,
be persons who think that to treat of it at all is
unwise, and will only help to propagate it. Such
is not my opinion. It seems to me that there are
good and true elements in Socialism ; and these I
wish to see spread, and hope that discussion will
contribute to their diffusion. There are also, in my
judgment, bad and false elements in Socialism ; and
I have not so poor an opinion of human nature as
to believe that the more these are scrutinised the
more will they be admired.

I propose to discuss Socialism in a way that will be
intelligible to working men. It appeals specially
t<> them. It is above all their cause that its
advocates undertake to plead, and their sympathies
that they seek to gain. It is on the ground that it
alone satisfies the claims of justice in relation to the
labouring classes that Socialists urge the acceptance

io SOCIALISM

of their system. I cast no doubt on the sincerity of
their professions or the purity of their motives in this
respect. I believe that Socialism has its deepest and
strongest root in a desire for the welfare of the
masses who toil hard and gain little. I grant freely
that it has had among its adherents many men of
the stuff of which heroes and martyrs are made :
men who have given up all to which ordinary men
cling most tenaciously, and who have welcomed
obloquy and persecution, poverty and death itself,
for what they deemed the cause of righteous-
ness and brotherhood. But the best-intentioned
men are sometimes greatly mistaken ; and Socialism
might prove the reverse of a blessing to working men,
although those who are pressing it on them may
mean them well. At all events, those who are so
directly appealed to regarding it seem specially called
to try to form as correct a judgment on it as they
can, and to hear what can be said both against
it and for it.

This is all the more necessary because of what
Socialism aims at and undertakes to do. It is
not a system merely of amendment, improvement,
reform. On the contrary, it distinctly pronounces
every system of that sort to be inadequate, and seeks
to produce an entire renovation of society, to effect
a revolution of momentous magnitude. It does not
propose simply to remedy defects in the existing
condition of our industrial and social life. It holds
that condition to be essentially wrong, radically
unjust : and, therefore, demands that its whole
character be changed ; that society organise itself

WHAT IS SOCIALISM? n

on entirely different principles from those on which
it has hitherto rested ; and that it proceed on quite
new lines and in quite another direction. Now, any
very busy man may, perhaps, with some fair measure
of reason, excuse himself from coming to any decision
at all on so radical and ambitious, so vast and
sweeping a scheme ; but certainly any person inclined
to entertain it should very seriously discuss it before
committing himself to it ; and any one asked to
accept it should think oftener than twice before he
assents.

We have no right, it is true, to assume that the
existing order of society will not pass away, or that
the new order which Socialism recommends will not
displace it. All history is a process of incessant
change, and so a continuous protest against the
conservatism which would seek to perpetuate any
present. But neither is it a series of revolutions.
Rather is it a process of evolution in which revolution
is rare and exceptional. It is doubtful if any of the
violent revolutions of history might not have been
averted, with advantage to mankind, by timely and
gradual reforms. There is certainly a legitimate
presumption against readily believing in the necessity
or desirableness of social revolution.

The term " Socialism " is not yet sixty years old.
It is a disputed point whether it first arose in the
school of Owen ; or was invented by Pierre Leroux,
the author of a system known as "Humanitarianism;"
or had for author Louis Reybaud, a well known
publicist and a severe critic of Socialism.

J. S. Mill, in his " Political Economy," says " the

12 SOCIALISM

word orignated among the English Communists,"^
but he adduces no evidence for the statement, and
does not assign a date to the alleged origination.
Mr. Kirkup, in his " History of Socialism," tells us
that it was "coined in England in 1835.'^ In
proof he merely refers to the following statement in
Mr. Holyoake's " History of Co-operation " (vol. i.
p. 210, ed. 1875) : "The term Socialism was first
introduced on the formation of the Society of All
Classes of All Nations, the members of which came
to be known as socialists." But the statement is
self-contradictory. If the members of the Society
referred to only " came to be known as socialists "
the term Socialism was certainly not "first introduced
on the formation of the Society" but after the Society
had been formed. How long after ? That Mr.
Holyoake has not told us ; nor has he supported
his statement by any confirmatory quotations or
references. The term Socialism may, perhaps, have
originated in England ; may even, perhaps, have
been coined there in 1835 ; but, so far as I am aware,
no evidence has been adduced that such was the
case, nor any information afforded as to how the
term was employed by those who are said to have
first used it in England. The matter will no doubt
be cleared up in due time either by some private
inquirer or in the great English Dictionary edited
by Dr. Murray.

* Book II. ch. i. sec. 2. t P. i.

\ From October 1836 onwards the terms " Socialist" and "Socialism,"
are of frequent occurrence in " The New Moral World," conducted by
Robert Owen and his disciples.

WHAT IS SOCIALISM? 13

M. Leroux claimed* to have originated the word
with the design of opposing it to " Individualism,"
a term which came somewhat earlier into use ; and
there is nothing improbable in the claim. But
M. Hey baud certainly preceded him in the employ-
ment of the word in print. He first made use of it
in August 1836, when he began a series of articles on
" Modern Socialists " in the Revue des Deux Mondes.
He employed it as a general term for the same
group of systems which had been previously desig-
nated " Industrialism " by D'Eckstein and some
other French writers, t

The word rapidly gained currency, because it was
generally felt to be required in order to denote the
schemes of social organisation which had been crop-
ping up in France from the beginning of the century,
and which, between 1836 and 1848, appeared, as
De Tocqueville said, " almost every morning like
mushrooms that had grown up during the night."
Thus we have got the word, and we are not likely
to lose it from want of occasions of hearing it or of
opportunities of using it.

A definition of Socialism may be demanded, and
one which will satisfy both Socialists and their
opponents. I not only do not pretend to give any
such definition, but consider it unreasonable to ask
for it. If Socialists and anti-Socialists could agree

o

at starting they would not fall out by the way.
The whole controversy between them has for end to

* In the "Journal des ticonomistes," July 1878.

t In Littre's dictionary we find no information as to the history of
•either the term SociaUsme or Indiciduali*

14 SOCIALISM

determine whether the relevant facts — the doctrines,
proposals, and practices of what avows itself to be,
and is generally called, Socialism — warrant its
being defined as something essentially good or as
something essentially bad. The adherents and the
opponents of Socialism must necessarily define it in
contrary ways ; and no further agreement can
reasonably be expected from them at the outset
than agreement so to define it as to express their
respective views of its nature, and then to proceed
to examine honestly whether the facts testify for
or against their respective definitions.

Were it only because it is important to see
clearly the vanity of expecting as much from
definitions of Socialism as is generally done, it seems
desirable to refer to some of those which have been
proposed. The great French dictionary — the dic-
tionary of the Academy — thus defines it : " The
doctrine of men who pretend to change the State,
and to reform it, on an altogether new plan." This
definition makes nothing clear except that the
Academicians were not Socialists. There is nothing
necessarily socialist in pretending to change the
state of society and to reform it ; nothing precise in
saying " on an altogether new plan," unless the
character of the plan be indicated, for it might be
new and yet not socialist, but anti-socialist ; and no
warrant even for representing socialist plans as
" altogether new," they being in reality, for the
most part, very old. The French Academy's
definition of Socialism is, in fact, very like the
medical student's famed definition of the lobster, as

WHAT IS SOCIALISM? 15

"a red fish which moves backwards "- —the creature
not being a fish, or red, or. moving backwards.

Littre in his dictionary often succeeded where
the Academicians failed, but not when he gave the
following as a definition of Socialism : "A system
which, regarding political reforms as of subordinate
importance, offers a plan of social reform." This is,
if possible, worse. It is to identify Socialism with
social reform, than which nothing can be more
inaccurate. Socialism generally claims to be social
revolution, and not merely social reform. It is by
no means a characteristic of Socialism to subordinate
the political to the social. The most advanced
Socialism seeks to revolutionise society by political
means, by the power of the State ; no class of men
believe more than Socialists do in the possibility
of making men good and happy by Acts of
Parliament — are more under the influence of what
Herbert Spencer calls " the great political supersti-
tion."

Passing over many other definitions let us come
at • once to those used by Mr. Hyndman and Mr.
Bradlaugh in their debate at St. James's Hall,
April 1 7th, 1884, on the question, "Will Socialism
benefit the English people ? " Mr. Hyndman 's was,
" Socialism is an endeavour to substitute for the
anarchical struggle or fight for existence an organised
co-operation for existence." Well, Socialism may
be that ; yet that cannot be an accurate and adequate
definition of Socialism. Few will deny that men
ought to substitute organisation for anarchy, and
co-operation for struggling or fighting, whenever

16 SOCIALISM

they can do so consistently with their independence
and freedom. But there is the point. Socialists have
no monopoly of appreciation of organised co-operation.
It is not in this respect that the great majority of
people differ from them : it is that they are
unwilling to be organised at the cost of their
liberty ; that they wish to be free to determine on
what conditions they are to co-operate ; that they
do not see how the organised co-operation suggested
is to be realised except through a despotism to
which they are not prepared to submit.

Mr. Bradlaugh succeeded much better, and, indeed,
as against Mr. Hyndman, perfectly. " Socialism,"
he said, " denies individual private property and
affirms that society organised as the State should
own all wealth, direct all labour, and compel the
equal distribution of all produce." This is a good
definition of the Socialism of the Social Democratic
Federation. It is a good definition, one may
perhaps even say, of all self- consistent political
Socialism which is likely to be of much political
significance. But there are many forms of Socialism
which are not self-consistent, and many more which
are never likely to have any political influence.
There is a Socialism which limits its dislike to
" individual private property," as property in land.
There is a Socialism which deems that the State
should appropriate the wealth of individuals only
when their wealth is beyond a certain amount.
There is a Socialism, as Leroy-Beaulieu observes,
which would allow the mistress of a household to be
the proprietress of a sewing-needle but by no means

WHAT IS SOCIALISM? 17

of a sewing-machine. And there is much Socialism
which would not go the length of Communism
and " compel the equal distribution of all produce."
So that Mr. Bradlaugh's definition although a good
working definition for the occasion, and not logically
assailable by his opponent, is not co-extensive with,
or applicable to, all forms of the thing sought to be
defined.

Perhaps M. Leroux, who professed to have in-
vented the word Socialism, came as near as any one
lias done towards correctly defining it. He was
what most people would call a Socialist, but he did
not deem himself such, and did not use the term to
denote a true system. He opposed it, as he said,
to Individualism, and so he defined it as " a political
organisation in which the individual is sacrificed to
society." The definition may be improved by the
omission of the word " political," for the obvious
reason that there may be, and has been, a Socialism
not political but religious. The most thoroughgoing
Socialism has generally been of a religious kind.
Where the entire sacrifice of the will and interests
of the individual to the ends of a community are
demanded, as in Communism, the only motive
sufficiently strong to secure it for any considerable
length of time, even in a small society, is the religious
motive.

Socialism, then, as I understand it, is any theory
of social organisation which sacrifices the legitimate
liberties of individuals to the will or interests of the
community. I do not think we can get much farther
in the way of definition. The thing to be defined is

i8 SOCIALISM

of its very nature vague, and to present what is
vague as definite is to misrepresent it. No definition
of Socialism at once true and precise has ever been
given, or ever will be given. For Socialism is essen-
tially indefinite, indeterminate. It is a tendency
-and movement towards an extreme. It may be
very great or very small ; it may manifest itself in
the most diverse social and historical connections ;
it may assume, and has assumed, a multitude of
forms. It may show itself merely in slight inter-
ferences with the liberties of very small classes of
individuals ; or it may demand that no individual
shall be allowed to be a capitalist or a proprietor, a
•drawer of interest or a taker of rent ; or be entitled
even to have a wife or children to himself. It is the
opposite of Individualism, which is similarly variable
and indeterminate in its nature, so that it may
manifest itself merely by rather too much dread of
over-legislation, or may go so far as seek the suppres-
sion of all government and legislation. Socialism is
the exaggeration of the rights and claims of society,
just as Individualism is the exaggeration of the
rights and claims of individuals. The latter system
rests on excessive or exclusive faith in individual
independence ; the former system rests on excessive
or exclusive faith in social authority. Both systems
are one-sided and sectarian — as most " isms " are.

According to this view, there may be much truth
in Socialism, as there may be much truth in Indi-
vidualism, but there cannot be either a true Socialism
or a true Individualism. The truth lies between
them, yet is larger than either. The true doctrine

WHAT IS SOCIALISM? 19

of society must include the truth, while excluding
the error, both of Individualism and of Socialism. It
must be a doctrine which, while fully recognising
all the just claims of society, fully acknowledges
also all the rights of the individuals composing
society. The Socialist, of course, supposes his
Socialism to be just such a doctrine, and he may
claim or attempt so to define it. But obviously the
most extreme Individualist must believe the same
of his Individualism, and has as good a right to
define it as if it were the whole doctrine, and the
only true doctrine, of society. The Individualist no
more wishes to destroy society than the Socialist to
suppress liberty : they agree in desiring to be just
both to society and the individual. But notwith-
standing this agreement, they differ ; and when we
seek to distinguish them, and to define their systems,
it is not with the mere general purpose or aim which
they share in common, but with the specific charac-
teristic in regard to which they differ, that we are
concerned. Now, wherein they differ is, that the
Socialist, while he may not mean to rob the in-
dividual of any portion of his rightful liberty, insists
on assigning to society powers incompatible with
due individual liberty ; and that the Individualist,
while he may be anxious that society should be
organised in the way most advantageous to all,
deems individuals entitled to a freedom which would
dissolve and destroy society. Neither Socialism nor
Individualism can, with any propriety, be accepted
as the true form of social organisation, or its doctrine
identified with Sociology or the science of society.

20 SOCIALISM

All definitions of Socialism which characterise it
by any feature not essential and peculiar are
necessarily futile and misleading. The following is
a specimen of the class : " Socialism is a theory of
social evolution, based on a new principle of economic
organisation, according to which industry should be
carried on by co-operative workers jointly controlling
the means of production." ^ Here Socialism is
identified with industrial partnership, which is
certainly not "a new principle of economic organisa-
tion ; " and in which there is, properly speaking,
nothing whatever of a socialistic nature.

J. S. Mill's definition may seem to resemble the
preceding, but is in reality essentially different :
" Socialism is any system which requires that the
land and the instruments of production should be
the property, not of individuals, but of communities
or associations, or of the Government." t This defini-
tion is defective, inasmuch as it does not apply, as
Mr. Mill himself admitted, to Communisii, which is
the most thorough -going Socialism, the entire
abolition of private property. It is, however, a
good and honest definition so far as it extends, or
was meant to extend. It expressly states that
Socialism not merely favours industrial partnership,
but recognises no other form of economic organisa-
tion as legitimate, and accordingly demands the
suppression of all individual property in the means
of production.

The mode in which I understand, and in which I

* Kirkup's " Inquiry into Socialism," p. 125.

f " Political Economy," p. 125. People's edition.

WHAT IS SOCIALISM? 21

mean to employ the term Socialism, will not, I am
a ware, commend itself to those who call themselves
Socialists. I do not ask or expect any Socialist who
may read this and the following chapter to assent to
the view or definition of Socialism which I have here
given. I ask and expect him merely to note in what
sense I purpose using the word, namely, to denote
onlv social doctrines, or proposals which I think I
may safely undertake to prove require such a
sacrifice, of the individual to society as society is not
entitled to exact. I claim the right to define
Socialism frankly and avowedly from my own point
•of view — the non-socialistic.

But I fully admit that there is a duty corre-
sponding to the right. It is the duty of not
attempting to reason from my definition as if it
were an absolute truth, or as if it were one to
which Socialists assent. Such a definition is merely
an affirmation which the opponent of Socialism must
undertake to show holds good of any system which
he condemns as Socialism, and which an advocate of
Socialism must undertake to show does not hold
good of the system which he himself recommends.

Any one not a Socialist must, as I have said, define
Socialism in a way which will imply that it neces-
sarily involves injustice to individuals. The Socialist
will be apt to say that in doing so one starts with
the assumption that Socialism is false and wrong, in
order, by means of the assumption, to condemn it
Bfl Mich. And the charge will be justified if one
really judges of the character of any so-called
socialistic system by his definition of Socialism.

22 SOCIALISM

But this is what no reasonable and fair-minded
man will do. Such a man will examine any system
on its own merits, and decide by an unbiassed
examination of it as it is in itself whether or not it
does justice to individuals ; and all that he will do
with his definition will be to determine whether,
when compared with it, the system in question is
to be called socialistic or not. There is nothing
unfair or unreasonable in this. It is not judging of
Socialism by an unfavourable definition of it ; but
only deciding, after an investigation which may be,
and should be, uninfluenced by the definition,
whether the definition be applicable or not.

What has been said as to the nature of Socialism
may, however, indicate what ought to be the answer
to a question which has been much debated, namely
—Is it a merely temporary phase of historical de-
velopment, or its inevitable issue ? Is it a trouble-
some dream which must soon pass away ; or a
fatal disease the germs of which the social constitu-
tion bears in it from the first and under whicli it
must at last succumb ; or the glorious goal to which
humanity is gradually moving ? On the view of its
nature here adopted, it is not exactly any of these
things. It is neither merely accidental nor purely
essential. It arises from principles inherent in the
life and necessary to the welfare of society ; but it
does not spring from them inevitably, and is the
one-sided exaggeration of them. Inasmuch, how-
ever, as truth underlies and originates it, and the
exaggeration of that truth is always easy, and
sometimes most difficult to avoid, without being

WHAT IS SOCIALISM' 23

strictly necessary it is extremely natural ; and society
can never be sure that it will ever on earth get free
of it, while it may be certain that it will have to
pass through crises and conjunctures in which it
will find Socialism a very grave matter to deal with.
Society has always the Scylla and Charybdis of
Socialism and Individualism on its right hand and its
left, and it is never without danger from the one or
the other. It is sometimes, of course, in much more
danger from the one than from the other.

o

SUPPLEMENTARY NOTE.

It may not be without use to lay before the reader a few more
definitions of Socialism. It is very desirable that we should
realise how vague and ambiguous the term is, and how indis-
pensable it is to ascertain on all occasions what those who use it
mean by it.

When Proudhon, on examination before a magistrate after
the days of June in 1848, was asked, What is Socialism? he
replied, " Every aspiration towards the amelioration of society."
" In that case," said the magistrate, "we are all Socialists."
" That is precisely what I think," said Proudhon. It is to be
regretted that he was not further asked, What, then, was the
use of the definition ?

Mr. Kaufman's definition reminds us of Proudhon's. After
making the entirely erroneous statement that " the very name "
of Socialism means nothing else but " the betterment of society,"
he tells us that he himself includes under it " Communism,
Collectivism, and every systematic effort under whatever name,
to improve society according to some theory more or less
explicitly defined." See " Subjects of the Day," No. 2, p. i.

Littre, in a discussion on Socialism contained in his " Paroles
de Philosophic Positive," somewhat similarly says, " Socialism is
a tendency to modify the present state, under the impulse of an
idea of economic amelioration, and by the discussion and inter-
vention of the labouring classes," p. 394. He had already, in

24 SOCIALISM

another discussion to be found in the same volume, given a far
more extraordinary definition : " Socialism is a word felicitously
devised (heureusement trouve) to designate a whole of senti-
ments, without implying any doctrine," p. 376.

I have not been able to find that Karl Marx has given
any formal definition of Socialism. Mr. Holyoake states that
he defines the " Socialistic ideal as nothing else than the
material world reflected by the human mind, and translated
into powers of thought," and remarks that " it would require
an insurrection to get the idea into the heads of any considerable
number of persons" ("Subjects of the Day," No. 2, p. 96).
This is a very curious mistake. The words of Marx are : " With
me the ideal is nothing else than the material world reflected by
the human mind and translated into forms of thought." See
pref. to 2nd ed. of ''Capital."

Bebel's definition is very pretentious and unreasonable :
•" Socialism is science applied with clear consciousness and full
knowledge to every sphere of human activity " (" Die Frau," p.
376, i3th ed., 1892).

According to Adolf Held, " We can only call Socialism every
tendency which demands any kind of subordination of the
individual will to the community " (" Sozialismus, Sozialdemo-
kratie, und Sozialpolitik," p. 29). Were this so, all but thorough
Anarchists — Anarchists more thorough than any who have yet
appeared — would be Socialists.

Dr. Barry, in his admirable " Lectures on Christianity and
Socialism," while professedly admitting Held's definition to be
satisfactory, gives as its equivalent what is really a much better
one : " Socialism must, I take it, properly mean the emphasising
and cultivating to a predominant power all the socialising forces
— all the forces, that is, which represent man's social nature and
assert the sovereignty of human society ; just as Individualism is
the similar emphasis and cultivation of the energy, the freedom,
the rights of each man as individual " (p. 22). What, however,
do these words precisely _imply ? If a theory of society do
justice alike to the claims of the individual and of the com-
munity, or if a man sacrifice neither the individualising ener-
gies of his nature to its socialising forces, nor the latter to the
former, but duly cultivate both, there is no more reason, even

WHAT IS SOCIALISM? 25

according to the definitions given, for describing that man or
that theory as socialistic than as individualistic, or as indi-
vidualistic than as socialistic, and if you either describe them
as both, or apply the terms to them indiscriminately, the words
Socialism and Individualism cease to have any distinctive mean-
ing. It is only when in theory or in life the emphasising of the
social forces is carried to excess relatively to the individual
energies, or vice versa, that either Socialism or Individualism
emerges. But if so, Dr. Barry should define them just as I do,
and recognise as of the very essence of both a departure from
truth, a disregard of order and proportion.

Bishop Westcott, in a paper read at the Church Congress,
Hull, Oct. ist, 1890,* treated of Socialism in a way which justly
attracted much attention. He identified Socialism with an
ideal of life very elevated and true, and recommended that
ideal in words of great power and beauty. I can cordially
admire his noble pleading for a grand ideal. I am only unable
to perceive that the term Socialism should be identified with that
ideal. He says : " The term Socialism has been discredited by
its connection with many extravagant and revolutionary schemes,
but it is a term which needs to be claimed for nobler uses. It has
no necessary affinity with any forms of violence, or confiscation,
or class selfishness, or financial arrangement. I shall therefore
venture to employ it apart from its historical associations as
•describing a theory of life, and not only a theory of economics.
In this sense Socialism is the opposite of Individualism, and it is
by contrast with Individualism that the true character of Socialism
can best be discerned. Individualism and Socialism correspond
with opposite views of humanity. Individualism regards humanity
as made up of disconnected or warring atoms ; Socialism regards
it as an organic whole, a vital unity formed by the combination
of contributory members mutually inter-dependent. It follows
that Socialism differs from Individualism both in method and in
aim. The method of Socialism is co-operation, the method of
Individualism is competition. The one regards man as working
with man for a common end, the other regards man as working

* Now republished in th3 volume entitled "The Incarnation and
•Common Life."

26 SOCIALISM

against man for private gain. The aim of Socialism is the fulfil-
ment of service, the aim of Individualism is the attainment of
some personal advantage, riches, or place, or fame. Socialism
seeks such an organisation of life as shall secure for every one the
most complete development of his powers. Individualism seeks-
primarily the satisfaction of the particular wants of each one in
the hope that the pursuit of private interest will in the end
secure public welfare " (" Socialism," pp. 3—4).

Now, it seems to me that to dissociate the term Socialism from
the forms in which Socialism has manifested itself in history,,
and to claim it for nobler uses than to express what is distinctive
of them, is too generous. What we really need the term for is-
to designate a species of actual schemes ; and to define it aright
we must understand by it what is characteristic of all schemes of
that species. If nothing but good be admitted into the definition
of the term, while the chief or only historical schemes which have-
an unquestioned right to the name are essentially evil, these
schemes must derive from the name and its definition a credit and
advantage to which they are not entitled. And if we are thus
generous to Socialism we must be less than just to Individualism.
Conceiving of it as the opposite of a system wholly good, we-
must regard it as a system wholly evil. An Individualism which
views individuals as entirely unconnected and independent, which
excludes co-operation, which deems the good of one as important
as the good of many or all, is one which I cannot find to have-
existed. A Socialism which really regards humanity as an
organic whole will also be difficult to discover. In its two-
great forms of Communism and Collectivism, Socialism is of all
economic and political systems the one which most manifestly
treats humanity as merely a mass or sum of individuals. The
" society " to which it sacrifices individuals is just the majority
of individuals. What it aims at is not the realisation of that true-
ideal of society which Bishop Westcott calls Socialism ; it is not
the attainment of the highest good of the whole and of every one
in relation to the whole, but the attainment of the equal good
of all, however much sacrifice of the exceptional and higher good
of any may be required for that purpose. Socialism as an
historical reality demands the equality of individuals in regard
to means, opportunities, labour, and enjoyment. It directly

WHAT IS SOCIALISM? 27

appeals to the egoism and selfishness of the great majority of
individuals. In the words of Mr. Bosanquet, " the basis of
Socialism is as yet individualistic, the State being regarded, not
as a society organic to good life, but as a machine subservient to
the individual's needs qud individual." But, it may be said, does
that not of itself justify the employment of the term to signify
the true theory of society ? It seems to me that it does not, and
for two reasons : first, because it is not in itself desirable to
designate the true theory of society an ism ; and second, because
those who maintain an erroneous theory of society are in actual
possession of the name Socialists, and will not forego their right
to retain it. Therefore, I think, we ought to restrict the term
Socialism as much as we can to their creed. That the term is
already far too widely and vaguely used needs no other proof
than the number of men recognised as eminently wise who have
been befooled by it to such an extent as to tell us that " we are
all Socialists now."

The following definitions may be added : — " We call Socialism
every doctrine which affirms that it is the office of the State to
correct the inequality of wealth which exists among men, and to
re-establish by law equilibrium, by taking from those who have
too much in order to give to those who have not enough, and that
in a permanent manner, and not in such and such a particular
case, a famine, for instance, or a public catastrophe, &c." (P.
Janet, " Les Origines du Socialisme Contemporain," p. 67). — "In
the first place, every Socialistic doctrine aims at introducing
greater equality into social conditions ; and secondly, it tries
to realise these reforms by the action of the law or the State "
(E. Laveleye, " Socialism of To-day," p. xv.). — " The word
Socialism has but one signification : it denotes a doctrine which
demands the suppression of the proletariat and the complete
remission of wealth and power into the hands of the com-
munity (collectivite)" (T. De Wyzewa, " Le Mouvement So-
cialite," p. in.) — " Socialism is the economic philosophy of the
sufl'dini: rlasx-s." (H. v. Scheel in " Schonbergs Handb. der pol.
Oekonoinie," Bd. i. 107.)

CHAPTER II.

HISTORY OF SOCIALISM.

IF we desire to form an intelligent estimate of
Socialism we should not fail to take due account of
its history. Here I can only make a few, seemingly
indispensable, remarks on that history.*

We have of late years heard much about Primi-
tive Socialism. I object to the designation when-
ever it is used to imply that Socialism was the
primitive condition of man. We do riot know what
the primitive condition of man was. Recent science
and research have enabled us to see much farther
back into the past than our forefathers could, but
they have not yet reached results which entitle
us either to affirm or deny that history began with
Socialism.

Two views of Primitive Socialism are prevalent,
and they are essentially different, delineating two
distinct social states, one of which only can have

* Of histories of Socialism, Malon's " Histoire du Socialisme," a five-
volumed work, is the fullest of information. In English, Kae's "Con-
temporary Socialism," Laveleye's "Socialism of To-day" (translated),
Graham's "Socialism New and Old," and Kirkup's " History of Socialism/'
are all valuable. KudoJph Meyer's " Emancipationskampf des Vierten
Standes," 2 vols., is a laborious compilation of facts, and rich in
documentary sources. Reybaud, Stein, Ihonissen, Franck, Janet, Jiiger,
Adler, and many others have done good work as historians of the sccialistic
movement.

HISTORY OF SOCIALISM 29

been primitive, while both might be secondary, the
one as a stage of degradation and the other as a
stage of improvement. According to McLennan,
Lubbock, and a host of other scientists, humanity
was cradled in a coarse and brutal Communism. In
their view, the earliest human societies knew neither
a separate family life nor private property, being
ignorant of any other laws than those of inclina-
tion and force. If this representation of man's first
estate be correct we have only to congratulate our-
selves that Primitive Socialism lies so far behind
us, for it was not only man's earliest but his lowest
and least human condition.

What is most generally meant by Primitive
Socialism, however, is a much higher state, one
comparatively moral and civilised. Greek and
Roman poets sang of a golden age, when poverty
and avarice were unknown, when there was na
violence or fraud, and when all things were in
abundance and in common. It is now claimed that,
modern historical investigation has discovered this
golden age of ancient tradition, and that it is the
true Primitive Socialism. Maurer, Maine, and many
others, have exhibited a vast amount of evidence,
tending to prove that in the history of every
country inhabited by any division of the Aryan
race, and of not a few countries lying beyond the
Aryan area, there was a time when the soil was
distributed among groups of self-styled kinsmen,
and when private property in land was scarcely
known or was non-existent. A very attractive and
popular view of the evidence for this conclusion has

30 SOCIALISM

been given by M. Laveleye in his well-known
work on " Primitive Property." In a general way
this historical theory seems legitimately and satis-
factorily established. But closer study is revealing
that it has been presented too absolutely, and
accepted without due criticism and limitation.
Much which Laveleye calls collective property
might more properly be called collective tenancy;
and much which he calls primitive is probably
not very old, and owed its existence largely to
the fact that in turbulent times kings and chiefs
could have got nothing out of isolated individuals ;
that only communities could cultivate land and pay
taxes or yield services. There is no evidence that
the land of the world was ever distributed among
peaceful agricultural communities, entirely indepen-
dent of lords and masters, within or without the
community.* On the other hand, the theory which
represented private property in land to have been
always and everywhere recognised and in force is
now entirely discredited. Property in movables
naturally preceded property in land ; and the collect-
ive tenure of land generally preceded, perhaps, its
individual tenure.

The stage of society in which land was occupied
by communities, not individuals, was one in which
men scarcely existed as individuals. The law and
the religion which corresponded to it knew next to

* In the latest (fourth) edition of his " De la Propriete et de ses Formes
Primitives," 1891, M. Laveleye replied carefully, and at considerable length,
to the objections of Fustel de Coulanges, Denman Ross, and other critics
of his theory ; but not, I think, conclusively.

HISTORY OF SOCIALISM 31

nothing of individuals ; they were concerned with
families and groups, in which no one felt with any
distinctness that he had rights and duties simply as
a man. When the claims of private judgment and
of independent action were thus not so much denied
and rejected as undiscovered and unimagined, what
is called " Primitive Socialism " may have been not
only the natural and appropriate form of organisa-
tion of human societies, but the only one which they
could assume. It is simply just to look back to it
with due recognition of its merits ; it must be foolish
to dream of recalling or restoring it. In every
progressive society it has been long outgrown.
Where it still lingers it must disappear as freedom
and energy increase. The natural childhood of
nations as of individuals lies behind them and can
never be recalled ; the only childhood which the
future can have in store for them is an unnatural
childhood, that second childhood of decadence which
is the sure forerunner of dissolution. When men
have once awakened to a sense of their rights and
duties as individuals, they can never again be con-
tent to think and act merely as members of a
community. When the persons who compose society
have each become conscious of a properly personal
life and destiny, the unconscious kind of Socialism is
henceforth impossible. The Socialism which alone
seriously concerns us is of a very different character.
It is a conscious Socialism, which knows itself and
knows its enemy ; which is the asserter of one class
of claims and rights and the denier of another ;
which is the vigilant, active combatant, sometimes

32 SOCIALISM

defeated, sometimes victorious, but never entirely
suppressed, and never completely successful, of
individuality and Individualism.^

In the nations of antiquity the individual was
sacrificed to the State ; but State-absolutism,
although clearly related to, is not to be identified
with Socialism. The sacrifices which it demands may
be political, not social ; sacrifices to the governing
power, not to the common interest. But what
makes the history of nations like Greece and
Rome of vast practical importance to a student of
Socialism is not so much any socialistic legislation
to which these nations had recourse, or any social-
istic theories to be found in some of their writers, as
the examples which they have left us of cultured
and powerful peoples ruined by failure to solve
aright "the social question." The direct and
immediate cause of the ruin of the Greek cities
was neither the falsity of their religion nor the
prevalence of slavery. The poor had political rights
and political power and they used them against the

* Koscher has shown (see his "Political Economy," book i., ch. v., sec.
78) that the idea of a community of goods, and schemes of a socialistic
character, have found favour especially in times when the following con-
ditions have met : — (A) A well-defined confrontation of rich and poor,
without any gradual and continuous passing of one class into another ;
(B) a high degree of the division of labour, by which, on the one hand,
the mutual dependence of men grows ever greater, but by which, at the
same time, the eye of the uncultivated man becomes less and less able to
perceive the connection existing between merit and reward, or service and
remuneration ; (C) a violent shaking or perplexing of public opinion as
regards the sense of right, by revolutions, particularly when they follow
rapidly on one another, and take opposite directions ; (D) a democratic
constitution of society, and the pretensions and feelings which it implies
or generates ; and (E) a general decay of religion and morals, and the
spread of atheistic and materialistic beliefs.

HISTORY OF SOCIALISM 33

rich to obtain equality of wealth, sometimes impos-
ing all the taxes upon them, sometimes confiscating
their i;oods, sometimes condemning them to death
or exile, sometimes abolishing debts, sometimes
equally dividing property. The rich resisted by \
all means in their power, by violence land fraud, ]
conspiracy and treason. Each Greek city thus
included, as it were, two hostile peoples, and civil
wars were incessant, the object in every war being,
as Polybius says, " to displace fortunes." This
ruined the Greek cities. Fifty years' agitation of the
social question in the same manner would be found
sufficient to ruin the strongest nations of modern
Europe, notwithstanding their freedom from slavery
and their profession of Christianity. Rome_s_uifered
and died from the same malady as Greece. Before
the close of the Republic she had twice experienced
a social revolution of the most sanguinary nature.
She sought a refuge and remedy in the Empire, and
at the expense of industry it fed and pampered an
idle population. This solution secured rest for a time,
but naturally ended in utter exhaustion and ruin.*

The series of socialistic ideals or Utopias which
have appeared in the world can be traced back to
that of Phileas of Chalcedon, about six centuries
before Christ.t Attempts to realise socialistic aspira-

* Prof. Pohlmann of Erlangen has published the first volume of a
contemplated elaborate " Geschichte des antiken Kommunismus und
Sozialismus," 1893.

f See the volume " Ideal Commonwealths," in Morley's Universal
/.(/;/•"/•//. the Rev. M. Kaufman's "Utopias: Schemes of Social Im-
provement from Sir Thos. More to Karl Marx," 1879 '•> and Fr. Klein-
wiichhter's " Die Staatromane. Ein Beitrag zur Lehre vom Communismus
und Socialismus," 1891.

C

34 SOCIALISM

tions and claims have been made in many lands and
ages, and in many forms and ways. Socialism is,
therefore, no new thing. It has, however, entered
on a new period of its history, and one which may
be very prolonged and very momentous.

The socialistic theories which appeared in France
even before the Revolution^ were merely antecedents
or preludes of the Socialism which at present pre-
vails. Saint-Simon, who died in i82_5, and Fourier,
who died in 1837, were its true founders. Both of
these extraorfeirary men left behind them disciples
strongly convinced that the reorganisation of society
on new principles, by the establishment of new
arrangements and institutions, and with a steady
view to the amelioration of the class the most
numerous and poor, was the most important and
urgent of all problems. Louis Blanc convinced a
multitude of his countrymen that the national
organisation of labour was one of the chief duties of
a Government. Proudhon, although a capricious
and unequal thinker on economic subjects, has,
perhaps, not been surpassed in critical keenness and
argumentative ingenuity by any later Socialist.
These and other French writers made Socialism in
its new phase known to all Europe, but for a con-
siderable time it remained almost confined to France.
It is no longer so. France is now far from being
the country most threatened by Socialism. Agrarian
Socialism has little chance of success in France,
owing to the relatively large number of its land-

* The theories referred to are those of Meslier, Morelly, Mably, Rousseau,
and Babeuf.

HISTORY OF SOCIALISM 35

owners. Anti-capitalist Socialism has no attraction
for the bourgeoisie, and can only move the masses in
the manufacturing towns in France, and these are
comparatively few in number. Socialism has, how-
ever, numerous adherents, sincere and effective
advocates, and skilful literary representatives in
France. French Socialism was no more slain on the
barricades of 1871 than on those of 1848.*

Every country of Europe has now been more or
less invaded by Socialism ; and, of course, all these
countries supply the United States of America with
advocates of it.t

In Spain and Italy it has taken a strong hold
of the peasantry, who are in many districts
grievously oppressed by excessive rent and taxa-
tion, and the result has been seen in various
local insurrections. In Switzerland it has been
extensively advocated by political refugees of various

* I have had occasion to treat at considerable length of Saint-Simon,
Fourier, Louis Blanc, Proudhon, Auguste Comte, and other French
Socialists, in my " Historical Philosophy in France and French Belgium
and Switzerland." Of contemporary French Socialism, MM. Guesde
and Lafargue are typical representatives. A politician like M. Naquet,
and an economist like M. Gide, do not seem to me to be Socialists
properly so-called.

t On the earlier history of American Socialism, Noyes* " History of
American Socialisms," 1870, gives most information. Of its later history,
the best account is A. Sartorius von Walterhausen's " Der Moderne
Socialismus in den Vereinigten Staaten von Amerika," 1870. See also
R T. Ely's "Labour Movement in America," 1886, Ed. and E. Marx-
Aveling's " Labour Movement in America," 1888, and N. P. Gillman's
"Socialism and the American Spirit," 1893. America has in Henry
George, Laurence Gronland, and Edward Bellamy, three exceptionally
interesting literary representatives of Socialism. Contemporary American
Socialism has been chiefly derived from Germany. Most of its journals
are in the German language. Of the eight •' Chicago Martyrs," five were

36 SOCIALISM

nationalities, but with little effect on the native
inhabitants. In Belgium, which has a dense agri-
cultural and manufacturing population, and where
labour is very poorly remunerated, socialistic doc-
trines and schemes are probably more prevalent than
in any other country.

Russia has given birth to a very strange system,
which one always finds classed as Socialism, and
which does not in general protest against being so
regarded — the system called Anarchism or Nihilism.
It is, however, in reality, rather the extreme and
extravagance of Individualism than a form of
Socialism ; and it is only just not to hold Socialism
responsible either for its principles or its practices.
It is an expression of the intense hatred to authority
which unlimited despotism has engendered in deeply
impressionable minds. It will hear of no authority
in heaven or earth, of no subordination of man to
man, or of man to any recognised moral or spiritual
law. It says : Use all your strength and energy to
level down the whole edifice of society which has
been built up by the labour of ages ; sweep away all
extant institutions so as to produce " perfect amor-
phism," for if any of them be spared they will be-
come the germs out of which the old social iniquities
will spring up again ; break up the nation and the
family, and get rid of the bondage which they in-
volve ; destroy all States and Churches, with all
their regulations and offices, all their obligations

born in Germany, and a sixth, although born in the States, was of German
parentage and education. Only one was a genuine American.

HISTORY OF SOCIALISM 37

and sanctions ; work towards confusion and chaos,
in the faith that out of them will emerge a future
in which all will breathe with absolute freedom;
v<-t take no anxious thought as to the organisation
of the future, for all such thought is evil, as it
hinders destruction pure and simple, and impedes
the progress of the revolution. Such was the creed
of Bakunin, the apostle of Nihilism, a creed which
lir was able to spread not only over Russia, but
throughout southern and western Europe, and for
which many men and women have shown themselves
willing to die and ready to murder.

It may, perhaps, seem to be merely the uttermost
extreme of Individualism, and to have nothing
socialistic in it. But extremes meet. When liberty
degenerates into license, that license is found to be
slavery. So when individuality generates anarchy,
what it first and most assuredly destroys is its own
srlt'. The primary function of government is to
coerce and suppress crime. Abolish government
and crime will govern ; the murderer and the thief
will take the place of the magistrate and the police-
inan ; every individuality will count only as a force,
not as a being entitled to rights. Even the Nihilist
cannot quite fail to see this; cannot altogether
iv fuse to recognise that except as a stage of transi-
tion, a society without government would be in a
more deplorable state than if under the harshest
despotism. Hence he lives in hope that out of the
anarchy which he will produce, organised societies
will spontaneously emerge, in the form of small
agricultural communities, each of which will be self-

3« SOCIALISM

governing and self-sufficing, contentedly cultivating
its bit of land, and fairly sharing the produce among
its members.

But he fails to give reasons for his hope. He
does not show that societies ever have been, or are
ever likely to be, organised spontaneously, or other-
wise than through the exercise of authority and the
discipline of law. He does not explain how, were
society overthrown and reduced to chaos, the result
of the interaction of conflicting individual forces
would be the springing up over all the earth of
peaceful self-governing communities. He does not
prove, and cannot prove, that if Europe were
to become somewhat like what Russia would
be if it had only its mirs, and if the Czar, the
Germans and the Jews, the nobility and the clergy,
the soldiers and police, the fortresses and prisons
were swept away, its condition would be preferable
to what it is at present. He does not indicate how
he purposes to prevent the social world of his hope
and admiration from again lapsing and passing
through all those phases of civilisation which he
detests ; how he would arrest the growth of the
individuality, that is to say, of the independence
of character, the originality of mind, the personal
energy, and the special acquirements and special
skill, which would gradually but surely destroy it,
just as they have destroyed what was like it in the
past, just as they are now destroying the Russian mir.

The ideal of the Nihilist seems to be a very poor
one in itself; and yet there appears to be no way
of realising it except by Nihilists annihilating all

HISTORY OF SOCIALISM 39

who do not agree with them. Any scheme which
can only be realised by men wading through the
blood of their fellow-men should need no discussion.
I have said thus much about Nihilism, because it
is generally regarded as Socialism ; but I shall say
no more about it in these pages. And for two
reasons : first, it is, on the whole, not Socialism ; and
secondly, it is more of a disease than an error, and
should be treated rather by moral remedies than by
arguments. Its educated advocates are men and

o

women who have been maddened by the sight of
the effects of despotic and selfish government ; and
its ignorant believers are largely composed of those
whom hunger, bad usage, and despair, have ren-
dered incapable of weighing reasons. It cannot be
satisfactorily dealt with by logic, and still less by
steel and shot ; but only by better social arrange-
ments, juster laws, a sounder education, a purer and
more energetic morality, a truer and more beneficent
religion.*

* The theory of Anarchism is advocated with an eloquence worthy of a
better cause in the following pamphlets, all procurable in an English
form : M. Bakunin's "God and the State ; " Elisee Reclus* " Evolution and
Revolution ;" and P. Krapotkin's " Law and Authority," " Expropriation,"
" Place of Anarchism in Socialistic Evolution," " War," and " Appeal to
the Young." I may quote the words with which Prince Krapotkin closes
his " Law and Authority," inasmuch as they convey the general practical
outcome of Anarchism : — " In the next revolution we hope that this cry
will go forth : ' Burn the guillotines ; demolish the prisons ; drive away
the judges, policemen, and informers— the impurest race upon the face of
the earth ; treat as a brother the man who has been led by passion to do
ill to his fellow ; above all, take from the ignoble products of middle-class
idleness the possibility of displaying their vices in attractive colours ; and
be sure that but few crimes will mar our society.' The main supports of
crime are idleness, law, and authority ; laws about property, laws about

40 SOCIALISM

Socialism has nowhere made more remarkable
progress than in Germany. Previous to 1840 it
had scarcely any existence in that country. The
organisation of the German social democratic party
took shape under the hands of Marx and Engels in
1847. The political agitations of 1848 were, on the
whole, favourable to ib. The conflict of labour and
capital, which was at its keenest about 1860, was
still more so, and is what chiefly explains the
extraordinary success of the socialistic campaign so
brilliantly conducted by Lassalle from 1863 to 1865.
The Socialism of Germany has had more skilful
leaders, and a better organisation, than Socialism
elsewhere. At present it is a power which neither
Church nor State can afford to despise. It would
seem as if every eighth voter were a Socialist.
Socialism is also indebted to German thinkers—
Bodbertus, Winkelblech, Marx, Lassalle, Schaffle,
and others — for its elaboration into a form which
allows it to put forth with plausibility the claim to
have become scientific, and which really entitles it

government, laws about penalties and misdemeanours ; and authority,
which takes upon itself to manufacture these laws and to apply them.
No more laws ! No more judges 1 Liberty, equality, and practical human
sympathy are the only effectual barriers we can oppose to the anti-social
instincts of certain amongst us." Among the most instructive works as to
Anarchism and Socialism in Kussia are Thun's " Geschichte der Eevo-
lutionaren Bewegungen in Russland," the most complete work, so far as it
goes, but ending with 1883 ; Anatole Leroy-Beaulieu's " Empire des Tsars" ;
Stepniak's "Underground Russia"; and J. Bourdeau's "Le Socialisme
Allemand et le Nihilisme Kusse," 1892. On anarchism in general, see
Adler's article " Anarchismus " in Lexis, " Handw. d Staatsw.," vol. i.,
and on so-called " Scientific Anarchism," a paper by H. L. Osgood in
the Political /Science Quarterly, March 1889.

HISTORY OF SOCIALISM 41

to expect that it will no longer be judged of by the
schemes propounded at the earlier stages of its
history.

There is prevalent, however, a very exaggerated
conception of the success of German Socialism. It
is by many supposed to have effected a revolution
in the thinking of German economists, and to have
converted the most of them to its creed. It is very
generally believed that the German professors of
Political Economy have gone largely over to the
.socialist camp, and that what are called " Socialists
<>f the Chair," or "Professorial Socialists," are true
Socialists, This is a mistaken view. Socialism, in
tin* proper sense of the term, has gained scarcely
any proselytes from among the professors of politi-
cal economy in Germany.

The doctrines of free trade, of unlimited compe-
tition, of the non-intervention of the State, were,
it must be remembered, never so popular among
German as among English political economists ; and
during the last forty years far the largest school of
political economy in Germany, the historical school,
has been bearing a continuous protest against what
is called Smithianism and Manchesterdom, and
English political economy, as insular and narrow,
too negative, too abstract and deductive, and blindly
hopeful of national salvation from leaving every
man to look after himself. German political econo-
mists, in passing from that to their present so-
<-al lr<l socialistic position, have moved neither so
rapidly nor so far as many of our Liberals who have
•d into Radicals, and from being advocates of

42 SOCIALISM

freedom and non-interference have become en-
thusiasts for fair rents, State-aid, and State-inter-
vention.

The so-called Professorial Socialists of Germany
have not got farther than our own governmental
politicians. There is a large section of them whose
alleged Socialism is simply the protectionism of
paternal government, the protectionism of Prince
Bismarck, but which that astute statesman naturally
preferred to call his Socialism when he appealed to
socialistic working-men. There is another large
section of them whose so-called Socialism consists.
in adopting a programme of political reforms similar
to that which Mr. Chamberlain propounded in this
country in 1885. It may be questioned, how-
ever, if there be one true Socialist among them.
They are simply State-interventionists of either a
Conservative or a Radical type. In calling them-
selves, or allowing themselves to be called, Socialists>
they are sailing under false colours. Their views as
to property, labour, capital, profit, interest, &c., are
essentially different from those of real Socialists.^

* The history of Socialism in Germany is treated of in the works men-
tioned in the note on p. 28. It is right, however, to mention in addition
as exceptionally thorough and valuable studies, W. H. Dawson's " German
Socialism and Ferdinand Lassalle" and "Bismarck and State Socialism."
The best general view of the German schools of political economy is
still, so far as I am aware, an Italian work published eighteen years ago,
Professor Cusumano's "Scuole Economiche della Germania." The term
" Kathedersocialist," Socialist of the Chair, or Professorial Socialifet, was
first employed as a nickname, and then accepted by those to whom it was
applied, in the hope that they would thereby secure that Socialism would
not be identified with the sort of doctrine taught by Marx, Lassalle, &c.
M. Leon Say treats of State-Socialism in Germany, as well as in England
and Italy in his " Socialisme d'Etat," 1890. The progress of Socialism in

HISTORY OF SOCIALISM 43

It is only in recent years that Socialism has made
any considerable progress in Britain. The socialistic
doctrine of Owen was very vague and nebulous.
The " Christian Socialism " of Maurice and Kings-
ley, Ludlow, Hughes, and Neale, was thoroughly
Christian, but not at all socialistic. The oldest
socialistic association at present existing in England is
the Social Democratic Federation, which was founded
in 1 88 1, but which did not put forth its socialistic
programme until 1883. Its offshoot, the Socialistic
League, was formed in 1884. The Fabian Society
and the Guild of St. Matthew are smaller socialistic
bodies. There are numerous branch associations
throughout the land. The creed of Socialism is
propagated by To-day, Justice, Hie Commomveal,
Tin' Socialist, Freedom, The Cliurch Reformer,
Tin' Christian Socialist, and other periodicals.*
The names of Hyndman, Champion, Joynes, John
Burns, Miss Helen Taylor, Morris, Bax, Dr. and
Mrs. Aveling, Mrs. Besant, Bernard Shaw, and the
Rev. Stewart Headiam, are widely known as those
of leaders of the various sections of English
Socialists. There are, so far as I am aware, no

Germany from 1871 to 1893 is strikingly manifest in the increase in the
number of deputies which the party has become able to return to the
Reichstag. The numbers were in 1871 two, in 1874 nine, in 1877 twelve,
in 1878 nine, in 1881 twelve, in 1884 twenty-five, in 1887 eleven, in 1890
thirty-six, and in 1893 forty-four. The Social Democratic vote at the
Reichstag elections was in 1871, 101,927; in 1874, 351,670; in 1877,
493,4475 in 1878, 437.458; in 1881, 311,961; in 1884, 549,000; in 1887,
774,128; in 1890, 1,342,000; and in 1893, i,8co,oco On this subject see
Dawson's "German Socialism and Ferdinand Lassalle," ch. xiv., and the
valuable report of Mr. Geoffrey Drage on Conditions of Labour in Ger-
many— "Royal Commission of Labour," Foreign Reports, vol. v., 1893.
* See Supplementary Note to the present chapter.

44 SOCIALISM

reliable statistics as to the number of Socialists in
Britain. In the years of commercial and industrial
depression through which the country has recently
passed, when multitudes were thrown out of employ-
ment and brought to the verge of starvation, the
socialistic propaganda had a kind of success which
filled the minds of many who favoured it with
exaggerated hopes, and those of many who dis-
liked it with equally exaggerated fears. They
fancied that the working classes were about to be
won over as a body to the new faith, and that the
social revolution which had been predicted was at
hand. They overlooked the fact that the movement
advanced with exceptional rapidity only among the
unemployed, and those most affected by the causes
by which that class was so largely increased ; and
that Socialism must, from its very nature, be far
more likely to spread among those who have nothing
to lose than among those who have, and in bad
times than in good. When honest, sober, industrious
men cannot get work to do and bread to eat, it is
not wonderful that they should turn Socialists ; and
if they do so sympathy is the chief feeling with
which they must be regarded. Men who are not
employed because of their lack of honesty and
sobriety, ought to be otherwise viewed and dealt
with, but they are none the less likely to be easily
persuaded to approve of Socialism either in the form
of Communism or Collectivism.

There is no evidence that British working-men
have to any very great extent gone over to Social-
ism strictly so called. There are no signs of

HISTORY OF SOCIALISM 45

Socialism having made much progress in this
country during the last three or four years.* But
our comparative immunity in the past is no
guarantee that there will be immunity in the
future. And certainly no country in the world
would have so desperate a task devolved upon it
as our own, were Socialism to become either the
creed or the ideal of masses of our population.

No other country has the bulk of its land owned
1>\- so few persons. In no other country is industry
so dependent on the enterprise of large capitalists.
No other country has in anything like so small a
space above one hundred towns each with above
100,000 inhabitants.

The more highly developed, the more elaborately
organised national life becomes, the less fitted, the
less capable, does it become to pass through a social
revolution. Let Britain become, like Athens, the
scene of a struggle between the rich and the poor,
the former striving to keep and the latter to seize
the wealth of the nation ; or let the poorer classes
of Britain become like those of Rome, after they had
gained their enfranchisement, weary of the produc-
tion of wealth, and resolved on such a distribution
of it as will give them maintenance and amusement
without labour ; and it will need no foreign enemy
to lay this mighty empire prostrate. In such a case
there could only be in store for us an alternation of
revolutions, a restless tossing between anarchy and

* This statement, it must be noted, refers to the years before 1890. I
am inclined to believe that it has made much more progress during the
years which have since elapsed.

46 SOCIALISM

despotism. In such a state the barbarians would
not require to come from afar for our overthrow ;
the barbarians would be here.

There is much to favour the spread of Socialism
amongst us. Many rich persons make a deplorable
use of their riches — a frivolous, selfish, wasteful,
corrupting use of them. Masses of the people are in
a state of misery and degradation disgraceful to the
nation, and which, if unremedied, must be fruitful
of mischief. Our population is so dense, and our
industrial economy so elaborate that a slight cause
may easily produce great disaster and wide dis-
content. The pressure of competition is often very
hard, and many human beings have to labour to an
excess which may well explain the revolt of their
hearts against the arrangements under which they
suffer. The foundations of religious faith have been
so sapped and shaken by various forces, that there
are thousands on thousands in the land devoid of
the strength and steadfastness to be derived from
trust in God and the hope of a world to come. In
consequence of the wide prevalence of practical
materialism, many have no clear recognition of
moral law, of right as right, of the majesty of simple
duty. The balance of political power is now un-
questionably on the side of the majority ; and
although it is just that it should be so, it does not
follow that the majority may not do unjustly, may
not act quite as selfishly as the minority did when
dominant ; while it is evident that there will be
more ready to seek to gain their favour by false
.and unmanly ways.

HISTORY OF SOCIALISM 47

Yet there is nothing to warrant a pessimistic view
of the course of coming events, or despair as to the
future. The resources for good which providence
has placed in the hands of the British people are
immense, and, if faithfully used, they are amply
adequate to avert every danger. Although the
extremes of poverty and wealth in this country be
at an enormous distance from each other, the whole
interval is filled up by classes which pass into one
another by insensible gradations, and which collect-
ively so outnumber either the very rich or the very
poor that at present the chance of success of any
socialistic revolution must be pronounced infini-
tesimally small. The workmen of Great Britain
have never, like the citizens of Greece and Rome,
sought to get free of work, but only to be better paid
for their work. A feeling of the honourableness
of labour is on the increase. Socialism itself is a
testimony to the growth of the sense of brother-
hood. Faith in God and faith in duty may have
been here and there shaken, but they have not
been uprooted, and are even widely and vigorously
displaying their vitality. Individuality of character
and the love of personal independence will not be
easily vanquished in Britain. It has never been the
character of the nation to adopt vague and revolu-
tionary proposals without criticism of them and con-
sideration of their cost. We may be less exposed to
the dangers of Individualism, and more to those of
Socialism, than we were twenty years ago, but to
be afraid of the speedy and decisive triumph of
Socialism is to be foolishly alarmed.

48 SOCIALISM

SUPPLEMENTARY NOTE— BRITISH SOCIALISM.

During the last two years Socialism has continued to be ener-
getically propagated in this country. In London especially the
activity displayed has been extraordinary. The media of pro-
pagandism have been lectures in public halls, open-air meetings,
demonstrations, conferences, pamphlets, periodicals, &c. That
Socialism has during this period made considerable progress
cannot reasonably be doubted. How much progress it has made
cannot apparently be determined. Socialists are not only very
zealous, but very careful to keep themselves en evidence, and apt
to claim to have accomplished more than they have really effected.
At the same time their influence, I believe, is really great in pro-
portion to their numbers. They have enthusiasm, an ideal, and
popular and devoted leaders.

What makes it impossible to determine accurately the numbers
or strength of British Socialism is that it exists to a far greater
extent in combination with other modes or systems of thought,
than in a separate or pure form. Thus it has amalgamated to
such an extent with Secularism that we now have comparatively
little of the latter in a pure form. We are not, therefore, to sup-
pose that there are fewer Secularists in reality. There are only
fewer in name.* In like manner, Socialism has, although to a
much less extent, entered into unions with Philanthropy,
Spiritualism, and Christianity, from which have arisen small
socialistic sects, with which the main socialistic body has little
sympathy, yet which help to increase the number of real, and
especially of nominal socialists.

It owes far more of its success, however, to having appro-
priated, under the guise of " proximate demands," " measures

* In The National Reformer of March I2th, 1893, the following com-
munication appears : — "At the weekly meeting of the Social Democratic
Federation (North Kensington Branch), on Sunday, igth ult., Mr. St. John
(National Secular Society) delivered an anti- Christian lecture, calling
attention to the danger to advanced movements from persons of the
'Christian-Socialist 'type* In the course of the discussion which followed,
each speaker declaredjhimself an Atheist, and supported the lecturer's con-
tention, urging that the time had arrived to endeavour to purge the Socialist
movement of all who retained the slightest suspicion of superstition."

BRITISH SOCIALISM 49

called for to palliate the evils of existing society," " means of
transition to the socialistic state," and the like, the schemes and
proposals of the Liberalism or Radicalism which it professes to
despise. All these it claims as socialistic, and presents as if they
were original discoveries of its own. It has thus put so-called
Liberalism and Radicalism to a serious disadvantage, and greatly
benefited itself. The result is not yet so apparent in the dis-
organisation and weakening of Liberalism or Radicalism in Britain
as in Germany, but it can hardly fail to manifest itself. In its
real spirit and nature, of course, Socialism is more akin to Pro-
tectionism of the Paternal State type than to Liberalism. Hence
there are various shades and degrees of what is known as State
Socialism.

Finally, British Socialism owes most of the strength it possesses
to its connection with the cause of Labour. We are not therefore
to suppose, however, that it has thereby secured to itself the full
strength of the Labour Movement. Socialism for the reason just
indicated naturally seems large and strong. But for the same
reason it may be much smaller and weaker than it seems. Many
who profess to be Socialists would probably disown Socialism just
when it began to be properly socialistic, i.e., to expropriate, col-
lectivise, and compulsorily organise. Our British Socialism is quite
possibly not unlike " the great image " of Nebuchadnezzar's dream ;
of which, we are told, " the brightness was excellent," "the form
terrible," and the materials " gold, silver, brass, and iron " ; yet.
which, because it rested on feet partly of clay, became, when
struck, " like the chaff of the summer threshing-floor." May not
real Socialism be only the clay in the feet of " the great image,"
nominal Socialism ?

Within the last two years various changes have taken place in
the socialistic periodical press.

Anarchism has, so far as I am aware, no periodical organ in
England at present. Freedom has, I think, ceased to appear,
but I am not s,ure of this ; it has often shown itself alive after
being supposed to be dead. The Commonweal, once the organ of
the Socialist League, has not been published since May 1892,
when its editor was condemned to imprisonment on the charge of
writing an article inciting to the murder of Mr. Justice Hawkins.
The Anarchist party is universally admitted to be a very small

5o SOCIALISM

one ; and we may congratulate ourselves that it is so, notwith-
standing that Mr. Sidney Webb assures us that the Anarchist
is a man " whose main defect may be characterised as being " too
good for this world " (" Socialism in England," p. 55).

The following socialistic periodicals are in circulation at the
present time (June 1893): — Justice, The Workman's Times, The
Clarion, and The Christian Weekly — all weekly publications ; and
The Labour Elector, The Labour Prophet, The Labour Leader, Land
•and Labour, Brotherhood, The Church Reformer, and The Positivist
Review — all monthly publications.

Justice is the oldest organ of pure Socialism in the United
Kingdom, and at present the only organ of the Social Demo-
cratic Federation. It may fairly claim to have " for the past ten
years fearlessly and honestly advocated the cause of Socialism." It
has avoided every kind of compromising concession, and rather
repelled than sought partial sympathisers. The number of sub-
scribers to this consistent and ably conducted paper would,
perhaps, be about the clearest indication procurable as to the
extent of the belief in Socialism pure and simple. It is admitted
that the number has never been large. H. M. Hyndman, H.
Quelch, E. Belfort Bax, W. Uttley, and S. Stepniak are among
its chief contributors.

The Workman's Times is in the third year of its existence. Its
contents are of a somewhat miscellaneous nature. Its principles
are decidedly Marxian. Messrs. Champion and Barry accuse it
of attempting to exploit the Independent Labour Party for
business purposes. Its chief merit is the amount of information
which it gives regarding Continental Socialism. Of its con-
tributors may be named Eleanor and Ed. Marx-Aveling, H.
Halliday Sparling, Miss Conway, and H. Russell Smart, <fec.

The Clarion is published at Manchester, and edited by " Nun-
quam " (R. Blatchford). Some of the contributions of the editor
show reading and reflection, but no praise can be honestly given
to three-fourths of the contents of each number. Until I saw
this publication I believed it impossible that Socialists, men profess-
ing to have a great cause and mission at heart, could be on a level
either as regards intelligence or taste with the readers of Sloper.

The Christian Weekly is a new periodical, a sequel to Religious
Bits. It aims at promoting a reformation which " will result in

BRITISH SOCIALISM 51

the abolition of the monopolies of land and capital, which create
the extremes of poverty and riches ; of the vested interests which
maintain the drink tram'c ; of the want and luxury which pro-
pairate sexual immorality ; and of the legal violence which compels
one man to do the will of another." It has on its staff a practised
expositor of Socialism in J. C. Kenworthy.

We pass to the monthlies. The Labour Elector has appeared
monthly instead of weekly since May, owing to the illness of its
chief conductor, Mr. H. H. Champion, a man of strong individuality
who has long taken an active part in socialistic and labour move-
ments. It is exceptionally free, for a socialistic publication, from
visionariness ; shows no prejudice in favour of popular politicians ;
and is candid to excess, perhaps, in pointing out the weaknesses
and faults of the "friends of Labour." Its claim to "treat of
all important Labour questions from an absolutely independent
point of view " is not likely to be challenged by any one ; but it
may, perhaps, be thought that it also treats of all Labour leaders,
except Mr. Champion, too much de haut en bas. It does not
expend much of its strength in direct socialistic propagandism.

The Labour Prophet, the organ of the Labour Church, is edited
by John Trevor, and published at Manchester. The Labour
Leader is edited by Keir Hardie, M.P., and published at Dum-
fries. Land and Labor is the organ of the Land Nationalisation
Society.

Brotherhood, a Magazine of Social Progress, is in its seventh
year. It is owing to the self-sacrifice of its editor, Mr. J. Bruce
Wallace, M.A., of Brotherhood Church, that it has attained this
age. In May of the present year there was incorporated with it
The Nationalization News : the Journal of the Nationalization of
Labour Society, established to Promote the System Proposed in
"Looking Backward." The Christian Socialist had been previously
amalgamated with it. It aims at propagating the principles of
Universal Brotherhood and Industrial Co-operation upon a
national and religious basis, and demands of those who reject
Socialism to show them " some more fraternal social system, some
fuller practical recognition of what is associated in the Divine
All- Fatherhood." The group of Socialists represented by Brother-
hood is characterised by faith in Mr. Bellamy and in home co-
operative colonies.

52 SOCIALISM

The Church Reformer, edited by the Rev. Stewart D. Headlam,
is (only in part) the organ of the Guild of St. Matthew. This
Guild, founded by Mr. Headlam, has for objects: — " i. To get
rid, by every possible means, of the existing prejudices, espe-
cially on the part of * secularists,' against the Church, her Sacra-
ments and Doctrines ; and to endeavour ' to justify God to the
people.' 2. To promote frequent and reverent worship in the
Holy Communion, and a better observance of the teaching of the
Church of England as set forth in the Book of Common Prayer.
3. To promote the study of Social and Political Questions in the
light of the Incarnation." If the views of the members of the
Guild are even in general accordance with those of the editor and
chief contributors to The Church Reformer there can be no more
reasonable doubt of the genuineness of their Socialism than of
their Sacerdotalism. Mr. Headlam and his friends are naturally
much occupied at present with the question of Disestablishment.
They oppose the Disestablishment policy of the Liberationists, not
only on the ground of its selfishness and unspirituality, but also
of its inadequacy and incompleteness. What they themselves
demand is a liberation of the Church from Mammon and Caste ;
that the Church shall be treated as a universal brotherhood of
equals, a spiritual democracy, in which all baptised are entitled to
a share in the election of their bishops and clergy ; that patronage
in all forms shall be abolished ; and that all endowments and
property shall be nationalised without any distinction between
Church or other property, or between the property of one Church
and another. Landowners they would get rid of by taxation which
is to rise by degrees till it reaches 205. in the pound. "As for
compensation," says Mr. Headlam, " from the point of view of
the highest Christian morality, it is the landlords who should
compensate the people, not the people the landlords. But prac-
tically, if you carry out this reform by taxation, no compensation
would be necessary or even possible " (" Christian Socialism,"
p. 14).

Positivism claims to be the truest and completest form of
Socialism; and so I may here mention The Positivist Review, pub-
lished since the beginning of the present year, and containing in
each number a contribution by Frederic Harrison, by Dr. Bridges,
and by its editor, Professor Beesly.

BRITISH SOCIALISM 53

There is a quarterly periodical, Seed-Time, which is mildly and
vairuely socialistic. It is the organ of the New Fellowship, a
society which has arisen from the personal and literary influence
of Mr. Edward Carpenter, author of "Towards Democracy,"
" England's Ideal/' «fcc. The general aim of the New Fellowship
is one with which few men will fail to sympathise ; it is truly to
socialise the world by truly humanising it. Its central thought
can hardly be better expressed than in the following sentence of
Mr. Maurice Adams : " The greatest aid we can render towards
the abolition of despotism, and the establishment of a true
democracy, both in the home and in the State, is to allow the New
Spirit of Solidarity and Fellowship to have full possession of our
being, so that it may, as Walter Besant has so happily expressed
it, ' destroy respect and build up reverence ; ' to allow free play to
our sympathy with every human being, that the thought of his
subjection or degradation may be as intolerable to us as that of
our own ; to give our full allegiance to the great truth that only
in mutual service and comradeship can we ever realise life's
deepest joy." The members of the New Fellowship are obviously
good, cultured, high-minded men and women, deeply imbued with
the sentiments and ideas which are the inspiration and essence of
the writings of Ruskin, Thoreau, and Tolstoi, of Wordsworth,
Browning, and Tennyson. Seed-Time, like Brotherhood, has
advocated the formation of industrial villages for the able-bodied
poor.

The Social Outlook is an occasional magazine, edited by the Rev.
Herbert V. Mills, Honorary Secretary of the Home Colonisation
Society. The attempt made at Starnthwaite, under the direction
of Mr. Mills, ended in May last in forced evictions.

The socialistic periodicals mentioned above are all those known
to me, but there may quite possibly be others. There are cer-
tainly not a few newspapers and journals which show a bias
towards Socialism.

The Fabian Society, founded in 1883, does not maintain an
oiHfial journal, but it is active in issuing tracts. Its leading
members, although nebulous thinkers, are fluent speakers and
expert writers, and well known as popular lecturers and

i.-ts.

The strength of Socialism in Britain lies mainly in London.

54 SOCIALISM

Socialism does not appear to be flourishing in Scotland. There
are, however, socialist societies in Edinburgh, Glasgow, Aberdeen,
and Dundee. In Ireland Socialism has hardly yet made itself
felt. This is, of course, because in Ireland only the Land Question
has been of late agitated. When the Labour Question emerges
Socialism will appear, probably in a very bad form.

British Socialism has an extraordinary number of officers
relatively to privates. Many of them are able, and some of them
are distinguished men ; but no general or commander, no man
of great organising and guiding genius has yet appeared among
them.

The best account of the development of Socialism in this
country is Sidney Webb's " Socialism in England," 1890. Mr.
Webb is a prominent member of the Fabian Society.*

* The foregoing note was written in June 1893, and the author holds
himself responsible only for its correctness at that date. There is probably
no portion of the periodical press in which comparatively so many changes
occur as the socialistic. The Commonweal has reappeared, and The Labour
Leader is now published in London and Glasgow.

The German socialistic periodicals are much more numerous than the
British, and the French still more numerous than the German. German
anarchist journals have been for the most part published in London and
in the United States. The Arbeiterfreund (printed in Hebrew characters),
the Autonomie, anarchistisches, kommunistisches Organ, and the Freiheit,
internationales Organ der Anarchisten deutscher Sprache, are among those
which have been printed in London.

The French anarchist journals are numerous, and generally of the most
mischievous character. Among those which have appeared during the
last ten or twelve years are L'Affame, L'Alarme, L'Audace, La Itataille,
Ca ira, Le Defi, Le Drapeau Noir, Le Drapeau Rouge, Le Droit anarchique,
L'fimeute, Le Format du Travail, L'Hydre anarchiste, L'Internatalanarchiste,
La Lutte sociale, La Revolte, Le Revolte, La JRevue anarchiste, La Revue
Antipatriotique, and La Vengeance anarchiste.

During the last few years Socialism has been making rapid progress in
France. Whereas in the elections of 1889 the Socialist votes amounted to
only 90,000, in 1893 they numbered 500,000, of which 226,000 were from
Paris alone. The Socialists in the Chamber of Deputies are consequently
now able to play as preponderating a r6le as do the Irish Nationalists in
our own House of Commons.

CHAPTER III.

COMMUNISM, COLLECTIVISM, AND
STATE INTERVENTION.

THE two chief forms of Socialism are Communism
and Collectivism. Both are clearly included in
Socialism, and they are easily distinguishable. It
is unnecessary to say much regarding the first.
The second is the only kind of Socialism which is
very formidable, and, consequently, the only kind
which urgently requires to be discussed.

Communism is related to Socialism as a species to
its genus. All Communists are Socialists, but all
Socialists are not Communists. Perhaps all Social-
ism tends to Communism. Socialism revolts
against the inequalities of condition which result
from the exercise of liberty. But why should it
stop short, or where, in opposing them, can it stop
short, of the complete equality of conditions in
which Communism consists ? Only when property
is left undivided, when it is held and enjoyed by
the members of a society in common, is there
equality of condition.

It is often said that Communism is impracticable.
In reality it is the form of Socialism which is far the
most easily, and has been far the most frequently,
practised. Communistic societies have existed

56 SOCIALISM

in nearly every land, and have appeared in almost
all ages of the world. It would be easy to collect
from the last two thousand years of history many
hundreds, and, from the present century, many
dozens, of examples of such societies. The family
has from its very nature somewhat of a communis-
tic character. The aggregation of families origin-
ated those so-called primitive communities still
extant in various countries, which held land in
common, and in which there very probably was at
first proprietary equality among all the families of
each group. But such natural or naturally evolved
forms of society as families and village communities
have never been found to be exclusively communis-
tic, or without considerable distinctions and in-
equalities of condition existing between their
members. Many societies more properly designated
communistic have had their origin and end in

o

religion, as, for example, that of the early Christians
in Apostolic times, those among the Gnostic sects,
the monastic brotherhoods of the Catholic Church,
the pantheistic brotherhoods of mediaeval heretics,
&c., down to the associations of Shakers and
Rappists in the United States. Religious Com-
munism has in some cases flourished and conferred
great services on humanity, owing to the religious
abnegation and zeal which have originated and
inspired it, but it has certainly cast no light on how
the bulk of mankind may acquire a sufficiency of
the means of material well-being.

It is, perhaps, only in the present century that
communistic societies have been formed as solutions

COMMUNISM 57

of the industrial and social problem. The great
field for experiments of the kind has been the
United States. These experiments have not been
iin instructive or useless; and no reasonable person
will regret that they have been made, or desire to
see the liberty of repeating and varying them
restricted. It may be unwise in a man to sur-
render his individual rights or personal property in
order to become a member of a communistic society,
but if he does so freely, and can quit the society
should he get tired of it, he ought to be allowed to
have his own way. The fullest freedom of combina-
tion, of co-operation, and of association cannot be
justly withheld so long as the primary laws of
moralitv are not violated.

»/

Already, however, it is clear enough that no com-
munistic experiments carried on in the backwoods of
America will yield much light as to how the economic
am 1 social evils which endanger countries in advanced
stages of development, are to be removed or remedied.
A large number of experiments made have entirely
Diiled, ending in a forsaken saw-pit and an empty
larder. Others have had considerable success. In
the United States there are at the present time
between seventy and eighty communistic societies,
.a goodly proportion of which are not of recent
origin, while a few of them are about a century old.
It has been estimated that their collective or aggre-
gate wealth if equally divided among their members
would amount to about ^800 for each, which far
fds the average wealth of the population even
<>t' the richest countries. But the slightest investi-

58 SOCIALISM

gation of the causes of the prosperity of the more
flourishing of these societies shows that they are of
a kind which must necessarily prevent Communism
from being any generally applicable solution of the
social problem.

Communistic associations have had advantages in
America which could not have been obtained in
Europe. They have got land for little or nothing,
and timber for the mere trouble of cutting it down.
They have lived under the protection of a powerful
government, and, through means of communication
provided by a wealth not their own, within reach of
large markets. They have, for the most part, had
capital to start with, and been composed of select
and energetic individuals.

But what is still more important to be remarked is,
that wherever communistic associations have not
proved failures as industrial or economical experi-
ments, their success has been dependent on two con-
ditions— namely, a small membership and a strict
discipline; the one of which proves that Communism
cannot be applied to nations, and the other of which
shows that it is not in harmony with the temper of a
democratic age. It is only when a communistic society
is small that each member can see it to be for his own
advantage to labour diligently and energetically.
The more the number of associates is increased the
more is the interest of each to work for the increase of
the collective wealth diminished, and the greater
become the temptations of each to idleness. If a
man be one of 400 persons engaged in any indus-
trial undertaking, the whole produce or gain of

COMMUNISM 59

which is to be equally divided among the co-opera-
tors, the inducement to exertion presented to his
mind in the form of self-interest, will probably be
stronger than that which acts on the majority of
men who work for wages. Not so, however, if he
be one in 4000 ; and if he be only one in 40,000, it
will be hopelessly weak. But were nations like
Britain, France, and Germany placed under a com-
munistic system, each man would be only one in
thirty, forty, or more millions of co-operators, all
entitled to share alike. In this case the stimulus of
self-interest to exertion would be practically nil ;
and the temptations to indolence and unfaithfulness
would be enormous.

The difficulty thus presented to the realisation of
Communism is at once so formidable and so obvious,
that a number of those who see in it the only just
system of social organisation and the only true
solution of the social problem, have felt themselves
compelled to propose that each of the nations of
Europe should be dismembered into thousands of
small, separate, independent communes. Such was
the scheme of the leaders of the socialistic insurrec-
tionists in Italy and Spain. Clearly, even if it were
carried into execution, although the individuals
within each commune might be levelled into equa-
lity, the communes themselves could not fail to be
unequal in their advantages, and thus occasions for
lusts and envyings, wars and fightings among them
would abound, while they would be at the mercy of
any nation which had been wise enough to retain
its unity. It would be a waste of time to refute so

60 SOCIALISM

monstrous a proposal ; yet the dismemberment of
Millions which it recommends is an indispensable
condition to the general application of communistic
principles.

Moreover, the societies which practise Communism
must, in order to succeed, be characterised by sul>-
missiveness to law and authority. The love of their
members for equality or for a common cause must he
so strong that they will be content to renounce for
them independence of judgment and action. The
Icarian societies founded by Cabet signally failed
because they consisted of men who imagined that
communistic equality could be combined with demo-
cratic freedom. The societies of Shakers founded
by Ann Lee have flourished because their members
implicitly obey the rules dictated by those whom
they suppose to be the channels of the GV/r/.s7-xy >/>/'/.

It is simply comical to hear Communism preached
by revolutionists and anarchists. But they mav
learn not a little by attempting to practise what they
preach. Let even fifty of them join together and
endeavour to act on communistic principles, and
they will soon discover that the new order of things
\\hieli they have been recommending can no more
be carried on without a great deal of government
.than could the old order of things which they
denounce ; that if government were needed to
.prevent people from attempting to retain more than
they have honestly gained, still more will it be
needed to make them submit to a system based on
equal distribution, however unequal may be produc-
tion— or, in other words, on (he denial of the

COL1 K< TIVISM 61

lal tourer's right to seek a ivmuneration propor-
tioned to the value of his labour. Should they
succeed in living and working together harmon-
iously and prosperously, without any servile
surrender of their individual wills to a governing
will or common law, the sight of so great a miracle
will do far more to convert the world to their views
than argumentation or eloquence, insurrection or
martyrdom. The world has not hitherto beheld
anything of the kind. Probably it never will. To
establish a democratic Communism is likely to prove
as unmanageable a problem as to square the circle.

Communism, however, is now generally regarded
as an eifete and undeveloped form of Socialism.
The kind of Socialism most in repute at present is
one which cannot be carried into practice by the
voluntary action of individuals, or illustrated by
experiments on a small scale. It is the Socialism
which can only be realised through the State, and
which must have a whole nation as a subject on
which to operate. It is the government of all by
all and for all, with private property largely or
wholly abolished, landowners got rid of, capital
rendered collective, industrial armies formed under
the control of the State on co-operative principles,
and work assigned to every individual and its value
determined for him.

Speaking of this form of Socialism, Schiiffle
says :

"Critically, dogmatically, and practically, the cardinal tin ->U
stun- Is out — collective instead of private ownership of all in-
struments of production (land, factories, machines, tools, <kc.);

62 SOCIALISM

* organisation of labour by society,' instead of the distracting
competition of private capitalists ; that is to say, corporate
organisation and management of the process of production
in the place of private businesses; public organisation of the
labour of all on the basis of collective ownership of all the
working materials of social labour; and finally, distribution
of the collective output of all kinds of manufacture in pro-
portion to the value and amount of the work done by each
worker. The producers would still be, individually, no more
than workmen, as there would no longer be any private property
in the instruments of production, and all would, in fact, be work-
ing with the instruments of production belonging to all — i.e.,
collective capital. But they would not be working as private
manufacturers and their workmen, but would all be on an equal
footing as professional workers, directly organised, and paid their
salary, by society as a whole. Consequently, there would no
longer exist in future the present fundamental division of private
income into profits (or in some cases the creditor's share, by way
of interest, in the profit of the debtor) and wages, but all incomes
would equally represent a share in the national produce, allotted
directly by the community in proportion to the work done — that
is, exclusive returns to labour. Those who yielded services of
general utility as judges, administrative officials, teachers, artists,
scientific investigators, instead of producing material commodities
— i.e., all not immediately productive workers, all not employed
in the social circulation of material, would receive a share in the
commodities produced by the national labour, proportioned to the
time spent by them in work useful to the community." *

The Socialism thus described has come to be
commonly designated Collectivism, and the name is
convenient and appropriate. It is the only kind of
Socialism greatly in repute at present, or really
formidable ; and, consequently, it is the form of it
which especially requires to be examined. It is the

* " The Quintessence of Socialism " (Engl. tr.), pp. 7-9.

COLLECTIVISM 63

Socialism which I shall henceforth have chiefly in
view.

Collectivism will appear to most men obviously to
involve an excessive intervention of the State — one
which deprives individuals of their fundamental
rights and liberties. It is Society organised as the
State intervening in all the industrial and economic
arrangements of life, possessing almost everything,
and so controlling and directing its members that
private and personal enterprises and interests are
absorbed in those which are public and collective.
Most people will ask for no proof that such
Socialism as this would be incompatible with the
freedom of individuals ; and would be a degrading
and ruinous species of social despotism. They will
consider this self-evident, and deem that those who
do not perceive that Collectivism will be utterly sub-
versive of liberty, and that its establishment would
be the enthronement of a fearful tyranny, must be
blind to the distinction between liberty and tyranny.

Now, that Collectivism must inevitably and to a
most pernicious extent sacrifice the rights and
liberties of individuals to the will and authority of
Society, or the State, I fully believe ; but I admit
that I must prove this, and not assume it. The
whole question as to the truth or falsity of
Collectivism turns on whether it necessarily does so
or not, and, therefore, nothing should be assumed
on the point. I shall endeavour to meet the
obligation of proving Collectivism to be a system
which would be destructive of liberty by discussing
the chief positions maintained, and the principal

64 SOCIALISM

proposals advocated, by Collectivists. But in what
remains of this chapter I must be content to indicate
the ground from which I shall thus examine the
claims of Collectivism, and of Socialism generally.

Individualism is an excess as well as Socialism,
and one excess while it so far tends to counteract,
also so far tends to evoke, another. When Hobbes,
for example, inculcated a theory of selfishness, a
system of ethics which made self-love the universal
principle of conduct, he was speedily followed by
Cumberland, who maintained the negative in terms
of the directest antithesis, and taught that the only
principle of right conduct is benevolence. The most
ready and forcible mode of denying an obnoxious
theory is by positively affirming and defending its
contrary. It is, therefore, only what was to have
been expected that the prevalence of Socialism
should drive many of those who see its dangers into
Individualism ; that a consequence of one class of
social theorists assigning to the State far more
power than it ought to possess should be the
ascribing to it by another class of far less power
than it is desirable to allow to it ; that a belief in
State omnipotence should generate a belief in
administrative nihilism. In this we are willing to
recognise a natural necessity, or even a providential
arrangement. Humanity very probably requires to
learn impartiality through experience of the contra-
dictions and exaggerations of many parties and
partisans. Yet none the less is every man bound to
try to be as impartial, as free from excess on any
side, from all narrowness, exaggeration, and par-

INDIVIDUALISM 65

tisanship as he can. And, therefore, while desiring
fullv to acknowledge alike the truths in Socialism
its* -If and the importance of the services rendered
by those who oppose the errors of Socialism from
individualistic standpoints, I must, for my own
part, endeavour to deal with Socialism without
making" use of the principles or maxims of what I
r«'i;-ard as Individualism.

The Individualist assumes that the limits of
State action should be unvarying, and may conse-
quently be indicated in some simple rigid formula.
It would plainly be very convenient for indolent
politicians if the assumption were true, but it does
not seem to be so. The sphere of State power has
not been the same in any two nations, nor in any
one nation at any two stages of its development.
And there is no good reason for thinking it should
have been otherwise. Nay, a man who does not see
that the measure of State control and direction to
be exercised ought to have varied according to the
•characteristics, antecedents, circumstances, education,
•enterprise, dangers, and tasks of those who were to
be controlled and directed, must be a man to whom
history is a sealed book, and who is consequently
incapable of forming a rational theory of the sphere
and functions of the State. The slightest survey of
history should suffice to convince us that an
enormous amount of mischief has been caused by
over-legislation, and that human progress has largely
consisted in widening the range of individual liberty
and narrowing that of public interference; but it
must make equally manifest that nations have

66 SOCIALISM

generally owed their very existence to having been
subjected in their youth to a system of discipline
and government which they justly rejected in their
maturity as despotic. We may well be suspicious,
therefore, of formulae which profess to convey to us
in a few words the absolute and unvarying truth
concerning what is essentially relative and ever
varying. When examined they will always be found
to be very inadequate, and often, notwithstanding
a specious appearance of clearness, obscure or even
unintelligible.

J. S. Mill's Essay on "Liberty" is a noble and
admirable production, but there is very little light
or help indeed to be got from what its author
considered its " one simple principle, entitled to
govern absolutely the dealing of society with the
individual in the way of compulsion and control "-
namely, the principle "that the sole end for which
mankind are warranted, individually or collectively,
in interfering with the liberty of action of any of
their number is self-protection ; that the sole
purpose for which power can be rightfully exercised
over any member of a civilised community, against
his will, is to prevent harm to others."

The proof of this principle will be sought for in
the Essay in vain. The distinction between effecting
good and preventing harm cannot be consistently
and thoroughly carried through in such a connec-
tion. Soldiers are no more maintained to repel
foreign enemies, and policemen to apprehend thieves
and murderers, merely in order to prevent harm,
without any view to doing good to the community.

INDIVIDUALISM 67

than physicians are called in to free individuals of
sickness, but not to help them to get well. In all
the functions of government the production of good
and the prevention of evil are inseparable, and they
are equally legitimate aims of action.

Further, the so-called " principle " while seem-
ingly definite, is in reality utterly vague. All vices
inevitably injure not only those who indulge in
them, but cause suffering to those who do not.
There are few, if any, actions which are purely
self- regarding. It is just because of the amount of
harm which drunkenness produces that a class of
social reformers desire to put an end to all liberty
to make use of strong drinks. Mr. Mill of course
opposed their proposals, but it was certainly not by
adhering to his " one simple principle." That
principle can be no effective barrier to encroach-
ments on individual liberty, to over-legislation, to
social despotism.

At present Mr. Spencer is generally regarded by
Individualists as a safer and more consistent guide
than was Mr. Mill. And his "Man versus The
State " is undoubtedly a most vigorous and oppor-
tune assault on excessive State intervention. While
I regard it as one-sided and exaggerated in some of
its charges, and seriously at fault on certain points,
I admire it in the main as not only a valuable book
but a brave and excellent action.

I cannot perceive, however, that in it or any
other of his works Mr. Spencer has established any
self-consistent or practical system of Individualism.
Mr. Auberori Herbert and the Party of Individual

68 SOCIALISM

Liberty believe that they find at least the firm
foundation-stone of such a system in his formula,
" the Liberty of each, limited alone by the like
Liberty of all." But is it so ? To me these words
seem to be vague and ambiguous. They tell
neither what is the liberty of " each " nor of " all,"
and, therefore, nothing as to how, or how far, the
liberty of each is to be limited by that of all.

"Like liberty!" Like to what? Like to a
liberty which has no other limit than the limit of
others? Then the formula means that each indi-
vidual may do to any other what he pleases,
provided all other individuals may do to him what
they please. But that is simply saying that there
should be no society, no government, no law
whatever ; that man is made for anarchy and
lawlessness ; that his ideal condition is what
Hobbes supposed to be his primitive condition—
" bellum omnium contra omnes."

If the formula does not mean this it must mean,
what it unfortunately, however, does not state, that
if men are to live as social beings the liberty of each
man, and of all men, should be limited by a like
law, the common law. This is quite true. If I
become a member of any society I must agree to
obey the laws of the society. I cannot be a citizen
of any country unless I consent to have my liberty
limited by its common and constitutional law. I
may seek the improvement of the law in a constitu-
tional way, but if I go further I renounce my
citizenship and must become an alien or an enemy.
In every society the liberty of each and of all its

STATE INTERVENTION 69

members is limited by the common and constitu-
tional law of the society, and must be so limited,
otherwise the society will dissolve. It is social law
which must limit and render like the liberty of each
and of all the members of the society ; not the
limitation of the liberty of each by the like liberty
of all which determines what is the proper constitu-
tion of society.

Liberty is limited by law, justly limited only
when limited by just law ; law and justice are not
constituted by liberty, or mere equality of liberty.
In fact, the phrase, " the Liberty of each, limited
alone by the like Liberty of all," is destitute of
meaning apart from knowledge of a law which
limits liberty — apart from knowledge of the very
law which it is supposed to reveal.

The theory that the gtate has for its sole aim to
protect life, liberty, and property, or, in other words,
to repel invasion and punish crime, is definite and
intelligible. But it is also arbitrary and inade-
quate. Those who object to pay taxes for anything
except defence from fraud and violence might, in
consistency, object to taxation even for that. There
may be men who seek from the State no protection,
and who are prepared to endure wrong without
appealing to it for reparation. There may be many
who consider it a greater hardship to be compelled
to contribute to the maintenance of an army in a
distant dependency than to the support of a school
in their own neighbourhood. To me it seems that
no member of a nation has reason to complain of
being required, so long as he profits by the various

yo SOCIALISM

real and precious advantages of good government,
to bear his share of its necessary expenses ; that, on
the contrary, to refuse to do so would be selfish,
unreasonable, and unjust. The State, in my view,
has a variety of functions through the right exer-
cise of which all its members are greatly benefited,
and for the exercise of which, therefore, they
may be fairly required collectively to provide.
The political Individualism which denies to the
State the right to intervene in any measure or
in any circumstances for the positive development
of industry, intelligence, science, morality, art, is
as erroneous, and, could it be consistently and
completely carried out, which happily it cannot,
would be almost as pernicious as fully developed
Socialism.

Does it follow that one who thus discards indi-
vidualistic theories of the limits of the State must
needs accept some socialistic theory thereof, or can
at least have no firm standing ground from which
to oppose Socialism, or definite and sound criteria
by which to test it ? By no means. It is true that
he has not a theory which he can sum up in a
sentence like either the Socialist or the Indi-
vidualist. It is not so easy to formulate a theory
which will apply to all the relevant facts with all
their complications and variations, as to formulate
one which is a mere ideal of the reason or imagina-
tion, and calmly or boldly indifferent to all trouble-
some and antagonistic realities. But though neither
an Individualist nor a Socialist, a man need not be
— arid if he undertake to discuss political subjects

STATE INTERVENTION 71

ought not to be — without some theory as to the
proper limits of State action; and however conscious
he may he that his theory can be only an approxi-
mation to the full truth, he may be confident of
having in it means sufficient to enable him to test
such a theory as Socialism. I should gladly, if time
and space enough were at my command, discuss the
question of the limits of State intervention, as there
are few questions more worthy of careful considera-
tion. I can only here and now, however, indicate
in a few sentences that, apart from such a discussion,
we may without arrogance undertake to form and
express a- judgment on socialistic conclusions and
proposals.

First, then, there are simple, definite, and well-
f.xrrrff lined moral laws which ought to condition
and regulate the actions both of States and of indi-
viduals. We may fairly demand that all theories
alike of State intervention and of personal conduct
shall recognise these laws. It is obvious how this
applies to our subject. Certain unfriendly critics of
the doctrine of laisser-faire have understood it to
mean that the State should not restrict commercial
competition within even the limits of veracity and
honesty. This was certainly not what Adam Smith
or any eminent economist belonging to his school
meant by it. Adam Smith formulated the doctrine
of lai.wr-faire, or natural liberty, thus: "Every
man, rw long ax //<' '/<">• not viol<tf<' tin' Jaws of
jiixfirr, is left perfectly free to pursue his own
interests his own way, and to bring both his
industry and capital into competition with those of'

72 SOCIALISM

any other man or orders of men." * There may have
been some theorists — it is difficult to disprove a
negative — who omitted from his teaching of the
doctrine the condition expressed by Adam Smith in

* "Wealth of Nations," Bk. IV. ch. ix. p. 286 (Nicholson's ed.). In the
" Introductory Essay " prefixed to his edition Prof. Nicholson has made
some remarks on Adam Smith which I cannot deny myselT Ehe pleasure of
reproducing : " The author of the ' Theory of Moral Sentiments,' the key-
stone of which is sympathy, the man who at his death left a much smaller
fortune than was anticipated, owing to his constant expenditure in deeds
of unostentatious charity, the man who was especially distinguished
amongst his contemporaries by his geniality and kindness, is popularly
supposed to be the father of the dismal dogmas which amongst the vulgar
(if the term may be still used in its older signification) pass current for
Political Economy. The most cursory perusal of the ' Wealth of Nations,'
however, will convince the reader that the spirit in which 'it is written is
essentially human, and the most careful scrutiny will bring to light no
passage in which the doctrine of ' selfishness ' is inculcated. The ' economic
man,' the supposed incarnation of selfishness, is no creation of Adam Smith ;
all the characters of the ' Wealth of Nations' are real— Englishmen,
Dutchmen, Chinese. The ' economic man ' of ultra-Eicardians is no more
to be found in Adam Smith than is the ' socialistic man," the incarnation
of unselfishness, the man who loves all men more than himself on the-
arithmetical ground that all men are more than one. Adam Smith was
unacquainted with any society composed mainly of either species. Of
the * socialistic man ' he writes : * I have never known much good done by
those who affected to trade for the public good. It is an affectation
indeed not very common among merchants, and very few words need be
employed in dissuading them from it.1 But the most severe passages in
Smith's work are those in which he condemns the various ' mean and
malignant expedients ' of the mercantile system, and satirises the ' eco-
nomic' merchants who, actuated only by the 'passionate confidence of
interested falsehood,' in order to promote 'the little interest of one little
order of men in one country hurt the interest of all other orders of men
in that country, and of all other men in all other countries.' Adam Smith
treats of actual societies, and considers the normal conduct of average
individuals" (pp. 13, 14). The present writer, in the article "Buckle,"
published about twenty years ago in the "Encyclopaedia Britannica,"
indicated how little foundation there was for the opinion that in the
" Theory of Moral Sentiments" man was represented as purely benevolent
and in the " Wealth of Nations " as purely selfish. Comparatively re-
cently Dr. Richard Zeyss, in his "Adam Smith und der Eigennutz," 1889,
has dealt with the same question more fully and quite conclusively.

STATE INTERVENTION 73

the words italicised ; there can be no doubt that a
great many people have not given due heed to it in
their practice ; but, of course, the doctrine when so
misrepresented and mutilated is not merely a false
but a disgraceful doctrine. The Individualism which
should teach the doctrine in such a form must be at
once condemned. Socialism is to be tested by a like
criterion. If any of its proposals directly or in-
directly imply a violation of the laws of justice, it is
so far a theory of State action to be repudiated.

Secondly, there are certain fundamental human
lilH'i'ft'r* essential to the true nature and dignity of
man, but which have been only slowly and painfully
realised through ages of struggle. Bodily freedom,
enfranchisement of women, industrial freedom, intel-
lectual, moral, and religious freedom, political free-
dom, with freedom of speech and association, are
such liberties. They are all amply justified both by
a true philosophy of man's nature and relationships
and a correct interpretation of his history. Any
system which implies that they are to be contracted
or suppressed may be reasonably suspected to be
erroneous, likely to be fatal to human progress and
welfare if successful, but really doomed to failure.
The whole history of the world has shown that,
although the arrest and repression of the movement
towards liberty have been attempted by force, fraud,
and seduction of all kinds and in all ways, it has
been without avail. I see no liberty yet gained by
humanity which ought to be sacrificed or even
lessened.

Thirdly, there are economic laivs — natural laws of

74 SOCIALISM

national wealth — which cannot be neglected or
violated with impunity. Systems of social con-
struction not conformed to them ought not to be
adopted. There is a science which professes to
exhibit these laws — political economy. Not many
years ago its teaching was generally received with
a too unquestioning trust. At present it is widely
viewed with unwarranted suspicion, or foolishly
assumed that it may be safely disregarded. The
laws of political economy have not, indeed, either
the perfect exactitude or the entire certainty of
mathematic or dynamical laws. The natural sciences
have reached few truths which answer to a strict
definition of law ; the social sciences have probably
reached still fewer. But short of absolutely exact
and indubitably demonstrated laws there are many
more or less satisfactorily ascertained relations and
regularities of causation, of dependence and se-
quence, which may fairly be viewed as laws, and
which it may be very desirable to know. Political
economists have brought to light many such truths.
They have also laboriously collected and carefully
classified masses of economic data, subtly analysed
all important economic ideas, and exhaustively dis-
cussed a multitude of economic questions and
theories. They have thus made large additions to
the knowledge and thought indispensable to en-
lightened statesmanship.

I am not, and never was, an adherent of what
was not long ago considered economic orthodoxy in
England. Thirty years ago it became my profes-
sional duty to teach political economy, and from the

STATE INTERVENTION 75

first I endeavoured to show that the distinctive
tenets of the dominant Ricardian creed in regard to
value, rent, and wages, were erroneous, and reached
by a one-sided method which was largely biased by
personal and national prejudice. The fact that
these tenets are the very pillars on which Marx and
Lassalle reared their whole economic structure
certainly shows that economic error can be powerful
for evil ; but it also shows the necessity for the
refutation of such error, and that economic truth
must be fruitful of good. The attempts which have
been made during the last twenty years to subvert
and discredit political economy have only increas-
ingly convinced me of the soundness and value of
its teaching as a whole and in essentials. Those
who set it at nought in their social schemes will, I
am persuaded, lead grievously astray those who
take them as guides. Economical expediency or
the reverse to a nation in its organic entirety is an
indication of the legitimacy or illegitimacy of State
intervention ; and those who endeavour to ascertain
by carefully conducted studies this limit between
wise and foolish State intervention must be more
likely to discover it than other men.

Fourthly, ivhat the State can and cannot do, may
'/" irdl or must do ill, is determinable by adequate
reflection, enlightened by history and experience.
The State can only act through an official machinery,
and the working and effects of such machinery can
be approximately calculated. It is only owing to
our own ignorance or insufficient consideration if we
do not perceive that many things which the State

76 SOCIALISM

might, perhaps, legitimately do if it could do them
greatly better than private persons and voluntary
associations, ought not to be undertaken by it because
it is sure to do them worse. The Radicals of thirty
years ago were disinclined to allow the State to do
anything which individuals could possibly do, how-
ever well the State, and however badly individuals,
might be able to do it. The Socialists of to-day, on
the other hand, are disposed to entrust to the State
whatever it is capable of, even when individuals,
separately or in combination, are more competent
to do it. The Radical owing to his bias erred, but
not more than the Socialist errs from the contrary
bias.

The implied formulae; of the Radical and of the
Socialist are equally crude and insufficient, al-
though they originate in contrary motives ; in
exaggerated fear in the one case, and in excessive
faith in the other. We ought obviously to keep
free alike from all unwarranted suspicion of the
State and from all blind idolatry of it. And if we do
so, we shall certainly not judge of the propriety or
impropriety of its intervention in any instance by
either of the formulae mentioned ; or by any doctrin-
arian formula whatever, such as both of them
manifestly are ; but we shall, in each particular
instance where intervention is suggested, carefully
and impartially examine what, with the resources
and appliances at its disposal, and in all the cir-
cumstances of the case, the effects of the interven-
tion will necessarily or naturally be, and decide
accordingly.

STATE INTERVENTION 77

Unfortunately at the present time many of our
political advisers are so enamoured of State inter-
vention that what weighs most with them in favour
of any form of its intervention is just what ought
to have no weight in their judgment at all, namely,
the mere fact that it is its intervention. Curiously
enough, by the irony of fate, and perhaps their own
want of humour, a considerable section of these
advisers in this country call themselves " Fabians,"
from, I suppose, the famous old Roman general
whose grand characteristic was prudence, and
whose great merit was the clearness with which
he saw that in the circumstances in which Rome
was placed, safety and victory were only to be
secured to her through a masterly inactivity,
the observance of laisser -faire. Fabius had
" Fabians " of the modern kind in his camp ; they
were those who chafed under his command, and
desired a bolder policy, such as he saw would
lead to disaster.

Fifthly, whenever the intervention of the State
tends to diminish self-help and individual energy, or
to encourage classes or portions of the community to
expect the State to do for them with public money
what they can do for themselves with their own
resources, it is thereby sufficiently indicated to be
excessive and unwise. " If," says Mr. Goschen,
in one of his Edinburgh addresses, " we have
learned anything from history, we are able to
affirm that the confidence of the individual in him-
self and the respect of the State for natural liberty
are the necessary conditions of the power of States,

78 SOCIALISM

of the prosperity of societies, and of the greatness of
peoples." "If," says Prof. Pulszky, "the State
undertakes a task too arduous, and taxes the
strength of its citizens to a greater extent than is
necessary for the attainment of its proper aim, that
portion of activity which it superfluously exacts
from its members, yields a much scantier return
than if it had been left to subserve individual
initiative, which can, after all, alone supply the
motive cause of all social progress. It follows,
accordingly, that if the State assumes the manage-
ment of affairs which the citizens would have been
able to carry on without its aid, the effect will be,
that the citizens lose both the disposition and the
readiness for independent initiative, that their indi-
viduality becomes stunted, and that thus, as the
factors of progress dwindle away, the State itself
becomes enfeebled, and decays." *

The demand that the State should refrain from
such intervention as tends to lessen the reliance of
its members on their own powers, and to prevent
the development of these powers by free and
energetic exercise, by no means assumes, as the
Radicals of a former generation were wont to
assume, that there is a necessary and irreconcilable
antagonism between the State and its members, so
that whatever it gains they lose, and its strength
is their weakness. It may be, and ought to be,
rested on the very different ground that the State
cannot be truly strong if the individuals and

* "The Theory of Law and Civil Society," p. 307.

STATE INTERVENTION 7c»

societies which compose it are lacking in personal
and moral energy ; cannot, as an organic whole, be
vigorous and healthy if its constituent cells and
component members have their strength absorbed,,
and scope for their appropriate activity denied them,.
by the foolish and tyrannical meddlesomeness of its.
head, its Government.

When we speak of the intervention of the State
what we really and necessarily mean is the inter-
vention of the Government through which alone the
State acts. And every Government is under tempta-
tion to interfere both too little and too much ; both
to neglect its duties and to occupy itself with what
it ought to let alone. There are, indeed, fanatical
admirers of Democracy who seem to believe that in
democratic countries the danger of Governments
interfering too much needs not to be taken into
account ; that when the people at large elect their
governors Governments will cease to be encroaching
and unjust. The optimism of such persons is of the
shallowest conceivable kind. There is nothing
either in the nature or in the history of Democracy
t<> warrant it. Democracies are always ruled by
parties ; their governors are always the leaders of
parties ; and parties and their leaders are naturally
ambitious, selfish, and grasping ; or, in other words,
prone to aggrandise themselves at the expense of
their adversaries and of the commonwealth. Demo-
crat ic Governments are, consequently, in no wise
fxrinpt from temptations to the intervention which
unduly restricts the liberties, undermines the
independence, and saps the vigour of individuals

8o SOCIALISM

and classes, of institutions, associations, and com-
munities.

Finally, in judging of proposals for the extension
of governmental action, account must be taken of
the state of public opinion in relation to them.
What a Government may be justified in under-
taking or enacting with the universal approval of
its subjects, it may be very wrong for it to under-
take or enact against the convictions and con-
sciences of even a minority of them. The common
division of the functions of the State into necessary
and facultative is of significance in this connection.
The former are those which all admit rightfully to
belong to the State. That the Government of a
nation should repel invasion, maintain internal order,
prevent injustice, and punish crime, is universally
acknowledged. No man's reason or conscience is
offended by its doing these things. It is recognised
by every one that only by the full discharge of these
duties does it justify its existence, and that, what-
ever else it may undertake, it ought not to under-
take what is incompatible with their efficient per-
formance. As to its facultative functions it is
otherwise. When a Government takes upon itself
obligations which are not naturally imperative but
optional, opinions will differ as to the wisdom and
propriety of its procedure, and the difference may
be such as of itself to suffice to determine whether
the procedure is wise and proper or the reverse. It
is not enough that a Government should be itself
convinced of the justice and expediency of its inter-
vention ; it is also important that the justice and

COMMUNISM 81

expediency thereof should be perceived by the
nation at large. Governments must beware of
coming rashly into conflict with the reasons and
consciences of even small minorities of honest men.
Otherwise they will have either to make exceptional
laws for these men or to treat them as criminals ;
and the adoption of either alternative must, it is
obvious, very seriously discredit and weaken their
authority. Socialists demand that the State shall
do many things to the doing of which there is this
insuperable objection : — that, even were these things
right and reasonable in themselves, there are so
many persons who firmly believe them to be unjust
and tyrannical, that they can only be carried into
effect by a vast and incalculable amount of persecu-
tion. But persecution does not lose its wickedness
when it ceases to refer to religion.

Any very simple or rigid solution of the problem
as to the limits of State intervention must, I believe,
be an erroneous one. The limits in question are
relative and varying. To trace them aright through
the changes and complications of social and civil life
will require all the science and insight of the genuine
statesman. The truth in regard to them cannot be
reached by mere abstraction or speculation, and
cannot be expressed in a general proposition.

SUPPLEMENTARY NOTE.

I. COMMUNISM. — J. W. Noyes, the founder of the Oneida
Community, and author of a lt History of American Socialisms,"
considers Communisn to be the practical recognition of unity of
life. " Our view," he says, " is, that unity of life is the basis of

* F

82 SOCIALISM

Communism. Property belongs to life, and so far as you and I
have consciously one life, we must hold our goods in common.
If there be no such thing as unity of life between a plurality of
persons, then there is no basis for Communism. The Com-
munism which we find in families is certainly based on the
assumption, right or wrong, that there is actual unity of life
between husband and wife, and between parents and children.
The common law of England, and of most other countries, recog-
nises only a unit in the male and female head of each family.
The Bible declares man and wife to be ' one flesh/ Sexual
intercourse is generally supposed to be a symbol of more com-
plete unity in the interior life • and children are supposed to be
branches of the one life of their parents. This theory is
evidently the basis of family Communism. So also the basis
of Bible Communism is the theory that in Christ believers become
spiritually one ; and the law ' Thou shalt love thy neighbour as
thyself ' is founded on the assumption that ' thy neighbour ' is,
or should be, a part of ' thyself.' Practically, Communism is a
thing of degrees. With a small amount of vital unity, Com-
munism is possible only in the limited sphere of familism. With
more unity, public institutions of harmony and benevolence make
their appearance. With another degree of unity, Communism of
external property becomes possible, as among the Shakers. With
still higher degrees, Communism may be introduced into the
sexual and propagative relations." *

The view set forth in these words is worthy of being noted,
inasmuch as it is undoubtedly one on which various communistic
societies have been actually based. It explains why such societies
have been characterised by their deplorable combination of spirit-
ualistic folly with carnal immorality.

Noyes is by no means singular in representing the family as a
stage of Communism. In reality, however, the family is an
exemplification of the true social community, which is incom-
patible with Communism ; the best type, in its normal state, of
the organic social unity which Communism would destroy. In
the family individualities are not suppressed, but supplemented ;
personal relations are not confused, but harmonised ; authority

* *' History of American Socialisms," pp. 197-8.

COMMUNISM 83

and subordination are maintained ; differences of duty are recog-
wisi'd; and even more rights are acquired than are sacrificed.
Communism has always, and very naturally, shown itself hostile
to the family. In what Noyes represents as the highest degree
of Communism the family is abolished.

Similarly, the third degree of his Communism annuls the
second. The doing away with private property must overthrow
thv3 " public institutions of harmony and benevolence supported
by it." His last two degrees are, in fact, alone properly com-
munistic ; and they are so just because they contradict and
violate the truths in the two first.

In Professor Wagner's opinion, " the only scientific acceptation
of the term Communism is ' Gemeinwirthschaf t,' common economy,
or, let us say, quite aware of the looseness of the rendering,
common management. " Every other * sense ' of the word," he
adds, is " nonsense." Then he proceeds to illustrate his definition
by informing us that the State in its administration of the public
finances is an example of Communism ; and^ that the post office,
telegraphic and railway systems, <fec., when under State direction,
are equally instances of it.*

Such a view is confused and misleading. Communists have
iihvays meant by Communism, not merely common management
in general, any sort of common management of property with a
view to production and advantage, but definitely the management
of the property of a community by the community itself, and
with all its members on terms of equality. They have never
conceived of it as management by departmental officials under
the control of a king or parliament. They have never imagined
anything so absurd as that they could vindicate their claim to be
called Communists by forming themselves into little States and
handing their property over to be managed by a ruling indi-
vidual or class. Communism, properly so-called — " common
management " in the communistic sense — is almost as incon-
sistent with State management as with private management.

Having fallen into the error indicated, it was natural that
Professor Wagner should regard Communism, in the ordinary
and proper acceptation of the term, as a phenomenon on which

* " Lehrbuch der Politischen Oekonomie," p. 171, cf. 172.

84 SOCIALISM

not a word need be spent (" iiber dem kein Wort zu verlieren-
1st"). But this is a great mistake. The history of Com*
munism is rich in instruction, not only for students of human
nature, but even of economics. It may be doubted if other
Socialists have any economic doctrines which they have not derived-
in some measure from the Communists. All truly socialistic
systems logically gravitate towards Communism. While com-
munistic experiments have failed to attain their more ambitious
aims, they have been fairly fruitful of lessons. They have even
sufficiently shown that, under certain conditions, communistic
societies can acquire a considerable amount of wealth.

The chief conditions are the two already specified (pp. 58-61),
namely, a small membership and a strict discipline. But there
are others — e.g., religion, restriction of population, and capable
leadership. Communistic societies have never long enjoyed much
material success except when animated by some kind of religious-
zeal. In America only the religious communities — such as those
of Beizel, Rapp, the Shakers, the Snowbergers, Zoar, Ebenezer,
and Janson — have grown rich. Another feature distinctive of
the communities which have materially prospered is that their
members have been either celibates or "practical Malthusians."
The family as it exists in ordinary Christian society is an effective
barrier to the success of Communism, rendering impossible that
separation from general society and those sacrifices which it
demands. The influence of leadership on the prosperity of-
communistic bodies is easily traceable. The death of their
founders has been in a large proportion of cases followed by the-
cessation or decline of their temporary success.

The prosperity of communistic societies has been almost exclu-
sively of a material kind. They have given to the world no*
eminent men. They have done nothing for learning, science, or
art. Their separation of themselves from the society around
them has rendered them incapable of benefiting it. The oppo-
sition between their interests and those of healthy family life is;
equivalent to their being essentially anti-social. "The com-
munistic spirit, as distinguished from the socialistic, is indifferent
to the good of the family, or hostile to it, and makes use of the-
power of society for its own protection, without doing anything
for society in return. If a whole nation were divided' up into

COMMUNISM 85

communities, the national strength and the family tie both would
be weakened. A State so constituted would resemble, in im-
portant respects, one consisting of small brotherhoods, or gentes,
or septs, but with much less of the family tie than is found in
•the latter when general society is as yet undeveloped/' *

Communism is, of course, not to be confounded with schemes
for the equal division of property. It aims at the abolition of
private property, not at the multiplication of private properties.
.It c;m thus repel the objection that it implies the necessity for
a constantly recurring division of properties in ordeu to keep
them equal. It cannot escape, however, the necessity of imply-
ing a continuous division of the common wealth and labour of each
-communistic society among its individual members according to
some conception of equality or equity. " Common " can only
mean what is common to individuals, and, therefore, not what
is indivisible among them, but what they are individually entitled
to share. Common property is simply property to which all the
individuals of a community have an equal or proportional right.
It differs from individual property merely in that each individual
interested in it is not free in dealing with it to act according to
Jiis own views of what is for his advantage, but is dependent on
the wishes and conduct of all the other individuals composing the
community. The production of wealth cannot be otherwise
•" common " than as the production of a number of combined
and co-operating individuals, each of whom must bear his own
burden of toil. The product of common capital and labour can
only be consumed or enjoyed by individuals. There can be, in
.fact, no production, possession, or enjoyment, which is not
ultimately individual, even under the most communistic arrange-
ments. Hence, as the wealth of a communistic society con-
tinually varies in amount as a whole, it, practically, continually
.divides itself among the individual members of the society, and
.that in a way which may be as disastrous to them as would a
continuous equalisation of properties to the individual citizens
of a commonwealth.

Communism can only be consistent and complete when it

-ident Woolsey in Her/og-ScLaffs "Encyclopaedia," vol. iii.
j>. 2204.

86 SOCIALISM

affirms the equal right of all to the use of the means of pro-
duction, the equal obligation of all to labour in industrial work,
and the equal claim of all to share in every species of social
enjoyment. It does not, of course, contemplate a general
scramble for spades and ploughs, hats and coats, but it legiti-
mates it when the supply of such articles is deficient. Thus
Communism, while the extreme of Socialism, touches on
Anarchism, the extreme of Individualism.

The Fourierist societies should not be described as com-
munistic* Fourierism was a system of complex Associationism
in essential respects antithetic to Communism, although marked
by some of its features.*

Whether the fraternal love of the primitive Church of Jeru-
salem did or did not express itself in the entire renunciation of
private property, a complete community of goods, is a question on
which the most eminent exegetes of the Acts of the Apostles are
far from agreed. A community of goods has seemed to some
Christian teachers, brotherhoods, and sects, the social ideal of
Christianity. The want or weakness of Christian love has seemed
to them the chief or sole obstacle to its realisation. There
are, however, two others, far from inconsiderable : common sense,
discernment of the manifest evils which its general acceptance as
a rule of life would infallibly inflict on society; and a sense of
justice, a sense of the responsibilities and obligations which the
renunciation of private property would leave men incapable of
meeting. M. Joly, in his " Socialisme Chretien," 1892, has
learnedly and impartially shown how exaggerated is the view
held by many Socialists as to the teaching of the founders, fathers,
and doctors of the Christian Church regarding private property,
wealth and poverty, &c.

II. COLLECTIVISM. — It is permissible and convenient to treat of
Collectivism as a kind of Socialism co-ordinate with Communism.
It is not, however, essentially distinct from it. Karl Marx, its
founder, was content to call it Comjmmism. And, in fact, it may

* The most instructive works on modern economic Communism are that
of Noyes', already mentioned, and William Alfred Hind's " American Com-
-munities : Brief Sketches of Economy, Zoar, Bethel, Aurora, Amana, Icaria,
Oneida, Wallingf ord, and the Brotherhood of the New Life.'' Oneida, 1 878.

COLLECTIVISM 87

not unfairly be described as in one aspect a universalised, and in
another aspect a mitigated Communism.

Collectivism is Communism pure and simple in so far as it
declares unjust all private property in the means of production,
distribution, and exchange ; and it is this Communism univer-
salised, inasmuch as it is not content to leave its realisation to the
union in voluntarily constituted groups of those who believe in
its justice and expediency, but seeks to "capture" Governments,
and through them to impose itself legislatively on nations. It
admits that it can only be definitely established in any single
nation concurrently with its evolution in all other advanced
nations. It claims to be the heir of all the ages, and the out-
come of the whole development of civilisation ; the stage into
which capitalism is necessarily everywhere passing, — that in
which, as Engels says, " the exploited and oppressed class will
free itself from the exploiting and oppressing class, and at the
same time free society as a whole from exploitation, oppression,
and class conflicts for ever."

Collectivism is, on the other hand, mitigated Communism,
inasmuch as it promises to allow of private property in objects
destined merely for consumption. Whether it can consistently
make this promise, or is likely to keep it, are questions which we
shall not here discuss. It is sufficient to note that it makes the
promise, and that it is, in consequence, so far differentiated from
a strict or complete Communism.

The Belgian Socialist, Colins, began to advocate collectivist
principles in a work published in 1835, and the French Socialist,
Pecqueur, in a volume which appeared in 1836. It was not,
however, until between twenty and thirty years later that these
principles were so presented as to master the understandings and
inflame the passions of a multitude of working-men; and that
Collectivism made itself felt as a mighty and portentous reality.
It appeared in Germany under the name and form of Sozial-
demokratie (Social Democracy) ; and was from the first militant
and threatening. Karl Marx was its theorist and strategist ;
<lle was its orator and agitator. Rodbertus had not the
slightest direct influence upon it, — merely an indirect through
Marx and Lassalle. It has now spread over the civilised world,
but the spirit of Marx still inspires it ; his schemes of organisa-

88 SOCIALISM

tion and of war are still acted on by it; and his " Das Kapital " is
still its " Bible."

At this point I wish to give all due prominence to the central
and ruling idea of Social Democracy. This can best be done, I
think, by quoting the words in which that idea has found
expression in the most authoritative documents of Social Demo-
cracy,— its chief manifestoes and programmes. A considerable
subsidiary advantage will also thus be gained, as the reader will
have brought under his observation the most important portions
of a number of documents with which it is desirable that he
should be to some extent acquainted.

The Manifesto of the Communist Party, drawn up by Marx
and Engels in 1847 is the earliest and most celebrated of these
documents — the first and most vigorous presentation of the
general creed of the democratic Socialism of the present day.
I quote from it these sentences : —

"When, in the course of development, the distinctions of classes have
vanished, and when all production is concentrated in the hands of asso-
ciated individuals, public authority loses its political character. Political
power in the proper sense is the organised power of one class for the
suppression of another. When the Proletariat, in its struggle against
the middle class, unites itself perforce so as to form a class, constitutes
itself by way of revolution the ruling class, and as the ruling class forcibly
abolishes the former conditions of production, it abolishes therewith at
the same time the very foundations of the opposition between classes,
does away with classes altogether, and by that very fact with its own
domination as a class. The place of the former bourgeois society, with
its classes and class contrasts, is taken by an association of workers, in
which the free development of each is the condition of the free develop-
ment of all."

Next may be adduced the Fundamental Pact or Statutes of
the International Workmen's Association, drawn up by Marx
in September, 1864 : —

Considering : — That the emancipation of the working classes must be
carried out by the working classes themselves, and that the struggle for
the emancipation of the working classes does not imply a struggle for
class privileges and monopolies, but for equal rights and duties, and for
the abolition of all class domination ;

That the economic dependence of the working-man on the monopolist
of the means of production, the sources of life, forms the basis of servi-

COLLECTIVISM 89

tmle in every form, social misery, mental degradation, and political
dependence ;

That consequently the economic emancipation of the working classes is
the great aim to which every political movement must be subordinated as
a mere means to an end ;

That all endeavours directed to this great aim have hitherto failed from
want of union between the various departments of labour of each country
and from the absence of a fraternal bond of union between the working
classes of the various countries ;

That the emancipation of labour is neither a local nor a national, but a
social problem, which comprises all countries in which the modern state
.of society exists, and whose solution depends on the practical and
theoretical co-operation of the most advanced countries ;

That the present reawakening of the working classes of the industrial
countries of Europe, while raising new hopes, contains a solemn warning
against a return to old mistakes, and demands the close connection of the
movements which are as yet separated ;

For these reasons the first International Congress of Workmen declares
that the International Workmen's Association and all societies and indi-
viduals connected with it acknowledge truth, justice, and morality as the
basis of their behaviour among themselves and towards all their fellow-
men without regard to colour, creed, or nationality. The Congress
regards it the duty of a man to demand the rights of a man and a citizen,
not only for himself, but also for every one who does his duty. No rights
without duties, no duties without rights.

The properly socialistic portion of the Eisenach Programme
(August, 1869) runs as follows : —

" The Social Democratic Workmen's Party strives for the establishment
of a free State governed by the people.

"Every member of the Social Democratic Workmen's Party pledges
.himself to support with all his power the following principles :

" i. The present political and social conditions are extremely unjust,
and must therefore be attacked with the greatest energy.

" 2. The struggle for the emancipation of the working classes is not a
struggle for class privileges and advantages, but for equal
rights and equal duties, and for the abolition of all class
domination.

"3. The economical dependence of the labourer on the capitalist
forms the basis of servitude in every form, and consequently
the Social Democratic Party aims at abolishing the present
system of production (wage system), and at securing for every
worker the full result of his labour by means of co-operative
production.

"4. .Political freedom is an indispensable -condition for the economic

90 SOCIALISM

emancipation of the working classes. The social question is
therefore inseparable from the political ; its solution depends
thereon, and is possible only in a democratic State.

" 5- Considering that the political and economical emancipation of
the working class is only possible if the latter carries on the
struggle in concert and in unison, the Social Democratic Work-
men's Party offers a united organisation which, however, makes
it possible for each to make his influence felt for the good of
the whole.

"6. Considering that the emancipation of labour is neither a local
nor a national, but a social problem which comprises all
countries in which the modern state of society exists, the
Social Democratic Workmen's Party considers itself, as far as
the laws of the society permit it, as a branch of the Inter-
national Workmen's Association, and unites its endeavours
therewith."

The corresponding portion of the Gotha Programme (May,
1875) reads as follows : —

"Labour is the source of all wealth and of all civilisation, and since
productive labour as a whole is possible only through society, the whole
produce of labour belongs to society — that is, to all its members — it being
the duty of all to work, and all having equal rights in proportion to their
reasonable requirements. In the present state of society the means of
production are the monopoly of the capitalist class ; the dependence of
the working class resulting from this is the cause of misery and servitude
in every form. The emancipation of labour requires the conversion of the
means of production into the common property of society, and the social
regulation of the labour of society, the product of labour being used
for the common good and justly divided. The emancipation of labour
must be the work of the working class, in relation to which all other
classes are only a reactionary mass.

"Starting with these principles, the Socialist Workmen's Party of
Germany uses all legal means to attain a free State and a socialistic
condition of society, the destruction of the iron law of wages, the abolition
of exploitation in every form, the removal of all social and political in-
equality. The Socialist Workmen's Party of Germany, though at present
acting within national limits, is conscious of the international character of
the workmen's movement, and is determined to fulfil every duty which it
imposes on the workers, in order to realise the fraternity of all men.

" The Socialist Workmen's Party of Germany demands, for the purpose
of preparing for the solution of the social question, the establishment of
socialistic co-operative societies, supported by the State, under the demo-
cratic control of the working people. These co-operative societies must
be instituted for industry and agriculture to such an extent as to cause
the socialistic organisation of the labour of all to arise therefrom."

COLLECTIVISM 91

The Erfurt Programme (October, 1891) gives a fuller state-
ment : —

"The economic development of bourgeoise society necessarily leads to
the ruin of the industry on a small scale which is founded on the private
property of the workmen in his means of production. It separates the
workmen from the means of production, and transforms him into a
proletarian possessing nothing, owing to the means of production be-
coming the property of a relatively limited number of capitalists and of
large landed proprietors.

"In proportion as the means of production are monopolised, large
agglomerated industries displace small scattered : the tool is developed
into the machine ; the productivity of human labour is enormously in-
creased. But all the advantages of this transformation are monopolised
by the capitalists and large lauded proprietors. For the proletariat and
the intermediate layers on the slope of ruin — small tradesmen, peasants,
&c. — this evolution means a continuous augmentation of insecurity of
existence, of misery, of oppression, of slavery, of humiliation, of ex-
ploitation.

" Always greater becomes the number of the proletarians, always larger
the army of superfluous workmen, always harsher the antagonism between
exploiters and exploited, always more exasperated the war of classes
between the bourgeoisie and the proletariat, which separates modern
society into two hostile camps, and which is the common characteristic
of all industrial countries.

" The abyss between those who possess and those who do not possess is
still farther widened by the crises which arise from the very nature of the
capitalist mode of production ; they become always more extensive and
disastrous, make general uncertainty the normal state of society, and
prove that the productive forces of the society of to-day are too great,
and that private property in the means of production is now incompatible
with the orderly application of these forces and their full development.

" Private property in the means of labour, which was formerly property
in the fruit of his labour to its producer, serves now to expropriate
peasants, manual labourers, and small tradesmen, and to place those who
do not labour — capitalists and large landowners — in possession of the
product of the workers. Only the transformation of capitalist private
property in the means of production — the soil, mines, raw materials, tools,
machines, means of transport — into collective property, and the trans-
formation of the production of commodities into production effected by
and for society, can make our large manufacturing industry and propor-
tionally increased power of collective labour, instead of sources of misery
and oppression as regards the classes hitherto exploited, sources of the
greatest happiness and of harmonious and universal improvement.

"This social transformation means the enfranchisement, not only of
the labouring class, but of the whole of the human species which suffers

92 SOCIALISM

-under present conditions. But this enfranchisement can only be the
work of the labouring class, because all the other classes, notwithstanding
the conflicting interests which divide them, rest on private property in the
•means of production, and have as their common aim the maintenance of
the foundations of existing society.

" The battle of the working class against capitalist exploitation is neces-
sarily a political battle. The labouring class cannot fight its economic
•battles and develop its economic organisation without political rights. It
cannot bring about the transition of the means of production into collective
property without having taken possession of political power.

" To give to this war of the working class unity and consciousness of
the end aimed at, to show to workmen that this end is a necessity in the
•order of nature, such is the task of the Socialist Democratic Party.

" The interests of the working class are identical in all countries where
the capitalist mode of production prevails. With the universal expansion
of commerce, of production for the market of the world, the condition of
the workmen of each country becomes always more dependent on the
•condition of the workmen in other countries. The enfranchisement of
the working class is consequently a task in which the workmen of all
'civilised countries should equally take part. In this conviction the
Socialist Democratic Party of Germany declares itself in unison with
the workmen of all other countries who are true to their class.

" The Socialist Democratic Party of Germany fights therefore, not for
new class privileges, but to abolish the domination of classes and classes
themselves, and to establish equal rights and equal duties for all, without
distinction of sex or descent. Starting with these ideas, it combats in
existing society, not only the exploitation and oppression of those who
work for wages, but every species of exploitation and oppression, whether
it be directed against a class, a family, or a race."

I have not referred to those portions of the foregoing docu-
ments in which are formulated the demands of the Social
Democracy for measures tending either to ameliorate or sup-
plant the present regime. My next and last quotation gives an
adequate conception of these demands, and clearly indicates what
their place and purpose are in the collectivist scheme of doctrine
.and policy. It is that. part of the latest manifesto of English
Socialists — the Manifesto of the Joint Committee of /Socialist
bodies* — in which are summed up the conclusions arrived at by
the representatives of the Social Democratic Federation, the
Fabian Society, and the Hammersmith Socialist Society, as
supplying a basis for united socialistic action :

* Published in pamphlet form in May 1893.

COLLECTIVISM 93

" It is opportune to remind the public once more of what Socialism
means to those who are working for the transformation of our present
unsocialist state into a collectivist republic, and who are entirely free from
the illusion that the amelioration or ' moralisation ' of the conditions of
capitalist private property can do away with the necessity for abolishing
it. Even those re-adjustments of industry and administration which are
socialist in form will not be permanently useful unless the whole State is
merged into an organised commonwealth. Municipalisation, for instance,
can only be accepted as Socialism on the condition of its forming a part
of national, and at last of international Socialism, in which the workers of
all nations, while adopting within the borders of their own countries those
methods which are rendered necessary by their historic development,, can
federate upon a common basis of the collective ownership of the great
means and instruments of the creation and distribution of wealth, and
thus break down national animosities by the solidarity of human interest
throughout the civilised world.

" On this point all Socialists agree. Our aim, one and ail, is to obtain
for the whole community complete ownership and control of the means of
transport, the means of manufacture, the mines, and the land. Thus we
look to put an end for ever to the wage system, to sweep away all distinc-
tions of class, and eventually to establish national and international Com-
munism on a sound basis.

" To this end it is imperative on all members of the Socialist Party to
gather together their forces in order to formulate a general policy and
force on its general acceptance.

"But here we must repudiate both the doctrines and tactics of
Anarchism. As Socialists, we believe that those doctrines, and the
tactics necessarily resulting from them, though advocated as revolutionary
by men who are honest and single-minded, are really reactionary, both in
theory and practice, and tend to check the advance of our cause. Indeed,
so far from hampering the freedom of the individual, as Anarchists hold
it will, Socialism will foster that full freedom which Anarchism would
inevitably destroy.

"As to the means for the attainment of our end, in the first place, we1
Socialists look for our success to the increasing and energetic promulga-
tion of our views amongst the whole people, and, next, to the capture and
transformation of the great social machinery. In any case the people1
have increasingly at hand the power of dominating and controlling the
whole political, and through the political, the social forces of the
empire.

"The first step towards transformation and reorganisation must neces-
sarily be in the direction of the limitation of class robbery, and the'
consequent raising of the standard of life for the individual. In this
direction certain measures have been brought within the scope of prac-
tical politics ; and we name them as having been urged and supported
originally and chiefly by Socialists, and advocated by them still, not, as'

94 SOCIALISM

above said, as solutions of social wrongs, but as tending to lessen the
evils of the existing regime; so that individuals of the useful classes,
having more leisure and less anxiety, may be able to turn their attention
to the only real remedy for their position of inferiority — to wit, the
supplanting of the present state by a society of equality of condition.
When this great change is completely carried out, the genuine liberty of
all will be secured by the free play of social forces with much less coercive
interference than the present system entails.

" The following are some of the measures spoken of above :

" An Eight Hours Law.

" Prohibition of Child Labour for Wages.

" Free Maintenance of all Necessitous Children.

" Equal Payment of Men and Women for Equal Work.

" An Adequate Minimum Wage for all Adults Employed in the

Government and Municipal Services, or in any Monopolies, such

as Kail ways, enjoying State Privileges.
" Suppression of all Sub-contracting and Sweating.
" Universal Suffrage for all Adults, Men and Women alike.
" Public Payment for all Public Service.

" The inevitable economic development points to the direct absorption
by the State, as an organised democracy, of monopolies which have been
granted to, or constituted by, companies, and their immediate conversion
into public services. But the railway system is of all the monopolies that
which could be most easily and conveniently so converted. It is certain
that no attempt to reorganise industry on the land can be successful so
long as the railways are in private hands, and excessive rates of carriage
are charged. Recent events have hastened on the socialist solution of
this particular question, and the disinclination of boards of directors to
adopt improvements which would cheapen freight, prove that in this, as in
other cases, English capitalists, far from being enlightened by competition,
are blinded by it even to their own interests.

" In other directions the growth of combination, as with banks, shipping
companies, and huge limited liability concerns, organised both for pro-
duction and distribution, show that the time is ripe for socialist organisa-
tion. The economic development in this direction is already so far
advanced that the socialisation of production and distribution on the
economic side of things can easily and at once begin, when the people
have made up their minds to overthrow privilege and monopoly. In order
to effect the change from capitalism to co-operation, from unconscious
revolt to conscious reorganisation, it is necessary that we Socialists should
constitute ourselves into a distinct political party with definite aims,
marching steadily along our own highway without reference to the con-
venience of political factions.

" We have thus stated the main principles and the broad strategy on
which, as we believe, all Socialists may combine to act with vigour. The

INDIVIDUALISM 95

opportunity for deliberate and determined action is now always with us
and local autonomy in all local matters will still leave the fullest outlet
for national and international Socialism. We therefore confidently appeal
to all Socialists to sink their individual crotchets in a business-like
endeavour to realise in our own day that complete communisation of
industry for which the economic forms are ready and the minds of the
people are almost prepared."

III. INDIVIDUALISM. — In speculative philosophy the term Indi-
vidualism bears two acceptations. It has been applied to
designate the theory which would explain the universe by the
agency of a multitude of uncreated, individuated forces or
wills. In this sense we hear of the Individualism of Leibniz,
of Bahnsen, and others. More frequently, however, what is
meant by Individualism in this sphere of thought is the theory
which represents the individual consciousness as the ultimate
ground of all knowledge and certitude. In this sense one speaks
of the Individualism of Descartes or Rousseau, or of the indi-
vidualistic character of the philosophy of the eighteenth century.
Obviously in neither of thase senses is the term Individualism the
antithesis of Socialism.

It is otherwise in the spheres of religion, ethics, politics, and
economics. Individualism, like Socialism, may be religious,
ethical, political, or economical. And in all these spheres Indi-
vidualism is, like Socialism, only partially realisable. There
can be no complete Socialism, for society in entirely sacrificing
the individual must annihilate itself. There can be no complete
Individualism, for the individual is inseparable from society,
lives, moves, and has his being in society. Both Individualism
and Socialism can only exist as tendencies or approximations to
unattainable and self-contradictory ideals created by irrational
and excessive abstraction. Of course, the more individualistic a
man is the more Socialism will he fancy that he sees, and the
more socialistic he is the readier will he be to charge other men
with Individualism. One who does justice to the rights both
of the individual and of society will probably conclude that
Individualists are not so numerous as they are often represented
to be, and that many who call themselves Socialists do so without
much reason.

There may be Individualism as well as Socialism in the sphere

96 SOCIALISM

of religion, although the history of religion clearly shows that
socialistic have here been far more powerful than individualistic
forces.

The teaching of Christ has been often represented as socialistic,
and even as communistic. A well-known socialist writer, Mr. E.
Belfort Bax, however, often insists on what he calls its " one-
sided, introspective, and individualistic character." An impartial
examination of it will lead, I think, to the conclusion that it was
so comprehensive and harmonious as to be neither individualistic
nor socialistic. While worthily estimating the value and dignity
of the individual soul, it kept ever in view the claims both of
brotherhood and of the kingdom of God.

The Mediaeval Church exalted to the utmost social authority as
embodied in the Church. The Reformers demanded that churchly
authority should only be allowed in so far as it could justify itself
to individual reason, to private judgment. This constitutes what
is called " the individualism of Protestantism." Whether it ought
to be so called or not should be decided by determining whether or
not the demand was excessive. To me it seems that it was not nearly
large enough ; that every external authority is bound to prove its
claims reasonable; and that there is no real Individualism in
insisting that every external and social authority should do so.

There have been some religious teachers who have expressly
claimed to be individualists, — for instance, William Maccall and
the Dane S.Kierkegaard. In Martensen's "Christian Ethics"
(vol. i. pp. 202-36) will be found a valuable study on the Indi-
vidualism of the latter and of Alexander Vinet. Vinet, however,
while insisting strongly on the importance of individuality,
expressly disclaimed " Individualism."

Ethical Individualism has made itself visible in egoistic
hedonism, the selfish theory, the utilitarianism of personal
interest. It has assumed various phases. It was maintained
both in the Cyrenaic and Epicurean schools of antiquity. In
later times we find it represented by Hobbes, Mandeville, Paley,
Helve tius, Max Stirner, &c. It makes duty identical with per-
sonal interest. It judges of actions solely by their consequences,
and yet leaves out of account their effects on society. At the
same time, by an instructive inconsistency, the ethical Indi-
vidualist, while resolving virtue into a regard to personal interest,

INDIVIDUALISM 97

is generally found attempting to justify it by its conduciveness to
the interest of society. Although Mandeville went so far as to
plead the cause of " private vices " it was on the ground that
they were " public benefits." The frightful egoism of Max
Stirner led him to socialistic conclusions which Marx and
Lassalle re-advanced. Socialism, in like manner, not only may
be, but largely is, ethically individualistic, a generalised egoism,
by no means the altruistic system which it is often represented
as being.*

* Various writers have already pointed out that there is a sense in
which Socialism is an extremely individualistic theory. Some of them
are mentioned in the following quotation from Mr. J. S. Mackenzie's
admirable "Introduction to Social Philosophy " (p. 250) : " It may be well
to remark at this point that, in one sense, the contrast which is commonly
drawn between Individualism and Socialism is not well founded. Socialism
in many cases, as Schiiffle has trenchantly pointed out (Aussichtslosig-
keit der Socialdemokratie, p. 13), is little more than Individualism run
mad. Lassalle, too (the most brilliant of the Socialists) recognised that
Socialism is in reality individualistic. Cf. also Stirling's ' Philosophy of
Law,' p. 59, and Rae's 'Contemporary Socialism,' p. 387. Indeed, the
readiness with which extreme Radicalism passes into Socialism (unless it
be regarded as merely an illustration of the principle that 'extremes
meet') may be taken as a sufficient evidence that Socialism is not in
reality opposed to Individualism. No doubt, Socialism is really opposed
to a certain species of Individualism— viz., to the principle of individual
liberty. But, in like manner, the principle of individual liberty is opposed
to another species of Individualism — viz., to the principle of individual
e'jiK/Itty. The real antithesis to Individualism would be found rather in
the ideal of an aristocratic polity, established with a view to the pro-
duction of the best State, as distinguished from the production of the
happiest condition of its individual members. The most celebrated
instance of such an ideal (that sketched in the JRepublic of Plato) happens
to be also to a large extent socialistic ; but this is in the main an accident."

Adolf Held, in his " Sozialismus, &c.," 1878, was, so far as I am aware, the
first adequately to emphasise the fact that the Socialism of " Social Demo-
cracy " was extreme Individualism, the natural and historical outgrowth
of Liberalism, or, as Mr. Mackenzie says, Radicalism. It is one of the
merits, however, of the Katheder-Socialisten as a class to have clearly
seen that the last merit which can be assigned to the Collectivist
Socialists is that of entertaining any truly organic idea of society. In-
dividualism and Socialism are only antithetic in that Individualism
sacrifices social right to individual licence, and Socialism sacrifices in-
dividual liberty to social arbitrariness. What Socialism means by

G

98 SOCIALISM

The antithesis of Individualism and Socialism is fundamental
in politics and political history. The aim of true politics is to
eliminate and reject what is erroneous and excessive both in
Political Individualism and Political Socialism, and to accept,
develop, and conciliate what is true in both. Each of them,
it must be observed, not only does positive injustice to the truth
which is in the other, but also necessarily imperfect justice to
the truth which is in itself. Political Individualism robs society,
but thereby impoverishes the individual. Political Socialism
represses the liberty of the individual, but thereby saps the
strength of the State. This is what is meant by those who
have said that Individualism is the true Socialism, as well as
by those who have pronounced Socialism to be the true Indi-
vidualism. It is to be regretted that they could not find a less
absurd mode of giving expression to so very sound and certain a
thought. How political and general history has moved through-
out the world, and from age to age, between the individualistic
and socialistic extremes, has been shown in a masterly manner
by the late Fr. Laurent, of Ghent, in the eighteen volumes of
his " Etudes sur 1'Histoire de l'Humanite." Laurent always
uses the terms Individualism and Socialism in what seems to
me a consistent way ; and certainly no one has shown so clearly
and fully the reasons which history supplies to warn nations to
beware of both Political Individualism and Political Socialism. *
• __

" society," is merely an aggregate or majority of individuals, assumed to
be entitled to suppress individual liberty in order to obtain, as far as
possible, equality of individual enjoyment. Ethically, Socialism is an
individualistic equalitarian hedonism. In the sense in which Indivi-
dualism and Socialism are opposite extremes they are extremes which
meet in Anarchism, which, practically, regards every person as entitled
alike to enjoy absolute liberty as an individual and to exercise the entire
authority of society.

* There is also a profound discussion of both in the fourth book of
Professor Carle's "Vita del Diritto." Mr. Wordsworth Donisthorpe has
given us a professedly individualistic theory of politics in his able treatise
" Individualism : A System of Politics," 1889. He effectively assails, how-
ever, "extreme Individualists"; and, perhaps, no economist not a Socialist
accepts so fully the ordinary socialistic teaching regarding " the iron law "
and the evil effects of the wage-system. He is vigorous and ingenious,
especially in his criticism*

INDIVIDUALISM 99

In the sphere of economics, Individualism has been differen-
tiated from Socialism in several ways. According to M. Maurice
Block, for example, the fundamental distinction between them is
that the former recognises the right of private property, and the
latter wholly or largely denies it. He admits, however, that he
*ees objections to thus employing the term Individualism, and
that he does so because it is customary.* He does not indicate
his objections; but one very obvious objection is that few of
those who fully acknowledge the legitimacy of private property
will consent to be classed as Individualists. The denial of that
legitimacy all will admit to be a sure mark of Socialism ; the
recognition of it few will accept as an equally certain sign of
Individualism.

Socialists generally mean by Economic Individualism the
theory which affirms that individuals are entitled to exercise their
energies in economic enterprises unimpeded by Governments so
far as they do not contravene the rights of others, so far as they
do not injure or wrong their fellows: in other words, they
generally class as Individualists all economists who have acknow-
ledged the substantial truth of what has been called " the system
of natural liberty." But to justify this employment of the terms
in question it would be necessary for them to show that the
economists to whom they refer really did, as a class, ascribe more
freedom to the individual and less authority to the State than
were their due; and that their economic theory naturally led
them to commit these errors. This Socialists have not done,
although some of them have made a kind of show of doing it by
representing the exceptional exaggerations of a few economic
writers as the common and fundamental principles of " economic
orthodoxy."

Cohn, Held, Wagner, and other Katheder-Socialisten, have
represented Individualism and Socialism as complementary and
equally legitimate principles, the one springing from a sense of
what the individual is entitled to as a personal and free being,
and the other from a perception of the obligation of the State to

* " Les Progrfcs de la Science ficonomique," t. i. p. 199. The chapter
on " Individualism and Socialism " in this work is very learned and
judicious.

ioo SOCIALISM

aim at the general good of society. They affirm that Indivi-
dualism and Socialism are both essential to the development of
the economic life, and that neither ever quite excludes the other,
although they coexist in different degrees of strength at different
times. Yet they profess to keep clear of Individualism and to
teach Socialism; and describe their own so-called Socialism as
" true Socialism " or "Socialism," and Communism and Collectiv-
ism as forms of a " false " or " extreme " Socialism, while they
either treat Individualism as itself " an extreme," or identify
with " extreme Individualism " the theory of natural economic
liberty even when held by those who fully acknowledge that the
rulers and also the individual members of a nation are morally
bound to promote as far as they can the common welfare. The
inconsistency of this procedure is obvious, but not its fairness.

c

0

c
a

o

4

CHAPTER IV.

SOCIALISM AND LABOUK.

SOCIALISM seeks to reconstruct and reorganise the
whole social system, and to effect a vast improvement
•in every department of human life. But it aims
primarily and especially at a thorough reorganisation
of industry and property ; at such an alteration of
the conditions and arrangements as to the production,
distribution, and enjoyment of wealth, as will abolish
poverty and remove the discontent of the operative
classes. While it contemplates a revolution in the
intellectual, religious, moral, and political state of
mankind, it acknowledges and affirms that this must
be preceded and determined by a revolution in their
economic state. It follows that while Socialists, in
attempting to bring about the vast social revolution
which they have in view, are bound to have a new
theory as to the proper constitution of society as a
\vlmle, they are especially bound to have a new
theory as to the proper economic constitution of
society ; to have other and more correct opinions as
to the subjects and problems of which economic
science treats than mere social reformers and ordinary
economists ; and, in a word, to have a political eco-
nomy of their own. New doctrines as to labour,
land, and capital, money and credit, wages, profits,

102 SOCIALISM

interest, rent, taxes, and the like, are needed to
justify the new measures which are required to
bring about the socialist revolution.

Socialists cannot be fairly charged with failing to
recognise the necessity and obligation herein implied.
They frankly claim to have a political economy of
their own, entitled to displace that which has been
prevalent ; and they demand that their system
should be judged of chiefly by that portion of its
teaching which constitutes its political economy.
Whatever merits they may assign to their philo-
sophical, religious, and ethical theories, they hold
them to have only a secondary and supplementary
place in the socialist creed, and grant that it is not
by their proof or disproof that Socialism can be
either established or overthrown. They will admit
no verdict on the character of Socialism to be
relevant and decisive which has failed to recognise
that its answers to economic problems, its proposals
for the organisation of industry and the adminis-
tration of wealth, are what is primary and funda-
mental in it.

Thus far they are, I think, perfectly right ; and,
therefore, I shall in the present work confine myself
chiefly to the economics of Socialism. Of course, it
is only possible to consider even the economic teach-
/ng of Socialism on a limited number of points ; and
naturally the selected portion of its teaching should
be that which is most obviously crucial as regards
the truth or falsity of the socialist system, and which
is concerned with questions of the widest range of
interest. What Socialism teaches on the subject

SOCIALISM AND LABOUR 103

of labour certainly meets this requirement. To con-
sideration of the socialist doctrine of labour let us
now accordingly turn.

The importance of true and the danger of false
teaching in regard to labour can hardly be ex-
aggerated. The history of labour is one in many
respects most painful to contemplate. For al-
though it is a wonderful manifestation of the power,
ingenuity, and perseverance of man, it is also a
most deplorable exhibition of his selfishness, injustice,
and cruelty. It is the history of secret or open war
from the earliest times, and over the whole earth,
between rich and poor, masters and servants, labour
and capital. It shows us men not only gradually
subduing nature, so as to render her forces obedient
to their wills and subservient to their good, but
constantly engaged in a keen and selfish struggle
with one another, productive of enormous misery.
Pride and envy, merciless oppression and mad revolt,
wicked greed and wanton waste, have displayed
themselves in it to a humiliating extent, and have
left behind them in every land a heritage of woe,
a direful legacy of mischievous prejudices and evil
passions.

On no subject is it at present so easy to satisfy
prejudice and to enflame passion. Religious animos-
ities are now nearly extinct among all peoples in the
first ranks of civilisation, and those who endeavour to
revive them talk and strive without effect. Merely
political distinctions are losing their sharpness and
their power to divide, and political parties are finding
that their old battle cries no longer evoke the old

io4 SOCIALISM

enthusiasm, and that their principles have either
been discredited or generally acknowledged and
appropriated. But the labour question is in all
lands agitated with passionate fierceness, and gives
rise, in many instances, to violence, conspiracy,
assassination, and insurrection. It is the distinctively
burning question of the Europe of to-day, as the
religious question was of the Europe of the Refor-
mation period, or the political question of the Europe
of the Revolution epoch. And it burns so intensely
that the spokesmen and leaders of the labour party
may easily, by the errors and excesses which spring
from ignorance, recklessness, or ambition, as seriously
dishonour and compromise their cause, and produce
as terrible social disasters, as did the fanatics and
intriguers who, under the plea of zeal for religious
and civil liberty, brought disgrace on the Reforma-
tion and the Revolution.

If they do so they will be even more guilty than
were their prototypes. The excesses of fanaticism
are growing always less excusable, seeing that it
is becoming always more obvious that they are
unnecessary. It might well seem doubtful at the
time of the Reformation whether the cause of re-
ligious freedom would triumph or not ; but in the
nineteenth century, and in countries where speech
is free, where public opinion is of enormous in-
fluence, and political power is in the hands of the
majority of the people, it surely ought to be mani-
fest to all sane human beings that the just claims
of labour will and must be acknowledged, and that
none the less speedily or completely for being

SOCIALISM AND LABOUR 105

unassociated or uncontaminated with unreasonable-
ness and disorder.

Unfortunately many Socialists refuse to acquiesce
in this view of the situation. They have come to
the conclusion that the condition of the labouring
classes is so bad that the first and chief duty of
those who befriend them is to spread among them,
as widely and deeply as possible, discontent with
their lot. And, accordingly, they concentrate their
eiforts on the attainment of this end. By the
selection only of what suits their purpose, by the
omission of all facts, however certain and relevant,
which would contravene it, and by lavishness in ex-
aggeration, the past and present of the labouring
classes are so delineated as to embitter their feelings
and pervert their judgments, while their future is
portrayed in the colours of fancy best adapted to
deepen the effect produced by the falsification of
history and the misrepresentation of actuality.

Further, assertions the most untrue, yet which
are sure to be readily believed by many, and which
cannot fail to produce discontent as widely as they
are believed, are boldly and incessantly made in all
ways and forms likely to gain for them acceptance.
I refer to such assertions as these : that the
labourers do all the work and are entitled to all the
wealth of the world ; that the only reason why they
ivcjuire to toil either long or hard is that they are
plundered by privileged idlers to the extent of a
half or three- fourths of what is due for their ser-
vices ; that capitalists are their enemies ; that
mechanical inventions have been of little, if any,

io6 SOCIALISM

benefit to them ; that they are as a class constantly
growing poorer, while their employers are constantly
growing richer ; that as the recipients of wages they
are slaves under " an iron law " which is ever press-
ing them down to a bare subsistence ; that industrial
freedom, or competition, is essentially immoral and
pernicious, while compulsory industrial organisation,
or collectivist co-operation, would make society
virtuous and happy ; and that by an act of simple
justice — the expropriation of the wealthy and the
nationalisation of land and all other means of pro-
duction— manifold and immense material and moral
advantages would at once and infallibly be ob-
tained.

Vast discontent may be produced by such pro-
cedure and teaching, but it can only be a most
dangerous and destructive discontent. It is a
false discontent, because founded on falsehood. It
is entirely different from the legitimate discontent
which the labouring classes may justly feel, and
may properly be taught to feel ; the discontent
which is founded on avoidable hardships, on real
wrongs, on a correct perception of the many weak
points, the many grievous sores, the many deeply
engrained vices of our industrial and social constitu-
tion. This latter sort of discontent is indispensable
to the progress of the labouring classes ; but nothing
save mischief can result either to them or others
from a discontent which is engendered by error.

Socialism in its latest and most developed form,,
evolves its doctrine of labour from the notion un-
fortunately to some extent sanctioned by certain eco-

SOCIALISM AND LABOUR 107

nomists of high standing, that labour is the sole
s< >urce of wealth ; that an object has value only in
so far as it is the result of human toil ; that every
i economic product is merely, as has been said, " a de-
i finite mass of congealed labour-time." It insists that
the value of an object ought to be estimated entirely
according to the quantity of labour it has cost, the
quantity being measured by the average time which
it takes to perform it. All commodities, it main-
tains, are so many " crystallisations of human
activity " ; and all of them which require the same
extent of time to produce them are of the same
value. Any labour is equivalent to all other labour,
because it equally represents the mean or average
of social labour. From this view of the function of
labour in the economic process Socialists draw the
inference that as labourers alone produce all wealth
they alone should enjoy it ; that the just wage of a
workman is all that he produces or its full value ;
that whatever a landlord or capitalist deducts from
this is robbery ; and that such robbery is the great
cause of poverty and its attendant evils.

This teaching seems to me a mass of congealed
fallacies. Labour alone can produce nothing, can
create no particle of wealth, can satisfy no economic
want. All labour which is alone is pure waste.
Labour, instead of being the source of all value, is
itself only of value in so far as it results in remov-
ing discomfort or yielding gratification, and such
labour is never alone, but always inseparably con-
joined with natural agents, capital, and intelligence.
We might use our arms and legs as vigorously and

io8 SOCIALISM

as long as we pleased in empty space, but we could
never become rich by thus spending our strength.
Man does not create. He produces wealth only by
modifying the materials and applying the forces of
nature so as to serve his purposes and satisfy his
desires. He can by his labour effect certain changes
on natural things ; he can change their condition
and form, can transfer them from one place to
another, from one time to another, from one person
to another ; but by his utmost energy and ingenuity
he can do no more. Nature supplies to labour the
materials of wealth, and to what extent labour can
make wealth depends largely on the quantity and
quality of the materials which it has to work upon.
Labour of itself generates no wealth, but derives it
from, and is dependent for it on, nature.

That nature supplies to labour the materials on
which it has to operate, and that these materials
are useful, are, of course, truths so obvious that
they can be denied by no one ; and we are not
charging Socialists with denying them. What we
charge them with is denying that what nature gives
affects the relative worth of things, their cheapness
or dearness, their value in exchange.

Karl Marx himself says : " The use- values, coat,
linen, &c., i.e. the bodies of commodities, are com-
binations of two elements — matter and labour. If
we take away the useful labour expended upon
them, a material substratum is always left, which is
furnished by nature without the help of man. The
latter can work only as nature does, that is by
changing the form of matter. Nay, more, in this

SOCIALISM AND LABOUR 109

w» >rk of changing the form he is constantly helped
l>y natural forces. We see, then, that labour is not
the only source of material wealth, of use-values
produced by labour. As William Petty puts it,
labour is its father and the earth its mother."*

This would be quite satisfactory if Marx allowed
that the matter of commodities counted for any-
thing in the purchase or price of them ; that the
mother had a part as well as the father in the pro-
duction of economic wealth. But this Marx denies.
And his whole theory of the exploitation of labour
rests on the denial. He represents labour as the
sole source of the value of everything ; the labour
spent on anything as the alone just price of it.

What a preposterous notion ! Are we to believe
that sea-sand will be worth more than gold-dust if
w»> only spend more labour on it ? that the differ-
ence between the value of a diamond and an Elie
ruby is exactly measurable by the difference in
the amount of trouble which it takes to find them ?
Are we to deny that a fertile field or a seam of
good coal cannot have a high exchange value,
seeing that they are not products of labour ?
There is a class of goods the exchange value of
which may be reasonably affirmed to be regulated
by labour, but to say that labour is the sole source
and only true measure of value, and that nature
contributes nothing to value and differences of value,
is an amazing absurdity.

How did Marx fall into it ? Because the belief of

" Capital," vol. i. p. 10 (Engl. tr.).

no SOCIALISM

it was necessary to him. It was indispensable to his
convincing labourers that they were robbed that he
should feel able to assure them that they produced
all value, and that consequently they were entitled
to possess collectively all wealth. People are very
apt to believe what they wish to believe. Marx
was no exception to the rule.

But, further, two celebrated economists, the two
for whom Maj?x had most respect, Adam Smith
and David Hicardo, had in some measure fallen
into the same error. Ricardo, for instance, had
gone so far as to write thus : " Gold and silver,
like all other commodities, are valuable only in pro-
portion to the quantity of labour necessary to
produce them, and bring them to market. Gold is
about fifteen times dearer than silver, not because
there is a greater demand for it, nor because the
supply of silver is fifteen times greater than that of
gold, but solely because fifteen times the quantity
of labour is necessary to procure a given quantity of
it." Surely these words, however, should have
been of themselves enough to open the eyes of an
attentive reader to the erroneousness of the hypo-
thesis which they imply. What possible justifica-
tion can there be for a statement so extravagant
as that it takes fifteen times more labour to
procure a given quantity of gold than the same
quantity of silver. It does not take even double
the quantity. It does not require more labour to
extract or gather gold than to work in a coal or tin

* " Principles of Political Economy, &c.," p. 340 (Gonner's edition).

SOCIALISM AND LABOUR in

mine. Gold is not especially difficult, laborious, or
costly to work. Its price relatively to silver depends
obviously very much on its quantity relatively to
that of silver, and very little on difference either in
the quantity or quality of the labour employed on
them.

Labour alone, labour independent of nature,
can produce nothing. Labour alone, labour inde-
pendent of nature, can confer value on nothing. It
can no more absolutely create the value of com-
modities than it can create commodities themselves.
Mother Nature helps always, but in infinitely
varying degrees, to produce both economic com-
modities and their values.

Besides, in order that there may be labour there
must be labourers. Labour without labourers is a
nonsensical abstraction. But a labourer is the result
of a great deal of saving, represents a large amount
of capital, not his own. For years before he could
do any productive labour his parents or other bene-
factors had to feed and clothe, lodge, tend, and
educate him ; and he may well feel bound to repay
them in some measure for those sacrifices of theirs
to which he owes his strength and power to labour.
After he has acquired power to labour he must, if
without capital of his own, contract and co-operate
with someone who has it, in order that he may be
provided with the necessaries of life and the means
of production, so as to be free to work usefully and
effectively; but he cannot reasonably expect that
he will get the help of the capitalist without giving
an equivalent. The manufacturer did not get the

ii2 SOCIALISM

buildings, machinery, materials, &c., which compose
his capital for nothing ; he paid for them, and is
fully entitled to be paid for the use of them.

Further, the intelligence which foresees when,
where, and how labour may be most profitably
applied, which, by discoveries, inventions, shrewd-
ness, and watchfulness, increases its effectiveness,
saves it from waste, and secures good markets
for its products — the intelligence which super-
intends and directs industrial enterprises — is
as clearly entitled to be remunerated as is the
exertion of muscular force in the execution of
industrial operations. Great industries have never
been created by the labours of workmen alone.
They have in every instance been largely the result
of the foresight and sagacity, of the powers of calcu-
lation and talent of organisation, of the patience
and resourcefulness, of particular men. " There is no
case on record," says Mr. Frederic Harrison, " of a
body of workmen creating a new market, or founding
an original enterprise/'

To say, then, that labour alone is the source
of wealth is as extreme and as absurd as to say that
natural agents alone, or capital alone, or intelligence
alone, is its source. Wealth is the result of labour, of
natural agents, and of capital, intelligently combined
and intelligently used. The amount of it produced
in any given case depends not only on the amount of
labour employed in its production, but also on the
quantity of material to work on, the extent of
capital engaged in the occupation, and the measure
of executive and directive intelligence put forth.

SOCIALISM AND LABOUR 113

Hence, where wealth is produced not only the
labourer, but the supplier of material also, the owner
of capital, and the managing intellect, have all a
right to share in it, for they have all contributed to
produce it.

There is a still more decisive objection to the
notion that the value of commodities is conferred on
them only by the labour expended on them. It is
not labour which gives value to commodities ; but it
is the utility of commodities, the desirability of
them, the demand for them, which gives value to
labour. Unless things be felt to be useful, in the
sense of being desirable or fitted to gratify some
want, unless there be a demand for them, no labour
will be spent in producing them, and for the obvious
reason that the labour so spent would have no value,
would neither receive nor deserve any remuneration.
Labour simply as such, i.e., labour viewed without
reference to its end and usefulness, labour for which
there is no desire or demand, is of no value, however
painful or protracted it may be. The notion of
resolving the value of things into the quantity of
labour embodied in them, or of measuring their value
by the length of time which it has taken to produce
them, is thus a manifest error, and any doctrine of
economic justice or scheme of social reorganisation
founded upon it is condemned in advance to utter
failure. To speak of a doctrine or scheme which
rests on such a basis as " scientific " is an abuse of
language. Any such doctrine or scheme must
necessarily be Utopian, a dream, a delusion.

If labour is not the sole source of wealth the

ii4 SOCIALISM

whole socialist doctrine as to labour is erroneous ;
and, in particular, the conclusion that all wealth
ought to belong to the labourers is plainly unjust.

I must add, that even if labour were the source of
all wealth, the conclusion that landlords, capitalists,
and non-operatives should have no share in it would
be very questionable. Bastiat fully admitted the
premises yet entirely denied the conclusion, as he
held that the wealth which consists in rent and
capital is as natural and legitimate a result of labour
as that which consists in wages, and as justly owing
to proprietors and capitalists as wages to workmen.
I do not doubt that he could have victoriously main-
tained his position against any attack of Karl Marx.

Nay more, were the Collectivism of Karl Marx
established, it could by no possibility confer on
labourers what he taught them to look for as
their due, the whole produce of their labours ; but
only such part of it as remains after deduction of an
equivalent to rents, whatever it might be called, of
the wealth necessary to maintain the collective
capital, and of the expenses of government and
administration. That a larger share of the produce
would be left for the labourers than at present is
easy to assume, but not easy to prove. I shall return,
however, to this subject in a later chapter.

A superficial observer, and especially, perhaps, if
he be an ordinary manual labourer, is apt to fall into
the mistake of supposing that the labour directly
and immediately spent on a thing is the only labour
involved in that thing. The shoemaker when he
has finished a pair of shoes may thoughtlessly

SOCIALISM AND LABOUR 115

imagine that they are wholly his work, and that he
is entitled to receive the whole value of them. But
in this he deceives himself. He alone has not made
the shoes ; those who prepared his leather and
formed his tools, whoever pays him a wage or lets
him his shop, or finds customers for his shoes, and
even the policeman, soldier, and sailor, the magis-
trate, the judge, and cabinet minister, who secure
him from disturbance, violence, and fraud in the
prosecution of his business, have all contributed to
the production of the shoes, and to the worth of the
shoes. It takes many more people than shoemakers
to make shoes, and still more to make good markets
for shoes. And so of all other things.*

Society is not even now, whatever Socialists may
say to the contrary, essentially or mainly anarchy

* Mr. Frederic Harrison, in a lecture from which I have already quoted,
well says : — " Unhappily, in the current language of Socialists, we too
often miss important elements which enter into all products, material or
intellectual, but which are usually completely left aside. The first is the
enormous part played in every product by the society itself in which it is
produced, the past workers, thinkers, and managers, and the social organism
at present, which alone enables us to produce at all. An ocean steamship
could not be built on the Victoria Nyanza, nor could factories be estab-
lished on the banks of the Aruwhimi. No one in these discussions as to
' Rights of Labour ' seems to allow a penny for government, civil popula-
tion, industrial habits, inherited aptitudes, stored materials, mechanical
inventions, and the thousand and one traditions of the past and appliances
of civil organisation, without which no complex thing could be produced
at all. And they entirely leave out of sight posterity. That is to say,
socialist reasoners are apt to leave out of account society altogether.
And society— that is, the social organism in the past plus the social
organism of the moment — is something entirely distinct from the par-
ticular workmen of a given factory or pit, and indeed has interests and
claims opposed to theirs. Thus society, which Socialists ought to be the
very last to forget, is the indispensable antecedent, and very largely the
creator, of every product." (" Moral and Religious Socialism," p. 15, 1891.)

n6 SOCIALISM

and confusion and strife. A remarkable and bene-
ficent order, a marvellous natural organisation, is to
be seen in it when we look a little below the surface.
All classes composing it are wondrously bound
together, intimately dependent on one another, and
constantly co-operating even when they have no
wish to do so, no consciousness that they are doing
so ; yea, co-operating often in and through their very
competition.

The teaching in economics then, which leads any
class of men to believe that they alone produce
wealth, will not bear examination, and can only do
harm. Whoever seeks, for example, to persuade
workmen that it is their labour alone which has
produced the wealth of the world, and that there-
fore for a capitalist or inventor to be rich while
workmen are poor is an injustice, is labouring to
mislead them. He is fully warranted, indeed, to
advise them to look carefully to their own interests,
and to be unitedly on the alert that capitalists and
inventors do not get more than their fair share of
the produce of labour ; but if he goes farther, and
denies that the capitalist and inventor have real
claims,' and large claims, to remuneration out of the
produce of labour, he becomes a sower of tares, a
breeder of mischief. But for capitalists and inventors
workmen would be either much poorer or much
fewer than they are.

Capitalists and inventors, of course, without the
workmen would have been as helpless as the
workmen without them. But as in war the fact
that officers cannot do without soldiers any more

SOCIALISM AND LABOUR 117

than soldiers without officers is no reason for repre-
senting officers as contributing nothing to victories,
or for sowing dissension between officers and pri-
vates, so is it in industry with regard to employers
and employed. A great general, although not
striking a blow with his own hand, may do more to
determine the success of a campaign than many
thousands of the actual fighters ; and, in like
manner, a great capitalist endowed with commercial
genius may count for more in the achievements of
industry than multitudes of those who carry into
effect what he devises and commands. The indebt-
edness of labour to capital is enormous ; its indebt-
edness to science and invention is also enormous ; and
it is as wrong for labour to ignore this as for capital,
science, and invention to ignore their enormous
indebtedness to labour.

When Socialists fail to establish that labour alone
originates and deserves wealth, they naturally pro-
ceed to argue that it at least produces more than is
acknowledged, and is entitled to more than it
receives. They insist that under the present reign
of competition the distribution of the produce of
industry is unjust ; that the labourer gets too little
and the capitalist too much ; that too little goes to
wages, too much to profits and rents. Competition,
" anarchic individualist competition," is denounced
with heartiest vehemence. It is represented as
internecine war, as essentially inhuman and immoral,
as the hateful process through which the iron law
of wages operates, as the root of manifold evils and
iniquities, and especially as the main cause of the

n8 SOCIALISM

prevalence of starvation and misery alongside of
luxury and waste.

Even this part of the plea for Socialism, however,
is not made out, although the eloquence which has
been expended on it will be readily granted to have
been often generous in spirit and motive, and
cannot be denied to have been popularly most
effective. It is quite possible, and even quite
common, for capital as well as labour to get too
little remuneration. Labour may, and not infre-
quently does, ask more than capital can give. The
griefs and losses of capital are not imaginary, or
few, or light. At the same time it is perfectly true
that labour in its conflict or co-operation with
capital often gets too little, and is always in danger
of getting too little. And it is most desirable that
it should obtain all that is due to it, all that it
possibly can consistently with that general indus-
trial and social prosperity on which its own welfare
depends. But even under the reign of competition
it is far from powerless to obtain this. With
adequate and correct knowledge of the labour
market and of what may in each trade under actual
circumstances be reasonably and safely demanded,
and with organisation and energy to give effect to
its demands and to defend its interests, it can hope-
fully hold its own in any controversy which it may
have with capital ; and under the reign of competi-
tion this knowledge, energy, and organisation it has
acquired to a remarkable extent, and is constantly
increasing and perfecting. Would it be able to
struggle as effectively against the authoritative

SOCIALISM AND LABOUR 119

and unified administration of capital under the
reign of Collectivism ?

It is further true that where there is competition
there must be temptation to have recourse to ignoble
and unfair means of success, to lying and cheating,
to cruelty and injustice. Where competitors are
numerous and competition keen, many will pro-
bably succumb to the temptation. But if this
happen it will be their own fault. Daily experience
amply testifies that, in spite of competition, mer-
chants and operatives can be not only truthful and
honest, but even generous and self-denying. The
excesses to which competition may lead afford no
reason for the suppression of competition ; they
afford a reason merely for restraining it within
moral and rational limits, for preventing or punishing
hurtful or wicked conduct prompted by greed of

gam.

And this is a task which the State is clearly
bound to undertake. Whatever else the State may
be, it is society organised for the maintenance and
realisation of justice. A State which does not hold
the balance equal between conflicting interests and
parties, which allows any one class of its citizens to
oppress or plunder any other class, which does not
prevent individuals from doing wrong or injury to
the community, is a State which fails to justify its
own existence. It manifestly does not perform its
duty or fulfil its mission. The State is an essen-
tially ethical organism and institute ; and the laws
of ethics ought to condition, permeate, and regulate
the entire economic life. The more of industrial

120 SOCIALISM

freedom and general liberty the members of the
State enjoy, not the less but the more scope and
need are there for the ethical superintendence and
intervention of the State. Those who suppose that
an ample and practical recognition of the ethical
character and functions of the State is a distinctive
feature of Socialism, or is incompatible with approval
of the competition inseparable from industrial free-
dom, are utterly mistaken.

Again, wherever competition prevails some must
succeed and others fail, some will be at the front
and others in the rear. This does not imply that
those who fail or fall behind will be absolutely
worse off than they would have been had no com-
petition existed. There may be universal com-
petition and yet universal improvement. After
seventy years of industrial and capitalist competi-
tion in this country, pauperism is not found to have
grown in proportion either to wealth or population ;
it is found to have greatly decreased relatively to
both. Seventy years ago there were as many
paupers in London as there are now, although
it has more than tripled its population in the
interval. During the last twenty-five years, "the
machinery epoch," in which competition has been
at its keenest, labour has been better remunerated
relatively to capital than at any former epoch, and
the general improvement in the condition of the
labouring population has been most marked. Com-
petition is not the direct or necessary cause of
poverty, misery, or crime, and its suppression would
not be their removal.

SOCIALISM AND LABOUR 121

As under the reign of competition, however, these
evils largely exist, and as in all our large centres of
population many of the physically, intellectually,
and morally weak or lethargic, and many who are
unfavourably situated, break utterly down, and fall
into the loathsome mass of pauperism and crime,
which is the standing reproach and shame of our
civilisation, society ought undoubtedly to occupy
itself in earnest endeavour to prevent and suppress
misery and vice. To abandon the fallen and
unfortunate to their fate, to say "let the fittest
survive," is unchristian and inhuman ; it is even
inexpedient, and sure to degrade, corrupt, and
weaken a people. Mr. Spencer has done grievous
injustice to his own theory of development in
representing it as involving such a conclusion. The
State, it seems to me, is clearly under the law of
duty in relation to the destitute and helpless. If,
indeed, their wants can be more wisely and
efficiently relieved by individual charity or special
organisations than by its own intervention, then, of
course, it ought not to intervene ; but if this be not
the case it must act itself, and supplement private
charity in so far as it is insufficient, taking due
care neither to deaden the germs of self-help nor to
dry up the sources of voluntary liberality. It is
further its duty to watch over the institutions and
administration of private charity lest they increase
and confirm, as they so often do, the very evils
which they are intended to diminish and remove.

And now, after these elucidations, I do not
hesitate to give my entire assent to the principle

122 SOCIALISM

of industrial competition, and to reject the antago-
nistic principle of Socialism as altogether erroneous
and pernicious. What really is the principle of
industrial competition assailed? Nothing less, but
also nothing more, than the principle of industrial
liberty ; than the affirmation of a man's right to
labour, and to live by his labour, as he judges to be
best and most expedient, so long as he does not
thereby wrong and injure his fellow-men. What-
ever Socialists may say to the contrary, the
principle of competition, or laisser-faire, has never
been otherwise understood by economists ; and thus
understood, it is simply identical with liberty in
the sphere of economics, and one form of that
liberty which makes man a moral personality.

Is it, then, unchristian ? If it be, so much the
worse for Christianity. Any religion which denies
man to be thus far free must be itself so far false. Is
the principle immoral ? On the contrary, it is the
recognition of a moral right, the affirmation that
man is a free moral being or law unto himself in
regard to his own labour. Is it unjust ? No,
because it is limited by justice. Is it a warrant for
selfishness, for unneighbourly or unbrotherly deal-
ing, for disregarding the interest of the community
at large ? It may seem so at the first glance, and
socialist writers continually assume that it must be
so. But this view is most superficial, as Bishop
Butler conclusively showed long ago.

Competition, as the term is used in economics,
implies self-love, a regard to one's own interest ;
altruism is not the immediate source of any merely

SOCIALISM AND LABOUR 123

business transaction. But he who confounds self-
love with selfishness, or supposes that regard to one's
own interest implies disregard of or aversion to the
interests of others, or imagines that there is any
natural or peculiar opposition between self-love and
benevolence, is an inaccurate observer and thinker,
and shows an ignorance of rudimentary mental and
moral truths which one does not expect to find
displayed by educated Englishmen, the countrymen
of Bishop Butler. A really reasonable regard to a
man's own interest has not an anti -social but a
social tendency. Men cannot truly, or on the
whole and in the long run, secure their own good
by looking only to their own good. Every man in
order to attain his own true good must work
towards the good of others ; and so every class of
men, in order to promote their own true interest,
must have in view also what is best for the com-
munity. Aiming at the higher end is the indispen-
sable condition of gaining the lower end.

Then, we must not forget to ask, What is the
principle which Socialism has to oppose to, and
which it would substitute for, competition ? Is it
co-operation ? Certainly not. If men are entitled
to be free to compete, they are at the same time
and to the same extent entitled to co-operate. If
they would compete successfully they must also
largely co-operate. With the utmost freedom of
competition prevailing, the workmen of England
have become more closely united, more practically
fraternal, and more strongly and healthily organ-
ised, than those of countries fettered by so-called

124 SOCIALISM

protection. The real opposite of competition or
liberty is compulsion or slavery, the authoritative
assignment to each man of the work which he has
to do. This is what genuine Socialism, what
Collectivism, proffers us. This is its distinctive
principle ; it is also its decisive condemnation. It
means robbing man of his true self, of what gives to
his soul and conduct dignity and worth. It is
treating man as a thing or a beast, not as a person.
The organisation of labour, or of society, thus to be
obtained would be dearly bought whatever might
be the material advantages which it conferred.
These advantages would probably be very few
and slight, and the disadvantages numerous and
enormous.

Socialists dwell on what they regard as the
injustice of the rate of wages being fixed by compe-
tition according to the proportion of supply and
demand. The truth is that if the rate were exactly
fixed between real supply and demand, it would
be quite justly fixed. Injustice comes in because
it is often not so fixed. Absolute justice is difficult
to obtain in- this world. Who hopes to see a perfectly
just income-tax ? Is there any bargain, any at least
not of the very simplest kind, in which one of the
parties does not get more and the other less than is
exactly right ? I have no doubt that labourers have
often the worst of it in their contracts with capital-
ists, and would approve whatever can aid them to
get their proper share of the produce of industry.
But to encourage them to quarrel with the law of
supply and demand, instead of to study its opera-

SOCIALISM AND LABOUR 125

tions and to act accordingly, is as absurd as it would
be to attempt to enrage us against the law of gravi-
tation. The law of gravitation will break our necks,
if we do not take care. The law of supply and de-
mand will leave us without a penny, if we do not
take care. The lesson is, Take care ; it is not, Set
aside the law.

Socialists have failed to show that any other
method of determining the rate of wages due to
labour would be as just as the one which they con-
demn. Some have proposed as a substitute for it
an equal distribution of the produce; they would
pay every man alike. It is a very simple plan, but
also a very unjust one. Men differ much in ability,
and their labours differ much in quality and worth.
To ignore these differences — to treat mere " botch-
ing " and genuine work, unskilled and skilled labour,
carelessness and carefulness, stupidity and genius, as
equal — would be essentially unjust, dishonouring
to labour, discouraging, to talent, energy, and
conscientiousness, and hurtful to society.

Saint- Simon and others have said, distribute in
proportion to ability ; give to every man according
to his capacities. But even if it be granted that
this shows a sense of justice, how is it to be acted
on ? How is society to ascertain and judge of men's
abilities unless by letting them have free scope to
show what they can do ; or how can it estimate the
worth of what they do except by finding out what
value is assigned to it by those who set any value
upon it ?

Louis Blanc said, distribute according to wants;

126 SOCIALISM

take from men according to their abilities and give
to them according to their needs. He did not
explain what he meant by a want, or what wants
he meant. But whatever he meant, we may be sure
that if his formula were to be acted on in any
society, abilities would decrease and wants increase
in that society in a very remarkable manner.

Karl Marx, as I have previously mentioned,
maintains that the value of work should be esti-
mated according to the quantity of socially neces-
sary labour expended, or, in equivalent terms,
according to the time which must be on the average
occupied in the work. There is neither reasonable-
ness nor justice in this view. Mere expenditure of
labour does not produce any value, and is not
entitled to any remuneration. A man may labour
long and hard in producing something in which
nobody can see any use or beauty. If he do so he
will get nothing for his labour, and he has no right
to expect anything for it. He may expend ten
hours' labour in producing what there is so little
demand for that he will get merely the pay of one
hour's work for it. If he say that this is not fair ;
that as it has cost him ten hours' work it is worth
ten hours' work ; he will be told that it is only
worth that in his eyes, and because he has wasted
nine hours' work upon it. It is impossible to
eliminate from the determination of value the
elements of use, demand, rarity, limitation, and to
fix it exclusively by quantity or duration of labour.

Besides, the doctrine of Marx leaves out of
account the infinite differences of quality in labour,

SOCIALISM AND LABOUR 127

and implicitly reduces the labour of rare intelligence,
of exquisite artistic taste, and supreme genius to
the level of the mere muscular exertion which may
be replaced with advantage, wherever possible, by
the action of a machine or an animal. In a word,
it is as dishonouring to human labour, as unjust
and discouraging to talent and merit in human
labour, as the doctrine of communism itself. Yet
this doctrine Marx regarded as the very corner-
stone of his Collectivism. On it he rested entirely
his hope of a just payment of labour employed in
production within the collectivist community.
Every suggestion which he has made, or which his
followers have made, as to the administration of
distribution in the collectivist world, is but an
application of it. If it be not true, the " labour
certificates " and " labour cheques," of which we
have heard so much, can be no better than false
bank-notes. That a system built on such a
corner-stone should have obtained the confidence
of so many persons shows how prevalent credulity
still is.

So long as Socialists cannot give us better rulesA
than those just indicated for the remuneration of
labour, or for the distribution of the produce of
industry among those concerned in production, we
must keep to the method to which we are accus-
tomed. It may not always work entirely to our
satisfaction. Still it works with some considerable
measure of justice and success on the whole, is not
incapable of being improved, and does not prevent
co-operation, industrial partnership, participation

128 SOCIALISM

in profits, or other like schemes, being tried. But
socialist plans, so far as yet divulged, are so unjust
or so vague that it is obvious they would not work
at all.

Such being the state of the case, we should not
hastily assent to certain sweeping charges often
made by Socialists against the system under which
we are living, and under which society will prob-
ably long require to continue. I shall only glance
at two of these charges.

In the present state of economic discussion the
allegation that the law of wages reduces the
majority of labourers to the bare means of sub-
sistence can only be regarded as a sign of ignorance
or bias. No competent and impartial economist
now fails to recognise that Ricardo's treatment of
the law of wages was vitiated by the omission of
important elements which should have been taken
into account ; and still less is any such economist
unaware that Lassalle's exaggeration of Ricardo's
conclusion is a gross caricature of the real law,
devoid of theoretical justification, and decisively
contradicted by the history of wages. The law of
wages tends to press us down to bare subsistence
no otherwise than water tends to drown us.
Water tends to drown us, and will drown us, if we
do not keep out of it, or cannot swim, or make no
use of ship, boat, or saving apparatus. The law of
wages tends to draw us down to bare subsistence,
and will draw us to that level if we do not exercise
self-restraint and temperance ; if we are content to
be unintelligent and unskilled in our work ; if we

SOCIALISM AND LABOUR 129

do not strive to develop our faculties and improve
our condition ; if we do not seek the best market for
our labour ; and if we are in other ways untrue to
ourselves. Water, however, notwithstanding its
tendency to drown us, drowns not one of us of
itself, or apart from our occasional misfortunes, or
want of skill, or want of prudence. And equally
the law of wages, notwithstanding its tendency
towards bare subsistence, drags not one of us down
to that of itself, or apart from our exceptional ill-
luck, or our insufficient intelligence or virtue, or our
lack of skill or energy.

To represent wages as a badge of degradation
and slavery is another common misrepresentation.
Not only the obscure and irresponsible scribblers
and the ignorant and reckless mob-orators of the
socialist party, but its leading representatives (men
like Engels, Marx, and Lassalle, Hyndman, Morris,
and Henry George) have employed all the eloquence
at their command in dilating on the debasement
and enslavement involved in dependence on
wages.

It might have easily been put to a better use. If
there be such a thing as obligation in the world at
all there must be to the same extent such depen-
dence as that which the opponents of the wages-
system denounce as slavery. Whoever enters into
any kind of engagement or contract ceases to have
the freedom of not fulfilling it ; but if that suffice to
make a slave of him it is not only the labourer for
wages, but every man who feels bound to keep a
promise, every respectable husband, every worthy

130 SOCIALISM

citizen, every honourable person, who is a slave.
On other foundation than such so-called slavery, no
society, or social institution, can be established or
sustained.

And if to serve for wages be debasement and
slavery, few indeed of those who have professed to
regard it as such have not daily and deliberately
consented to their own degradation by accepting
what they denounce. In fact, even kings and
presidents, prime ministers and lord-chancellors,
official and professional persons of all classes,
authors of all descriptions, and, in a word, men of
all degrees, not merely manual labourers, receive
wages under some name or another.

There is nothing servile or degrading in a wages-
contract in itself. Wages imply in the very notion of
them that the receiver of them is a moral and free
being, with a right of property in himself. The slave
and serf, as such, cannot be the recipient of wages,
but only of the sustenance thought requisite to main-
tain their efficiency as instruments of labour, or a
something more to stimulate their exertions. But
neither sustenance itself nor a premium on labour is
a wage, precisely because the latter implies that the
faculties of him who receives it are his own, and
that he is entitled to use them as his own. There
is, therefore, in the receiving of wages nothing
akin to slavery or serfdom. On the contrary,
it is so essentially contrasted to them, so sharply
separated from them, that where it is they
cannot be, and where they are it cannot be. To
earn wages a man must be a free man, must have

SOCIALISM AND LABOUR 131

his faculties at his own disposal, and be entitled
to employ them primarily for his own good. There
is no more slavery or dishonour in the workman
receiving wages than in the capitalist taking
profits.

Further, the wages-contract has been assailed as
unjust. It is represented by Socialists as always
favourable to the employer and unfavourable to the
employed. Workmen are asserted to be so weak
and masters so strong that the former are never
paid a fair day's wages for a fair day's work. The
workman, it is affirmed, is entitled to the whole
product of his labour, but never receives in the
form of wages nearly so much as would enable him
to purchase it. But, again, when we seek for proof
it is not to be found. The wages-contract is as
just as any other form of contract. What more
injustice is there in purchasing labour-power than
in purchasing commodities at market value ? If it
be no wrong to a peasant woman to buy from her
eggs or butter at their current price, what wrong
can there be in buying from her so many hours
of work according to the same principle of re-
muneration ?

It is manifestly contrary to fact that the wages-
system is always favourable to employers, and
unfavourable to the employed. In a multitude of
cases it is just the reverse. Its great merit, indeed,
is that it ensures that workmen get paid for their
labour, although it be economically worthless or
even wasteful. Let me illustrate this statement.
In the west of Ireland there is to be seen the

132 SOCIALISM

channel of what was intended to be a canal
connecting Loughs Corrib and Mask. It was cut at
enormous expense through very porous limestone.
When completed the water of Lough Mask was let
into it, but, with the perversity ascribed to Irish
pigs, it refused to take the course prepared for it,
and ran straight towards the centre of the earth.
The canal was simply a gigantic and costly blunder.
What would the labourers employed have got for
their toil if they had been working not for wages
but for shares in the product of their labour or in
the profits of the enterprise ? Again, was it the
capitalists who had an eye to profits, or the
labourers who had the security of a wages-contract,
who benefited by the construction of that unfin-
ished edifice, intended to be a Hydropathic Estab-
lishment, which disfigures the town of Oban ? Of
enterprises started more than 20 per cent, fail, yet
the workmen connected with them get the ordinary
wages current in the trade at the time. A great
number of industrial companies pay in the course of
a year neither interest nor dividend ; but they all
pay wages.

Those who assert that workmen are always under-
paid should be able to state what would be proper
payment. But they have no certain and invariable
criterion, rule, or law, enabling them to do so. All
the varying conditions of the labour market must
be taken into account. When they affirm that the
workman is entitled to the whole product of his
labour, they should explain what they, mean there-
by. There is a sense in which they may be right ;

SOCIALISM AND LABOUR 133

but it is one which would prove nothing against the
justice of the wages-system. The sense, however,
in which Socialists wish to get it credited is one
which implies that if a working tailor makes a coat
in the workshop of, and with the materials supplied
by a master tailor, he is entitled to the whole value
of the coat, and should be able to purchase it with
the wages which he receives for the labour which
he spent on it. That, of course, is sheer absurdity.
Even if a tailor be both capitalist and workman, so
as at once to pay for every element in the produc-
tion of a coat and personally to execute the whole
process of its production, he is only entitled to
receive for it what buyers will give him ; and if he
part with it to one who sells ready-made clothes, he
cannot expect to be able to repurchase it with what
he received for it. In a word, it is just as difficult
to prove that a workman who receives the wages
current in his trade at the time does not receive the
whole product of his labour as that he does not
obtain a just wage.

I am far from maintaining that the wages-system
is a perfect or final system ; the best possible system ;
one which does not require to be supplemented, or
which may not in the course of historical develop-
ment be superseded by a system which will have
greater advantages and fewer incidental evils. All
that I maintain is that it is wrong to heap on it
foolish and false accusations like those to which I
have just referred ; wrong to strive by unfair means
and poisoned weapons to stir up the hatred of large
masses of men against a system which obviously

134 SOCIALISM

secures to them most important advantages, and
which must obviously continue to be the system
under which they will live, until displaced either
by a slow and vast process of moral and social
evolution or by a violent and ruinous revolution
which would be unspeakably disastrous even to
themselves.

Would the compulsory labour-system of Collec-
tivism be any improvement on the voluntary
wages-system of Capitalism? It is sufficient, I
think, to quote in answer a few words of truth and
soberness uttered by Schaffle : " Democratic Collec-
tivism promises the abolition of the wage-system
and of all private service, which involves the con-
tinuous enslavement of the proletariat. ' Wage-
slavery' is to be superseded by a system of
universal service directly for the community : the
whole of productive labour would be placed in the
position of a paid official department of the Demo-
cratic Republic. There is no doubt that private
service is in principle very irksome and oppressive
to workmen of high self-respect and personal
superiority. But it has not been proved that for
the great mass of existing wage-labourers the
position of private service could not be made
tolerable by some other means, nor has it been
demonstrated that the elite of the working classes
cannot find within the limits of the capitalistic
sphere of industry leading positions which are also
suited to satisfy a high sense of self-respect. It is
certain, on the other hand, that there is no possible
organisation of society in which no one must obey,

SOCIALISM AND LABOUR 135

and every one can rule, or in which all ruling would
be mere idle pleasure and satisfaction. In the
existing order of society the mass of officials who
make up the administration, both central and local,
although they have the great advantages of im-
mediate and uninterrupted self-supporting labour,
have it at the price of very strict obedience towards
often the most insignificant and spiteful nominees
of favoritism, and in the face of very great uncer-
tainty as to impartial and fair advancement on the
ladder of promotion. -The freedom of the individual
would lose in a degree which democracy would by
no means tolerate. Popular government very
easily degenerates into mob-rule, and this is always
more favourable to the common and the insignifi-
cant than to the noble and distinguished. Hence
Democratic Collectivism itself would be likely to
wound in a high degree the most sensitive self-
respect, without leaving as much freedom as does
the present system of private service, in the choice
of employment and employer, or of a place of abode.
Its only equality would be that no one was in any
wise independent, but all slaves of the majority,
and on this point again Democratic Collectivism
would come to grief, and utterly fail to keep the
promises it makes to the better class of working
men whose self-respect is injured by the existing
state of things."*

* " The Impossibility of Social Democracy," pp. 94-6.

136 SOCIALISM

SUPPLEMENTARY NOTE.

Collectivist Socialism rests on economic doctrines propounded
by Rodbertus and Marx. By designating these doctrines " new "
(p. 43) I am not to be understood as attributing to them any
other novelty than that of development and of application.
They were mainly exaggerations of, or inferences from, doctrines
of earlier economists; they were certainly not "new" economic
truths. Neither Rodbertus nor Marx was successful in dis-
covering such truths. They were both, however, learned,
laborious, and able students of economic science ; and, by their
critical acumen, their dialectic vigour, and their ingenuity, they
have, at least indirectly, greatly contributed to its progress. The
views of the former on the distribution of wealth, and of
the latter on the evolution of capitalist production, were of
a kind admirably calculated to stimulate to fruitful economic
investigation.

I can here only touch briefly on the chief features of Marx's
teaching as to labour. That teaching was drawn mainly from
English economists — Locke, Adam Smith, Ricardo, Bray,
Thompson, Hall, &c. Without Ricardo there would have been
no Marx. The essential content of the Marxian economics
is the Ricardian economics. Marx received Ricardo 's exposition
of economics as generally correct, narrowed still further what
was already too narrow in it, exaggerated what was excessive,
and made applications of it which Ricardo had not foreseen.

Sismondi, the Saint-Simonians, and Proudhon were his precur-
sors among French economists. His criticism of Capitalism owes,
of course, a good deal to Fourier. His whole system presupposes
the truth of the idea that there is a radical class distinction, an
essential social antinomy within the present industrial regime,
between bourgeoisie and proletariat, or peuple. That idea was
gradually evolved and popularised in France between 1830 and
1848 by various litterateurs of whom Louis Blanc was the most
influential.

As regards the spirit of Marx's teaching, it was the spirit of the
generation to which he belonged; the irreverent and revolu-
tionary spirit of what was once known as Young Germany ; the

SOCIALISM AND LABOUR 137

spirit of a race of disillusionised men, without belief in God or
unsensuous good ; a hypercritical, cynical, and often scurrilous
spirit. In passing into its latest or German stage Socialism
gained intellectually but lost morally. Under the manipulation
of Marx and Lassalle and their successors the spirit of justice and
of humanity which characterised it as presented by French
Socialists from Saint-Simon to Louis Blanc was expelled from it,
and it is now everywhere a morally inferior thing to what it was
in its earlier phases.

A fundamental part of the teaching of Marx is his theory of
social development. The general thesis in which the theory may
be summed up is stated by his friend Engels, thus : " The
materialist conception of history starts from the proposition that
the production of the means to support human life, and, next to
production, the exchange of things produced, is the basis of all
social structure; that in every society that has appeared in
history, the manner in which wealth is distributed and society
divided into classes or orders, is dependent upon what is pro-
duced, how it is produced, and how the products are exchanged.
From this point of view the final causes of all social changes and
political revolutions are to be sought, not in men's brains, not in
man's better insight into eternal truth and justice, but in changes
in the modes of production and exchange. They are to be sought,
not in the philosophy, but in the economics of each particular
epoch. The growing perception that existing social institutions
are unreasonable and unjust, that reason has become unreason,
and right wrong, is only proof that in the modes of production
and exchange changes have silently taken place, with which the
social order, adapted to earlier economic conditions, is no longer
in keeping. From this it also follows that the means of getting
rid of the incongruities that have been brought to light, must
also be present, in a more or less developed condition, within the
changed modes of production themselves. These means are not to
be invented by deduction from fundamental principles, but are
to be discovered in the stubborn facts of the existing system of
production." *

What is true in this theory is that the economic factors of

* " Socialism, Utopian and Scientific," pp. 45-6.

138 SOCIALISM

history have at all times had a great influence on the general
development of history ; and that in all stages of the movement
of human society there have been a correspondence and congruity
between the character and organisation of industry and the
character and organisation of law, politics, science, art, and
religion. It is very important truth, but not truth which had
been left to Marx to discover or even to do justice to. Many
authors before him had indicated and illustrated it; and one,
especially, Auguste Comte, the founder of Positivism, had
exhibited the relations and significance of it with an insight
and comprehensiveness to which there is nothing akin in the
treatment of it by Marx. Where alone Marx did memorable
work as an historical theorist, was in his analysis and interpreta-
tion of the capitalist era, and there he must be admitted to have
rendered eminent service even by those who think his analysis
more subtle than accurate, and his interpretation more ingenious
than true. When he imagined that history could be completely
accounted for by its economic factors — that modes of production
and exchange generated hostile classes from whose antagonism
and conflicts arose all the changes, institutions, and ideas of
society — he greatly deceived himself, and ignored and rejected
hosts of facts which testify against so narrow and exclusive a
conception. The causes of his thus erring were two : an un-
proved assumption of the truth of materialism, and a desire to
find some sort of philosophical and historical basis for his social-
istic agitation. His relationship to Hegel determined the form
the error assumed, and the method of its evolution into a
philosophy. The historical philosophy of Marx was reached
mainly by the rough and ready process of turning Hegel's upside
down, and retaining the Hegelian dialectic to so slight an extent
that it came to look to Marx as a dialectic of his own " funda-
mentally different from Hegel's, and even its direct opposite."
The historical philosophy of Marx, as well as of other German
Socialists, I shall require carefully to examine in a forthcoming
work on Historical Philosophy in Germany*

* There is a fairly good account and criticism of the Marxian historical
hypothesis in Dr. Paul Earth's " Geschichtsphilosophie Hegel's und der
Hegelianer bis auf Marx und Hartmann," 1890. The claim of Socialism to

SOCIALISM AND LABOUR 139

The doctrine of Marx on labour rests on what is generally
spoken of as a theory of value but which is properly only a theory
of value in exchange or of price. In attempting to establish this
theory Marx begins by distinguishing between value in use or
utility and value in exchange or simply value, but soon concludes
that the former must be abstracted or discarded in the economic
estimation of things ; that the utility of the goods or commodities
which constitute the wealth of societies does not affect their
relative values ; that labour is the source of all economic value,
the cause of all social wealth. He deserves credit for having
tried to prove that such is the case. Various eminent economists
had preceded him in affirming that labour produced all, or nearly
all, value. But none of them had made an effort to prove what
they affirmed. Marx is, therefore, not without merit in connec-
tion with the proposition in question. His attempt to prove it,
however, is at once feeble and sophistical. The following quotation
will give an adequate conception of his pretended demonstration : —

"The utility of a thing makes it a use-value. But this utility is not
a thing of air. Being limited by the physical properties of the com-
modity, it has no existence apart from that commodity. A commodity,
such as iron, corn, or a diamond, is therefore, so far as it is a material
thing, a use-value, something useful. This property of a commodity is
independent of the amount of labour required to appropriate its useful
qualities. When treating of use-value, we always assume to be dealing
with definite quantities, such as dozens of watches, yards of linen, or tons
of iron. The use-values of commodities furnish the material for a special
study, that of the commercial knowledge of commodities. Use-values
become a reality only by use or consumption ; they also constitute the
substance of all wealth, whatever may be the social form of that wealth.
In the furm of society we are about to consider, they are, in addition, the
material depositories of exchange value.

be founded on the theory of development set forth by Darwin and his
followers has not been admitted by any biologists of eminence, and has
been repudiated even by such resolutely free-thinking evolutionists as
Oscar Schmidt and Ernst Hiickel. What is presented as science and
history in Fr. EngelV Ursprung der Familie, des Privateigenthums, und
<les Staats," and Bebel's "Frau," is notoriously superficial and uncritical.
Some portion of the evidence for this statement will be found well
exhibited in " Die Naturwissenschaf t und die Socialdemocratische Theorie,"
1894, of H. E. Ziegler, Prof, of Zoology in Freiburg i. B.

140 SOCIALISM

"Exchange value, at first sight, presents itself as a quantitative relation,
as the proportion in which values in use of one sort are exchanged for
those of another sort, a relation constantly changing with time and place.
Hence exchange value appears to be something accidental and purely
relative, and consequently an intrinsic value — i.e., an exchange value that
is inseparably connected with, inherent in, commodities seems a contra-
diction in terms. Let us consider the matter a little more closely.

"A given commodity — e.g., a quarter of wheat — is exchanged for x
blacking, y silk, or z gold, &c.; in short, for other commodities in the
most different proportions. Instead of one exchange value, the wheat
has, therefore, a great many. But since x blacking, y silk or z gold, &c.,
each represent the exchange value of one quarter of wheat, x blacking,
y silk, z gold, &c., must, as exchange values, be replaceable by each other,
or equal to each other. Therefore, first, the valid exchange values of a
given commodity express something equal; secondly, exchange value,
generally, is only the mode of expression, the phenomenal form of some-
thing contained in it, yet distinguishable from it.

" Let us take two commodities — e.g., corn and iron. The proportions in
which they are exchangeable, whatever those proportions may be, can
always be represented by an equation in which a given quantity of corn
is equated to some quantity of iron — e.g., i quarter corn = x cwt. iron.
What does this equation tell us ? It tells us that in two different things
— in i quarter of corn and in x cwt. of iron — there exists in equal quan-
tities something common to both. The two things must therefore be
equal to a third, which in itself is neither the one nor the other. Each of
them, so far as it is exchange value, must therefore be reducible to this
third.

"A simple geometrical illustration will make this clear. In order to
calculate and compare the areas of rectilinear figures, we decompose them
into triangles. But the area of the triangle itself is expressed by some-
thing totally different from its visible figure — namely, by half the product
of the base into the altitude. In the same way the exchange values of
commodities must be capable of being expressed in terms of something
common to them all, of which thing they represent a greater or less
quantity.

" This common 'something ' cannot be either a geometrical, a chemical,
or any other natural property of commodities. Such properties claim our
attention only in so far as they affect the utility of those commodities,
make them use-values. But the exchange of commodities is evidently an
act characterised by a total abstraction from use-values. Then one use-
value is just as good as another, provided only it be present in sufficient
quantity. Or, as old Barbon says, ' one sort of wares are as good as
another, if the values be equal. There is no difference or distinction in

things of equal value An hundred pounds' worth of lead or iron, is

of as great value as one hundred pounds' worth of silver or gold.' As use-
values commodities are, above all, of different qualities, but as exchange-

SOCIALISM AND LABOUR 141

values they are merely different quantities, and consequently do not
contain an atom of use-value.

" If, then, we leave out of consideration the use-value of commodities
they have only one common property left, that of being products of
labour. But even the product of labour itself has undergone a change
in our hands. If we make abstraction from its use-value, we make
abstraction at the same time from the material elements and shapes that
make the product a use-value ; we see in it no longer a table, a house,
yarn, or any other useful thing. Its existence as a material thing is put
out of sight. Neither can it any longer be regarded as the product of the
labour of the joiner, the mason, the spinner, or of any other definite kind of
productive labour. Along with the useful qualities of the products them-
selves, we put out of sight both the useful character of the various kinds
of labour embodied in them, and the concrete forms of that labour ; there
is nothing left but what is common to them all ; all are reduced to one
and the same sort of labour, human labour in the abstract.

" Let us now consider the residue of each of these products ; it consists
of the same unsubstantial reality in each, a mere congelation of homo-
geneous human labour, of labour-power expended without regard to the
mode of its expenditure. All that these things now tell us is, that human
labour-power is embodied in them. When looked at as crystals of this
social substance, common to them all, they are — values.

" We have seen that when commoiities are exchanged, their exchange
value manifests itself as something totally independent of their use-value.
But if we abstract from their use-value there remains their value as
denned above. Therefore, the common substance that manifests itself
in the exchange value of commodities, whenever they are exchanged, is
their value." *

Such is the argument. Obviously it begins with the assump-
tion of a developed system of exchange, an organised trade with
common weights and measures, cwts., quarters, &c., and a host of
exact and invariable equations of value recognised as existing
between exchangeable objects. The assumption is unfair, and we
can never hope to understand the nature of exchange if we
examine it only at such a point. What we must commence by
looking at is exchange in its roots and rudiments, the rudest and
most, elementary exchanges, those of the kind out of which all
others must have grown. The simplest conceivable exchanges,
such as necessarily take place between mere savages, presuppose
no equations, no definite measures of weight or capacity, no

" Capital," vol. i., pp. 2-5.

142 SOCIALISM

common standard of value. What is really implied when two
individuals in what may be called the state of nature (meaning
thereby one without culture or inventions) exchange, in the
economic sense of the term, any two objects ? Merely that each
of these two individuals, considering the two objects from the
point of view of his own present and prospective advantage,
regards what he gets as more desirable, more useful, than what
he gives ; in other words, that each of these individuals forms two
different judgments or estimates of the value of these objects.
Such judgments or estimates are obviously founded only on a
comparison of the use-values of the objects to the individuals who
exchange them. Such judgments are all that is necessarily
implied in the simplest economic exchanges ; and they can never
be eliminated from the most developed and complicated processes
of exchange, although these processes widen the distance between
the final use-values, make their influence less conspicuous, and
render it easier for a fallacious reasoner to pretend that they
have none.

Marx not only takes up the consideration of exchange value at a
wrong stage, but also unwarrantably assumes that at that stage
it remains unaltered, so that a quarter of grain not only is
equivalent at a given moment but continues to be permanently
equivalent to, constantly to equate, the same definite amounts of
all other things. This assumption is utterly inconsistent with
facts. The relative values of objects are incessantly changing.
This of itself indicates that their values cannot be dependent on
" a constant," on what is unchanging with respect to them all,
equal to them all ; in other words, it shows that " an intrinsic
value in exchange," not merely " seems to be " but is " a contra-
diction in terms," a chimera which science and common sense
must repudiate.

Marx proceeds with his argument at a very rapid pace ; indeed
in reckless haste. There is, he next tells us, a common " some-
thing " in commodities without which, whatever utility they
might have, they would have no value ; and that this " some-
thing " cannot be any property affecting their utility, inasmuch
as " the exchange of commodities is evidently an act characterised
by a total abstraction from use-value." We have a right to insist
on this evidently being proved ; we have a right to refuse to

SOCIALISM AND LABOUR 143

accept either the mere assertion of Marx or a few irrelevant
words from " old Barbon " in lieu of proof. That the desir-
ability of commodities can ever be legitimately abstracted in the
determination of their values is plainly in the utmost need of
proof, and most unlikely to receive it. Without the former, use-
value, there would be not an atom of the latter, exchange-value,
and therefore to speak of the " total abstraction " of the former
in exchange is absurd. To take no account of the degrees of
desirability of commodities, and of the qualities and circumstances
on which they depend, and in relation to which they vary, is to
make all explanation of their values impossible. The resolution
of Marx to " leave out of consideration the use-value of commodi-
ties," without any justification of the doing so, was very con-
venient but quite illegitimate.

He carries it into effect : and then he has only to draw an
inference, and lo ! the whole world of commodities which compose
the wealth of societies is transformed as by the touch of a magic
wand, so at least we are asked to believe, not indeed into a fairy
scene, but into a fitting paradise for a German metaphysician, one
filled with characterless and undifferentiated objects ; with things
which have no elements or qualities, bodies or shapes ; with " pro-
ducts of human labour in the abstract ; " with " crystals of the
universal social substance, values." What rubbish ! What poor
dialectic jugglery ! And tlitit is what Socialists take for invincible
logic.

In reality, notwithstanding the wave of the prestigiatory wand,
the world of commodities, the realm of values remains unaffected.
Among its contents there are not merely products of labour but
also products of nature. Its objects have not exclusively the one
property of having been originated by human exertion. They
are equally objects of human desire in various degrees, objects of
demand and supply, objects relatively rare or abundant. The
mere "crystals" and "congelations" of homogeneous human
labour into which Marx would resolve them, are the creations of
an abstraction and imagination unguided by reason and regardless

of facts.

So much for the doctrine of Marx as to the cause or principle
of value. His doctrine as to the measure of value naturally
follows from it. He states it thus :

i44 SOCIALISM

"A use- value, or useful article, has value only because human labour in
the abstract has been embodied or materialised in it. How, then, is the
magnitude of this value to be measured ? Plainly, by the quantity of the
value-creating substance, the labour, contained in the article. The quan-
tity of labour, however, is measured by its duration, and labour-time in
its turn finds its standard in weeks, days, and hours.

" Some people might think that if the value of a commodity is deter-
mined by the quantity of labour spent on it, the more idle and unskilful
the labourer, the more valuable would his commodity be, because more time
would be required in its production. The labour, however, that forms the
substance of value is homogeneous human labour, expenditure of one
uniform labour-power. The total labour-power of society, which is em-
bodied in the sum total of the values of all commodities produced by that
society, counts here as one homogeneous mass of human labour-power,
composed though it be of innumerable individual units. Each of these
units is the same as any other, so far as it has the character of the average
labour-power of society, and takes effect as such ; that is, so far as it
requires for producing a commodity no more time than is needful on an
average, no more than is socially necessary. The labour-time socially
necessary is that required to produce an article under the normal con-
ditions of production, and with the average degree of skill and intensity
prevalent at the time. The introduction of power-looms into England
probably reduced by one-half the labour required to weave a given quantity
of yarn into cloth. The hand-loom weavers, as a matter of fact, continued
to require the same time as before ; but for all that, the product of one
hour of their labour represented after the change only half an hour's social
labour, and consequently fell to one-half its former value.

"We see, then, that what determines the magnitude of the value of
any article is the amount of labour socially necessary, or the labour-time
socially necessary for its production. Each individual commodity, in this
connection, is to be considered as an average sample of its class. Com-
modities, therefore, in which equal quantities of labour are embodied, or
which can be produced in the same time, have the same value. The value
of one commodity is to the value of any other, as the labour-time neces-
sary for the production of the one is to that necessary for^the production
of the other. As values, all commodities are only definite masses of con-
gealed labour-time." *

The validity of what Marx thus maintains is obviously and
entirely dependent on the conclusiveness of the argument which
we have already shown to be worthless. Had he made out labour
to be the sole principle, the common and only substance, of value,
we could not have reasonably refused to admit amount or quantity

* " Capital," vol. i., pp. 5-6.

SOCIALISM AND LABOUR 145

of labour to be the only and the adequate measure of the magni-
tude and proportions of value. But as he has completely failed
to prove labour the source of value, he has left his doctrine that
it is the measure of value, hanging in the air, without any basis
or support.

This is very unfortunate for it, especially as there is not only
no natural probability in its favour, but intrinsic unreasonableness
is plainly stamped upon it. Labour itself varies in value with
the fluctuations of demand and supply. An hour of common
manual toil may be worth a few pence per working day in India,
a shilling in Ireland, three or four shillings in England, and six
or seven shillings in certain districts of the United States. In
all trades the value of labour is liable to rise and fall from one
short period to another, sometimes from week to week, or even
from day to day. And there are unfortunately times and places
where it has no value, or almost no value at all. It varies from
the action and interaction of a great number of causes and circum-
stances, many of which may be in themselves independent and
unconnected. How can what thus varies be an unvarying
measure ? How can its duration be the sole, common, and exact
measure of the magnitudes of all values ? In fact, to pretend to
have proved that it is so is as absurd as to claim to have dis-
covered the philosopher's stone, or to have invented a machine
with the property of perpetual motion.

To say that the same quantity or duration of labour always
implies the same exertion, trouble, or sacrifice on the part of the
labourers, and is therefore to be regarded as always of the same
value, is a quite futile attempt at defence of the Marxian position.
For, in the first place, what is alleged is not correct. Men
differ amazingly as regards both their natural and acquired powers
of labour, and consequently as regards the quantity and quality
of what they can produce in a given time, and as regards the
value of their labour in that time. In the second place, it has,
fortunately for the welfare of mankind, not been exclusively left
to labourers to determine the value of labour, to producers to
assign what prices they please to their products, to sellers to
impose their own terms on buyers ; they must conform to what
employers of labour, consumers of commodities, buyers are able
and willing to give. The state of the market, the relation of

K

i46 SOCIALISM

supply and demand, cannot be disregarded. Economic law can-
not be set aside by arbitrary will, nor can it be made to operate
only in the interest of one set of persons. It is neither capricious
nor partial.

Labour has an influence on value. The labour expended in
the production of commodities must be remunerated or it will
not continue to be given, and the remuneration is a part of the
cost of production which must be returned in the value of the
products. Nothing which does not repay the cost of production
will be permanently produced. But cost of production does not
alone determine the value of products ; and labour alone is not
the only element of cost of production. The crops reaped by the
farmer, the articles fabricated by the manufacturer, must repay,
not merely their expenditure in wages but also in rent, machinery,
materials, and all other drains on capital.

Marx ignores the influence of rent and capital on value. He
reasons as if they had no existence ; as if Socialism were already
established, and had successfully abolished them. As they still
undoubtedly exist, however, and undoubtedly affect cost and
price, and consequently value, the theory which "abstracts"
them, leaves them out of account, and represents labour alone as
the measure of value, is plainly one reached by shutting the eyes
to relevant but unwelcome facts. And rent and capital are facts
which Socialism, even if established, could neither abolish nor
prevent influencing value. The rent of land is just what is paid
for its productive advantages ; and agriculturists would be an
intolerably favoured class in the community, if, under Collectivism,
they did not continue to pay for these advantages. They would
pay, indeed, to the State instead of to private landlords ; but
they would equally have to pay, and the new arrangements
would as likely be disadvantageous to them as the reverse. Were
the capital invested in manufacturing industries collectivised that
capital would not, unless the collectivist State were bent on com-
mitting suicide, be handed over specially to the workmen in these
industries ; nor would the profits thereof be added to their wages ;
while the expenditure and consumption of it necessary to
production would require to be returned out of the products,
however much wages might have to be diminished in
consequence.

SOCIALISM AND LABOUR 147

When labour enters largely, in comparison with other factors,
into the production of commodities for which there is a steady
demand it will have a relatively decisive influence on their value.
When there is no monopoly, no need for expensive machinery,
and an abundant supply of cheap materials on which to operate,
wages may be far the largest items in the cost of production, and
the labour expended on commodities may nearly measure their
value. But labour alone never really measures value, never being
alone in determining the cost of production, and cost of produc-
tion itself never alone determining the value of products. Labour
itself must be supported with capital, requires tools, and cannot
dispense with materials seldom, if ever, procurable for absolutely
nothing. And, above all, value is not an absolute objective thing,
a metaphysical substance, a Ding-an-sich, as Marx, with his sham
science, virtually represents it to be, but an essentially variable,
and, in the main, subjective relation, the relation between the
wants of human beings and the objects fitted to supply these
wants.

Marx falls into a still less excusable error. He was so engrossed
with the desire to prove that the labour which he regards as the
substance of value is " homogeneous human labour, expenditure
of one uniform labour-power," that he could see no labour con-
stitutive or originative of value except manual labour. He over-
looks what scientific knowledge, what inventive genius, what
commercial talent and enterprise, what powers of business
management and organisation, have done for industry; he
attributes to them no merits, allows them no rights to remunera-
tion for what they have done, concedes to them no atom of claim
to the possession of what they have produced. Not seeing how
to measure the value of headwork by its duration, he chose not to
see that it had any, and so was able to reason as if hands alone
had value and could dispense with heads.

He could not, however, overlook the distinction between skilled
and unskilled manual labour, that being obvious even to the
bodily eye. What does he make of it ? How does he explain
such a fact as that while a hodman is paid, perhaps, two shillings
for a day's work, a sculptor for the work of an equal day will be
paid, say, two pounds ? He gets over the difficulty as quickly as
he can thus : — " Skilled labour counts only as simple labour

148 SOCIALISM

intensified, or rather, as multiplied simple labour, a given quantity
of skilled labour being considered equal to a greater quantity of
simple labour. Experience shows that this reduction is con-
stantly being made. A commodity may be the product of the
most skilled labour, but its value, by equating it to the product of
simple unskilled labour, represents a definite quantity of the
latter labour alone. The different proportions in which different
sorts of labour are reduced to unskilled labour as their standard,
are established by a social process that goes on behind the backs
of the producers, and, consequently, appear to be fixed by custom.
For simplicity's sake we shall henceforth account every kind of
labour to be unskilled, simple labour."*

This is a very curious answer. The question to which it
should be a response is one not about " counting " or " consider-
ing " or what is " constantly being done " ; but about what is, and
what is implied in Marx's doctrine that duration of labour is the
measure of value. Our sculptor gets for one day's work twenty
times as much as our hodman gets for the same length of labour,
and labour as intense and much less pleasant. How does this
happen if duration of labour be the measure of value ? " O ! "
replies Marx, " I am willing to reckon the sculptor's day equal to
twenty days of the hodman." But that is no answer. What
alone would be an answer would be to show us that one day of
the sculptor really is equal in duration to twenty days of the hod-
man. And when that is done it will be further necessary to
show, how, if one day of labour may be twenty days of labour, or
indeed any number of days, a day can have any definite duration,
or the labour done in it any definite value ; in a word, how dura-
tion of labour can have the characters of a measure at all.

Further, Marx takes "simple average labour," "simple un-
skilled labour," as his basis of reckoning and reasoning. He
abstracts or disregards all that individualises and differentiates
men as labourers or producers. He represents "average" as
exchanged against " average," one hour's work of one man as in
the abstract equivalent to one hour's work of another man, even
although he is forced to reckon it as sometimes equivalent to
twenty or even more hours' work of certain men. Surely this is

* "Capital," pp. U-I2.

SOCIALISM AND LABOUR 149

exceedingly unreal and unreasonable. Is not all, or nearly all,
economic labour simply more or less unskilled, and most of it
that we call unskilled very far from really so ? The " average "
quantity of individual labour performed in a community may be
a quantity which not one individual of the community exactly
accomplishes. Every man of them may produce either more or
less than the average so that there may be no average to ex-
change. In a given time almost any one individual produces
more and another less than a special average, and hence cannot
exchange on the footing of such an average without the one
suffering an unfair loss and the other gaining an unfair advan-
tage. Marx, in a word, has rested his theory not on reality, but
on a fictitious abstraction. His units of measurement and cal-
culation are arbitrary and inapplicable. His " simple average
labour " is akin to " le moyen homme," " the economic man," and
various other pseudo-scientific myths.

I only require to add that the theory of Marx which has been
under review receives many contradictions from experience. As
we have seen it supplies us with no measure for the economic
appreciation of inventive mechanical genius, industrial and com-
mercial enterprise, or talent for business management. Nor does
it account for the value of specially skilled and artistic labour ;
nor for the value of rare, and still less of unique objects ; nor
for the value of natural advantages, or of the spontaneous pro-
ducts of nature ; nor for the slight value of abnormally ill-paid
labour. But this line of argument has been so often and so
conclusively followed up both by the critics of Eicardo and the
critics of Rodbertus and Marx that it may suffice merely to refer
to it.

Let us now pass to the account which Marx gives of the
relation of labour to capital. As regards this portion of his
teaching, however, I shall here confine myself to mere exposi-
tion, reserving criticism for the next supplementary note.
Marx conceives of capital in a peculiar way. It is, in his view,
not simply wealth which is applied to the production of wealth,
but wealth which is applied for the exploitation of labour.
It consists of "the means of exploitation," of "the instru-
ments of production which capitalists employ for the
exploitation and enslavement of labourers." None of these

150 SOCIALISM

means and instruments are in themselves capital ; they are not
capital if personally used by their possessors; they are only
capital when so employed as to extract profit, unpaid labour,
from those who do not possess them. " Capital is dead labour,
which, vampire-like, becomes animate only by sucking living
labour, and the more labour it sucks the more it lives."

Capital is further "an historical category," and even a late
historical category. "The circulation of commodities is the
starting-point of capital. The production of commodities, their
circulation, and that more developed form of their circulation
called commerce, these form the historical groundwork from
which it rises. The modern history of capital dates from the
creation in the sixteenth century of a world-embracing commerce
and a world-embracing market. If we abstract from the material
substance of the circulation of commodities, that is, from the
exchange of the various use-values, and consider only the
economic forms produced by this process of circulation, we find
its final result to be money : this final product of the circulation
of commodities is the first form in which capital appears."

The capitalist causes his capital to circulate with a view to
obtaining not commodities or use-values but profit, an excess over
the value of his capital, surplus-value, Mehrwerth. But the
process of circulation or exchange, although necessary to the
attainment of this end, does not itself secure it. It is merely a
change of form of commodities, which does not, whether equiva-
lents or non-equivalents are exchanged, effect a change in the
magnitude of the value. Neither by regularly buying commodi-
ties under their value nor by regularly selling them over their
value can the capitalist create the surplus- value which is the
object of his desire. He can only do so by finding one commodity
whose use-value possesses the peculiar faculty of being the source
of exchange-value. This he finds in the capacity of labour, or
labour-power. It is offered for sale under the two indispensable
conditions, first, that its possessors are personally free, so that
what they sell is not themselves but only their labour-power, and
secondly, that they are destitute of the means of realising this
labour-power in products or commodities which they could use or
sell for their own advantage, and, consequently, are under the
necessity of selling the power itself. This power the capitalist

SOCIALISM AND LABOUR 151

buys, supplies with all that it requires to realise itself, and
obtains in return for the price he pays for it all that it
produces.

How does he from this source draw surplus-value? Thus,
according to Marx, labour-power, the source of all value, itself
possesses a value. What value ? Like all commodities, the value
of the social normal labour^me incorporated in it, or necessary
to its reproduction; in this case, the value of the means of sub_
sistence necessary to the maintenance of the labourer. If six
hours of average social labour be sufficient to provide the
labourer with the physically indispensable means of subsistence,
and the value of these means be represented by three shillings,
these three shillings correctly represent the value of the labour-
power put forth by the labourer during a working-day of six
hours. This sum the capitalist gives, and must give, to the
labourer. There is, therefore, still no surplus-value. The
capitalist has paid away just as much as he has received ; the
labourer has put into the product in which his work is incorporated
no more than that work has cost.

This, of course, does not satisfy the capitalist. But he sees
that the labourer can produce more than he costs : that he can
labour twelve hours instead of six, yet maintain himself each day
in working efficiency and renew his vital powers on three shillings*
the equivalent of the value of six hours. Accordingly he compels
the labourer to work for him twelve hours instead of six at the
price of six, and appropriates the value created by the labourer
during the six extra hours. Capitalistic profit is simply the surplus-
value obtained from unpaid labour.

As we have now reached the very heart of Marx's doctrine we
shall allow him to speak for himself. He writes :

" Let us examine the matter more closely. The value of a day's labour-
power amounts to 3 shillings, because on our assumption half a day's
labour is embodied in that quantity of labour-power — i.e., because the
means of subsistence that are daily required for the production of
labour-power, cost half a day's labour. But the past labour that is
embodied in the labour-power, and the living labour that it can call into
action; the daily cost of maintaining it, and its daily expenditure in
work, are two totally different things. The former determines the
exchange-value of the labour-power, the latter is its use-value. The fact
that half a day's labour is necessary to keep the labourer alive during

152 SOCIALISM

twenty-four hours, does not in any way prevent him from working a whole
day. Therefore, the value of labour-power, and the value which that
labour-power creates in the labour process, are two entirely different
magnitudes ; and this difference of the two values was what the capitalist
had in view, when he was purchasing the labour-power. The useful
qualities that labour-power possesses, and by virtue of which it makes
yarn or boots, were to him nothing more than a conditio sine qud non ; for
in order to create value labour must be expended in a useful manner.
What really influenced him was the specific use-value which this com-
modity possesses of being a source not only of value, but of more value than
it has itself. This is the special service that the capitalist expects from
labour-power, and in this transaction he acts in accordance with the
' eternal laws ' of the exchange of commodities. The seller of labour-
power, like the seller of any other commodity, realises its exchange-value,
and parts with its use-value. He cannot take the one without giving the
other. The use-value of labour-power, or in other words labour, belongs
just as little to its seller as the use -value of oil after it has been sold
belongs to the dealer who has sold it. The owner of the money has paid
the value of a day's labour-power ; his, therefore, is the use of it for a
day ; a day's labour belongs to him. The circumstance that on the one
hand the daily sustenance of labour-power costs only half a day's labour
while, on the other hand, the very same labour-power can work during a
whole day, that consequently the value which its use during one day
^ay creates is double what he pays for that use is, without doubt, a
piece of good luck for the buyer, but by no means an injury to the
seller.

"Our capitalist foresaw this state of things. The labourer therefore
finds, in the workshop, the means of production necessary for working,
not only during six, but during twelve hours. Just as during the six
hours' process our 10 Ibs. of cotton absorbed six hours' labour, and
became 10 Ibs. of yarn, so now 20 Ibs. of cotton will absorb twelve hours'
labour and be changed into 20 Ibs. of yarn. Let us now examine the
product of this prolonged process. There is now materialised in this
20 Ibs. of yarn the labour of five days, of which four days are due to the
cotton and the lost steel of the spindle, the remaining day having been
absorbed by the cotton during the spinning process. Expressed in gold,
the labour of five days is 30 shillings. This is, therefore, the price of the
20 Ibs. of yarn, giving, as before, 18 pence as the price of a pound. But
the sum of the value of the commodities that entered into the process
amounts to 27 shillings. The value of the yarn is 30 shillings. Therefore
the value of the product is one-ninth greater than the value advanced in
its production ; 27 shillings having been transformed into 30 shillings ; a
surplus- value of 3 shillings has been created. The trick has at last
succeeded ; money has been converted into capital.

"Every condition of the problem is satisfied, while the laws that
regulate the exchange of commodities have been in no way violated.

SOCIALISM AND LABOUR 153

Equivalent has been exchanged for equivalent. For the capitnli-t a>
buyer paid for each commodity, for the cotton, the spindle, and the
labour-power, its full value. He then did what is done by every pur-
chaser of commodities ; he consumed their use-value. The consumption of
the labour-power, which was also the process of producing commodities,
resulted in 20 Ibs. of yarn, having a value of 30 shillings. The capitalist
formerly a buyer, now returns to market as a seller of commodities. He
sells his yarn at 18 pence a pound, which is its exact value. Yet for all
that he withdraws 3 shillings more from circulation than he originally
threw into it. This metamorphosis, this conversion of money into capital,
takes place both within the sphere of circulation and also outside it ;
within the circulation, because conditioned by the purchase of the labour-
power in the market ; outside the circulation, because what is done within
it is only a stepping-stone to the production of surplus-value, a process
which is entirely confined to the sphere of production. Thus ' tout eat pour
le mieux dans le meiUeur des mondes 2*)ssible8.'

"By turning his money into commodities that serve as the material
elements of a new product, and as factors in the labour-process, by incor-
porating living labour with their dead substance, the capitalist at the
same time converts value — i.e., past, materialised, and dead labour — into
capital, into value big with value, a live monster that is fruitful and
multiplies."*

The foregoing extract deserves careful perusal. It may not
disclose, as Marx pretends, " the secret " of capitalistic produc-
tion, but it either explicitly states, or inferentially involves
almost everything essential in the Marxian system.

The latter and most interesting portion of the treatise of Marx
on Capital consists of little more than the deduction and illustra-
tion of the consequences implied in his doctrine of surplus-value.
Of these consequences the chief are the following : —

( i ) The capitalist constantly and successfully strives to appro-
priate more and more of the productive power of labour. In this
endeavour he finds, in machinery, which is the most powerful
means of shortening labour-time, the most powerful instrument
for accomplishing his purpose. While he lessens, by its aid, the
time in which the labourer can gain what is necessary to maintain
him, he at the same time increases the length of the labour-day.

" In its blind unrestrainable passion, its were-wolf hunger for surplus-
labour, capital oversteps, not only the moral, but even the merely physical

* " Capital," pp. 174-6.

154 SOCIALISM

maximum bounds of the working day. It usurps the time for growth,
development, and healthy maintenance of the body. It steals the time
required for the consumption of fresh air and sunlight. It. higgles over a
meal-time, incorporating it where possible with the process of production
itself, so that food is given to the labourer as to a mere means of production,
as coal is supplied to the boiler, grease and oil to the machinery. It
reduces the sound sleep necessary for the restoration, reparation, refresh-
ment of the bodily powers to just so many hours of torpor as the revival
of an organism, absolutely exhausted, renders essential. It is not the
normal maintenance of the labour-power which is to determine the limits
of the working day ; it is the greatest possible daily expenditure of labour-
power, no matter how diseased, compulsory, and painful it may be, which
is to determine the limits of the labourer's period of repose. Capital cares
nothing for the length of life of labour-power. All that concerns it is
simply and solely the maximum of labour-power that can be rendered
fluent in a working-day. It attains this end by shortening the extent of
the labourer's life, as a greedy farmer snatches increased produce from the
soil by robbing it of its fertility." *

(2) When Law interposes and shortens the hours of labour,
the capitalist still attains his end by " squeezing out of the work-
man more labour in a given time by increasing the speed of the
machinery, and by giving the workman more machinery to
tend." He substitutes intensified labour for labour of more
extensive duration, and so exploits the labourer as successfully
as before.

(3) Capital appropriates the supplementary labour-power of
women and children.

" In so far as machinery dispenses with muscular power, it becomes a
means of employing labourers of slight muscular strength, and those
whose bodily development is incomplete, but whose limbs are all the
more supple. The labour of women and children was, therefore, the first
thing sought for by capitalists who used machinery. That mighty sub-
stitute for labour and labourers was forthwith changed into a means for
increasing the number of wage-labourers by enrolling, under the direct
sway of capital, every member of the workman's family, without dis-
tinction of age or sex. Compulsory work for the capitalist usurped the
place, not only of the children's play, but also of free labour at home
within moderate limits for the support of the family.

" The value of labour-power was determined, not only by the labour-time
necessary to maintain the individual adult labourer, but also by that neces-

* "Capital," vol. i., p. 250.

SOCIALISM AND LABOUR 155

sary to maintain his family. Machinery, by throwing every member of
that family on to the labour market, spreads the value of the man's labour-
power over his whole family. It thus depreciates his labour-power. To
purchase the labour-power of a family of four workers may, perhaps, cost
more than it formerly did to purchase the labour-power of the head of the
family, but, in return four days' labour takes the price of one, and their
price falls in proportion to the excess of the surplus-labour of four over
the surplus-labour of one. In order that the family may live, four people
must now not only labour, but expend surplus-labour for the capitalist.
Thus we see that machinery, while augmenting the human material that
forms the principal object of capital's exploiting power, at the same time
raises the degree of exploitation." *

(4) Capitalist accumulation necessarily leads to a continuous
increase of the proletariat. It cannot content itself with the dis-
posable labour-power which the natural increase of population
yields, but demands and creates an always enlarging surplus-popu-
lation in a destitute and dependent condition, an industrial
reserve army in search of employment.

" The greater the social wealth, the functioning capital, the extent and
energy of its growth, and, therefore, also the absolute mass of the pro-
letariat and the productiveness of its labour, the greater is the industrial
reserve army. The same causes which develop the expansive power of
capital, develop also the labour-power at its disposal. The relative mass
of the industrial reserve army increases therefore with the potential
energy of wealth. But the greater this reserve army in proportion to the
active labour army, the greater is the mass of consolidated surplus- popula-
tion, whose misery is in inverse ratio to its torment of labour. The more
extensive, finally, the Lazarus-layers of the working-class, and the indus-
trial reserve army, the greater is official pauperism. This is the absolute
general law of capitalist accumulation.

" The folly is now patent of the economic wisdom that preaches to the
labourers the accommodation of their number to the requirements of
capital. The mechanism of capitalist production and accumulation con-
stantly effects this adjustment. The first word of this adaptation is the
creation of a relative surplus-population, or industrial reserve army. Its
last word is the misery of constantly extending strata of the active army
of labour, and the deadweight of pauperism." t

(5) Society tends under the operation of capitalism to
inequality of wealth with all its attendant evils. Small and

"Capital," vol. ii., 391-2. t Jbul., vol. ii., 659-60.

156 SOCIALISM

moderate fortunes are being absorbed in large, and these in those
which are larger ; intermediate distinctions and grades are being
effaced and eliminated ; riches and luxury are accumulating at one
pole, and poverty and misery at the opposite ; and the time is
approaching when, unless capitalist-accumulation be arrested,
there will be only a bloated mammonism confronting a squalid
pauperism.

CHAPTER V.

SOCIALISM AND CAPITAL.

THE teaching of Socialism as to labour having been
considered, we must now turn our attention to its
doctrine concerning capital.

There is no portion of its teaching to which
Socialists themselves attach greater importance.
They trace to false views of the functions and
rights of capital the chief evils which prevail in
modern society. They rest all their hopes of a just
social organisation in the future on the belief that
they can dispel these false views and substitute for
them others which are true. Socialists aim at
freeing labour from what they regard as the tyranny
of capital, and in order to attain their end they
strive to expose and destroy the conceptions of
capital which are at present dominant. This they
consider, indeed, to be their most obvious and most
urgent duty.

What is capital? It is a kind of wealth : wealth
which is distinguished from other wealth by the
application made of it ; wealth which, instead of
being devoted to enjoyment, or to the satisfaction of
immediate wants and desires, is employed in main-
taining labour, and in providing it with materials
and instruments for the production of additional

158 SOCIALISM

wealth. It is, in fact, just that portion or kind of
wealth which, from its very nature, cannot but co-
operate with labour. There is much wealth spent
in such a way that the labouring poor may well be
excused if they feel aggrieved when they see how it
is expended. There are many wealthy persons
among us whom Socialists are as fully entitled to
censure as the Hebrew prophets were to denounce
the " wicked rich," among their contemporaries. By
all means let us condemn the " wicked rich ; " but
let us be sure that it is the " wicked rich," and only
the " wicked rich," that we condemn.

Now, a capitalist may be wicked, but he is not
wicked simply as a capitalist. Viewed merely in
the capacity of a capitalist, he is a man who employs
his wealth in a way advantageous to labour ; who
distributes the wealth which he uses as capital
among those who labour. As a consumer of wealth
the rich man may easily be an enemy of labour, but
as a capitalist he must be its friend ; and this
whether he wish to be so or not. For capital
attains its end only through co-operation with
labour. Separated from labour it is helpless and
useless. Hence, however selfish a man may be in
character and intention, he cannot employ his
wealth as capital without using it to sustain labour,
to provide it with materials, to put instruments into
its hands, and to secure for it fresh fields of enter-
prise, new markets, new acquisitions.

It seems manifestly to follow that those who seek
the good of labour should desire the increase of
capital. It appears indubitable that if the wealthy

SOCIALISM AND CAPITAL 159

could be persuaded to use more of their wealth as
capital and to spend less of it in the gratification of
their appetites and vanities ; and if the poor could
be induced to form capital as far as their circum-
stances and means allow, so as to be able to supple-
ment and aid their labour in some measure with
capital, the condition of the labouring classes would
be improved ; and, on the other hand, that to re-
present capital as the enemy of labour and the cause
of poverty, and to discourage and impede its forma-
tion, can only tend to their injury. But obvious
and certain as this consequence looks, Socialists
refuse to acknowledge it. They labour to discredit
capital, deny or depreciate its benefits, and urge the
adoption of measures which would suppress the
motives, or remove the means, essential to its pre-
servation and increase.

There are Socialists who charge capital with
doing nothing for production ; who represent it as
idle, inefficacious, sterile. They say labour does
everything and capital nothing ; and that, con-
sequently, labour deserves to receive everything and
capital is not entitled to receive anything.

Assuredly they are utterly mistaken. Manifestly
the assistance given by capital to production is im-
mense. Without its aid the most fertile soil, the
most genial climate, the most energetic labour, all
combined, will produce but little. By means of the
capital which the people of Britain have invested in
machinery they can do more work and produce more
wealth, than all the inhabitants of the earth could
do through the mere exertion of their unaided

160 SOCIALISM

muscles. Surely that portion of capital is not less
efficacious than the muscular exertion required to
impel and direct it. Deprived of the capital which
is spent as wages, the most skilled workmen, how-
ever numerous and however familiar with machinery,
are helpless.

Exactly to estimate the efficacy of capital, as
distinct from that of the other agents of production,
is indeed impossible ; and for the very sufficient
reason that it never is distinct from them, or they
independent of it. Nature itself, when no capital is
spent upon it, soon becomes incapable of supplying
the wants of men, at least if they increase in number
and rise above a merely animal stage of existence.
The more labour advances in power and skill, the
more industrial processes become complex and re-
fined, the more dependent do labour and capital
grow on the aid of each other. If the influence of
capital then be, as must be admitted, incapable of
exact measurement, that is only because it is so
vast, so varied in the forms it assumes, so compre-
hensive and pervasive. It operates not as a separate
and distinct factor of production, but in and through
all the instruments and agencies of industry, sup-
plying materials, making possible invention and the
use of its results, securing extensive and prolonged
co-operation, facilitating exchange by providing
means of communication often of an exceedingly
costly kind, and, in a word, assisting labour in every
act and process by which nature is subdued and
adapted to the service of humanity.

With every desire to deny or depreciate the

SOCIALISM AND CAPITAL 161

influence of capital in production, Socialists have
naturally found it very difficult to find reasons for
their prejudices against it. Of late, however, some
attempts have been made to render plausible the
notion that capital is, if not altogether inefficient as
a factor in production, at least much less efficient
than is ordinarily supposed. All these attempts
necessarily take the form of arguments designed to
show that the various elements of the cost of
production are paid not out of capital accumulated
by past saving, but out of the produce which
labour itself creates. The conclusion sought to
be proved carries absurdity so plainly on the
face of it that there is no wonder that most of
these attempts dropped almost instantaneously into
oblivion.*

The only one, indeed, which has succeeded in
attracting general attention is that of Mr. Henry

* The eminent American economist, Prof, Francis A. Walker, contends,
that "although wages are, to a very considerable degree, in all communi-
ties, advanced out of capital, and this from the very necessity of the case,"
yet that they " must in any philosophical view of the subject be regarded as
paid out of the product of current industry." While accepting all the
facts on which this opinion is founded, I think a correct interpretation of
them would show that the "philosophical view" of wages is that which
regards them as "paul" or payable out of capital. Profit on capitalised
labour or interest on credit given by labourers to their employers ought
not, it seems to me, to be regarded as strictly wages. Of course, capital-
ists always expect to be repaid out of the product of labour, and are
always influenced by their expectations as to the amount and value of the
product in determining the rate of wages which they will consent to give.
The view of Walker as to the source of wages is not to be confounded with
that of George, its exaggeration and caricature. The inferences which he
draws from it are in no degree either revolutionary or socialistic. His
treatise on "The Wages Question" (1891) is one of the ablest on the
subject. Ch. viii. is the portion of it specially referred to in this note.

L

162 SOCIALISM

George. He, of course, has too much ability and
good sense to agree with those fanatical Socialists
who are hostile to capital itself, or who venture to
maintain that it does nothing for labour while
labour does everything for it. For example, he
does not even apply to capital in the form of
machinery, the same reasoning which he does to
capital in the form of wages. He does not maintain
either that machinery is useless in production, or
that the wealth spent in producing it was wealth
which the machinery itself had to generate. But
the wealth spent in wages he tries to prove to have
been produced by the very labour for which it is
paid. Each labourer, .he holds, makes the fund
from which his wages are drawn, and makes it not
only without deducting anything from his employer's
capital, but even while increasing it.

Mr. George brings forward, in proof of his
hypothesis, a number of instances, which are inge-
niously and interestingly presented, but which supply
no real evidence. He starts with the assumption of
a naked man thrown on an uninhabited island, and
supporting himself by gathering birds' eggs, or
picking berries. The eggs or berries which this
man obtains are, he says, " his wages," and are not
drawn from capital, for " there is no capital in the
case." But manifestly these eggs or berries are not
wages. There can be no wages where there is only
one man ; where there is no quid pro quo between
one person and another; where there is neither
employer nor employed.

Mr. George proceeds to imagine a man hiring

SOCIALISM AND CAPITAL ]6j

another to gather eggs or terries for him, the
payment being a portion of the eggs or berries
gathered. In this case, too, he says, there are
wages, and they are drawn from the produce of
labour, not at all from capital. But was there ever
such a case ? Would any sane person who was not
in some way dependent on another take only a
portion of the eggs or berries he collected when he
might have, and ought to have, the whole ? When
a man who collects eggs or berries engages to take
only a portion of them for his trouble and to give
up the remainder to another man, it must be
because he recognises that that man is entitled to
have a share in the eggs or berries in virtue of some
right of property in them ; or because he has done
him some service which makes him his debtor ; or
has already given him wages in some other form
than eggs or berries, but for which eggs or berries
will be accepted as an equivalent.

Mr. George's hypothesis finds, then, no support
or exemplification even in the simplest and most
primitive applications of labour. It fails far more,
of course, to apply to ordinary agricultural and
manufacturing industry, when labour has to be
expended weeks, months, or even years perhaps, in
advance, requires to be provided not merely with a
basket but with costly instruments and materials,
and is seldom occupied with what can be eaten
almost or altogether raw. The ingenuity which
would persuade us that the wages of the workmen
who built the Pyramids, or tunnelled St. Gothard,
or cut the Suez Canal, or cast the cannons of

1 64 SOCIALISM

Herr Krupp, were paid out of the pyramids, the
tunnel, the canal, and the cannons, must be wasted.

It must be added that if the wages of labour
were no deduction from capital, while labour only
generated and increased capital, it becomes most
mysterious that capitalists should ever lose their
capital. Yet it is a fact of daily occurrence. And
if any man inclined to approve of Mr. George's
hypothesis will only attempt to act on it, he will
soon find out to his cost how easily the fact may
occur, and how incorrect the hypothesis is. Whoever
tries to establish and carry on business without
capital for the payment of wages, will speedily
discover that he has made a serious mistake. The
hypothesis that such capital is unnecessary, will not
stand the test of practice.

Capital is charged with a worse fault than in-
dolence. It is denounced as not only a sluggard
but a thief. It is said to be born in theft and kept
alive only by incessant theft ; to be all stolen from
labour, and to grow only by constantly stealing
from it. This is the thesis on the proof of which
Karl Marx concentrated his energies in his treatise
on " Capital." By the acceptance of some unguarded
statements of Adam Smith, by misconceptions of
Bicardo's meaning, by sophisms borrowed from the
copious store of Proudhon, by erroneous definitions
of value and price, by excluding utility from or
including it in his estimate of value just as it suited
his purpose, by unwarranted assumptions regarding
the functions of labour, and by numerous verbal
and logical juggleries, he elaborated a pretended

SOCIALISM AND CAPITAL 165

demonstration. To expound it in detail would take
a chapter to itself, and a general refutation of it
would require at least another, but to indicate its
essential features and fundamental defects need not
detain us long, and may suffice for our present pur-
pose. So far as I am aware it has imposed upon
few who knew sufficiently the elementary truths of
economic science. The greater number of those who
have accepted its conclusion have, owing to their
ignorance of economics, necessarily received it merely
or chiefly on authority.

Marx regards capital not as a natural and universal
factor of production, but as a temporary fact, or what
he calls an " historical category," which has had an
historical, and even late origin. That origin was,
according to his view, violence and fraud, or in a
single word, spoliation. The mass of capital at
present in existence he traces back to conquest,
the expropriation of the feudal peasantry from
the soil, the suppression of the monasteries, the
confiscation of Church lands, enclosures, legislation
unfavourable to the working classes, and other like
causes. In this part of Marx's doctrine there is
nothing original or specially important. That wealth
has been obtained by the illegitimate means he
describes is indubitable. That it was created by
them is very doubtful. It must have existed before
it could be stolen ; mere theft is not creative either
of wealth or capital. The great mass of extant
capital has not been inherited from so remote a past
as the close of the feudal system and the Reformation,
but is of very recent origin. The great majority of

166 SOCIALISM

contemporary capitalists are not the descendants
of feudal lords or of the appropriators of the wealth
of the Roman Catholic Church, but are the sons,
grandsons, or great-grandsons of poor men. Probably
a larger proportion of the wealth of Britain than
that of any other country may be traced to the
sources described by Marx, but even it must be
only a small proportion. The bulk of British wealth
has had its source within the capitalist system itself,
and is not directly at least inherited plunder. Still
more, of course, does this hold good of American and
Australian wealth.

But here Marx meets us with the cardinal article
of his economic creed — the continuous capitalistic
appropriation of surplus value. The profits of capital
are represented by him as of their very nature
robbery. They are only obtained by the abstraction
of what is due to labour. The capitalist and the
labourer make a bargain, the latter consenting to
accept as wages, instead of the full value of what
he produces, only, perhaps, a half or a third, or a
quarter of it, and in fact, only the equivalent of
what will keep him and his family alive, while the
former pockets the remainder, lives in luxury, and
continuously accumulates capital. " Capital, there-
fore, is not only, as Adam Smith says, the command
over labour. It is essentially the command over un-
paid labour. All surplus- value, whatever particular
form (profit, interest, or rent) it may subsequently
crystallise into, is in substance the materialisation
of unpaid labour. The secret of the self-expansion
of capital resolves itself into having the disposal

SOCIALISM AND CAPITAL 167

of a definite quantity of other people's unpaid
labour."

If this doctrine be correct all capitalists are
thieves ; and Marx often energetically denounces
them as such. In one of the prefaces to his chief
work, however, he has tempered his reproaches by
the statement that as he considers economic evolution
to be simply " a process of natural history," he does
not hold capitalists to be individually responsible,
but merely regards them as " the personification of
economic categories, the embodiments of class-
interests and class-relations." This only amounts to
saying that although capitalists do live by theft, we
must in condemning them remember that they are
not moral agents. Schaffle attempts to improve on
it by arguing that although the capitalist must be
objectively a thief, he may be subjectively a most
respectable man ; and that although he lives by
stealing, he is not even to be expected to cease from
stealing to the utmost of his power, because "if he
did not abstract as much as possible from the
earnings of the workmen, and increase his own
wealth indefinitely, he would fall out of the running."
It is a pity that after so remarkable an application
of the terms "objective" and "subjective," Dr.
Schiiftte should not have succeeded in reaching a
more plausible conclusion than that capitalists are
to be excused for stealing because they could not
otherwise get the plunder. Might not all the
thieves in prison be declared subjectively honest on
the same ground ? If the doctrine of Marx as to
capital be correct ; if the profit of capital be entirely

1 68 SOCIALISM

the result of the exploitation of labour ; if capitalism
be a system of robbery : there is no need of any
apology for calling" capitalists thieves ; and no
possible justification of any man who knows what
capital is living on its gains. All who live on
profits, rents, or interest, are thieves if Marx's
doctrine be true ; and they are consciously thieves
if they believe it to be true.

It is to be hoped that most of them can plead
that they do not believe it to be true. For this
opinion there are many strong reasons. As I
indicated in the previous chapter the notion that all
value is derived from labour is erroneous. But on
this error Marx's whole hypothesis of surplus- value
and of the iniquity of the accumulation of capital
rests. Another support of his hypothesis is the
notion that the true standard of value is to be
found in normal labour-time. But this is a gross
absurdity, justified by no facts, and defended only
by sophisms. A third conception essential to the
hypothesis is that profit arises only from the part of
capital expended in the payment of wages. It
requires us to believe that it is of no consequence to
the capitalist what he requires to pay for raw
materials, buildings, and machinery, as he can
neither gain nor lose on these things, but only on
what he spends in wages. But surely a man who
believes so extraordinary a dogma must have much
more regard for his own fancies than for the actual
experience of other men.

Again, Marx's doctrine of the production of
relative surplus-value necessarily implies that as

SOCIALISM AND CAPITAL 169

capital grows strong labour grows weak ; that as
the wealth of the capitalist accumulates the poverty
of the labourer increases. Almost all modern Socialists
have come to the same conclusion. Marx believes
himself to have demonstrated it. The direct aim of
his entire criticism of capital, and especially of that
analysis of the formation of surplus-value which is
what is most distinctive and famous in his treatise,
is to establish the result which he himself states in
the following vigorous terms : — " Within the capi-
talist system all methods for raising the social
productiveness of labour are brought about at the
cost of the individual labourer ; all means for the
development of production transform themselves
into means of domination over, and exploitation of,
the producers ; they mutilate the labourer into
fragments of a man, degrade him to the level of an
appendage of a machine, destroy every remnant of
charm in his work, and turn it into a nated toil ;
they estrange from him the intellectual potentialities
of the labour-process in the same proportion as
science is incorporated in it as an independent
power ; they distort the conditions under which he
works, subject him during the labour-process to a
despotism the more hateful for its meanness ; they
transform his life-time into working-time, and drag
his wife and child beneath the wheels of the Jugger-
naut of capital The law, finally, that always

equilibrates the relative surplus population, or
industrial reserve army, to the extent and energy of
accumulation; this law rivets the labourer to
capital more firmly than the wedges of Vulcan did

i?o SOCIALISM

Prometheus to the rock. It establishes an accumu-
lation of misery corresponding with an accumulation
of capital. Accumulation, wealth, at one pole is,
therefore, at the same time accumulation of misery,
agony of toil, slavery, ignorance, brutality, mental
degradation, at the opposite pole." *

The theory which necessitates such a conclusion
must be false, for the conclusion itself is certainly
false. The evils; indeed, incidental to, and inherent
in, the existing economic condition of society must
be admitted to be numerous and serious. There is
no sufficient warrant for any optimistic view either
of the present or of the future of industry. But
such sheer pessimism as that of Marx is thoroughly
baseless and irrational. It insists that within the
capitalist system, and in the measure that the
wealth of capitalists increase, the labouring classes
must become continually poorer, more dependent,
more ignorant, more degraded in intellect and
character. Yet within this very system, and while
wealth has been accumulating with extraordinary
rapidity, the working classes have obtained the
political right formerly denied to them ; democracy
has proved irresistible ; knowledge and the desire
for knowledge have penetrated to the lowest strata
of society ; crime relatively to population has de-
creased ; wages have remarkably risen ; commodities
have generally fallen in price ; and material comfort
has become much more common. Statistical investi-
gations leave it, perhaps, undecided whether during

* "Capital," pp. 660-1.

SOCIALISM AND CAPITAL 171

the last half-century wages have increased relatively
to the gains of capital ; but they make it certain
that they have increased absolutely ; and that the
rise of real \vages has been even greater than that
of nominal wages. They show that there has been
a remarkable levelling up of wages ; and even that
the wages of the more poorly paid occupations have
increased proportionally much more than those of
the better paid.* The doctrine of Marx, generally
accepted by Socialists, that the increase of production
and the accumulation of capital necessarily tend to
the disadvantage, slavery, and misery of the operative
classes, is thus clearly inconsistent with history,
and is decisively contradicted by science truly so
called.

The claims of the capitalist to remuneration for
what he contributes to production, can no more
reasonably be contested than those of the labourer
for the recompense of his toil ; yet Socialism insists
on contesting them. Capital is a portion of the
capitalist's wealth, and maylbe any portion of it ;
hence, if wealth can be honestly possessed at all,
capital also may be honestly possessed. But if the
wealth which a man uses as capital be really his
own we must have very much stronger reasons for
denying him the right to benefit by it than any
which Socialists have yet brought forward.

His capital is such portion of a man's wealth as

* Abundant confirmation of the three immediately preceding sentences
will be found in Giffen's " Progress of the Working Classes " ; Atkinson's
"Distribution of Profits"; and especially in P. Leroy-Beaulieu's great
work, " Essai sur la Repartition des Richesses. "~

172 SOCIALISM

he withholds from consumption and devotes to pro-
duction. It is impossible both " to eat one's cake
and to keep it " ; both to consume wealth in the
present and to retain it as capital with a view to
profit in the future. That abstention from con-
sumption, or as economists call it, abstinence, is a
necessary condition of the formation, or an essential
moment or element in the notion, of capital is
evident ; but hardly more so than that the man who
thus abstains is entitled to the use and benefit of
the wealth thus retained, of the capital thus formed.
The ordinary reader may be inclined to pronounce
this certainly very simple truth a truism or a plati-
tude ; but Socialists, from Lassalle and Marx to the
writers of Fabian Essays, have been able to see in
it a paradox, and have made themselves merry over
the notion of the sacrifices and privations of a
Rothschild or a Vanderbilt as capitalists. What
is alone ludicrous, however, is that professed teachers
and reformers of economic science should show such a
portentous ignorance of the ordinary and proper
signification of so simple and familiar an economic
term. It may be easier for a millionaire to capital-
ise ;£ 1 00,000 than for a poor man to capitalise
sixpence, but the one can no more than the other
capitalise a farthing of the wealth which he con-
sumes, and the rich man and the poor have clearly
an equal and a perfect right to profit by their
capital, both because what they abstained from
spending unproductively was their own property
and because the abstaining was their own action.
Further, the man who abstains from the con-

SOCIALISM AND CAPITAL 173

sumption of wealth in order to profit by it as
capital, runs the risk of losing it, whether he employ
it himself or lend it to another. In either case it is
absurd to expect him to run the risk without chance
of advantage. In the former he must even add the
labour of administration to the cares of the capitalist,
and such labour is not less entitled to recompense
than that of the operative. In the latter, although
he may so lend that the danger of loss is trifling,
it is never wholly eliminated, and where security
is good the remuneration for mere investment is

o

small.

Moreover, the return for capital, the share of
produce which its owner obtains for the loan of it,
varies naturally according to conditions of demand
and supply, and very largely owing to the demand
of those who seek the wealth of others for the sake
of the profit which they believe they can derive
from it as capital. But manifestly there is no
injustice in men paying for the use of what is not
their own a share of the profit or produce which the
use of it brings them. On the contrary, it is only
right that they should do so in proportion both to
the amount of the capital and the length of time
during which its use is obtained.

The rightful ownership of the wealth from which
capital is formed, the abstinence from consumption
involved in its formation, the risk run in its employ-
ment or investment, and the benefit conferred on
enterprise and labour by the use of it, are the
grounds on which the claim of capital to remunera-
tion rest, and on which it is to be defended. Clearer

174 SOCIALISM

and stronger grounds there cannot be. The attempts
to assail and reject them show only intellectual
weakness and wilfulness ; not necessarily incapacity
for a certain kind of popular writing and speaking
on social subjects, but utter incompetency to appre-
hend the rudimentary principles of social science,
and especially of economics. Yet Socialists persist
in such attempts.

They have very generally even sought to resusci-
tate the mediaeval superstition that interest is
inherently unjustifiable. They tell us, as if it were
a new discovery, instead of an antiquated and most
justly discredited dogma, that money is by nature
barren, and can of right yield no interest. They
elaborately argue that if capital were honest it
would be content to take no profit. Credit, they
say, should be gratuitous. They would have us
believe that if a man has a field or a house he
should be satisfied if at the end of the lease the
tenant hands it over to him in the condition in
which he received it, and is unreasonable if he looks
for anything more in the shape of rent. Some of
them even think that the rent of a field should be
what they call "prairie value," a something so
indefinite that perhaps the only thing certain about
it is that it would be in general much less than the
interest of the wealth expended as capital on the
field, or, in Carlylean phrase, " a frightful minus
quantity." There are many socialistic variations of
the same tune. But they are all discordant and
nonsensical. There was some excuse for the early
Christian Fathers and mediaeval Churchmen enter-

SOCIALISM AND CAPITAL 175

taining such foolish notions, because they fancied
they found them in the Scriptures, to the whole
teaching of which they deemed themselves bound to
yield implicit obedience.* But Socialists have in
general no such plea to urge.

Nor have they any new arguments to supply the
place formerly filled by authority. The ancient soph-
ism that money is sterile, and that as the essence of
every equitable loan is precisely to return what was
lent or its equivalent, to exact interest is a sort of
robbery, is still the only thing like an argument
which the most recent Socialists can adduce. As
regards this argument Mr. Lecky hardly speaks too
strongly when he says, "it is enough to make one
ashamed of one's species to think that Bentham was
the first to bring into notice the simple considera-
tion, that if the borrower employs the borrowed
money in buying bulls and cows, and if these
produce calves to ten times the value of the interest,
the money borrowed can scarcely be said to be
sterile or the borrower a loser." But what are we
to think of those who are unable to see the force of
such a consideration even when it has been pointed
out to them ? What are we to think of the intelli-
gence of those whose only answer to it is, " We are
not reasoning about bulls and cows but about pieces
of gold and silver, which do not beget smaller pieces,
and so multiply ? " The argument plainly implies

* Further, in antiquity and the Middle Ages interest was generally
exorbitant, and loans were generally made with a view not to production
and the acquisition of gain but to consumption and the satisfaction of
want.

176 SOCIALISM

that gold and silver pieces in order to be productive
must be exchanged ; and the point of it is that they
are entitled to interest because of what their
borrower gains from their equivalents, the bulls and
cows bought with them.

The Collectivists display no more wisdom in their
views regarding capital than the advocates of the
oldest and crudest schemes of Socialism. They do
not, it is true, maintain that capital is powerless, or
useless, or essentially hurtful. They admit that it
contributes to production, and object only to its
being held by individuals. But the admission that
it is a natural and important factor in production
does not in the least prevent their bringing against
profits, rents, and interest, those accusations of dis-
honesty, injustice, exploitation of labour, &c., which
are not only baseless but ludicrous, when once the
utility or productivity of capital is acknowledged.

Collectivism likewise threatens to prove as hostile
as Communism could be to the maintenance and
increase of capital. It undertakes to organise
society in a way which would rapidly destroy the
capital which exists and prevent the formation of
capital in the future. It professes not to forbid men
to possess wealth, or even enormous wealth, but it is
quite resolved that they shall not use any portion
of their wealth as capital. In order to establish
their system the leading representatives of Collect-
ivism do not suggest the killing or robbing of the
capitalists of a nation, but the buying them out
with annuities, which they will only be allowed
to spend unproductively. In other words, the rich

SOCIALISM AND CAPITAL 177

are to be prevented from employing their wealth
as capital, but guaranteed the enjoyment of it
through the contributions of the community so
long as it is not applied to aid labour ; and the poor
are to be required to help in paying enormous
annuities to capitalists like the Duke of West-
minster and Baron Rothschild, on condition of their
being henceforth mere consumers of wealth. At the
same time all the producers or labourers in a com-
munity are to be prohibited from forming capital of
their own, but to be compelled to contribute to the
maintenance of a collective capital, in which each
individual can have only an infinitesimal interest.
Can a plan more certain to diminish capital and
increase poverty be imagined ?

The foregoing remarks may have been sufficient
to show that the teaching of Socialists as to capital
has not only no claim to be regarded as scientific
truth, but is radically erroneous. Notwithstanding
all that Socialists have urged to the contrary, it
remains clear and certain that capital and labour,
even under the regime of private property and
personal freedom, are indispensable to each other
and essentially beneficial to each other. The im-
mediate interests of capitalists and labourers, as of
all buyers and sellers, are, indeed, in each particular
instance opposed ; but on the whole and in the long
run they will coincide. In spite of a direct personal
contrariety of interests between each seller and
buyer, it is clearly the great general interest of
every seller that there should be plenty of buyers
possessed of plenty to buy with. Were a shop-

178 SOCIALISM

keeper to ascribe his failure in business to the
number of his customers and the extent of their
purchases, he would be considered insane. It is
precisely the same absurdity to refer the poverty of
labourers to capital, and to represent capitalists as
their natural enemies.

Does it follow that all the griefs of labour against
capital are without warrant, and that all the angry
feelings which labourers have entertained towards
capitalists have had no reasonable foundation ? By
no means. Does it follow that all capital is honestly
gained and honourably used ? By no means. Does
it follow that a great many capitalists do not fail to
treat labour as they ought and to appreciate their
indebtedness to it as they ought ? By no means.
Does it follow that labour is more to blame than
capital for the evils of our industrial and social con-
dition ? By no means.

Political economists have been accused of return-
ing, or at least of suggesting, affirmative answers to
these questions. There is probably little, if any,
truth in the charge. But were it true much of the
distrust and dislike shown by the working classes
towards economists and their science would be ac-
counted for, and justified. Economists have certainly
no warrant in their science, or in facts, to answer
any of these questions affirmatively. It is their
duty to set forth what is true both about labour
and capital; it is their shame, if they plead as
partisans the cause either of capital or of labour.
They are bound by regard to truth, and in the
interest even of labour, to expose the falsity of such

SOCIALISM AND CAPITAL 179

accusations as Socialists bring against capital itself,
and against capitalists as a class ; but they are
equally bound not to deny or excuse the abuses
of capital or the demerits of capitalists. Some
capitalists are probably as bad as Socialists represent
the class to be ; doubtless few of them are as good
as they ought to be.

The mere capitalist is never a satisfactory human
being, and is often a very despicable one. The
man of wealth who takes no trouble even in the
administration of his capital, who is a simple
investor or sleeping partner, and devotes his
abilities and means neither to the public service nor
to the promotion of any important cause, but is
active only in consumption, and self-gratification,
well deserves contempt and condemnation. The
world gets benefit from his capital indeed, but
without exertion or merit of his, and it would get
it not less were he dead. His life is a continuous
violation of duty, since duty demands from every
man labour according to his ability, service accord-
ing to his means. Unfortunately there are not
only many such capitalists, but many such who
consume what they so easily get in waste and vice.
Against them socialistic criticism is far from wholly
inapplicable. Their prevalence goes a considerable
way, perhaps, to explain the success of socialistic
propagandism.

But the waking and active capitalist may be as
objectionable as the sleeping and inactive one. He
is a man whose thoughts and energies are neces-
sarily concentrated on the pursuit of wealth, and,

i8o SOCIALISM

therefore, a man specially apt to become possessed
by the demon of avarice, enslaved by the desire of
gain, hard and selfish, heedless of the claims of
justice and sympathy. It is only too possible that
workmen may have very real and serious grievances
against their capitalist employers. Wherever
labourers have been ignorant, politically feeble and
fettered, divided or isolated — wherever they have
not learned to combine, or been so circumstanced
that they could not combine their forces and give
an effective expression to their wishes — capitalists
have taken full advantage of their inexperience, their
weakness, and their disunion. Nowhere would it be
safe for working men to trust merely to the justice
of capitalists. Everywhere it would be ridiculous
for them to trust to their generosity. For labour
to be on its guard against the selfishness of capital,
for labour to organise itself for self-defence and the
attainment of its due, is only ordinary prudence.

Then, while it is very easy to show against Socialism
the legitimacy of expecting profit from capital, of
claiming a rent for land, or of taking interest for the
loan of money ; it is impossible to defend many of
the practices prevalent in the industrial, commercial,
and financial world. The mendacious puffery of
wares, the dishonest adulteration of goods, the
mean tricks of trade, the commercial devices for
the spoliation of the inexperienced and unwary, so
prevalent among us, are, of course, discreditable
to our present civilisation. We have become so
accustomed to them that we do not feel their
hatefulness as we ought. Socialism is beneficial

SOCIALISM AND CAPITAL 181

in so far that it incites us to hate them, although
we must find some other remedy for them than
the drastic one which it recommends. The greatest
fortunes of our age have been made not from
agriculture, manufactures, or what is commonly
called trade, but by speculation. This has now
become a most elaborate and powerful art. I do
not say that it is not an art which has a legitimate
and even necessary place in our economical system,
or that fortunes may not be legitimately made by
it. But, without a doubt, it is an art which has.
often been most wickedly and cruelly exercised,
and many of the largest fortunes made by it have
been made with very dirty hands. Even in this
age of low interest your skilled speculator can make
an exorbitant percentage on his money by seemingly
taking upon himself great risks which he knows how*
to evade by bringing ruin upon hundreds of simpler
and less-informed individuals, or even, perhaps, upon
a whole people struggling to become a nation or
sinking under the pressure of debt and taxation.
There are great money-lords who in our own genera-
tion have been as successful robbers as the most
rapacious and unscrupulous of mediaeval warriors.

Further, men who as capitalists receive only a very
moderate profit on their capital may as employers of
labour render themselves justly objectionable to
their workmen by an overbearing demeanour, by dis-
plays of bad temper, by arbitrary requirements and
unreasonable expectations, by a want of frankness,
courtesy, and friendliness in their behaviour. They
may pay their workmen the wages of their labour,

182 SOCIALISM

yet withhold from them the respect due to them
as men who are their own equals as men ; and the
consideration due to them as their partners in a
contract, rendering at least an equivalent for what
they receive and contributing to their prosperity.
They may plainly show that they do not realise
that they are living in a free and democratic age ; and
that they are not the masters of slaves or serfs.
And they may thus, and often really do thus, most
grievously and foolishly strain and embitter the re-
lations between themselves and their workmen.

I would only add that capitalists may be fairly
expected to recognise their special indebtedness to
their operatives by a special interest in their welfare.
A capitalist has become, let us suppose, a man of
great wealth, and he has made his fortune honestly ;
he has paid his workmen their reasonable wages ;
the rate of his own profits has been moderate, or
even small. Still, as all the many men whom he
has employed have contributed each something to
his fortune, he is a man of great wealth. Ought
he not to feel that he owes some gratitude to his
workmen ? Surely he ought. May society not look
to him to take a special interest in the improvement
of the condition of the operative class to whose
labours he has chiefly owed his success ? Surely it
may. And should this man make even most muni-
ficent public benefactions of a merely general kind-
should he build town-halls, endow churches, and
leave large legacies to missions arid charities — yet
overlook the class by the aid of which he has made
his wealth, his charity, it seems to me, can by no means

SOCIALISM AND CAPITA!, 183

be pronounced without flaw. The capitalists of this
country could, I am convinced, if they would only
gird themselves up to the task, do greater things
for our labouring classes than any absolute ruler can
for those of his empire. I know of no problem as to
the requirements of the labouring classes which he
could solve by the methods of despotism which they
might not solve better by the methods of freedom.
No class of men is called to a nobler mission than
the capitalists of Great Britain. It is their interest
as well as their duty to listen to the call.

SUPPLEMENTARY NOTE.

The theory of Marx as to the nature and effects of capitalistic
production rests on his theory as to the cause and measure of
value. And in this respect his system of economics, which is
substantially constituted by these two theories, has the merit of
consistency. If sundry economists who preceded him in taking the
same view of the relation of labour to value gave quite a different
view of the relation of labour to capital, we can only attribute
that to defective logic or imperfect courage. The consequences
which he deduces from his theory of value are really implied in
it. That theory is the foundation-stone of the whole Marxian
structure. It is, however, as we have seen in the previous
chapter, one which only requires to be tried and tested to crumble
into dust.

Of late there are symptoms that some of the most cultured
advocates of Social Democracy are becoming ashamed of the
Marxian theory of value. At least I observe that some of our
Fabians are beginning to say that collectivist economics is
independent of any particular theory of value and compatible
with an acceptance of the theory of value with which the
names of Walras and Jevons, Menger and Bohm-Bawerk, are
familiarly associated. But why have they not also given some
reasons for their opinion ? It seems to me that they must
inevitably perceive it to be an error as soon as they make any

i84 SOCIALISM

serious attempt to deduce the Marxian theory of surplus-value
either without any theory of value, or from any other theory of
value than that on which Marx relied. The system of Marx
cannot be half accepted and half rejected ; it must stand or fall
as a whole.

While Marx was no more the first to maintain that the profit
of the capitalist is wholly drawn from unpaid labour than that
labour alone creates value, he was also no less the first to attempt
a complete demonstration of the former than of the latter of
those doctrines. His originality and merit were of the same kind
as regards both. It is only with the former that we have at
present to concern ourselves.

Proudhon began his investigation of the nature of property by
defining property as " theft." Marx starts on his investigation
of the nature of capitalist production with the conception that
capital consists of " the means of exploitation." The coincidence
is remarkable ; but Marx is very often to be found stepping in
the footmarks of the man whom he particularly delighted to
depreciate. No impartial_thinker has approved of, or can ap-
prove of, his definition of capital. If he wished to have a term
for "the means of exploitation," he should have invented one,
and not appropriated a word which has in economic science a
recognised signification quite different from that which he sought
to substitute for it. Capital as generally understood by
economists is wealth which is used not for the direct gratification
of desire but as a means of producing additional wealth. Every
instrument auxiliary to labour and productive of wealth is in this
sense capital. In the Marxian sense no such instrument is
capital unless the possessor of it can, by entrusting or lending it
|to another, derive from it a benefit to himself which is robbery
'of the other. A strange notion ! Could a manufacturer, by some
grand mechanical contrivance, himself work the whole machinery
of his factory, and dispense with labourers altogether, he would
forthwith cease to be a capitalist in the Marxian sense. And, on
the other hand, were some ingenious man, by much hard thinking
and through much self-sacrifice, to invent an instrument by
the help of which there could be performed in a single day
as much work as would otherwise require ten days' toil, to charge
for the loan of it a shilling or even a penny more than an equiva-

SOCIALISM AND CAPITAL 185

lent for its deterioration while employed by its borrower, he
would become a capitalist and an exploiter. Such a conception of
capital is its own refutation. It obviously implies the assumption
that capital is essentially sterile, and unentitled to any profit.
This assumption also needs no special refutation. Capital by
itself is indeed unproductive. But so is labour by itself. If
capital can produce nothing without natural agents and labour,
labour can produce nothing without natural agents, and extremely
little without capital.

By representing capital as " an historic category " Marx meant
that it had not existed in all stages of society, and was even a
comparatively late phenomenon in history. But this view was
only a consequence of the conception which he had formed of the
nature of capital, not a result of historic investigation. Capital
must be admitted, indeed, to have had an origin in history, to
have been derived from labour and natural agents, and not to be,
as labour and natural agents are, primordial in production ; it is
only a secondary, not a primary, factor of production. But if it
be conceived of in its proper acceptation as wealth devoted to
production it must have been almost coeval with man. History
does not inform us of any age in which capital thus understood
was non-existent. " Man," it has been said, " is a tool-using
animal." But the simplest tool is an instrument of production
equally with the most complex machine, and as such is equally
capital. Man as a rational being is naturally endowed with the
power of seeing that he can often better attain his ends indirectly
by the use of means with which he can provide himself than by
the immediate and direct action of his own members. This
power, a universal and distinctive characteristic of humanity, is
the root alike of invention and of capital, two of the chief
secondary factors of production. Some outgrowths of it are
to be found among the most uncultured peoples of the earth ;
and the latest, most elaborate, and most subtle of the mechanical,
commercial, and capitalistic contrivances and processes adopted in
the most advanced of modern nations are only its most evolved
results.

That capital, in the Marxian sense, is " an historic category "
may be doubted. No one, it is true, will refuse to admit that
capital may grow, and often has grown, by exploitation, by

1 86 SOCIALISM

appropriation of the wealth created by unpaid labour. But
that is not what Marx had to show in order to confirm and
justify his conception of capital. What he required to prove
was that it necessarily and exclusively so grows ; that the
exploitation of labour is its essential function, and the whole
secret and source of its accumulation. That is what he has
not done. Hence capital, as denned by him, is rather a mythic
or metaphysical than an historic category, originating as it does
in the imaginative or dialectic identification of the nature of
capital with its abuse, and in the personification of it as "a
vampire." While admitting that the present era is a capitalist
era, we may reasonably hold that " the capitalist era " of Marx
is, if anywhere, still in the future, awaiting, perhaps, its advent
in Collectivism.

Marx is mistaken when he represents capital as a product of
circulation which makes its first appearance in the form of
money. On the contrary, it is just the commodities which
constitute capital that are circulated, and money presupposes
both their existence and their circulation. Neither the means
of production nor of exploitation originated in circulation and
money. "The modern history of capital" may, perhaps, be
dated from the sixteenth century, but it was preceded by a
mediaeval history of capital, and that again by an ancient history
of it. The time of the utmost exploitation of labour by capital
was that of slavery, when the capitalist made of the labourer a
mere instrument of production, a mere portion of his capital.
That money may not be capital Marx himself admits ; but having
made the admission he should have further allowed that money
is not otherwise capital than any commodity may be capital.
When he affirms that "if we abstract from the material sub-
stance of the circulation of commodities — that is, from the
exchange of the various use- values — and consider only the
economic forms produced by this process of circulation, we find
its final result to be money," he falls again into the same error as
when he maintained that through abstraction of the use-values of
commodities we find them to be mere congelations or crystals of
the social substance, human labour in the abstract. In other
words, he again adopts the irrational intellectual procedure which
in the Middle Ages peopled the world of thought with " entities "

SOCIALISM AND CAPITAL 187

and " quiddities." The abstraction which he recommends is of
the kind which only generates fictitious notions and fallacious
arguments.

The whole of that portion of his argument which is intended
to prove that profit cannot arise in the process of circulation or
exchange is also dependent on an abstract notion to which nothing
real corresponds. Circulation as he conceives of it ; circulation as
an exchange either of equivalents in which no one gains, or of
non-equivalents in which what one gains another loses ; is not a
normal economic process, or the process treated of in economic
science. In an exchange, as understood in economics, both
parties to it believe it to be for their advantage. In no case
of sale does either the buyer or seller seek either a mere equiva-
lent or a loss. Were the view of Marx correct, there should not
be any profits made in the distributing trades. The ability of
certain manufacturers to buy their raw materials cheaper and to
obtain for their products a wider and better market than their
rivals is a copious source of profit to them. Circulation or
exchange — the actual process, not the fictitious Marxian ab-
straction of it — so augments the useful co-operation of the
powers of nature and of man as in countless cases enormously to
aid production and to increase profits. The Marxian " demon-
stration " of the source of surplus-value has, in fact, scarcely even
an appearance of applicability in the sphere of commerce, and is
practically confined by its author to that of industry.

Marx further denies that profit can arise from any portion of
capital except such as is expended on wages, or what he calls
ft. si thle capital. He holds that all other capital — what he calls
constant capital — is unproductive of profit. While he admits
that capital incorporated in machinery contributes powerfully to
production, he yet asserts that it has no influence whatever on
the production of surplus-value. This monstrous paradox he
obviously required to maintain before he could pretend to make
out that capital grows only by the exploitation of labour. He
had the wot'ul courage to do so ; and his followers have had
the credulity to believe him in defiance alike of reason and of
experience.

Consider what the paradox implies. Take two capitalists, AB
and CD. Suppose AB to have a capital of ^1000 ; to expend

1 88 SOCIALISM

half of it in -wages amounting to ^50 a year to each of ten tailors,
and half of it in materials for them to work on ; and to find him-
self at the close of the year to have made profit to the extent of
^£500. Suppose CD to have a capital of ^100,000, of which
^£99,500 are invested in pearls, while the remaining ^500 are
expended in wages to ten workmen who string the pearls into
necklaces, &c. What amount of profit should, according to the
doctrine of Marx, fall to CD during the year ? Just the same
as to AB, because, although his total capital is a hundred times
greater, his variable capital is the same. In other words, if Marx
be correct, CD must expect to get 99 J per cent, less profit on his
capital than AB. Should he get the same rate of profit the
amount of it would be not ^500 but ^£5000. In this latter
case, however, he must, according to the Marxian economics, rob
his workmen to the extent of ^500 each, not like AB only to
the extent of ^50 each. And to accomplish that — to appropriate
to himself ^500 out of the annual wages due to a common work-
man— would surely be a feat not less remarkable than to take the
breeches off a kilted Highlander or to extract sunbeams from
cucumbers.*

The view of Marx is undoubtedly erroneous. Profits are
derivable from all the factors of production, and not merely from
labour. Greater disposable wealth or purchasing power, superior
intelligence in buying, selling, and management, the possession of
more powerful or perfect machinery, and other advantages are
sufficient to explain why one manufacturer gathers far more
surplus-value than another, although he neither employs more
labourers nor pays them worse. The masters who make most
profit seldom make it by paying lower wages than their rivals.
Could manufacturers dispense with human labour altogether, and
substitute for it the action of automatic machines, they would
acquire surplus-value not less than at present. Only on con-
dition of acquiring such value would they consent to produce at
all. Profit and loss in business are not proportional to what
Marx calls the variable capital but to the total capital employed
in it. To maintain the reverse implies blindness to the most
obvious and indubitable facts of industrial and commercial life.

* Cf. BoKm-Bkwfijk's " Capital and Interest," pp7355-52?

SOCIALISM AND CAPITAL 189

We may now see how hopeless must be the attempt of Marx
to prove that the profits of the capitalist are derived entirely
from the robbery of the labourer. Every principle which he laid
down with a view to proving it has been found to be false. Every
proposition from which he would deduce the conclusion at which
he desires to arrive has been shown to be contrary to reason and
to fact.

Let us look, however, at such argumentation as he favours us
with. The capitalist, we are first told, cannot find profit else-
where than in labour-power, because labour-power has the peculiar
quality of being the sole source of value. But that reason has
been already disposed of. Marx, we have seen, tried but utterly
failed to justify it. Labour-power has not the peculiar quality
which he ascribes to it. It is not the sole source of value. And,
therefore, it is not to be inferred that value can be derived from
no other source.

Labour-power, Marx further assures us, is not only the sole
source of value but has itself a value — " the value of the social
normal labour-time incorporated in it, or necessary to its repro-
duction; in this case, the value of the means of subsistence
necessary to the maintenance of the labourer." But here again
he assumes that he has proved what he has not proved, and what
is even, as we have seen, certainly false. He imagines that he
has shown that the duration of labour is the measure of its value ;
and that he has consequently a standard by which he can tell
definitely how much of it is paid for, and how much of its value
is appropriated by the capitalist. But the dujTatiojajrflabour is
no such measure, and Marx has not a standard of the kmci which
he supposes. All his assertions as to the extent of the exploita-
tion of labour are, therefore, of necessity arbitrary.

Marx supposes that labour-power can restore itself, or provide
itself with the physically indispensable means of subsistence, by
the labour of six hours, and that the value of these means exactly
represents the value of that labour. There is no reason for either
supposition. There is no definite period discoverable in which
labour will produce the value of the means necessary to its repro-
duction ; and there is no ground for regarding the value of these
means as the natural or appropriate remuneration of the labour-
power exerted during that period. The physically indispensable

IQO SOCIALISM

means of subsistence are the minimum on which labour-power can
be sustained, not the measure or criterion of its value, not a
necessary or normal, just or reasonable, standard of wages.
What return is due to labour cannot be determined in any such
easy, simple, definite way as Marx would have us believe.

His next step is the most extraordinary of all. It is to treat
what he had professedly supposed merely for the sake of argument
as true, to be true and without need of argument. It is to affirm as
fact, without producing any kind of evidence, that the labourer
who had only been assumed to be entitled to give the capitalist six
hours' work for three shillings of pay, cannot give more than that
amount of work for that amount of pay without being robbed by
the capitalist to the extent of the excess of work. A more loose
and illusory argument there could not be ; and yet it is all that
we get at the very point where argument of the strictest and
strongest kind is most needed.

The labour which the capitalist pays for produces, according to
Marx, no profit, any more than what he calls constant capital.
If the capitalist, therefore, received only the labour of six hours
from each of his workmen he would make no profit. Marx
expounds at great length his conception of what takes place in
the conversion of 10 Ibs. of cotton into yarn when the process is
effected by means of six hours' labour paid for at its natural
value. He distinguishes and dwells on the cost of the different
factors in the process, and assures us that in this case the
capitalist can get no more for his cotton yarn than the total cost
of its production, or, in other words, must necessarily fail to
create surplus- value. Yet he does not attempt to show us on
what his assurance is founded ; does not discuss the question
whether the capitalist might not even in the case supposed obtain
a profit. There is no element of argument in his illustration.
The hypothetical example on which he discourses so elaborately,
doubtless clearly expresses his view; but it does not in the
slightest degree confirm it.

The capitalist, then, according to Marx, cannot get profit either
from his constant capital or from the labour which he pays for.
But, says he quite gravely, the capitalist compels the labourer to
give him twelve hours' labour instead of six, and for the price of
six ; and thus he is able to appropriate to himself as much of

SOCIALISM AND CAPITAL 191

the value of labour as that which he allows the labourer to
retain.

Observe, that, according to the hypothesis of Marx himself, the
workmen are not only free, but as yet undegraded and unmanned
by the operation of the system of capitalism. Yet he asks us to
believe that they submit to give the capitalist twice the amount
of labour which they are paid for, twelve hours instead of six.
The capitalist, according to Marx, cannot give them less than the
value of their six hours of labour. Why, then, should they give
him six hours gratis ? If he is to make profit at all he cannot
refuse to accept from them one hour or even half an hour more,
and yet pay them as much for the six and a half or seven hours
as Marx represents him as paying for the twelve hours. In a
word, Marx attributes to the capitalist a power arid to the work-
men a foolishness incredible on any hypothesis, but especially
incredible on his own, seeing that if the capitalist be wholly
dependent on human labour for his profit he must be weak, and if
the labour-power of the workmen be the sole source of value they
must be blind indeed if they do not recognise their own strength,
and see that the capitalist must take any amount of time,
however little beyond six hours which they are pleased to grant
him.

The only semblance of reason which Marx gives for ascribing
to the capitalist such power as he does is that " he who once
realises the exchange-value of labour-power, or of any other
commodity, parts with its use-value " ; that " the use-value of
labour-power once bought belongs just as much to its buyer as
the use- value of oil after it has been sold belongs to the dealer
.who has bought it " ; that " when labour actually begins it has
already ceased to belong to the labourer, and consequently cannot
again be sold by him." This pretence of proof Prof. Wolf of
Zurich quite justly stigmatises as " eitel Humbug." It is equiva-
lent to asserting that the proprietor of a house cannot let it for
a year and then refuse to allow the tenant to occupy it another
year free of rent ; that if the possessor of a reaping-machine sells
the use of it for a limited time, he loses his rights over it for an
unlimited time. A workman sells the use of his labour-power on
certain conditions for a certain time ; he does not sell himself,
nor does he sell his labour, or the use of his labour-power,

1 92 SOCIALISM

on other conditions or for a longer time than he himself
consents to.

Further, Marx shows himself inconsiderate and inconsistent
when he represents the capitalist as appropriating to himself the
value of the six hours of labour for which he does not pay the
workmen. Marx repeatedly recognises the truth of the economic
law that " the value of commodities tends to diminish as the
amount of the product per unit of labour-cost increases." But it
is an obvious and necessary inference from it that the capitalist
would not, arid could not, appropriate the value of the labour
which he did not pay for ; that the three shillings of which he
sought to rob each labourer daily would not stay in his own
pocket but take to itself wings and fly into the pockets of the
public by reducing the price of commodities three shillings to the
consumer.

The illustrative example by which Marx endeavours to make
perfectly plain to us how " the capitalistic trick " is performed
still remains for consideration. It is fully presented in the
extract on pp. 66-7. As I have already attempted to refute all
the erroneous principles and suppositions which are expressed or
implied in that extract, I shall now merely set over against it an
extract from an eminent American economist, which contains the
clearest and most conclusive exposure of it that has come under
my notice.

Mr. Gunton writes thus :

"In demonstrating the operation of the law of economic value, Marx
first manufactures 10 Ibs. of cotton yarn, in which the cost of the different
factors consumed is stated as follows :

Cost of raw cotton ios.

Cost of wear and tear of machinery. . . 28.
Cost of labour power 3$.

Total cost 155.

" Marx then tells us the same amount of labour is expended on the
production of 155. in gold, so that the 10 Ibs. of yarn and the 15*.
are the exact economic equivalents of each other. To use his own
formula, the case stands thus: 155. value of yarn = los. raw cotton +
2*. machinery + 3*. labour-power; and 15$. is all the capitalist can
get for his yarn, and no surplus value is produced. Marx then pro-
duces for us 20 Ibs. of yarn, in the process of producing which a surplus

SOCIALISM AND CAPITAL 193

value of 3«. is created. He sees, of course, that in producing 20 Ibs.
of yarn the raw material consumed and the wear and tear will be twice
as great as in the production of 10 Ibs. ; but he discovers that the
labourer lives twenty-four hours on 33., and, in the first process, works
only six hours a day to earn the 3*. He now makes him work twelve
hours a day and produce 20 instead of 10 Ibs. of yarn. And since the
labourer can live now, as before, on 3*. a day, he only pays him 3$. for
twelve hours' labour. Accordingly, the results of the second process are
as follows :

Cost of raw cotton 20*.

Cost of wear and tear of machinery. . . 4*.
Cost of labour power ..... 3*.

Total cost 27*.

"Marx assumes that, since the value of 10 Ibs. of yarn is 15*., that
of 20 Ibs. must be 303. ; hence 35. surplus value has been created. To
use his formula, the ' prolonged process ' stands thus : 30$. value of
yarn = 20*. raw cotton -f 43. machinery + 3*. labour-power + 3*. surplus
value. Then, as with a flourish of trumpets, he exclaims : ' The trick
has at last succeeded ; money has been converted into capital.' And
as if to assure us that everything has been done on the square, he adds :
'Every condition of the problem is satisfied, while the laws that regulate

the exchange of commodities have been in no way violated Yet

for all that, he [the capitalist] draws 3*. more from circulation than he
originally threw into it.'

" If we ask whence came this 3*. surplus value, he promptly replies :
From prolonging the working-day to twelve hours and thereby making
the labour produce 20 instead of 10 Ibs. of yarn for the same pay. Now
the trick has surely succeeded, and it almost seems as if the capitalist
had performed it ; but let us look at it once more.

"In the first instance the case stood: 15*. value of yarn = los. raw
cotton + 28. machinery + 3*. labour-power. Why was the value of the
yarn just 15*. ? Because, explains Marx at great length, * 15*. were
spent in the open market upon the constituent elements of the product,
or (what amounts to the same thing) upon the factors of the labour pro-
cess. ' He explicitly tells us that the only reason why the capitalist could
not get 1 6*. or 17*. for his yarn was that only 15*. had been consumed
in its production.

" Now let us look at the 20 Ibs. of yarn produced under « the prolonged
process ' in the light of the law Marx has applied to the production of the
10 Ibs. Here the cost of the raw material is 20*. ; wear and tear, 4*. ;
labour power, 3*. ; total cost, 27*. Therefore, according to the above law,
the total value of the product is 27*. 'Oh no ! ' exclaims Marx, ' that
would give no surplus value.' The cost of the yarn in this case, he admits,
is only 27*., but he insists that its value is 30*. According to Marx, then,

N

194 SOCIALISM

his economic law of value works thus : los. + 2s. + 3-9. cost = 155. value ;
while 2os. + 45. + 35. cost = 30$. value. In other words, 15$. = 15*., but
275. = 305. Now, by what application of his own law of value, according
to which 155. cost can only produce 155. value, can he make 273. cost
produce 305. value ? Clearly, if the 20 Ibs. of yarn, the production of
which only cost 275., can have a value of 305. , then by the same law the
10 Ibs. of yarn, whose production cost 155., can have a value of i6s. 6d.
To assume that, while a cost of 15$. cannot yield a value of more than
155., a cost of 275. can yield a value of 305., is to violate alike the laws of
logic and the rules of arithmetic ; and this self-contradiction destroys
the whole basis of his theory. Manifestly surplus value was no more
created in the production of the 20 Ibs. of yarn than that of 10 Ibs. The
3*. here paraded as surplus value is a pure invention of Marx. True,
' the trick has at last succeeded ; ' but it was performed by Marx, and
not by the capitalist. It is obviously a trick of metaphysics, and not of
economics. The only exploitation here revealed is the exploitation of
socialistic credulity, and not of economic labour-power." *

We may now consider ourselves entitled to reject in toto that
portion of the teaching of Marx in " Capital," which claims to be
theory or science. It fulfils none of its promises, justifies none
of its pretensions, and is, indeed, regarded from a scientific point
of view, the greatest failure which can be found in the whole
history of economics. No man with an intellect so vigorous, and
who had read and thought so much on economic subjects, has
erred so completely, so extravagantly, as to the fundamental
principles and laws of economic science. The only discovery
which he has made is that of "a mare's nest." His pretended
demonstration is not a logical chain of established truths, but a
rope of metaphysical cobwebs thrown around arbitrary suppo-
sitions.

And the cause of his failure is obvious. Passion is a bad
counsellor. And the soul of Marx was filled with passion ; with
party hate ; with personal animosities ; with revolutionary ambi-
tion. His interest in economics was neither that of the scientist
nor of the philanthropist, but of the political and social agitator ;
and he put forth his strength entirely in manipulating it into an
instrument of agitation. That was the chief source of such
success as he obtained. There was wide discontent. He framed

* George Gnnton, " Economic Basis of Socialism," in the Political Science
Quarterly, vol. iv., 1889, pp. 568-71.

SOCIALISM AND CAPITAL 195

a doctrine with a view to justify and inflame it. He taught
masses of men just what they were anxious- to believe ; and hence
they believed him.

That portion of the treatise of Marx which deals with the
effects of capitalist production is, on the other hand, of very con-
siderable value. It is also the fullest expression of what was
best in his nature, his sympathy with the poor; a sympathy
which, although by no means pure, was undoubtedly sincere and
intense. The large manufacturing system during the first fifty
years of its history in this country was enormously productive,
not only of wealth, but of misery, of vice, of human degradation.
The glitter of the riches which it created so dazzled the eyes of
the vast majority of men that they were blind to the disorgani-
sation, the oppression, the abominations, which it covered. The
most honest and intelligent persons took far too rosy a view of
it, or, at the most, timidly apologised for practices which they
should have felt to be intolerable. But the reaction at length
came. The struggles of the victims of the system made them-
selves felt, and their cries awakened the slumbering conscience of
the nation. The claims of justice and of humanity found per-
sistent and persuasive advocates. Careful investigations were
instituted, and important reforms initiated.

In the transition period, when the first era of the large
manufacturing system", the era of lawless individualistic enter-
prise, the era of anarchy, had given place to its second era, the
era of regulated development, of incipient but growing organisa-
tion, Marx, by his work on " Capital," and his friend Engels, by
his book on the " Condition of the Working Classes in England
in 1844," did excellent service by concentrating as it were into
these foci the light which parliamentary inquiries had elicited as
to the evils of a capitalism allowed to trample on physiological
and moral laws ; and causing it thence to radiate over the world.
It is true, indeed, that Marx, in that portion of his work to
which I refer, continually confounds merely incidental with
necessary consequences. Still the evils which he so vigorously
describes and assails were mostly real consequences; and his
exposure of them must have helped to destroy them, and to
render their return impossible.

On the inferences which he has drawn from his doctrine, and

196 SOCIALISM

which I have already stated on pp. 67—8, my remarks will be very
brief.

1. The charge which Marx brings against the capitalist, of
striving to appropriate more and more of the productive power
of labour by lengthening the labour day is, of course, one in
which there is a considerable measure of truth. All that he
blames the capitalist for having done with this intent he shows
from unexceptionable authorities that the capitalist had actually
done. Unquestionably the desire of the capitalist to extend as
much as he can the labour day is one against which labourers do
well to be on their guard, and which they are justified in
endeavouring to thwart whenever it demands what is unreason-
able. Experience proves that with prudence, firmness, and
union, they can do so; and that Marx was quite mistaken in
thinking that the capitalist must be successful in his attempts to
overstep "the moral and even the merely physical maximum
bounds of the working day." Machinery has not helped the
capitalist to attain that end. For a time, indeed, when social
continuity was violently disrupted and industry largely dis-
organised by its sudden and rapid introduction, it seemed as if it
would do so ; but it has had, in reality, a contrary effect. Owing
to condensing population within narrow circuits, and associating
intelligences and forces, the large manufacturing system is just
what has rendered possible the rise and growth of powerful
trade unions, and has transferred political power from the hands
of employers to those of the employed. Hence there has been
within the last thirty years, and especially in large industries, a
notable shortening of the working day. At the present time the
average working week consists of not more than fifty hours.
Thus already workmen have very generally as much leisure time
as labour time. The labour time will doubtless be still further
abbreviated, and for all classes of workmen. When this takes
place, what is even now a very important question for workmen,
that as to the right use of their leisure time, will become the
chief question.

2. The charge that the capitalist contrives by the aid of
machinery so to intensify labour as to compensate him for any
loss incurred by shortening its duration, is also not without a
•certain amount of truth. Labour may be excessive without

SOCIALISM AND CAPITAL 197

being prolonged. Hard running for four hours may be more
exhausting than steady walking during twelve hours. Marx had
no difficulty in showing from the testimony of factory inspectors
and other authorities, that manufacturers managed, after the
passage of the Factory Acts, to get their operatives to compress
the work of twelve hours into less than ten, and to labour at a
rate which ruined their health and shortened their lives. It is
very probable that there may still be industries in which labour
is carried on at an excessively rapid pace, and where consequently
the labourers are overdriven, although they may have nothing to
complain of as regards the mere length of their working day. But
this also can be checked and prevented. It is no more out of the
power of the workmen, or beyond the province of legislation, to
put a stop to the excessive intensification than to the undue pro-
longation of labour. There can be no reasonable doubt that, on
the whole, machinery has lightened as well as shortened labour.
The heaviest labour which men perform is that which they
execute by the exertion of their muscles and members without
any aid from machinery. J. S. Mill has said : " It is question-
able if all the mechanical inventions yet made have lightened the
day's toil of any human being." It seems to me that there can
be no question at all that mechanical inventions have lightened
the day's toil of millions of human beings; although in many
cases where they ought to have done so they have not, owing to
human greed and perversity.

3. Marx touched a very sore point in the capitalist and manu-
facturing system when he dwelt on the extent to which it had
appropriated the labour-power of women and children. It nad
been allowed to do so to the most monstrous extent. Parents
sold the labour-power of children of six years of age to masters
who forced these children to toil from five in the morning to
eight in the evening ; and British law treated the criminals, for
whom no punishment in the statute-book would have been too
severe, as innocent — treated such unnatural and abominable
oppression and slavery as a part of British liberty. Married
women, tempted by their insensate avarice or, perhaps, constrained
by drunken, lazy, brutal husbands, were permitted, without being
in any way restrained or discouraged, to engage in employments
wliich necessarily involved the neglect of their children and house-

198 SOCIALISM

holds, and the sacrifice of all the ends for which the family has
been instituted. Certainly these things ought not to have been.
And such things are not only not necessary, but tend to the
impoverishment, enfeeblement, and decay of nations, and to the
injury of all classes in a nation. Nor are they essential to the
capitalist and manufacturing system ; they are only evils inci-
dental to it, and especially to the initial and anarchical stage of
its history. They have already been largely got rid of. The
influence of the system, in virtue of the increased demand which
it makes for female industry, far from being exclusively evil, is,
on the whole, most beneficial. While it is undesirable that
married women should become, otherwise than in exceptional
circumstances, labourers for wages, it is greatly to be wished
that all well-conducted unmarried women of the working class
should be able to maintain themselves in honest independence by
finding employment in whatever occupations are suited to them.

4. Marx attached great importance to his doctrine of the
formation under the capitalist system of an industrial reserve
army. He rejected Lassalle's " iron law ; " but he believed that
he had himself discovered a law harder than iron, one which
" rivets the labourer to capital more firmly than the wedges of
Vulcan did Prometheus to the rock." He controverted with
extreme superciliousness, and, it must be added, with equal
superficiality, the Malthusian theory, but maintained the
practical conclusion generally, although erroneously, inferred
from it by Malthusians. Without mentioning Dr. Sadler, he
substantially adopted his extraordinary opinion that different
social stages or conditions have different laws of human increase.
Dr. Sadler composed two bulky volumes to prove that the law of
human increase was one which varied with circumstances through
a providential adaptation of the fecundity of the human species
to the exigencies of society. Marx had, of course, no wish to
justify the ways of Providence, but he had a keen desire to dis-
credit the ways of capitalism, and so he devoted more than a
hundred pages to arguing that "there is a law of population
peculiar to the capitalist mode of production ; " * that " capitalist
accumulation itself constantly produces, in the direct ratio of its

* P. 645-

SOCIALISM AND CAPITAL 199

own energy and extent, a relatively redundant population of
labourers — i.e., a population of greater extent than suffices for the
average needs of the self-expansion of capital, and therefore a
surplus population ; " * or, in still other words, that " the
labouring population produces, along with the accumulation of
capital produced by it, the means by which itself is made
relatively superfluous, and does this to an always increasing
extent." f

Unfortunately Marx forgot that such a law, and the
statements which he made in support of it, could only be
established by statistics and an adequate induction of relevant
facts, not by mere general reasoning and assertion. The only
statistical data, however, which he submits to us — those in the
note on p. 544 (Engl. tr.) — are ludicrously irrelevant and
insufficient. Out of the census reports of 1851 and 1861 he
selected fourteen industries which showed either a decrease or
only a slight increase in the number of labourers employed, and
said not a word concerning over 400 other industries. But, of
course, what he required to prove was not that there had been
a diminution of labourers in some departments of industry, but
that there had been a general and growing diminution of
industrial labourers. He was bound to establish the prevalence
of a law ; the operation of an essential and inevitable tendency.
Manifestly his statistics do nothing of the kind.

Nowhere, indeed, throughout his lengthened argumentation
does Marx deal even with the facts which bear most directly on
his hypothesis. From beginning to end his method in the
hundred pages which I have specially in view is one of fallacious
dogmatic ratiocination. It consists in inferring what the facts
must be on the assumption that capitalistic accumulation is the
process of exploitation which it has been described by Marx as
}>emg ; silently taking for granted that the facts are what they
ha\v been inferred to be; and loudly asserting that what was
undertaken to be proved has been proved. But the facts have
never once been looked in the face ; their voices have not been
allowed to be heard for an instant. The facts are indubitably
not what we are asked to believe them to be. They plainly

* P. 643. t P. 645.

200 SOCIALISM

contradict at every point the hypothesis propounded regarding
them.

If, as Marx pretends, the relative magnitude of the constant
part of capital is in direct, but that of the variable or wage-paying
part of capital is in inverse, proportion to the advance of accumu-
lation ; if, as capital increases, instead of one-half of its total value,
only one-third, one-fourth, one-fifth, one-sixth, one-seventh, &c., is
transformed into labour-power, and, on the other hand, two-thirds,
three-fourths, five-sixths, seven-eights, into means of production ;
if the demand for labour progressively falls in this frightful
manner, undoubtedly there must be a correspondingly continuous
and progressive diminution of the increase of labourers. But
why did it not occur to him to confirm his assertion that there
was such a law by showing that there had been such a diminu-
tion? Why, instead of doing so, did he content himself with
giving us merely the note to which I have already referred?
Simply because he could not do any better ; could not deal fairly
with the facts without abandoning his hypothesis.

Within the present century the increase of the population of
Europe has amounted to about 200 millions of men. How has
this happened if the demand for labour has been relatively to the
accumulation of wealth progressively falling in the manner Marx
maintains ? Were the great mass of these millions born either
with silver spoons in their mouths or in the industrial reserve
army? In 1841 there were employed in British industries
3,137,000 workers, and in 1881, 4,535,000, showing an increase
in their number of about 45 per cent., while during the same
period the whole population increased from 26,855,000 to
25,003,000, or only about 30 per cent. A similar progressive
increase of labourers has taken place in all countries under an
energetic capitalist and manufacturing regime. Marx himself
declares the growth of official pauperism to be the indication and
measure of the increase of the industrial reserve army. Pauper-
ism, however, has been for nearly half a century steadily
decreasing in England, both absolutely and relatively. Whereas
in 1855—9 the paupers of England formed 4*7 per cent, of the
population, in 1885-9 they formed only 2*8 per cent, of it. In
like manner there has been no relative increase but a decided
relative decrease of able-bodied adults who have received tern-

SOCIALISM AND CAPITAL 201

porary assistance owing to want of employment. The " growing
mass of consolidated surplus population," of which Marx speaks,
does not exist. His hypothesis of an industrial reserve army
produced by capitalism for its own advantage, and constantly
dragging the labouring class into deeper and more hopeless
misery, is fortunately only a distempered dream.

5. The famous Condorcet, in the most celebrated of his works,
the " Tableau historique des progres de 1'Esprit Humain," pub-
lished in 1795, argued that the course of history under a regime
of liberty would be towards equality of wealth, as well as towards
equality in all other advantages, inasmuch as it would gradually
sweep away all those distinctions between men according to their
wealth which have been originated by the civil laws and per-
petuated by factitious means, and would leave only such as were
rooted in nature. Seventy-four years later we find Marx strenu-
ously contending that when property, trade, and industry were
left unfettered, when labour was unprotected, wealth tended
irresistibly and with ever increasing rapidity to inequality ; the
distance between rich and poor continually and with ever-
growing speed widening, so that only a vast revolution could
prevent capitalist society from being soon divided into two great
classes : one consisting of a few thousands of moneyed magnates
in possession of all the means of production and enjoyment, and
the other of many millions of dependent and pauperised prole-
tarians. Which of these views is to be preferred? Whoever
impartially and comprehensively studies the actual history of the
last hundred years will find no difficulty in answering. He must
acknowledge that it has clearly shown Condorcet to have been
far-seeing and Marx to have been short-sighted. Freedom in
the industrial and commercial sphere has undoubtedly during the
last hundred years proved itself to be, on the whole, a most
democratic thing ; surely and steadily pulling the higher classes
of society down to a lower level ; surely and steadily raising the
lower classes ; destroying all fixed class distinctions, moneyed
inclusive ; and not only greatly increasing the number of inter-
mediate fortunes, but so grading them, and so facilitating their
passage from one person to another, as to manifest that liberty
really has that tendency to equality, even as regards wealth, for
which Condorcet contended.

CHAPTER VI.

NATIONALISATION OF THE LAND.

SOCIALISM proposes to reconstruct and reorganise
society. It has the merit of being not merely criti-
cal, but also, in intention at least, constructive. It
seeks not simply to pull down, but also to build up ;
it would pull down only to build up ; and it even
would, so far as possible, begin to build up before
pulling down, in order that society, in passing from
its old to its new mode of life, may not for a moment
be left houseless.

It has often been said that Socialism has shown
itself much stronger in criticism than in construction.
I cannot altogether assent to the statement. Social-
ism is nowhere weaker, it seems to me, than in its
criticism of the chief doctrines of political economy.
It is weak all over, because it has not had sufficient
critical discernment to apprehend the essential laws
of economic life. The leading representatives of
Socialism, and especially the founders of the princi-
pal early schools of French Socialism, have shown
no lack of constructive ingenuity. Saint-Simon,
Fourier, and Comte were men of quite exceptional
constructive power. They were unsuccessful con-
structors, not owing to any want of constructive
ability, but because they had not a solid foundation

NATIONALISATION OF THE LAND 203

of principles on which to construct, and chose some
very bad materials with which to construct. Fourier,
for example, displayed an extraordinary ingenuity
in planning his phalanges and phalansteres ; but of
course it was wasted, for he was trying to accom-
plish the impossible, believing that he could so alter
the conditions of life as to insure every person
against requiring to do any hard or disagreeable
work, secure to him eight meals a day, and provide
him in abundance with all known pleasures, and
even with many peculiar to the new era of
existence.

If, however, by saying that Socialists have been
more successful in criticism than in construction, is
merely meant, that they have been more successful
in pointing out the evils of our present social condi-
tion than in indicating efficient remedies for them,
the statement is undoubtedly true ; but it is true of
many others beside Socialists, and is no very severe
censure. It is for all of us much easier to trace the
existence and operation of social evils than to find
the remedies for them ; to detect the faults of any
actual system of society than to devise another which
would be free from them, and free at the same time
from other faults as bad or worse. Yet we must not
on that account undervalue the criticism of social
institutions, or the exposure of what is defective and
injurious in them. We shall never cure evils unless
we know thoroughly what are the evils we ought to
cure. In so far as socialistic criticism is true ; in so
far as it fixes our attention upon the poverty, misery,
and wickedness around us — upon what is weak and

204 SOCIALISM

wasteful, unjust and pernicious, in the existent con-
stitution of society — and compels us to look at them
closely, and to take them fully to heart : so far it
does us real service.

But Socialists, as I have said, do not confine them-
selves to criticism. They make positive constructive
proposals. One of these proposals is the subject of
the present chapter.

Nationalise the land. Private property in land is
unjust in itself and injurious in its consequences.
The land is of right the property of the nation, and
in order that the nation may enjoy its right, labour
reach its just reward, and pauperism be abolished,
what is above all needed is the expropriation of
landlords. This is what Henry George, Alfred
R. Wallace, and many others recommend as a cure
for the chief ills under which society is languishing.
In early youth, I myself held the views which they
maintain, having become acquainted to some extent
with a man whose name should not be forgotten
in connection with this doctrine — a man of talent,
almost of genius, an eloquent writer, as eloquent
a talker — Patrick Edward Dove, the author, among
other works, of a " Theory of Human Progression "
and " Elements of Political Science," in which he
advocated the nationalisation of the land ardently
and skilfully. No one, perhaps, has more clearly
and forcibly argued that the rent -value of the soil is
not the creation of the cultivator, nor of the landlord,
but of the whole labour of the country, and, there-
fore, should be allocated to the nation ; that this
would allow of the abolition of all customs and

NATIONALISATION OF THE LAND 205

excise, and the imposition of a single tax of a kind
inexpensive to collect ; that it would unite the agri-
cultural and manufacturing classes into one common
interest, and would secure to every labourer his
share of the previous labour of the community, &c.
I have long ceased, however, to believe in land
nationalisation as a panacea for social misery.*

I deny that individual property in land is unjust,
and, consequently, that justice demands the national-
isation of land. It is necessary, however, to explain
precisely what I understand by this denial.

I do not mean by it, then, that an individual may
justly claim an absolute proprietorship in land, an
unlimited right alike to use or abuse land. Nay,
I wholly disbelieve that any man can possibly
acquire a right to such absolute proprietorship in
anything.

All human rights of proprietorship are limited—
and limited in two directions — limited both by the
law of perfect duty, and the legitimate claims of our
fellow-men ; or, as the Theist and Christian may
prefer to say, by the rights of God, and by the
rights of society. If we have an absolute right to
anything, it would seem that it must be to our own

* Thomas Spence, Fergus O'Connor, Ernest Jones, Bronterre O'Brien,
and others, had preceded Dove in maintaining that land should cease to
be held as private property. The first mentioned advocated, as early as
1775, t\&ptir-j'-hi:iri*infj of all the land of the nation, "so that there shall
be no more nor other landlords in the whole country than the parishes;
and each of them be sovereign landlord of its own territories." See the
" Lecture of Thomas Spence, bookseller, read at the Philosophical Society
in Newcastle on November 8th, 1775, for printing of which the Society did
the author the honour to expel him," reprinted and edited, with notes and
introduction, by H. M, Hyndman, London, 1882,

206 SOCIALISM

lives ; yet we have no absolute right to them. We
are morally bound to sacrifice our lives, whenever
a great cause, whenever God's service, demands the
sacrifice. Thus without an absolute right of pro-
perty even in our own selves, we can still less have
an absolute right of property in anything else. By
no labour or price can we purchase an absolute
right in anything, and so, of course, not in land.
" The earth is the Lord's, and the fulness thereof;
the world, and they that dwell therein." If these
words be true (and Socialists often quote them as
true), most certainly no man can reasonably regard
himself as the absolute proprietor of any portion of the
earth ; but just as certainly can 110 man reasonably
regard himself as the absolute proprietor of any por-
tion of its fulness, or even of his own limbs, faculties,
or life. In the strict or absolute sense there is but
one Proprietor in the universe. No man's proprietor-
ship is more than tenancy and stewardship.^

But our rights of property in land, as in every-
thing else, being thus necessarily subordinate to the
sovereignty and limited by the moral law of God,
cannot possibly be absolute and unlimited as
against society. The individual is a member of
society ; connected with it in many ways, benefited
by it in many ways, indebted to it in many ways,
and bound by the laws of morality to seek to pro-

* Socialists often quote merely the words "the earth is the Lord's,"
and then infer that they condemn private property in land. If they quoted
the whole sentence every person must at once perceive that what it teaches
is that there is an absolute divine proprietorship, not of land only, but of
all that the earth contains, to the law of which all other proprietorship,
whether individual or collective, ought to be subordinated.

NATIONALISATION OF THE LAND 207

mote its good, and, if need be, to sacrifice his
personal interests to the general welfare. He can
have no rights which are in contradiction to his
duties, no rights to do wrong to society, or even to
do nothing for society. On the contrary, the society
of which he is a member, to which he owes so much,
by which his property is protected, and from which
it is even largely derived, has obvious claims on him
and his property ; and may most righteously insist
on their fulfilment. There is no reason why any
exception should be made, or favour shown, in
respect to property in land. Nay, as the welfare of
a people is even more affected by property in land
than by personalty, the State may reasonably be
expected to guard with special care against abuses
of it, and to insist on its being held and ad-
ministered only under such conditions as are con-
sistent with, and conducive to, the general good.

Yet Socialists continually argue against the
private ownership of land on the supposition that
individual proprietors of land must be allowed an
unlimited right of abusing their position. They
think it relevant, for example, to adduce instances
of landlords who have exercised the power which
proprietorship gave them in interfering with the
religious and the political freedom of their tenants.
But manifestly the proper inference to be drawn
from such facts is, not that landlordism is in itself
an evil, but simply that landlords who venture to
act the part of despots in a free country should be
punished, and compelled to pay due respect to the
constitution of the country in which they live. No

208 SOCIALISM

right of property in land would be violated should a
landlord who persisted in interfering with either
the religious or the civil liberties of his fellow-
subjects be expropriated without compensation.

Then, if the right of property in land be only a
relative and conditioned right, what meaning or
force is there in the argument so often and so
confidently employed, that private property in land
must be unjustifiable, because otherwise were a man
rich enough to buy an English county he would be
entitled to make a wilderness of his purchase, and
to sow it with thorns, thistles, or salt ; or even were
he rich enough to buy up the world he would be
entitled to prosecute all its other inhabitants as
trespassers, or to serve them with writs of eviction ?
It would be just as reasonable to argue that a man
rich enough to buy up all the pictures of Raphael,
Titian, and Rembrandt, or all the copies of Homer
and the Bible, Dante and Shakespeare, would be
entitled to burn them all, and that, therefore, there
should be no private property in pictures or books.

Proudhon wrote his celebrated treatise on pro-
perty to prove that property, meaning thereby the
absolute right to use and abuse a thing, is theft ;
and he occupied about a third of it in contending
that property is impossible ; that there neither is,
has been, nor can be such a thing as property :
that property is not itself, but a negation, a lie,
nothing. He has no less than ten elaborate argu-
ments to this effect. His book was extremely
clever, but so admirably adapted to make a fool of
the public that it would have been very appropri-

NATIONALISATION OF THE LAND 209

ately published on a first of April. No elaborate
reasoning is needed to convince reasonable men that
property understood as it was by Proudhon, if it
were possible, would be theft ; or that if society
allow such theft — allow rights of property in land,
or in anything else, which are clearly anti-social,
plainly injurious to the community — it is foolish,
and forgetful of its duty.*

* The argumentation of Mr. Herbert Spencer (see "Social Statics,"
ch. ix.) against the legitimacy of private property proceeds, like that of
Proudhon, very largely on the assumption that a right to do right implies a
right to do wrong ; that a right to use carries with it a right to abuse. Mr.
Spencer may or may not have been conscious of making this assumption.
He has certainly not shown that he was entitled to make it. When, there-
fore, he infers that " a claim to private property in land involves a land-
owning despotism," that if men have a right to make the soil private property
"it would be proper for the sole proprietor of any kingdom — a Jersey or
Guernsey, for example — to impose just what regulations he might choose
on its inhabitants, to tell them that they should not live on his property
unless they professed a certain religion, spoke a particular language, paid
him a specified reverence, adopted an authorised dress, and confirmed to
all other conditions he might see fit to make," and the like, he only
makes manifest the absurdity latent in an assumption of his own.

It is from " the law of equal freedom " that Mr. Spencer deduces " the
injustice of private property." If each man " has freedom to do all that he
wills, provided he infringes not the equal freedom of any other, then each
of them is free to use the earth for the satisfaction of his wants, provided
he allows all others the same liberty. And, conversely, it is manifest that
no one may use the earth in such a way as to prevent the rest from
similarly using it; seeing that to do this is to assume greater freedom
than the rest, and consequently to break the law."

Mr. Spencer has overlooked that "the law of equal freedom" only
confers an equal right to try, but not an equal right to succeed. It entitles
every man to try to become Prime Minister, but it does not forbid only
one man becoming Prime Minister. And as to land, not only is it not
"manifest," but it is manifestly ridiculous "that no one may use the
earth in such a way as to prevent the rest from similarly using it." If
any man uses a field for agricultural purposes or a portion of ground to
build a house on it, he necessarily prevents all other people from similarly
using it.

Mr. Spencer, it is proper to add, has ceased to believe in either the

O

210 SOCIALISM

I do not maintain, then, that the individual
ownership of land is an absolute or unlimited right.
I do not even maintain it to be an essential or
necessary right. It is not the only form of property
in land which may be just. It has been generally,
if not always, preceded by tribal or communal
ownership, and it may be succeeded by collective or
national ownership. It may be limited, conditioned,
modified in various ways according to the changing
requirements of time and circumstance. What I
hold in regard to it is simply this, that in itself, and
apart from abuses, it is not unjust, but, on the
contrary, as just as any other kind of individual
property, or even as any other kind tof property,
individual or collective.

In order to establish the legitimacy of collective
property in land, the illegitimacy of individual
property in land is affirmed. But the connection
between the one contention and the other is far
from obvious. On the contrary, it is difficult to see
how collective property in land can be right if

equity or expediency of land-nationalisation, for reasons which will be
found stated in "Justice," Appendix B. ed. 1891.

Proudhon defines property as "le droit d'user et d'abuser," the right to
use and abuse, and holds that the phrase jus utendi et alutendi in the
definition of property in the "Pandects" maybe so translated (see his
" De la Propriete," ch. ii.). The interpretation is, however, undoubtedly
erroneous. Says M. Ortolan in a well-known work, published long before
Proudhon's, " II faut bien se garder d'attribuer, dans la langue du droit
remain, & ce mot abuti, l'id£e qu'il emporte dans notre langue, c'est-a-dire
d'un usage immodere, dSraisonnable, condamnable. Abuti, par sa decom-
position etymologique elle-me'me (db particule privative, et uti user)'
designe un emploi de la chose qui en fait cesser, qui en detruit, 1'usage.
Tel est 1'effet de Palienation, de la consummation de la chose" ("Tableau-
historique des Instituts," t. i. pp. 253-4).

NATIONALISATION OF THE LAND 211

individual property in land be necessarily wrong.
If a tribe of savages may appropriate a portion of
unowned territory as a hunting-ground, surely an
individual man may with as much justice appropriate
a portion of unowned land through occupying and
cultivating it — or rather with more, as he has done
more to the land. The title of savages to the land
over which they roam is often a weak and question-
able one, just because they have never really appro-
priated, cultivated, used it. The aborigines of
Australia were hardly more entitled to be called the
proprietors of Australia than were the kangaroos of
Australia, for they had only, like the kangaroos,
wandered up and down in it. If any individual
among them had made something like a garden of
any portion of Australian soil his title to that piece
of ground would have been much superior to that of
his tribe to the hundreds of miles over which its
members sought for their food.

It has never been shown that national property
in land has any better foundation than individual
property in land. A nation generally gets its land
by occupation and conquest, and if these are good
titles for it they are good titles for individuals.
Purchase and cultivation as modes of appropriation
are better than these, and individual property
is more frequently acquired than national property
by them. The titles of the Norman followers of
William the Conqueror to the lordship of English
lands may have been morally far from good, but
they were as good as William's own to the lordship
of England ; the right of the Norman individual

212 SOCIALISM

was as good as that of the Norman State. If individual
property in land then be unjust, we shall not escape
from injustice by taking refuge in national property
in land ; for it must be equally or more unjust, seeing
that it rests on the same or weaker grounds, and
has been effectuated in the same or worse ways.
The only mode of escape from the alleged injustice
must be to allow of no property in land ; to have all
land unappropriated, free and open to all. But this
would render land useless, or nearly so. If every-
body is to have the same right to it nobody will get
any good of it. The earth, however, can hardly
have been designed to be useless. If, as Socialists
frequently remind us, God has made it for the good
of all, He cannot have so given it to all that it could
benefit none. And certainly it is only through land
becoming the property of some that it can become
profitable to all, or indeed of almost any use to any.

It cannot reasonably be doubted that individual
property in land was a decided advance and im-
provement on any of the forms of collective property
in land which preceded it. It would not otherwise
have everywhere displaced them in progressive
.societies ; it would not otherwise have uniformly
accompanied the growth of civilisation. The collec-
tive tenure of land was once the general rule ; now
it is the rare exception. Why ? Because it was an
economically feeble and defective system ; because
it cramped freedom, depressed energy, limited produc-
tion, could not supply the wants of a large popula-
tion, and hindered the accumulation of capital.

None of the objections against private property

NATIONALISATION OF THE LAND 213

in land appear to me to be of any real force. Some
argue thus : No man has made the earth or given
to it its natural powers, and therefore no man is
entitled to appropriate it and its powers to his own
exclusive use, or to exact from another compensa-
tion for their use. Were this argument good no
natural agent whatever could be justly appropriated,
and all industry would be wrong, all production of
wealth sinful. One man takes a piece of wood and
makes it into a bow and arrows, to kill the
creatures which are to serve him as sustenance ;
another takes a piece of ground, clears it, cleans it,
digs it, plants in it the seeds of trees and herbs
which will yield him food. In what respect is the
latter less entitled to be left in undisturbed posses-
sion of the piece of land which he has made useful
than the former of the piece of wood which he has
made useful ? In none. The natural qualities of
the wood were as much the creation of God and
His free gift to man as the natural powers of the
soil ; the soil not less than the wood has in the
process of appropriation been converted from a
natural and useless into an artificial and useful
thing ; and the men who have respectively so
changed the wood and the soil have both justly
become the owners of them, and are entitled either
to keep them for their own use or to lend the use of
them to others for a compensation. Agricultural
land is very rarely the pure gift of nature ; it is
almost always an artificial and manufactured
article. It is often an instrument of production
most expensive to make, and generally also one

2i4 SOCIALISM

most expensive to maintain in efficiency. Hence
in any advanced stage of civilisation none except
capitalists can be the proprietors of it without
injury and injustice to the community.

Land, it is likewise often argued, so differs from
other things that it ought not to be made property
of like other things. As it is limited in amount,
and the quantity of it cannot be increased, the
ownership of it, we are told, is a monopoly to which
no individual can be entitled. This is a very
common yet a very weak argument. Only things
which are limited are made property of; what is
unlimited, or practically so, is not worth appropriat-
ing. Political economy does not concern itself
about things the supply of which is unlimited.
There is no social question as to the use of such
things. But what articles of value are unlimited ?
What natural agents needing to be taken into
account in the production of wealth are unlimited ?
None. Stone, coal, iron, wood, &c., are all as
limited as the surface of the ground. Limitation is
a condition of all wealth, not a distinctive pecu-
liarity of wealth in the form of land. That land is
limited is the very reason why there is property in
land. It is no reason for concluding that property
in land must be an unjust monopoly, or a monopoly
at all. Those who affirm that it is, merely show
that they do not know what a monopoly is. If
every man be free to go into the sugar trade, selling
sugar is not a monopoly, although the quantity of
sugar in the world is not unlimited. In like
manner, the limited amount of land cannot make

NATIONALISATION OF THE LAND 215

property in land a monopoly, provided there be, as
there ought to be, free trade in land.

Another argument against private property in
land, and one which is much relied on by most
advocates of land nationalisation, is based on the
fact that the value of land is largely due to the
general labour and growth of wealth of the com-
munity. It is not only what the landlord does to
his land which gives it the value represented by its
rent. A piece of ground in the centre of London is
of enormous value, not because of anything which
its owner has done to it, but because of the industry
and wealth of London. The socialistic inference is
that a proprietor cannot justly profit by what thus
owes its existence to the community ; that the
" unearned increment " derived from social labour,
or general social causes and " conjunctures," should
of right return to society. But here, again, it is
overlooked that what is alleged is not more true of
land than of other things ; that all prices are as
dependent as rents of land on the general labour
and prosperity of the community : that if land in the
centre of London rents high, it is because houses
there rent high ; and that if houses there rent high,
it is because a vast amount of business is done in
them.

It is not only the owners of land in London
who profit by the industry and prosperity of
London, but also its professional men, merchants,
tradesmen, and labourers. All of them, when
times are good, when "conjunctures" are favour-
able, receive " unearned increments," as well as the

2i6 SOCIALISM

landowners ; all of them are in the same way
indebted to the community. The large incomes of
London physicians and London merchants, com-
pared with those of physicians and merchants of
equal ability in provincial towns, are as much due
to an unearned increment as the high rents of the
owners of the ground on which London is built. If
the people of London are rightfully entitled to the
unearned increment in the rents of its ground-
proprietors, they are entitled also to the unearned
increment in the fees, salaries, and profits of all
classes of its citizens.

That they are entitled to it in any case has yet
to be proved. That there is any way of exactly
separating unearned from earned increment, and
justly apportioning it among those who have con-
tributed to produce it, has yet to be shown. That
a city or nation can have any better claim to it
than an individual has never been made out, and is
even clearly incapable of being made out. For the
value of land in London, for example, depends not
only on the wealth of London, but on the wealth of
England, and the wealth of England depends on the
wealth of the world, on the labour, production, and
abstinence of the world. If, therefore, the argu-
ment under consideration were valid, the British
nation ought in justice to hand over to other
nations no inconsiderable portion of the unearned
increment included in the wealth of its members.

The rise and fall of the rents of land, then,
depend on the labour and good or bad fortune of
society, no otherwise than the rise and fall of all

NATIONALISATION OF THE LAND 217

other rents, of all prices, and of all values. There
is nothing special or peculiar in the mode of their
increase or the course of their movement which can
warrant society to treat them in an exceptional way,
and to deal with property in land differently from
all other property.

Easily proved as this truth is, and amply proved
although it has often been, enthusiastic advocates of
land-nationalisation, like Henry George and Alfred
R. Wallace, cannot afford to acknowledge it. They
have founded their whole system on the assumption
that land alone, or almost alone, increases in value
with the increase of population and wealth, and
that in virtue of this law the landowners of a
country by simply raising rents can and do appro-
priate all that labour and capital contribute to the
production of national wealth.

The assumption is altogether arbitrary, and un-
doubtedly contrary to fact. The man who can
believe that land is in this country the exclusively,
or even a specially, remunerative kind of property ;
that the want of it is a necessary and chief cause
of poverty, and the possession of it the infal-
lible and abundant source of wealth, displays a
remarkable power of adhering to a prepossession in
defiance of its contradiction by experience. Is there
any kind of property which increases less in value in
Britain than land ? It is known not to have doubled
in value during the last seventy years. It has cer-
tainly diminished in value during the last twenty
years. There is no apparent probability of any rela-
tively great or rapid rise in its value in the future.

2i8 SOCIALISM

The vast increase of the national income, since, say,
1820, has been almost wholly derived from other
property than land. It is not the rule but the ex-
ception to make large fortunes, either by speculating
in land, or cultivating land. The notion that the
landowners are appropriating all the wealth of the
nation, and keeping the other classes of society in
poverty, can be entertained by no man of unpreju-
diced mind who is acquainted with the mass of
evidence to the contrary accumulated by the recent
researches of scientific economists and statisticians.

It has to be added that the connection of the in-
dividual with society is for the owners of land, as
for other persons, the source of undeserved decre-
ments as well as of unearned increments. This fact
the advocates of land-nationalisation strangely over-
look, or unjustly ignore. They seem to think the
conjuncture of social circumstances, the incalculable
operation of social causes, only brought gain and
wealth to the possessors of land ; whereas, in reality,
it as often brings to them loss and poverty. Riches
sometimes flow in upon them, as upon other men,
owing to the condition and fortune of the community ;
but from the same cause their riches as frequently
" take to themselves wings and flee away." If,
therefore, the State is, on the plea of justice, to
appropriate landowners' increments so far as not
individually earned, it must also become responsible
for their decrements so far as socially produced.
For society to seize on the socially caused increment,
yet not to restore the socially caused decrement, in
individual incomes, would be a manifestly unjust

NATIONALISATION OF THE LAND 219

and unfair procedure. Those who have recommended
it in regard to the rents of land have been in-
fluenced by a false theory, and have neither looked
calmly nor comprehensively at the subject. They
have seen only one side of the shield. They have
gazed so eagerly at the coveted increments as
wholly to overlook the decrements, though equally
real. Now, suppose that the British Government,
about the year 1870, in the belief that landowners
only benefit by their connection with society, had
agreed to appropriate their unearned increments,
but on condition of making up for their decrements
not due to their own mismanagement, should there
be any : would not the bargain have been a
wretched one for the British people during the
fifteen years which followed ? Why, they would
have had decrements everywhere, year after year,
and increments nowhere. In some of these years,
instead of being entitled to get anything from great
landowners, like, for instance, the late Duke of
Bedford, they would have had to give them fifty per
cent.

Instead of being either foolish or unjust, it is
really both the wisest and the justest policy which
the State can pursue, not to attempt the impossible
task of separating the social or unearned from the
individual or earned portions in the incomes of any
class of its citizens, but to leave them both to enjoy
the gains and bear the losses which their connection
with the nation involves.*

* Mr. Robert Giffen, in his " Growth of Capital," 1890, has con-
vincingly shown that in Britain property in land has been steadily losing

220 SOCIALISM

For having thus argued at such length that jus-
tice does not demand the nationalisation of the land
of the country, my excuse must be that so many
persons are at present loudly asserting the contrary,
and endeavouring to make it appear that private
property in land is morally wrong, and that to ex-
propriate landowners without compensation would
be an innocent or a virtuous act.

I do not maintain that to nationalise the land
would be in itself unjust. If private property in
land may be just, so may national or collective pro-
perty be. What I fail to see is, how national or
collective property in land can be just, if private
or individual property therein must necessarily be
unjust. Nationalisation of the land would be quite
just if the present proprietors were bought out, and
if men were left not less free than they are at
present to purchase the use of the land in fair com-
petition. It is quite possible to conceive of a kind
of nationalisation of the land which would not inter-
fere with the liberty of individuals in regard to the
possession or tenure of land, and which would con-
sequently not be Socialism at all in the sense in
which I employ the term. Could it be shown that
to nationalise the land by the national purchase and
administration of it would be clearly for the good of
the nation, I should have no hesitation in advocat-
ing its nationalisation.

its relative importance among the items of the national wealth. It con-
stituted, according to his estimate, in 1690, 60 per cent, of the total
property of Britain ; in 1800, 40 per cent.; in 1865, 30 per cent.; in 1875,
24 per cent.; and in 1885, only 17 per cent.

NATIONALISATION OF THE LAND 221

The present proprietors could in justice only
demand for their land its fair market value. They
may have in theory a right to the possession of it
for all eternity ; but this is not a right which will
entitle or enable them to get more for it in fact
than a sum equal to between twenty and thirty
annual rents. They could reasonably claim from
the State, supposing the nationalisation of the land
were resolved on, only its ordinary selling price.
But this they could with perfect justice claim ; this
could not honestly be refused to them. To maintain
the contrary is to advocate theft. The proposal of
Mr. George and his followers to appropriate the rent
of land by throwing on it all public burdens is a
suggestion to theft of the meanest kind ; to theft
which knows and is ashamed of itself, and tries to
disguise itself under the name and in the form of
taxation. The State which adopts it will only add
hypocrisy to theft.

The proposal, also often put forward of late, that,
on due intimation, property in land should be
appropriated by the State without compensation,
when present owners die, or after the lapse of
twenty or thirty years* possession, is likewise one
of flagrant dishonesty. Imagine three men : one
invests his money in land, the second buys house-
property, the third acquires bank-shares. Can any
good reason be given why the capital of the first
alone is, either at his death or after thirty years, to
go to the nation, while that of the other two is to
remain their own however long they may live and at
their death to go to their heirs ? Or is it in the

222 SOCIALISM

least probable that a State unprincipled enough thus
to appropriate the capital invested in land would
long scruple to appropriate any kind of investments ?
There must be a radical change in the primary moral
apprehensions and judgments of men before proposals
such as these can be generally regarded as other
than immoral.

If the nation, then, would become the sole pro-
prietor of the land of the country, it must first buy
out the present landowners. Any other course
would be unjust. No other course is possible except
through violence, revolution, civil war. But buying
out the landowners would be a very foolish and un-
profitable financial transaction for the nation. It
could only be effected at a cost of about two thou-
sand millions ; the interest on which would amount
to more than the net return of the land, which is in
this country not above 2j per cent. It would not
be, perhaps, an impossible financial operation, but it
would certainly be a very difficult one ; and it would
divert an enormous capital from profitable spheres
of employment, necessarily increase taxation, and
tend not to any improvement in the condition of
farmers, but to rack-renting. I shall not, however,
occupy the space still at my disposal in showing that
land-nationalisation accomplished by purchase would
be a very disadvantageous investment of national
capital, because this has been often unanswerably
shown, and can hardly be said to have been ever
seriously contested. Socialists themselves — all of
them, at least, except credulous believers in the
power of the State to work industrial and econo-

NATIONALISATION OF THE LAND 223

mical miracles — do not deny it. On the contrary,
it is just because they cannot help admitting it,
cannot fail to see that land-nationalisation by pur-
chase would be a case where honesty would not
pay, that they are forced to advocate schemes of
land-nationalisation by open or disguised confisca-
tion that are distinctly dishonest.

The nationalisation of the land has been advocated
as a solution of the social question. By the solution
of a question is meant an answer to it, a settlement
of it. But the nationalisation of the land would
answer no social question, would settle none. It
would only raise in a practical form the question,
What is the nation to do with the land ? Only
when this question is settled, or practically answered
in a satisfactory manner, will ever the land question
be solved. But the slightest reflection will show
that the question which would arise as to how the
land when nationalised ought to be made use of,
must prove an extremely difficult one to answer
aright. Those who, like the great majority of the
advocates of land-nationalisation, merely expatiate
in a general way on the advantages which they
conceive would flow from the measure, avoiding to
state and explain what system of land administra-
tion they would substitute for that which at present
prevails, must be regarded as vague thinkers and
empty talkers, yet none the less likely on that
account to influence dangerously the ignorant and
inconsiderate.

The nation might deal in various ways with
the land which it nationalised. It might, for

224 SOCIALISM

example, proceed forthwith to denationalise it by
creating a new class of proprietors, say, peasant
proprietors. But one can hardly suppose that it
would be so inconsistent as thus to stultify itself.
The socialistic arguments against property should
be as applicable to private property on a small as on
a large scale. Buying out one class of proprietors
in order to put in another class would be an ob-
viously absurd procedure. The new proprietors
could hardly expect other classes of the nation to
pay, merely for their benefit, the interest of the
enormous debt incurred in buying out the old pro-
prietors. These classes might justly, and no doubt
would, look to them to pay it. Bat peasant pro-
prietors, and, indeed, any class of proprietors so
burdened, could never maintain themselves and
prosper. Still less could they pay a land-tax
additional to that required to yield a sum equiva-
lent to the interest of the debt incurred by the
State in the purchase of the land. Yet what
Socialists aim at is to impose such a tax on land as
will render every other species of taxation unneces-
sary. This method, then, would neither satisfy any
principle of those who contend for land-nationalisa-
tion, nor serve any desirable end. The proprietors
of the new system would be in a far worse position
than the farmers of the old ; the use of the land
would be restricted to a class as exclusively as
before ; and the only change in the relation of the
State or nation to the land would be its liability for
the enormous debt incurred by its purchase.

The State might also let the land when national-

NATIONALISATION OF THE LAND 225

ised to tenant-farmers. This is the plan which,
were all private ownership of land abolished, would
produce least change in the agricultural economy of
the country, and which Government could follow
with least trouble and most sense of security.
Hence it is the plan which has found most favour
with those who advocate land-nationalisation.

But how, then, would the rents be determined?
If by competition, Socialism, which professes to set
aside competition, would be untrue to itself in
conforming to it. While rents would not be
lowered, the general community would be as much
shut out from enjoyment of the land as it now is,
and the expenses of the Government so increased
by the management of it as largely to deduct from
the rent. If, on the other hand, the rents should
be fixed otherwise than by competition, and in
accordance with some truly socialistic principle, a
just and equitable principle of the kind has yet to
l>e discovered. It is as ' impossible, apart from
competition, to determine what are fair rents as
what are fair wages.

If fixed otherwise they would have to be fixed lower
than competition would determine, in order that the
farmers might not be aggrieved and driven to resist-
ance. But the more they were thus lowered the
greater would be the wrong done to the rest of the
community, which instead of being benefited by the
return from the land would be burdened with an
increased measure of the debt on the land. If, then,
the changes required by this plan be comparatively
slight, the advantages which could reasonably be

226 SOCIALISM

expected from it are equally slight. The condition
of farmers would not be improved ; the condition of
agricultural labourers would not be improved ; the
condition of the general community would be
rendered much worse, as it would be placed in the
position of a landlord, the rental of whose land fell
far short of the interest of the debt on it.

Private landowners, indeed, would be got rid of ;
and the members and agents of the Government
would take their place. But would this be of real
advantage? In all probability it would be the
reverse. A democratic Government represents only
that political party in a country which happens for
the time to command the largest number of votes.
As it will not be long in power unless its budgets
are of a popular and cheerful kind, it would be very
impolitic to spend, as great private landowners have
done, vast sums in agricultural experiments which
might not prove financially successful, or in improve-
ments which could bear fruit only in a somewhat
distant future. Yet unless this were done the land
and agriculture of a nation would not prosper but
would rapidly deteriorate. Thus the agents of a
modern democratic Government, or, in other words, of
a party Government which represents merely an un-
stable political majority, cannot but have far too
much interest in immediate returns and far too
little in the permanent amelioration of the soil, to
make good land- administrators.

It is generally recognised by those who have
studied the subject, that were the soil of a country
left entirely to the management of any class of

NATIONALISATION OF THE LAND 227

mere farmers it would soon be, if not ruined,
seriously deteriorated. Hence probably, in the case
of the land being nationalised, it would be found
expedient to allow the occupiers of land under the
State fixity of tenure and judicial rents, or, in other
words, a virtual proprietary right and a monopolistic
privilege. But this state of things would certainly
be neither more just nor more profitable to the general
community, and especially to the labouring classes,
than the system which at present prevails.

It is unnecessary to discuss either the proposal
that the State should restore agricultural village
communities or that it should create agricultural
co-operative associations. In exceptional circum-
stances both the agricultural village community and
the agricultural co-operative society might, perhaps,
be established with good results under the fostering
care and guidance of a sagacious, generous, and
wealthy individual ; but the former has so many
economic defects, and the success of the latter
implies so many favourable contingencies not likely
to be found in conjunction, that no prudent Govern-
ment will feel itself warranted to spend any con-
siderable sum of public money in calling them into
existence. No person in this country, so far as I
am aware, has been so unwise as to contend that the
land should be nationalised with a view to a general
adoption of either of these forms of rural economy.*

* I fear that in this paragraph I have under-estimated the unwisdom
of the English Land flest&ration League. At least, one of its "Tracts,"
written by a well-known literary exponent of Socialism, J. Morrison
Davidson, concludes as follows :— " Let us pass at once from, feudalism
to municipalisation ; vest the site of every town in its Town Council,

228 SOCIALISM

Still another method, however, might be adopted,
and it is the one which would unquestionably be
most consistent with the principles of Socialism.
The State might take into its own hands the whole
management of the whole land of the country. It
might organise agriculture, as it does the art of war,
by the formation of armies of industry, superintended
and guided by competent officers of labour. Thomas
Carlyle, it will be remembered, recommended that
" the vagrant chaotic Irish " should be provided
with plenty of spade work, formed into regiments

and of every landward parish in its Parish Council. The land is the
birthright of the people. The Free Land Leaguers are trying to hand
it over to the capitalists. If they succeed in gulling the electors, the
little finger of every new landlord will be thicker than his predecessor's
loins, and a long era of suffering — the capitalist era — as fatal as that
inaugurated by the Norman Conquest, will be the result.

" Nota Bene. — The first man who, having enclosed a plot of ground,
took upon himself to say ' This is mine ! ' and found people silly enough
to believe him, was the real founder of civil society. How many crimes,
how many wars, how many murders, how much misery would have been
spared the human race, if some one, tearing up the fence and filling in
the ditch, had cried out to his fellows, ' Give no heed to this impostor ;
you are lost if you forget that the produce belongs to all, the land to
none.' "

Mr. Davidson here 'simply resuscitates the scheme of Spence — one
which, had it been acted upon before the Napoleonic wars, would in-
evitably have issued in Britain becoming a French island. He overlooks
that it is not in any proper sense a scheme for nationalising land, but for
denationalising a country, dismembering a nation; and also that land, in
so far as municipalised or parochialised, must also necessarily be, in so
far, " enclosed." He has not deemed it necessary to ask himself whether
the land even of a parish, if without fence or ditch, and the property of
nobody, would produce much for anybody, or anything for all. Very
possibly, however, he is right in thinking that "enclosing a plot of
ground" had a good deal to do with founding civil society; and, unques-
tionably, "tearing up all fences and filling in all ditches" would be a
very effective means of bringing it down. His Nota Bene shows that he
has been unguardedly drinking the wine of Rousseau, which is of a very
intoxicating character.

NATIONALISATION OF THE LAND 229

under " sternly benignant drill-sergeants," and given
suitable pay and rations for their labour. There
are Socialists who generalise the suggestion, and

o oo

talk enthusiastically of organising agriculture and
creating armies of agricultural industry after the
model of our modern military system.

But, however attractively this scheme may be
presented, it is, in reality, one for the introduction
of slavery. The desire for freedom must be extin-
guished before it can be realised. It would degrade
the agricultural labourer from the status of a moral
being. It would impose a tremendous task and
confer a terrible power on the State. It would
enormously increase the temptations to corruption
both of rulers and of ruled in connection with the
appointment of officers of labour. Politically, there-
fore, it would be a retrograde and pernicious
system. And economically, also, it would be faulty
in the extreme. In order to be efficient it would
require to be most expensive, and would conse-
quently involve a constant drain of capital from
manufactures and commerce to agriculture. The
expense of adequately officering an army of agricul-
tural labourers would necessarily far exceed the
expense of officering an army of soldiers, as the
difficulty of effective supervision is vastly greater ;
yet even in the case of the latter the cost of
officering is, I understand, not less than half the
entire cost.

The nationalisation of the land, I may add, would
not answer, but only raise, the question, How is the
nation, as sole proprietor of the land and its produce,

230 SOCIALISM

to act in relation to foreign trade ? It is a difficult
question for the Socialist. If the State engage in
and encourage foreign trade it will fail to get free
of the competition which Socialists denounce, and
must conform its agricultural policy to that of its
competitors. If it set itself against it, it will be
unable to feed a large population, and must be
content to rule a poor and feeble nation. The land
of Great Britain cannot yield food to half the people
of Great Britain. In order that Britain may retain
her place among the nations, it is absolutely neces-
sary that her vast urban and manufacturing popula-
tion should have cheap food, and therefore that the
cultivators of the land should not receive high prices
for its produce.

The nationalisation of the land, then, is not de-
manded by justice, and would not be a solution of
the social problem. Its nationalisation on socialistic
principles would be contrary to justice, and incom-
patible with social prosperity.

CHAPTER VII.

THE COLLECTIVISATION OF CAPITAL.

THE proposal to nationalise the land may seem
sufficiently bold, and it is certainly one which it
would be difficult to carry into practice. Yet it
obviously does not go nearly far enough to satisfy
socialistic demands and expectations. The collec-
tivisation of capital is, from the socialistic point of
view, a far more thorough and consistent scheme.
Those who advocate it propose to do away with all
private property in the means of production. They
would have the State to expropriate the owners not
only of land but of all machines, tools, raw materials,
ships, railways, buildings, stocks, &c. ; and to appro-
priate the whole mass of these things for the common
good. They aim at setting aside capitalistic compe-
tition in every sphere, substituting for it corporate
organisation, and dividing the collective products of
all kinds of labour among the workmen according to
the quantity and worth of their work. They do
not seek, indeed, to destroy or dispense with capital ;
but they contend for the abolition of all private
capital, for the transference of all capital from indi-
viduals to the State, which would thus become the
sole capitalist.

This, it will be perceived, is a truly gigantic

SOCIALISM

scheme. What it contemplates is a tremendous
revolution. It is difficult, indeed, even to imagine
the amount of change in the constitution and
arrangements of society which must follow from
making the State not only the sole landlord, but
also the sole employer of labour, the sole producer
and distributer of commodities, the sole director of
the wills and supplier of the wants of its members.

But must not those who advocate such a scheme
be lacking in ability to distinguish between the
possible and the impossible ? Is the preliminary
objection to it of impracticability not insuperable ?
One can conceive the wealthier classes of the nation,
on pressure of a great necessity, buying out the
landowners and nationalising the land. But to
suppose that the poorer classes may buy up all the
property employed as capital in production, and so
create the Collectivist State, is inherently absurd.
Those who are without capital cannot acquire by
purchase all the capital of those who possess it, so
as to transfer it from individuals to the community,
unless they are endowed for the occasion with a
power of creation ex niliilo which has hitherto been
denied to human beings. Collectivism, if it is to
start with purchase, or, in other words, with the
honest acquisition of the capital of individuals,
presupposes that a stupendous miracle will be
wrought to bring it into existence.

Some Collectivists fancy that they can parry this
objection by vague discourse to the effect that
society is passing into the Collectivist stage by a
natural or necessary process of evolution. They

THE COLLECTIVISATION OF CAPITAL 233

dwell on such facts as the growth of governmental
intervention, the extension of the public service and
public departments, the absorption of small by large
industries, the increase of co-operative enterprise,
and the multiplication of limited liability companies,
as evidences and phases of a development of indivi-
dual capitals into collective capital. These facts are
plainly, however, nothing of the kind. The associa-
tion of capitals in large industries, in co-operative
societies, in joint-stock companies, is in no case the
slightest step towards rendering them riot private
but public, not individual but common. Associated
capitals are not more easily bought up than separate
capitals. While, therefore, history does undoubtedly
show a process of social evolution which obviously
tends to the enlargement of industrial and commercial
enterprise through extension of the association of
resources and energies, such evolution is essentially
different from an evolution towards the realisation
of Collectivism. Of the latter kind of evolution
there are happily no traces yet visible ; nor is there
the least probability that capitalists will ever be so
foolish as to cast themselves into any stream of
evolution which will transfer their property to the
community without compensation.*

* In some respects the proposals of Collectivism are obviously at
variance with the course of historical development. Says Professor J.
S. Nicholson, " Let any one try to imagine how the business of a great
country is to be carried on without money and prices, how the value to
the society of various species of labour is to be estimated, and how the
relative utilities of consumable commodities and transient services are to
be calculated, and he will soon discover that the abolition of money would
logically end in the abolition of division of labour. This prospect throws
a strong light on the claims of tte Socialists to base their doctrines on

234 SOCIALISM

The majority of Collect ivists, however, do not
imagine that the State will or can purchase the
property which they desire to see transferred from
individuals to the community. They look to its
being taken without payment. The real leaders of
Collectivism in England — the chiefs of the Social
Democratic Federation — do not attempt to conceal
that this is what is aimed at. They tell us quite
plainly that they are aware that it is most improb-
able that Collectivism will be established otherwise
than by revolution and force ; and at the same time
that they are determined to work for its establish-
ment.

I shall say nothing as to the morality of this
resolution. And it is unnecessary to do more than
merely call attention to the short-sightedness and
folly of it. What chance could there be of benefit
resulting from it ? Attempts to realise Collectivism
by force are only likely to lead some unhappy and
misguided men to outbursts of riot as contemptible
as deplorable, and from which they must be them-
selves the chief sufferers. Were such attempts to
become gravely dangerous they would discredit
democracy in the eyes of the majority of the com-
munity and cause them to throw themselves for pro-
tection into the arms of despotism. It would thus

the tendencies of history and the actual processes of evolution, for, as
already shown in detail, the principal characteristic of industrial progress
has been the continuous extension of the use of money. In reality, how-
ever, Socialism is still more vitally opposed to historical development,
since it aims at reversing the broadest principle of progress, the con-
tinuous substitution, namely, of contract for status." (" Principles of
Political Economy," 1893, vol. i.p. 433.)

THE COLLECTIVISATION OF CAPITAL 235

destroy democracy without establishing Socialism.
To those who would attempt to reach Collect-
ivism through revolution these words of J. S. Mills
are exactly applicable : "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 Saint- Just, hitherto the typical instances of these
united attributes, scarcely came up to."

Suppose, however, Collectivism to be established.
Is it probable that it could be maintained ? Is it a
kind of system which would be likely to endure ?
No. Its entire character precludes our reasonably
entertaining the hope. Collectivists have as false a
notion of what social organisation is, or ought to be,
as had their socialist predecessors, Saint-Simon,
Fourier. Owen, and so many others. They conceive
of it not as natural, organic, and free, but as arti-
ficial, mechanical, and compulsory. They would
manipulate and mould society from without into
conformity with an ideal of their own imaginations,
but to the disregard of its inherent forces and laws,
the constitutional tendencies and properties of
human nature.

All notions of this kind are foolish ; all efforts

236 SOCIALISM

in this direction can only lead to mischief. Were a
man to take it into his head that his body was
insufficiently organised, that his stomach decided
too much for itself, that his heart took its own way
more than it was entitled to, and that various other
parts of him were irregular and erratic in their
action ; and were he to resolve to put an end to
this state of anarchy and to let none of his organs
act by and for themselves, but to rule them all by
his reason alone, the result would be sure speedily
to prove a disastrous failure. If the would-be
reorganiser of himself survived the experiment,
he would be forced to recognise that a larger
wisdom than his own ruled even his own body,
and that to attempt to substitute his own wisdom
for it was folly. But it is precisely this kind of
error which Collectivists make ; and even a far greater
error, inasmuch as a nation is a far more com-
plex and important organism than a single human
body.

Were collectivist organisation tried even for a
week the suffering which would ensue would pain-
fully teach us that self-love has not been so deeply
planted in human nature in vain ; that its benefits
far outnumber and outweigh the evils of selfishness,
its excess and abuse, although these be neither few
nor small ; and that if human reason would do any-
thing in the way of organising society aright it must
be not by disregarding and contravening, but by
studying and conforming itself to the Universal
Reason which accomplishes its great general pur-
poses through the free intelligences, the private

THE COLLECTIVISATION OF CAPITAL 237

affections, the particular interests, and the personal
motives of individuals.

As has been often indicated, no council of the
wisest men in London, although invested with abso-
lute powers, could feed, clothe, lodge, and employ
the population of that city, were no man allowed to
act without having their authority ; were no com-
petition permitted in buying and selling ; and were
wages and prices prohibited, and some supposed
strictly rational determination of what labour was to
receive and what commodities were to be exchanged
for, adopted instead. The problem involved is of a
kind which cannot be solved by the reasoning and
calculation, the legislation and administration, even
of the wisest and most uncontrolled rulers : it can
only be solved, as it actually is solved, by leaving men
free, each to seek his own interest and to attend to
his own business ; to carry his services or his goods
where the rise of wages or of prices shows that they
are most wanted ; and to withhold them where the
fall of wages or of prices warns him that the market
is overstocked. Even when this method of freedom
and of nature is followed numerous mistakes will
occur, but they will be comparatively slight, and
those of one man will counteract those of another,
while every man's intelligence and energies will be
so stimulated by his interest that the general end
to be attained, gigantic as it is, will be reached,
although few, if any, directly and exclusively strive
for it, and many seek merely their own private
benefit. But let the collectivist method be tried,
and the risk of mistakes will be immensely increased ;

238 SOCIALISM

the provisions which nature has made for their cor-
rection will be prevented from operating ; the
amount of mischief produced by each error will be
vastly multiplied ; and the faculties and activities of
the individuals composing society will be but feebly
brought into exercise.^

It is not only a single city, however, but entire
nations, like Great Britain, which Collectivists
propose to organise on this plan. May we not
safely conclude that what they dream of as organ-
isation would be ruinous disorganisation? Those
who rule nations when the laws of human nature
are suppressed and set aside, as Collectivism re-
quires, ought to be not mortal men but immortal
gods, or at least beings endowed with altogether
superhuman attributes.

Let us now look at Collectivism in itself. It pre-
sents itself as the remedy for a grievous evil. The
evil is that at present very many workmen are
merely workmen, and consequently work under
great disadvantages. The materials on which they
work, the instruments with which they work, and
all the wealth employed as capital in connection
with their work, belong to others. Hence they are
in a dependent and insecure position, have no voice
in the direction of their work, obtain a comparatively
small portion of its products, and are liable to be

* The illustration given above has been often used during the last three
hundred years. No one, however, so far as I know, has presented it so
clearly and fully, or shown in so interesting a way what it implies, as
Archbishop Whately in his " Introductory Lectures on Political Economy,"
Lecture IV.

THE COLLECTIVISATION OF CAPITAL 239

thrown out of employment and reduced to pauperism
and misery.

But if such be the evil, surely those who would
cure it should make use of measures to lessen
it, and so strive towards ultimately abolishing
it ; in other words, one would expect them to
originate, encourage, and aid all schemes and efforts
which tend to make the labourers capitalists as well
as workmen. Is this what Collectivists do ? Not in
the least ; the very opposite. They propose to cure
the evil by universalising it ; by depriving every
workman of his tools, by leaving him not a bit of
private property or a shilling of capital to be employed
in production, and by giving him, so far as I can per-
ceive, no voice in the direction of his labour except a
vote in the choice of his taskmasters.

In a word, this so-called solution of the social
problem is national slavery. The State becomes sole
proprietor, its officials omnipotent, all others abso-
lutely dependent on them, dependent for the very
means of existence, without any powers of re-
sistance to tyranny, without any individual re-
sources, with no right to choose their work or
to choose how to do it, but commanded and ruled
in a wholly military manner. Were the end aimed
at the putting of an effective stop to the singing
of " Britons never shall be slaves," Collectivism
would have to be admitted to be admirably con-
trived ; but as a scheme for removing the evils of
which Collectivists justly enough complain it is
singularly absurd. Its whole tendency is to multiply
and intensify these evils.

24o SOCIALISM

Of course, Collect ivists protest against the impu-
tation of wishing to introduce slavery. And I do
not impute to them the wish. People often do the
opposite of what they wish. My charge is that if
they establish Collectivism they will introduce
slavery, whether they wish to do it or not. How,
then, do they repel this charge that Collectivism is
slavery, or necessarily implies it ? It is by declar-
ing that they desire only to appropriate the means
and regulate the operations of production, but that
they will leave every one free as regards consump-
tion. Labour and capital must be collective ; but
each individual may spend as he pleases what he
receives as his share of the collective product, pro-
vided always that he does not employ it produc-
tively.

And this is supposed to be an answer, and one so
satisfactory that no other need be given. If so,
however, there never has been such a being as a
slave in the world. Slavery is not forced enjoyment
or consumption, but forced labour and production.
Collectivism, therefore, only offers us what avowed
slavery itself cannot withhold.

The reply plainly does not meet the objection so
far as production is concerned. It leaves it intact
to the extent that men as labourers, as producers,
are to be without any freedom of choice or contract ;
that every man is to be absolutely dependent on the
State so far as earning a livelihood is concerned ;
that the officers of the State are to assign to all its
subjects what they are to do to gain their bread and
to determine what amount of bread they are to get

THE COLLECTIVISATION OF CAPITAL 241

for what they do. But this is itself abject slavery,
to which no man of independent mind would submit
so long as there was in the world a free country to
which he could escape.

Then, what guarantees have Collectivists to give
us that men would be as free as they ought to be
even as regards consumption, that is spending
and enjoying what they have earned ? None. The
Collectivist State would be the sole producer, and
every individual would have to take just what it
pleased to produce. At present demand rules supply ;
in the collectivist system supply would rule demand.
The State might have the most capricious views as
to what people should eat or drink, how they should
dress, what books they should read, and the like ;
and being the sole producer and distributor of meat
and drink, the sole manufacturer of cloth and sole
tailoring and dressmaking establishment, the sole
publisher and supplier of books, individuals would
have to submit to all its caprices. The promised
freedom of enjoyment or consumption would thus, in
all probability, be very slight and illusory.

Were all powers concentrated in the State as Col-
lectivism proposes, the temptation to abuse these
powers would be enormous. The mere fact, for
example, that all printing and publishing would be
done by the State could hardly fail to be fatal to the
freedom of the press. Were Secularists in power they
could not consistently encourage the circulation of
works of devotion or of religious propagandism. If
Christians held office they would naturally regard
the publication of writings hostile to their religion as

242 SOCIALISM

also contrary to the welfare of the community. The
Collectivist State would not be likely either to im-
port books adverse to Collectivism, or to treat the
production of them by its own subjects as labour
worthy of remuneration. So of all things else. If
production were entirely in the hands of the State,
the liberty of individuals as to consumption could
not fail to be unjustly and injuriously limited in
every direction. Where supply rules demand, not
demand supply, desires must be suppressed or un-
satisfied, freedom unknown, and progress impossible.
The Collectivist, I may add, is bound to justify
his procedure in allowing a right of property in the
objects of consumption and denying it in the instru-
ments of production. It is not enough merely to
draw the distinction ; it is necessary also to show
that the distinction rests on a valid moral principle.
This has not been shown ; and, I believe, cannot be
shown. To affirm that a carriage may legitimately
be private property but that a plough cannot ; that
for an individual to possess the former is right, and
what the State cannot hinder without tyranny,
while to possess the latter is wrong, and what the
State must on no account permit, seems at least to
be a paradox devoid both of reason and justice. Why
do Collectivists not endeavour to vindicate it, yet
expect us to believe it ? They grant a right of pro-
perty to consume, and even to waste, but not to
produce ; not to employ with a view to a return.
Why is the right of property thus restricted and
mutilated? Would it not be more consistent to
deny and abolish it altogether ?

THE COLLECTIVISATION OF CAPITAL 243

There is another question, and a very important
one, to be answered. Is it probable that in a
collectivist community there would be much to
enjoy, to consume ? Collectivists, of course, assure
us that there would be abundance. But socialist
revolutionists are a remarkably sanguine class of
persons. Many of them have got very near the
length of believing that, if their theories were
carried into practice, men would only require to
sit down to table in order to have roasted pheasants
flying into their plates. It, therefore, need not
greatly astonish us to find that a number of Col-
lectivists have supposed that under the regime of
Collectivism three or four hours of work daily will
secure to every labourer an adequate supply of the
means of sustenance and comfort. But it is to be
feared that they are much mistaken ; that the
means of sustenance and comfort are far from so
abundant and easily procured as they imagine ; and
that men of average abilities, not placed in excep-
tionally favourable circumstances, who work merely
three or four hours a day, will be as sure speedily to
come to poverty and wretchedness in the future as
such men have done in the past.

It is chiefly by the suppression of luxury that
Collectivists hope to economise labour so immensely.
And it must be admitted that the administrators
of the Collectivist State would have greater power
of suppressing luxury than those who have hitherto
engaged in the task with such scant success. The
extreme difficulty of directly superintending con-
sumption has been the chief cause of the failure of

244 SOCIALISM

attempts to enforce sumptuary laws ; but Col-
lectivism would act through the regulation of pro-
duction, through refraining from ministering to any
desire for what it deemed luxury. Its greater
power in this respect, however, would probably turn
out to be simply a greater power for mischief.

Luxury is so essentially relative and so extremely
variable in its character and effects, that it is not a
proper or safe subject for legislation. Attempts to
suppress it by law are likely to do more harm than
good by destroying stimuli to economic exertion and
progress with which society cannot dispense. Even
if it were suppressed the saving effected would be
much less than Collectivists hope for, as far less
labour is spent in the production of objects of
luxury than they obviously fancy to be the case.
In Britain it is only about a thirtieth part of the
labour employed in production. In France it is
more, about a twentieth. But then France makes
objects of luxury for all the world ; and she does so
very much to her own advantage. A Parisian
producer of articles de luxe indirectly acquires for
France twice as much wheat as he would raise if he
actually cultivated French soil. There would be
more of the means of sustenance in Ireland if fewer
of her inhabitants were occupied in cultivating
potatoes and more in producing objects of luxury.

Two strong reasons can be given for holding that
were the system of Collectivism adopted the day of
labour in this country would not be a short one,
and that our production would be insufficient to
supply even the primary and most urgent wants of

THE COLLECTIVISATION OF CAPITAL 245

our population. The first is, that under this system
individuals would have no sufficient personal interest
to labour energetically or to economise prudently,
to increase production or to moderate population.
It is true that Collectivism does not propose,
like Communism, to remunerate all labourers alike ;
but in all other respects it would preclude to a
much greater extent the operation of personal mo-
tives to industry and carefulness. It does not, like
Communism, take account of the characters and
limit the number of its members, but undertakes to
provide for all the inhabitants of a nation, while
making the remuneration of each individual de-
pendent on the energy, faithfulness, and competency
of every other. Is it conceivable that under such a
system ordinary men employed in the common
branches of industry will labour as efficiently as at
present, or, indeed, otherwise than most ineffi-
ciently ? What motives will such a man have to
exert himself? The sense of duty and the feeling
of responsibility to God ? Yes, if he be a conscien-
tious and religious man, but not more than now
when he has his private interests in addition.
Fame ? No fame is within the reach of the vast
majority of men, and especially not in the common
departments of labour. The advantage of the
nation ? Very few men can in the ordinary avoca-
tions of life do almost any perceptible good to a
nation ; but any man can obviously do good to him-
self, and to his wife and children, by industry and
economy. Every individual ought to look to
general ends beyond his individual ends, but few

246 SOCIALISM

individuals are so fond of labour, and so given to
prudence and temperance, that a regard for their
own interests is a superfluous motive to them.

The second reason to which I have referred is
that by accepting Collectivism we must be almost
entirely deprived of the benefits of foreign trade.
Collectivists do not deny this, for they are conscious
of their inability to show how international trade
could be carried on without prices, profits, interest,
currency, the transactions of individuals, and, in a
word, without involving the destruction of the
whole collectivist system. While not denying it,
however, they maintain a " conspiracy of silence "
as to its inevitable consequences. One most obvious
consequence is that half of our present population
would have to emigrate or starve. Another is that
the population, after having been thus reduced,
must continue, on pain of starvation, not to
increase. How men can know what the population
of Britain is, and what its agricultural acreage is,
yet calmly contemplate the loss of foreign trade,
and coolly promise their fellow-countrymen short
days of labour and a plentiful supply of the good
things of life, passeth comprehension.

Collectivism could not fail to find the mere keep-
ing up or maintenance of its capital to be a most
difficult problem. It starts by appropriating the
capital which individuals have formed, and it
promises to divide the whole produce of labour
among the labourers. But if this promise be
honestly kept, the largest portion of the capital, all
the circulating capital, will, in the course of a year,

THE COLLECTIVISATION OF CAPITAL 247

have disappeared, without being replaced, and the
only capital remaining will be machines and build-
ings, the worse for the wear. In other words, if
Collectivism keep its promise to workmen, a speedy
national bankruptcy is inevitable. Let us suppose,
then, that it will not keep its promise. How will
it replace and maintain, not to say augment, its
capital ? It has deliberately stopped and choked up
all the existent sources of capitalisation, all the
motives and inducements to economy and invest-
ment on the part of individuals. It will not allow
individuals even if they save to use their savings as
capital. It can only, therefore, find capital for
itself by some process of the nature of taxation.
But this must be a poor and shallow source com-
pared with those which contribute to the formation
of capital at present. Men who have the means
and opportunity of forming capital are generally
anxious to capitalise as much as possible ; but those
who have the means and opportunity of paying
taxes are as generally anxious to pay as little as
possible. If a State meets its own necessary ex-
penses by taxation it does well ; for it to raise by
taxation the whole capital needed by the nation
from year to year cannot be rationally considered as
a hopeful enterprise.

The task of maintaining the national capital by
taxation would be all the harder, seeing that the
Collectivist State would not contain many rich
people or people who save. Some Collect i vista
propose to allow the rich people whose capital they
appropriate to retain during their lifetime a con-

248 SOCIALISM

siderable portion of their wealth for consumption,
for enjoyment, but not for production, not to use as
capital. But even if expropriated capitalists be
found content to settle down on these terms into
collectivist citizens, their wealth must be lost, so
far as the Collectivist State is concerned, to produc-
tion, to capital. It is much more probable, however,
that they would not be thus content, but would
transfer themselves and their wealth to some more
hospitable shore, where they could again start as
capitalists, and have scope for a free and energetic
life. It is obvious that it would be to the interest
of all individuals who economised in a nation where
Collectivism was established to send their savings
abroad. The State could not prevent this without
having recourse to arts of espionage and acts of
tyranny degrading both to rulers and ruled, and
tending to the foolish end of isolating the nation
from the rest of the world, of withdrawing the
current of its life from the general movement of
history. In all probability it would fail, whatever
means it employed. In all probability, under Col-
lectivism there would be a continuous decrease of
capital at home, and a continuous flow of individual
savings to swell the capital employed in foreign
industry and enterprise.

My general conclusion, then, is that a Collectivist
State can neither establish itself nor maintain
itself; that Collectivism is incapable of any solid
and stable realisation.

Nor is it desirable that it should be realised ; for
it is Socialism in the proper sense of the term—

THE COLLECTIVISATION OF CAPITAL 249

Socialism as essentially exclusive of liberty and
inclusive of slavery. It would make the State
enormously strong as compared with individuals,
and individuals excessively weak as compared with
the State. It would place every man in a position
of absolute dependence on Government, with no real
security for any kind of freedom. It is a system
which could only be carried out through the agency
of a vast host of officials and inspectors ; and this is
of itself a very serious objection. Official work is
seldom equal to the work which individuals do for
themselves ; State inspectors themselves need to be
inspected, and the highest inspector may be the
least trustworthy of all ; and where officials are
numerous seekers of office are far more numerous,
which is a grievous source of corruption both to
rulers and ruled, especially in a democracy. If a
democracy would preserve and develop its liberties,
it must keep the State within its due limits ; guard
against encouraging the multiplication of State
officials ; and, wherever it can, organise itself freely
from within by voluntary associations, instead of
aUowing itself to be organised compulsorily, from
without through the State. With the natural de-
velopment of the national life there will, indeed, be
also a certain natural and legitimate expansion of
the sphere of State activity ; yet none the less
every unnecessary law, every unnecessary class of
State officials, involves an unnecessary limitation of
popular liberty, is a danger to, or a drag on, popular
liberty. There is no cruder or more harmful conceit
current than the notion that since votes are now so

250 SOCIALISM

common the State cannot be too powerful, or legisla-
tion too extended. The State ought to be strong
only for the performance of its strictly appropriate
functions ; every further increase or extension of its
power must be an encroachment on freedom and
justice. The omnipotence of the State, it has been
justly said, is the utter helplessness of the indi-
vidual.

SUPPLEMENTARY NOTE.

Dr. Schaffle, in Letter n of his " Impossibility of Social
Democracy," has forcibly presented the chief valid objections to
Democratic Collectivism. I shall here briefly summarise his
statement of them.

1. Collectivist production is impossible on a democratic basis.
It could only be maintained and directed by a stable self-sufficient
authority and a powerful and carefully graduated administrative
system, of a non-democratic character, and without any charms
for the proletariat. " But then where would be your democratic
republic from top to bottom and from centre to circumference ?
Where would be your freedom and equality ? Where would be
your security against misuse of power and against exploitation ? "

2. Collectivism proposes "to eliminate nature and property,
two out of the three factors of production ; to transfer the owner-
ship of the means of production entirely to the community ; and
.to weld all businesses of the same kind — however unequal the
natural efficiency of the instruments may be in the various
sections — into one great ' social ' department of industry worked
on the principle of equal remuneration for equal contributions of
labour-time." ..." But under a purely democratic organisation,
a materialistic and greedy host of individuals, puffed up by
popular sovereignty, and fed with constant flattery, would not
easily submit to the sacrifices required by the immense savings
necessary to multiplying the means of production. Still less
would the members of such productive sections as are equipped
with the instruments of production of highest natural efficiency

THE COLLECTIVISATION OF CAPITAL 251

be inclined to cast in the surplus product of their labour with
the deficient production of others. Strife and confusion without
end would be the result of attempting it."

3. " Social Democracy promises an impossibility in under-
taking, without danger to the efficiency of production, to unite
all branches of it, and in each branch all the separate firms and
business-companies into one single body with uniform labour-
credit and uniform estimation of labour-time. Herein it goes
upon the supposition that the whole tendency of production is
toward business on a large scale with local self-complete branches
on factory lines. Yet this is a most arbitrary assumption."
Agriculture tends in the direction of small or moderately large
farms. Even in trade there will always remain over, a mass of
small scattered pursuits that entirely escape control.

4. " Social Democracy promises to the industrial proletariat a
fabulous increase in the net result of national production, hence
an increase of dividends of the national revenue, and a general
rise of labour-returns all round. This increased productivity of
industry would perhaps be conceivable if a firm administration
could be set over the collective production, and if it were also
possible to inspire all the producers with the highest interest
alike in diminishing the cost, and in increasing the productivity
of labour. But Social Democracy as such refuses to vest the
necessary authority in the administration, and does not know
how to introduce an adequate system of rewards and punish-
ments for the group as a whole, and for the individuals in each
productive group, however necessary a condition this may be of a
really high level of production. Therefore, on the side of pro-
ductivity again, all these delusive representations as to the
capacity and possibility of democratic collective production are
groundless. Without giving both every employer and every one
employed the highest individual interest in the work, and
involving them in profits or losses as the case may be, lx>th ideal
and material, it would be utterly impossible to attain even such a
measure of productivity for the national labour as the capitalist
system manages to extract. . . . Without a sufficiently strong
and attractive reward for individual or corporate pre-eminence,
without strongly deterrent drawbacks and compensatory obliga-
tions fcr bad and unproductive work, a collective system of pro-

252 SOCIALISM

duction is inconceivable, or at least any system that would even
distantly approach in efficiency the capitalistic system of to-day.
But democratic equality cannot tolerate such strong rewards and
punishments. The scale of remuneration in the existing civil
and military systems would be among the very first things Social
Democracy would overthrow, and rightly, according to its prin-
ciples. So long as men are not incipient angels — and that will
be for a good while yet — democratic collective production can
never make good its promises, because it will not tolerate the
methods of reward and punishment for the achievements of indi-
viduals and of groups, which under its system would need to be
specially and peculiarly strong."

5. Social Democracy is utterly unable to fulfil its promise of
strictly apportioning to each person the exact value of the
product of his social labour. It has discovered no principle or
method of determining what a " fair wage " is. So far from
preventing exploitation it could not fail to do injustice to those
whose average productiveness is higher than that of their neigh-
bours. " The fanaticism with which the gospel of Marx's theory
of value was at one time preached rests upon superstition, and
upon a wholly superficial misconception of facts. ... It is not
only not proved, it is absolutely unprovable, that a distribution
measured by the quantum of social labour-time given by each
would represent distribution in proportion to the measure of
product value contributed by each."

6. It is indispensable alike in the interests of the individual
and of society that each person should be remunerated in propor-
tion to the social value of his work. Social Democracy fully
acknowledges this, and promises to accomplish it, but necessarily
fails to keep its promise. For, however socially useful this pro-
portional remuneration be, and however little any continuous
advance in civilisation can be made without its enforcements, the
principle is still undeniably aristocratic, and totally incompatible
with a one-sided democratic equality. "A Social Democracy
which once admitted this principle would no longer be a demo-
cracy at all after the heart of the masses."

7. Collectivist Socialism further promises the distribution of
the product in a brotherly fashion according to needs. But this
is not consistent with the promise of distribution according to

THE COLLECTIVISATION OF CAPITAL 253

the value of the labour contribution. It is besides impracticable.
" If in a Democratic Collectivism it were to be attempted from the
outset to apportion men's share, not according to their contribu-
tion of work, but according to their needs, the result would be
that shortly every portion of the * sovereign people ' would
appear to be, and would even be, in a great state of need and
destitution. Everything would get out of hand, and a hopeless
confusion ensue, the only way out of the difficulty being to
declare a universal equality of need, a solution most unjust, most
wearisome, and most conducive to idleness."

8. Democratic Collectivism undertakes to suppress all " exploi-
tation." It can, however, do nothing of the kind, inasmuch as
the real value contributed by labour to the product cannot be
determined. It would even, by suppressing all individual home-
production, make impossible in any case a distribution of the
entire product of labour or of its full realised value. It would
thus open a far wider field for exploitation than any hitherto
known system of production. " The private capitalist of course
could no longer exploit the wage-labourer, since all private capital
would be over and done with. But labourer could very really
exploit labourer, the administrators could exploit those under
them, the lazy could exploit the industrious, the impudent their
more modest fellow-workers, and the demagogue those who
opposed him. Under such a system above all others it would be
impossible to set any limits to this. It would be the very system
to lend itself most freely to exploitation, as it would have no
means of defending itself from practical demagogy and the dis-
couraging of the more productive and more useful class of labour.
With the quantitative reckoning of labour-time, with the setting
up of a ' normal performance of work,' with the merging of in-
tensive and extensive measurement of labour, things might reach
such a pitch that Marx's vampire, * the Capitalist,' would show up
as a highly respectable figure compared with the Social Demo-
cratic parasites, hoodwinkers of the people, a majority of idlers
and sluggards. The State would be the arch-vampire, the new
State, whose function it would be to provide pleasure for the
people and to fill up for each and all the highest measure of
earthly bliss."

9. Another very attractive promise of Social Democracy is that

254 SOCIALISM

under the collectivist system there will be no paralyses of trade.
It professes that, unlike capitalistic society, it will not labour at
hazard, but so accurately estimate demands and needs as to hold
in constant equilibrium every kind of supply with every kind of
requirement; and that by securing for the labourers a larger
remuneration it will render them more competent throughout
the whole range of production to purchase and consume. But
this is only vain boasting. It has in nowise shown that it will
be able to do either of these things. Besides, crises in trade are
largely due to natural causes, and to conjunctures or overpower-
ing chains or combinations of circumstances, many of which men
can neither foresee nor control. And even could they be so far
mastered by means of a strenuous regulation of needs and com-
pulsion of individual tastes, Democratic Collectivism would be, in
virtue of its extremely democratic character, of all systems the
least competent to perform so unpleasant, unpopular, and
tremendous a task. " The eternal unrest and disturbance of this
administrative guidance of production, together with the
capricious changes of desire and demand in the sovereign people,
would most certainly increase, to an extraordinary degree, the
tyrannous fatality of these ever recurrent crises."

10. Democratic Collectivism promises to abolish what it
regards as the slavery of the wage-system. The system, however,
by which it would do so is one far more justly chargeable with
involving slavery. As regards this argument see the words
already quoted on p. 59.

. These arguments are all extremely worthy of consideration for
their own sakes. They fully sustain Dr. Schaffle's contention
that Social Democracy "can never fulfil a single one of its
glowing promises." They have, however, a further interest
simply as coming from Dr. Schaffle. His earlier work, the
" Quintessence of Socialism," 1878, was widely regarded as not
only a socialistic production, but as the only production of the
kind which had succeeded in showing that Collectivism was not
an altogether impracticable and impossible scheme. Marx and
his coadjutors had done nothing in this direction ; their work
had been merely critical and destructive. Schaffle undertook
the task which they had not ventured on, and made Collectivism
look as plausible as possible. He presented the case for it so

THE COLLECTIVISATION OF CAPITAL 255

skilfully indeed, that all those who have since attempted to show
its practicability have done little else than substantially repeat
what he had said. It cannot, then, be reasonably averred that
he has not thoroughly understood what Collectivism means, and
is worth ; that he has not comprehended it profoundly, and from
within. Yet what is his real opinion of it? That we learn
from the supplement to the "Quintessence" — from the "Im-
possibility of Social Democracy," 1884. It is a very definite and
decided opinion — the conviction that " the faith in the millennial
kingdom of Democratic Collectivism is a mere bigotry and super-
stition, and as uncouth a one as has ever been cherished in any
age." As was, perhaps, to be expected, those who had received
the earlier work with jubilation, entered into " a conspiracy of
silence " regarding the latter.*

* Among the many able works which have been published in refutation
of Collectivism the most conclusive and satisfactory on the whole, in the
opinion of the present writer, is M. Paul Leroy-Beaulieu's " Le Collectivisme,
examen critique du nouveau socialisme." 3®. ed. 1893.

CHAPTER VIII.

SOCIALISM AND SOCIAL ORGANISATION.

SOCIALISM is a theory as to the organisation of
society. It has done good service by insisting on
the need for more and better social organisation. It
was especially by the boldness and keenness of their
criticism of the actual constitution of society that
the founders of modern Socialism — Saint-Simon,
Fourier, and Owen — drew attention to themselves,
and gained a hearing for their proposals. And so
has it been with their successors. It is largely
because of the amount of truth in their teaching as
to the prevalence of disorder and anarchy, disease
and misery in society, that their views have obtained
so large a measure of sympathy and success.

Nor is this other than natural, seeing that society
is really in every organ, portion, and department of it
in a far from satisfactory condition. There is no
profession without either just grievances or unjust
privileges. Land is, in general, poorly remunerative
to its proprietors ; farming is precarious : and agri-
cultural labourers are depressed and discontented
not without reasons. The war between labour and
capital becomes increasingly embittered and danger-
ous. There can be no reasonable doubt that in not
a few occupations men and women are working far

SOCIALISM AND SOCIAL ORGANISATION 257

too many hours, and are consequently left without
time and strength for living fully human lives. It
is unquestionable that under the guise of business
hateful injustice is perpetrated to an enormous
extent ; and that by lying devices, dishonest tricks,
heartless practices, a large number of persons reputed
respectable beggar their neighbours and enrich
themselves. It is terrible to think of the physical
and moral condition and surroundings of multitudes
of human beings in many of our large towns ; and of
all the misery and vice implied in the statistics of
drunkenness, prostitution, and crime in this empire.
The socialistic criticism of society as at present
constituted has not only been directly and wholly
useful in so far as it has been temperate and well-
founded ; it has also been indirectly and partially
useful even when passionate and exaggerated, as it
has almost always been. By its very violence and
onesidedness it has provoked counter-criticism, and
led to closer and more comprehensive investigation.
It has contributed to a general recognition of the
necessity of instituting careful and systematic in-
quiries into the social difficulties and evils with
which it is contemplated to deal by legislation and
collective action. And this is an important gain.
A thorough diagnosis is as necessary to the cure of
social as of bodily diseases. Of many social troubles
and grievances an adequate knowledge would of
itself go far to secure the removal ; in regard to all
of them it is the indispensable condition of effective
remedial measures. Ignorant intervention, however
benevolent, only complicates the difficulties which

258 SOCIALISM

it seeks to solve, and aggravates the evils which it
hopes to cure.

As to the practicability of social organisation
Socialism cannot be charged with the lack either of
faith or hope. Its leading representatives to-day
show the same sort of simple and credulous confi-
dence in their ability to transform and beautify
society which was so conspicuous in Owen, Saint-
Simon, Fourier, and Cabet. It is possible, indeed,
as the example of Von Hartmann proves, to combine
Socialism with Pessimism, at least to the extent of
believing that it will inevitably come, yet only as a
stage of illusion and misery in the course of humanity
towards annihilation. But this conjunction is rare,
and probably not to be met with at all outside a
small philosophical circle. As a rule Socialists take
an extremely rosy view of the near future even
when they take a most gloomy view of the entire
past.

And in this confidence and hopefulness there is
undoubtedly something true and worthy of commen-
dation. Faith and hope are necessary to those who
would face aright the future and its duties. And
there are good reasons for cherishing them within
certain limits : namely, all the evidences which we
have for concluding that there has been progress or
improvement in the past ; that there exists an
Eternal Power which makes for righteousness ; and
that the evils which afEict society are in their very
nature curable or diminish able by individual and
collective effort. But faith is never wholly good
except when entirely conformed to reason ; nor is

SOCIALISM AND SOCIAL ORGANISATION 259

hope ever wholly good except when it is entirely
accordant with the laws and lessons of experience.
The faith and hope of Socialism, however, even when
it claims to be scientific, largely outrun reason and
ignore experience ; they are largely the most childish
simplicity and credulity. If they have saved, as
some suppose, a large section of the working classes
from pessimistic despair, it is so far well ; yet there
must be serious danger of a reaction when the extent
of their irrationality is discovered.

The great ends of life can by no means be so easily
or readily realised as Socialists imply in their schemes
of social organisation. Labour is the law of life ;
hard labour is the sign of earnest life. In the sweat
of the brow the vast majority of men must eat their
bread. In the sweat of the brain the mental worker
must hammer out his thoughts. In the bloody
sweat of a broken heart the martyr must consummate
his sacrifice. So has it been for ages on ages, and
so it is likely to be for ages on ages to come, even
until man is altogether different from what he is
now, and no longer needs the stimulus of hardship
or the correction of suffering. Life has obviously
not been meant, on the whole, to be easy, devoid
of strain, untried by misery and affliction. And
those who tell us that they have some scheme
by which they can make it so are fanatics or
charlatans.

It is much more difficult to become rich, or even
to get a moderate portion of the good things of this
life, than Socialists admit. There is no class of
creatures in the world of which some do not die of

26o SOCIALISM

starvation. Why should man be an exception ? *
Man, it is true, is better than a beast ; but just
because he is so, suffering has more and higher uses
to him than to a beast. He has reason, and there-
fore is capable of indefinite progress while the
lower creatures are not ; but therefore also he is
liable to innumerable aberrations from which they
are exempt, and which he can only slowly learn

* This question and the sentence which precedes it, called forth the
following observations from the editor of "Progress, the Organ of the
Salem Literary Society, Leeds " (November 1892) : " These words occur
in an article on Socialism and Social Organisation, which appeared in
the September number of Good Words. The writer of the article is Dr.
Flint, a Professor of Divinity of Edinburgh, and the author of some well-
known works on Theism. Good Words is a Christian paper, and Dr. Flint
is a Christian man, but his words reveal a cold, hopeless, and most sceptical
pessimism. Christianity may well pray to be delivered from its apologists.
Here is an acknowledged defender of the Christian faith calmly asking
why man should be an exception to the law, that ' of every class of
creatures some must die of starvation.' Dr. Flint's statement could be
passed over with comparative indifference if there were no reason to fear
that what he expresses with such unblushing candour was the tacit belief
of a great many Christian men, sometimes finding milder expressions in
the misread words of Jesus Christ, ' The poor ye have always with you.'
We admit with Professor Flint that the great ends of life cannot be easily
reached ; that labour is the law of life : that the vast majority of men
must eat their bread in the sweat of their brow. But we emphatically
deny that there is any law of nature which dooms a man who has indus-
triously striven after a livelihood to die of starvation. Such a belief
belongs to antiquated and discredited political economy. Did we cherish
it, it would work more mischief to our Theism than all Professor Flint's
elaborate theories could repair. It is not true, it never has been true, and
it is not likely to be true, that there is any real pressure of population
upon the means of subsistence. The world's fields stand white unto the
harvest. Nature's resources are infinite, she has heaped up in her vast
storehouses food and fuel and raiment for all. Nature is no niggard, with
ungrudging hand she yields her treasures to those who seek them with
industry and patience. None need go empty away. We do not forget
that Nature has other than a smiling face. Famine and pestilence and
storm have slain their thousands. But history is the record of man's
conquest over Nature. It is his privilege to wrest from Nature her secrets,

SOCIALISM AND SOCIAL ORGANISATION 261

to detect and abandon in the school of want and
adversity.

No distribution of the present wealth of the world
would give plenty to every one. Were all the
gold supposed to be in the world at present equally
distributed each person would hardly get a sovereign
a piece. Were all the land in Britain equally dis-
tributed among its inhabitants each person could

to make the crooked places straight, and the rough places plain ; to
make the wilderness and the solitary place glad, and the desert rejoice
and blossom as a rose. There is enough of mystery in life — the mystery
of sin and pain and death— without making life more mysterious still by
teaching that there are men born into this world who by irrevocable
natural law are destined to die of slow starvation."

Now, neither in the words animadverted on, nor in any other words
which I have written, have I either affirmed or implied that there is " any
law of nature which dooms a man who has industriously striven after a
livelihood to die of starvation," or that "there are men born into this
world who by irrevocable natural law are destined to die of slow starva-
tion." In referring to what Lassalle and his followers have said of the
so-called " iron law of wages," I have explicitly indicated my entire dis-
belief in such laws. Dr. Thomas Chalmers loved to expatiate '* on the
capacities of the world for making a virtuous species happy. " I am far
from denying that it has such capacities. I readily admit that the
miseries of society are mainly due not to the defects of the world, but to
the errors and faults of man. Were the human race perfect in intellect,
disposition, and conduct, possibly not only no human being but no harm-
less or useful beast would be allowed to die of starvation. Were it so tho
pressure of population upon the means of subsistence would, of course,
be unknown. It is, however, actual, not ideal, human nature, real, not
hypothetical human beings, that we must have in view when dis-
cussing practical social questions. When my critic denies that popu-
lation has ever pressed on the means of subsistence he denies facts
without number. His panegyric on the bountifulness of Nature will surely
not apply to the Sahara or the Arctic regions, or even to Donegal or
Connemara. History has been the record of man's conquest over Nature
only to a limited extent, and it has been the record also of much else — of
much that is painful and shameful. Neither Theism nor Christianity can
be truly benefited by ignoring facts or indulging in rhetorical exaggera-
tion. A sceptical pessimism is bad, but so likewise is a shallow and illusory
optimism.

262 SOCIALISM

not get quite two acres. Were all the rents of all
the landowners in Britain appropriated by the nation
to pay the taxes they would be insufficient to pay
them. Were the people of France grouped into
households of four individuals each, and the whole
annual income of France equally apportioned among
them, each of these households, it has been calculated,
would only receive about three francs a day. Were,
even in those trades where there are the largest
capitalists, the workmen to obtain all the profits of
the capitalists to themselves, in scarcely any case
would they receive four shillings per week more
than they do.

Most workmen can save more weekly by the
exercise of good sense and self-denial than the
State could afford to give them beyond what
they already receive were Collectivism established
even without expense. The spontaneous bounties of
earth become yearly less adequate to support its
inhabitants. Each new generation is thrown more
on its own powers of invention and exertion. Indi-
viduals may find " short cuts " to wealth, or even
"break through and steal" their neighbours' pro-
perty ; but there is no public royal road to wealth ;
no other honest path for the great majority of men
even to a competency of external goods than that of
self-denial and toil.

The way to happiness is still more difficult to
discover and follow than that to wealth. They are
very different ways, and often those who find the
one lose the other. " Men," said Hobbes, " are
never less at ease than when most at ease." " The

SOCIALISM AND SOCIAL ORGANISATION 263

more things improve," says Mr. Spencer, "the louder
become the exclamations about their badness."
History abounds in facts which warrant these
statements. And one of the most striking of them
is that although the workmen of Europe never had
so much freedom and power, or received so large a
proportion of the wealth of Europe, as since the
triumph of free-trade and the introduction of ma-
chinery and the rise of the large industrial system,
yet an enormous number of them believe that never
till then had their class been so robbed, enslaved,
and afflicted, and that never was there more need
than at present to revolutionise society, and to
reconstruct it on altogether new principles.*

I blame them not ; and still less do I blame the
Power which has made human nature so that the
more it gets the more it would have, and that
attainment rarely brings to it contentment, or
outward prosperity inward satisfaction ; for I see
that unhappiness and discontent have uses in the
education of mankind, and functions in history,

* That men with merely the education of ordinary workmen should be
able to believe their condition worse than that of the workmen of all
former generations is, of course, but little surprising, when men like Win.
Morris and E. Belfort Bax can gravely assert that "tlie whole of our
labouring dosses are in a far worse position as to food, housing, and
than any but tlie extreme fringe, of the corresponding class in the
Middle Ages " (" Socialism, its Growth and Outcome," p. 79). It is to
be regretted that none of those who have made assertions of this kind
have attempted to prove them, although they could hardly have failed to
perceive that if they succeeded they would thereby not only make a most
valuable contribution to historical science, but inflict a really fatal blow
on the civilisation which they detest. Julius Wolff, in his " System der
Socialpolitik," Bd. i. pp. 375-389, has some interesting remarks on such
assertions, and on the state of mind in which they originato.

264 SOCIALISM

which abundantly justify their existence. But I
cannot take due account either of the character of
human nature or of the history of the operative
classes without inferring that if working men believe,
as Socialists endeavour to persuade them to believe,
that were Communism or Collectivism even estab-
lished and found to possess all the economic advan-
tages which have been ascribed to them, unhappiness
and discontent would thereby be lessened, they are
lamentably easy to delude. The sources of human
misery are not so easily stopped. Dissatisfaction
will not be conjured away by any change in the
mere economic arrangements of society. Before as
after all such changes there will be not only dis-
content but the risks of disorder, conspiracy, and
revolution, which at present exist. Collectivism
will need its police and its soldiers, its tribunals
and prisons and armaments, just like Industrialism.
Good reasons, indeed, might, I think, be given for
holding that it must require a larger force at its
disposal to crush rebellion and ensure peace.

Excellence of every kind is, like happiness, very
difficult to attain. None of the ideal aims implicit
in our nature can be fully realised ; and even approxi-
mations thereto can only be made through toil and
self-denial. To become proficient in any department
of learning, science, or art, a man must not only
have superior and appropriate abilities, but make a
patient, strenuous, and anxious use of them. It is
only the very few who with their utmost exertion
can attain high eminence, true greatness, of any
kind. The late M. Littre's ordinary day of intel-

SOCIALISM AND SOCIAL ORGANISATION 265

lectual toil, was during a considerable period of his
life, about fourteen hours ; and the labours of mind
are certainly not less exhausting than those of body.

The way of perfect duty is the hardest way of
all. We have been told that it is " easier for a
camel to pass through the eye of a needle than for
a rich man to enter into the kingdom of heaven,"
that kingdom which is righteousness and purity and
peace of spirit. Is it easier for the poor to enter in ?
When I consider their temptations and difficulties I
fear that it may often not be so.

Manifestly we have not been made for ease and
happiness in this world. Manifestly those who
would persuade us that merely to alter our social
arrangements will go far to secure our welfare are
mistaken. An illusion so childish is unworthy of
grown men, and the more plainly those who foster
it or cherish it are told so the better. We should
look at the world as it is ; face life as it is ; seek no
earthly paradise, as it is sure to be only a fool's
paradise ; and be content patiently to endure hard-
ships and resolutely to encounter obstacles, if thereby
we can improve even a little either ourselves or our
fellow- men.

We have no right to expect to see in our days
complete social organisation, or any near approxima-
tion to it. Social organisation proceeds with varying
rates of rapidity at different times and in different
places, but on the whole slowly. It is not accom-
plished by leaps and bounds. It is a continuous
process, which began with the beginning of society,
and has never been quite arrested, but which has

266 SOCIALISM

always been only a gradual transformation of the
old into the new through slight but repeated modi-
fications. Society has been always organic, and,
therefore, has been always organising or disorganising
itself ; it is organic now, and, therefore, at every
point the subject of organisation or disorganisation.
It is not a collection or mass of inorganic materials
capable of being organised at will, as wood, stone,
and metals can be built up into a house according to
a given plan, and as rapidly as may be wished. The
power of statesmen in relation to the organisation of
society is slight in comparison with the power of
builders and engineers in relation to houses and
bridges. Society must organise itself by a slow and
multiform evolution.

Now, it is not even denied by contemporary
Socialists that their predecessors overlooked the
truth just indicated, and, in consequence, failed to
fulfil the promises which they made, and to justify
the hopes which they awakened ; that Owen, Saint-
Simon, and Fourier, for instance, proceeded on the
assumption that they could organise society according
to their several ideals and schemes without troubling
themselves much as to its own natural evolution ;
and that the result was that their systems were
essentially Utopian, quite unrealisable on any large
scale. What the socialistic theorists of to-day tell
us is that they have got wholly rid of this error ;
that Socialism has ceased to be Utopian, and is now
scientific; that instead of contravening historical
evolution the new Socialism is based upon it ; and
that its adherents do not "look for anything but

SOCIALISM AND SOCIAL ORGANISATION 267

the gradual passing of the old order into the new,
without breach of continuity or abrupt general
change of social tissue."

Such statements are not to be implicitly trusted.
For, first, a theoretical belief in the necessarily
gradual evolution of society is quite compatible
with practical disregard of its natural and rational
consequences. Saint-Simon and Fourier, like Con-
dorcet before them, saw more clearly than the bulk
of their contemporaries that the history of mankind
had been a slow and continuous development, and
yet they extravagantly deceived themselves as to
the rate and character of social organisation in the
future. Augaste Comte had quite as firm a grasp
of the conception of historical evolution as Carl
Marx, and yet he believed that his ludicrous religion
of humanity would be established throughout the
West during the present century ; in seven years
afterwards over the monotheistic East ; and in
thirteen years more, by the conversion and re-
generation of all the polytheistic and fetichist
peoples, over the whole earth. It is not less
possible for even cultured and intellectual Marxist
Collectivists, and evolutionist Socialists of other
types, to be as credulous ; and most of them, I
imagine, are so.

They argue that Collectivism, for example, is
inevitably arising from industrialism, as industrial-
ism arose from feudalism , and because they thus
reason from a scientific conception or theory, that of
historical evolution, they conclude that they must
be sober scientific thinkers. But even if the argu-

268 SOCIALISM

ment were good, it would not warrant expectation
of the establishment of Collectivism in Europe until
three or four hundred years from this date. It has
taken considerably more than that length of time
for industrialism to grow out of feudalism. I should
be much surprised, however, to learn that more than
a very few of the reputedly most scientific Collectiv-
ists are not fancying that Collectivism will come
almost as speedily as Comte supposed the Positivist
organisation of society would come. Of course, I
admit that were they less credulous and optimist
they would be also less popular as prophets, less
persuasive as prosely tisers. To set forth at Hyde
Park corner on a Sunday evening that the collec-
tivist regime might be expected to begin about the
year 2300, supposing no unforeseen conjunctures or
catastrophes powerful enough absolutely to prevent
or indefinitely to delay its advent intervened, would
not, indeed, gain many converts. To do so in an
assemblage of professedly scientific Socialists, be-
lievers alike in Marx and Darwin, at Berlin or Paris
on the first of May, might be dangerous.

Further, no evidences of the reality of an his-
torical evolution towards Socialism properly so
called have as yet been produced. The attempts
made by Marx and others to prove that in societies
which adopt the principles of industrial freedom the
rich will inevitably grow richer and the poor poorer,
and the number of landed proprietors and manu-
facturing and commercial capitalists steadily
diminish through the ruin of the smaller ones by
-the larger, until all wealth is concentrated in the

SOCIALISM AND SOCIAL ORGANISATION 269

hands of a few magnates on whom the rest of the
population is entirely dependent for the necessaries
of life, are obvious failures. Free trade in land can
be shown to tend to a rational subdivision of the
land. Where it has become the property of a few
the chief causes thereof have been improper restric-
tions on liberty as to its sale and purchase. When
Marx wrote there was some excuse for supposing
that the growth of our industrial and commercial
system was steadily tending to the extinction of all
capitalists except the largest ; but there is none for
it now when the system may be everywhere seen to
necessitate by the very magnitude of its operations
the combination of numerous capitalists, large and
small, in single undertakings of all sorts. The vast
manufactories and gigantic commercial enterprises
of the present day, instead of lessening are greatly
increasing the number of capitalists, and facilitating
the entrance of workmen into the ranks of capital-
ists. A multitude of the peasant proprietors of
France, and many of the cockers de jiawe of Paris,
were investors in the unfortunate Panama scheme.

It must be added that the present order of society
cannot possibly pass into Collectivism by evolution.
If it do so at all it must be through revolution. It
is conceivable, although most improbable, that a
time may come when all the possessors of capital in
Great Britain will deposit their capitals in a vast
fund to be administered and employed by one
directing body ; and that this result may be
brought about by a process of historical evolution
on from day to day without any breach of

270 SOCIALISM

continuity, through generations and centuries. But
manifestly should a day ever come when the direc-
torate or the State undertook to grant to all the
non-capitalists in the nation equal rights to the
stock and profits of the fund as to the capitalists,
this measure of expropriation, collectivisation, or
spoliation, must be a revolutionary measure involv-
ing a breach of continuity, a rupture of social tissue,
unprecedented in the history of mankind. Radical
or revolutionary Socialists are right in maintaining
that Collectivism cannot be established by evolution.
Evolutionary Socialists conclusively argue that social
organisation cannot be satisfactorily or successfully
effected by revolution.

The true organisation of society must not only be
a gradual evolution, but must be due mainly to the
exercise of liberty, not to the action of authority.
It must be originated and carried on chiefly from
within, not from without. It must be to a far
greater extent the combined and collective work of
the moral personalities who compose a nation than
of the officials who compose its Government. There
can be no good government of a community the
members of which are not already accustomed to
govern themselves aright. The healing of society
to be effective must proceed on the whole from the
centre outwards.

Socialism has never seen this clearly or acknow-
ledged it fully. From its very nature it cannot do
so, for it undervalues the individual. It leads men
to expect extravagant results from merely repairing
or reconstructing the outward mechanism of society.

SOCIALISM AND SOCIAL ORGANISATION 271

It encourages them to fancy that their welfare is
more dependent on what Government does than on
what they do themselves ; on the wisdom and power
of their legislators than on their own intelligence
and virtue. There can be no more foolish and
baneful illusion. Let any drunkard become sober,
or any profligate a man of clean and regular life,
and he has done far more for himself than any
Government can do for him. Let Irishmen deliver
themselves from the superstition that their clergy
can, by an act of excommunication, exclude them
from the pale of salvation, and they will thereby
obtain both for themselves and their country more
moral and political liberty than any Home Rule
Bill or other Act of Parliament can give them ;
while Almighty Power itself cannot make them free
either as citizens or as men so long as they retain in
their hearts that servile faith.

Nations have only enjoyed a healthy and vigorous
life when wisely jealous of the encroachments of autho-
rity on individual rights and liberties ; they have
sunk into helplessness and corruption whenever they
were content to be dependent on their Governments.
The men who have done most for society have been
those who were the least inclined to obey its bidding
when it had no moral claim to command. It is
because British men have been, perhaps above all
others, self-reliant men, with strongly marked
differences of character, with resolute, independent
wills, who would take their own way and work out
their own individual schemes and purposes, who
were not afraid of defying public opinion and social

272 SOCIALISM

authority, who were ready to do battle on their own
account against all comers, when they felt that they
had right on their side, that Britain stands now
where she does among the nations of the world.

All plans of social organisation which tend to
weaken and destroy individuality of character, inde-
pendence and energy of conduct, ought to be
rejected. In seeking to determine when collective
action, the exercise of social authority, is legitimate
or the reverse, we may very safely decide according
to the evidence as to whether it will fortify and
develop or restrict and discourage individual free-
dom and activity. Can there be any reasonable
doubt that, tested by this criterion, such a scheme
of social organisation as Collectivism must be con-
demned ? The whole tendency of Collectivism is to
replace a resistible capitalism by an irresistible
officialism ; to make social authority omnipotent
and individual wills powerless : to destroy liberty
and to establish despotism. Hence any society
which accepts it must find it, instead of a panacea
for its evils, a mortal poison. But happily the love
of liberty is too prevalent and its advantages too
obvious to allow of its general acceptance. It is so
manifestly contrary to the true nature of man and
inconsistent with the prosperity and progress of
society, that, notwithstanding all its pretensions to
a scientific and practical character, it must inevit-
ably come to be regarded as not less essentially
Utopian than the Phalansterianism of Fourier or
the Positive Polity of Comte.

One great reason why social organisation must

SOCIALISM AND SOCIAL ORGANISATION 273

be mainly the work of individuals left free to act
for themselves and to associate together as they
please, so long as they abstain from injustice and
from encroachment on the freedom of others, is a
fact already referred to, namely, that man has
various aims in life, and these distinct aims, and
often difficult to harmonise. He is not only a
physical being with physical appetites, to whom
life is only an economic problem ; but also a moral
being, conscious of the claims of duty and charity ;
an intellectual being, to whose mind truth is as
necessary as light is to his eyes ; a being capable of
aesthetic vision and enjoyment and of artistic
creation ; and a religious being, who feels relation-
ship to the Divine, with corresponding hopes, fears,
and obligations. And, of course, if he would live
conformably to his nature he must seek to realise,
as far as he can, all the proximate aims to which it
tends, and to reconcile and unify them as best he
may, by reference to an ultimate and comprehensive
end. But who except himself can do this for any
human being? And how can even he do it for
himself unless he be free to act and free to combine
with those who can aid him, in such ways as the
consciousness of his own wants may suggest to
him?

Society is as complex as man. It has as many
elements and activities as human nature. It can
only be a fitting medium for the development of the
individual by having organs and institutions adapted
to all that is essential in the individual Its true
organisation must consequently imply the evolution

274 SOCIALISM

of all that is involved in, and distinctive of, humanity.
Hence there was much truth in Gambetta's famous
declaration — " There is no social problem ; there are
only social problems." It is impossible to resolve all
social problems into one, or even to reduce all kinds
of social problems to a single class. From the very
nature of man, and therefore, from the very nature
of society, there are classes of social questions, all of
direct and vital importance to social organisation,
which although closely connected and not incapable
of co-ordination, are essentially distinct, and conse-
quently admit of no common solution.

Socialists almost always assume the contrary. And
for this plain reason that unless the natures of man
and of society be regarded as far meaner, poorer, and
simpler than they really are, the claim to regulate
human life and to organise human society socialisti-
cally is manifestly presumptuous. To render the claim
plausible it must sacrifice the individual to society,
and give inadequate views of the natures and ends
of both. The only modern Socialist, so far as I am
aware, who has made a serious and sustained attempt
to devise a comprehensive scheme of social organisa-
tion is Comte. Few men have possessed greater
synthetic and systematising power. And yet his
attempt at social reconstruction was, notwithstanding
many valuable elements and indications, a grotesque
and gigantic failure. It assumed as a fundamental
truth that belief in the entire subordination of the
individual to society which more than any other
error vitiated the political philosophy and political
practice of classical antiquity, and from which

SOCIALISM AND SOCIAL ORGANISATION 275

Christianity emancipated the European mind. It
proposed to organise the definitive society of the
future according to the mediaeval pattern ; to entrust
the government of it to a temporal and spiritual
power — a patriciate and a clergy — the former
centring in a supreme triumvirate and the latter in
a supreme pontiff — and the two conjointly regulating
the whole lives, bodily and mental, affective and
active, private and public, in minute conformity to
the creed of Comte ; and even, while forbidding
belief in the existence of God and of the immortality
of the soul, to impose a varied and elaborate worship.
It is unnecessary to criticise such a system, although
it is noteworthy as an almost unique attempt to
accomplish the task incumbent on Socialism as a
theory of social organisation.

Socialism generally concerns itself mainly or ex-
clusively with the organisation of industry. But it
manifestly thereby forfeits all claim to be considered
an adequate theory of society, if society really has
a religious, ethical, aesthetic, and intellectual work
to do as well as an economic one ; if it requires to
organise its science and speculation, its art and
literature, its law and morals, its faith and worship,
equally with its labour and wealth. When Social-
ism confines itself, as it commonly does, to the sphere
of industry, it can only prove itself to be a sufficient
and satisfactory theory of social organisation by
proving that there is far less in society to organise
than is generally supposed ; that men " live by
bread alone," and need only such advantages as
wealth properly distributed will procure for them ;

276 SOCIALISM

that they are merely creatures of earth and time ;
and that all aims which presuppose thoughts of
absolute truth and right, of God and of eternity, are
to be discarded as illusory. Of course, it does not
prove this ; but it almost always assumes it as if it
had been proved. There is at present little Social-
ism properly so called which does not rest on an
atheistic or agnostic view of the universe, on a
hedonistic or utilitarian theory of conduct, and on a
conception of the natures of man and of society
which ejects or ignores much of the wealth of their
contents.

The prevalent socialistic mode of solving the
problem of social organisation is that of simplifying
it by eliminating as many of its essential elements
as render the task of Socialism difficult. It is
wonderful to what an extent many Socialists thus
simplify it. Many of them look forward to the near
abolition even of politics. The two most eminent of
contemporary Socialists, Engels and Liebknecht,
expect that when the State establishes Collectivism
by socialising all capital and directing and controlling
all labour, so far from employing its enormous power
to extend its sphere of action and encroach on the
rights of individuals and of neighbouring States, it
will voluntarily die unto its old self, sacrifice its
very existence as a State by ceasing to be political
at all, and, as one of them has said, " concern itself
no longer with the government of persons but with
the administration of things." That such a notion
as this of the possible elimination of all political
interests and struggles from the life of society in the

SOCIALISM AND SOCIAL ORGANISATION 277

future, and the possible reduction of all the activities
of government to that of individual direction, should
have been entertained by the chief living theorist
and the greatest living tactician of the Socialism
which especially pretends to be scientific and prac-
tical, shows how absurd a thought may be generated
by an enthusiastic wish even in a naturally clear
and vigorous mind, and may well lead us to suspect
that much else in the system may be of the same
character and origin.

That there will be no serious religious difficulties
and troubles under the regime of Collectivism is
generally assumed by the advocates of the system.
With rare exceptions, they are decidedly hostile to
Theism, Christianity, and the Church, and only
repudiate the charge of being anti- religious on the
ground that Socialism itself so purifies and ennobles
human life as to be entitled to the name of religion.
But all that is commonly called religion, and all
that has been founded on it, they regard as per-
nicious superstition, and an obstacle to the organi-
sation of society on collectivist lines. While clear
and explicit, however, in their denunciation of it,
they are extremely vague and reticent as to how
they mean to deal with it. Can Collectivism be
established at all until religion and religious institu-
tions are got rid of? Some think that it cannot;
others that it can. Those who think that it cannot
seem to me to have the clearer vision ; but I should
like them to explain how, then, they hope to get it
established. What do they mean to do with
T heists, Protestants, Catholics, Greek Christians,

278 SOCIALISM

Jews, and Mohammedans ? They are not likely for
centuries to convince them by arguments. They
are not strong enough to overcome them by force.
To assume that religion is so effete that those who
profess it are ready to renounce it without being
either intellectually convinced or physically coerced
is unjust and unwarranted.

On the other hand, suppose that Collectivism
is established, and yet that religions and Churches
are not overthrown. How, in this case, can
the collectivist society be governed and £ organ-
ised by a merely temporal or industrial power?
How can it fail to be governed and organised
also by the spiritual power, which may be,
perhaps, all the more influential and despotic
because the temporal power is at once despotic
and exclusively industrial? How can a Collec-
tivism which is tolerant of religion be without
religious troubles ? I have sought in vain in the
writings of Collectivists for definite and reasoned
answers to these questions. I have only found
instead these two assumptions, alike without evi-
dence : that religion will either somehow speedily
disappear to make way for Collectivism ; or that if
it survive its establishment it will have changed its
nature, lost the will and power to move and agitate
the hearts of men, and will allow the temporal
authority to mould and govern society with un-
divided sway.

If what we have been maintaining is true even in
substance, social organisation is from its very nature
a complex operation, and incapable of being so sim-

SOCIALISM AND SOCIAL ORGANISATION 279

plified as Collectivists and most other Socialists
suppose. It must be carried on in a variety of
directions which are distinct, and none of which are
to be overlooked or neglected. It must be carried
on, therefore, not through the State alone, but
much more through the individual units which com
pose society, and those natural or voluntary groups
of individual units which may be considered the
organs of society ; not according to a single plan
laid down by authority, but along a number of lines
freely chosen.

The individual is of primary importance. Society
is composed of individuals, and their spirit is its
spirit. This is not to say that the individual is of
exclusive importance, or that we are not to take full
account of the dependence of character on social cir-
cumstances. It does not mean that we are Individ-
ualists ; that we sever the individual from society,
or absorb society in the individual, or oppose the
individual to society. It only signifies that with
the individualist error we set aside the socialist
error also ; that we refuse to regard individuals as
the mere creatures of society instead of as mainly
its creators, or to deny that they are ends in them-
selves, with lives of their own. The individualist
" abstraction " is bad ; the socialist " abstraction " is
still worse. The influence of the social atmosphere
and of social surroundings is great, but still it is
only secondary ; mainly product not producer. The
constitutive qualities and powers of human nature
have been modified in many respects from age to
age with the successive changes of society, but they

28o SOCIALISM

have not been certainly or conspicuously altered in
their essential character within the whole of re-
corded time. The Socialists of to-day who expect
a vast mental and moral improvement of individuals
from a mere reorganisation of society are just as
Utopian as their predecessors have been. Social
organisation without personal reformation will
always have poor and disappointing results. Dr.
Chalmers wrote his " Political Economy " to demon-
strate that the economic well-being of a people
is dependent on its moral well-being. Whether
he quite succeeded or not is of small consequence,
seeing that reason, experience, and history so amply
testify to the truth of his thesis. Those who would
reverse it and maintain that mere economic changes
will produce moral well-being or even economic
prosperity must be incompetent reasoners, slow to
learn from experience, and hasty readers of history.
What chiefly differentiates man from man is
character ; what chiefly elevates man, and secures
for him the rank and happiness of a man, is charac-
ter ; and character is always far less a product of
society than the growth of personal self-develop-
ment. Hence the extreme importance of the whole
art of education, and of all that directly affects true
self-development or self-realisation. There is un-
doubtedly still abundant room and urgent need for
improvement in this sphere. A vast amount of
what passes for education is positively mischievous
and tends directly not to educe and strengthen, but
to repress and enfeeble, the personality. Perhaps of
all our social evils the least visible to the vulgar eye,

SOCIALISM AND SOCIAL ORGANISATION 281

yet the most cruel, wasteful, and deplorable, is the
extent to which cramming is substituted for educa-
tion in all kinds of schools from the lowest to the
highest. If we only knew and felt what education
really is, and recognised aright nothing to be
worthy of the name which does not train the bodily
powers, or improve temper and disposition, or evoke
and widen the social sympathies, or awaken and
regulate imagination, or quicken and exercise
aesthetic discernment, or deepen and elevate the
sense of reverence, or help to make conscience the
uncontested sovereign of the human mind, we
would have immensely less of poverty, of unmanly
helplessness, of bad workmanship, of low taste, of
scandalous luxury, of intemperance, of licentious-
ness, of dishonesty, of irreligion, and the like, to
complain of. Appropriate training to bodily deft-
ness and dexterity, to intelligence, virtue, and
religion, although obviously a prime condition of
true social organisation, and just what education
should supply, is either not given at all, or only in
a wretchedly small measure by the so-called educa-
tion of the present day. Of course I cannot dwell
on this subject ; it would be unfair, however, not to
mention that as regards the true nature of educa-
tion, and especially as regards the relation of true
education to art, few have spoken worthier words
or done nobler work than two socialist men of
genius — John Ruskin and William Morris.

The importance of the Family follows from the
importance of individuals. Fathers and mothers
exert a far greater influence on the welfare of

282 SOCIALISM

society than politicians and legislators. " The
popular estimate of the family," says Westcott, " is
an infallible criterion of the state of society. Heroes
cannot save a country where the idea of the Family
is degraded ; and strong battalions are of no avail
against homes guarded by faith and reverence and
love."^ Comte has declared that "the first seven
years of life are the most decisive, because then a
mother's discipline lays so firm a foundation that
the rest of life is seldom able to affect it." Not
improbably he was right. Certainly there can be
no satisfactory organisation of any community or
nation in which the Family is not a healthy social
organ.

From the time of Plato to the present day the
constitution of the Family has been a favourite
subject of socialistic speculation ; and very naturally
so, both because of the vast influence of the Family
on society, and because at no period of its history
has it been free from grave and deplorable defects.
As we trace the evolution of the Familv from the

tf

obscurity of the prehistoric age through various
stages in the oriental world, in Greece, in Rome,
and Christendom, terrible traces of the selfishness
and cruelty of man, of the oppression and suffering
of woman, of the maltreatment of the young, the
feeble, and the dependent, and of legislative folly
and iniquity, continually present themselves to our
contemplation. Truly the task of socialist criticism
is here very easy. But it is also of comparatively

* " Social Aspects of Christianity," p. 22.

SOCIALISM AND SOCIAL ORGANISATION 283

little value. What is needed is practical guidance
in the work of amelioration, instruction of a truly
constructive character. Of this, however, Socialism
has singularly little to give us.

All the schemes of Family organisation proposed
by socialist theorists in the course of the last two
thousand years and more have been of a kind which,
had they unfortunately been adopted, would, instead
of improving the world, have done it incalculable mis-
chief. They have been reactions from actuality, not
without some soul of truth and justice in them, yet so
extreme and unnatural that carrying them into effect,
far from purifying and elevating the Family, would
have degraded it, and brutalised the community.
And Socialism has in this direction made hardly
any progress. Bebel and Lafargue have not got
beyond Plato and Campanella. Socialist critics of
what they call " the bourgeois Family " or " mercan-
tile marriage," can easily point out various imperfec-
tions prevalent in modern domastic life ; but when,
granting their criticisms not to be without more or
less foundation, we ask them how they propose to get
rid of, or at least to lessen, the evils which they
have indicated, they have virtually no other answer
to give us than that they would introduce evils far
worse — absorption of the Family in the community,
free love, the separation of spouses at will, transfer-
ence of children from the charge of their parents to
that of the State.

Without essential injustice the whole practical
outcome of socialistic theorising as to the Family
may be stated in the following sentences from the

284 SOCIALISM

joint work of Morris and Bax : " The present mar-
riage system is based on the general supposition of
economic dependence of the woman on the man, and
the consequent necessity for his making provision
for her which she can legally enforce. This basis
would disappear with the advent of social economic
freedom, and no binding contract would be necessary
between the parties as regards livelihood ; while
property in children would cease to exist, and every
infant that came into the world would be born into
full citizenship, and would enjoy all its advantages,
whatever the conduct of its parents might be. Thus
a new development of the family would take place,
on the basis, not of a predetermined lifelong business
arrangement, to be formally and nominally held to,
irrespective of circumstances, but on mutual inclina-
tion and affection, an association terminable at the
will of either party. It is easy to see how great
the gain would be to morality and sentiment in this
change. At present, in this country at least, a
legal and quasi-moral offence has to be committed
before the obviously unworkable contract can be set
aside. On the Continent, it is true, even at the
present day the marriage can be dissolved by
mutual consent ; but either party can, if so inclined,
force the other into subjection, and prevent the
exercise of his or her freedom. It is perhaps
necessary to state that this change would not be
made merely formally and mechanically. There
would be no vestige of reprobation weighing on the
dissolution of one tie and the forming of another.
For the abhorrence of the oppression of the man by

SOCIALISM AND SOCIAL ORGANISATION 285

the woman or the woman by the man (both of
which continually happen to-day under the aegis of
our would-be moral institutions) will certainly be an
essential outcome of the ethics of the New Society." *
What meagre and uncertain results ! What lame
and impotent conclusions !

A true organisation of the Family cannot be
effected on socialistic lines. It must proceed from
and carefully maintain the autonomy of the Family
against the encroachments of the community. It
must treat the Family as a true society with rights
and duties of its own, and as sacred and binding as
are those of the State or nation. The present Pope
— one of the wisest and worthiest of those who
have occupied the papal throne — has most justly
said that " the idea that the civil government
should, at its own discretion, penetrate and pervade
the family and the household, is a great and
pernicious mistake." A people which loses sight of
this truth is one in which all personal liberties, and
all regard for justice, will rapidly become extinct.

The economic dependence of the wife on the
husband must always be the rule among the labour-
ing classes. An emancipation of women from their
household duties in order that they may be able to
labour for remuneration in the service of the com-
munity, and of men from obligation to maj^e pro-
vision for their wives and children, would produce a
base kind of freedom economically and morally
ruinous both to women and men, and to the former

* "Socialism," dec., pp. 299, 300.

286 SOCIALISM

also cruelly unjust. Where the economic independ-
ence of women or men, in the married state, is actual
or possible, it is not by abolishing the right of
contract and substituting for it a condition of status
that satisfactory arrangements can be reached as to
the property of married people, but by the fuller de-
velopment of the right of contract — a development
towards the perfect equality of freedom, and justice
as regards husband and wife, and with no other
restrictions than those necessary to guard against
either of the contracting parties swindling the
other, or both conspiring to swindle the public.

The movement towards securing to women equal
rights with men and free scope to exercise all their
faculties, although some have regarded it as likely
to endanger and disorganise the Family, really
tends directly and powerfully to its consolidation
and true development. It favours the formation of
a better class of women. It contributes largely to
increase the number of women who are not necessi-
tated to enter into loveless marriages. Within the
last twenty years there has been decided improve-
ment in this direction ; and there will doubtless be
more. It is a right direction, however, precisely
because it leads away from the slavery which Social-
ism would introduce, and towards full personal
freedom.

To transfer, as Socialists have proposed, the care
of children from the Family to the State would be
to rob the Family of a large portion both of its
utility and of its happiness, and to devolve on the
State responsibilities which it must necessarily fail

SOCIALISM AND SOCIAL ORGANISATION 287

to meet aright. The State should supplement but
not supersede the education of the Family. To
replace marriage by mere association between man
and woman terminable at the will of either, would
be not, as Morris and Bax imagine, " a great gain to
morality and sentiment," but an incalculable and
irreparable loss. As long as the moral sense was so
deadened and the better feelings of human nature
so perverted as to tolerate the change, sexual pro-
miscuity and hetairism would prevail. So-called
Free Love is untrue and degrading love ; love from
which all the pure, permanent, and elevating ele-
ments are absent ; love reduced to animal passion
and imaginative illusions ; the love which is power-
ful to destroy families but powerless to sustain and
organise them.*

The Church draws its chief strength from religion,

* The following observations of Dr. Schaffie may usefully supplement
the preceding remarks as to the Family : " It is true we are told that
things would for the most part remain as they are, and marriage- unions
would still for the most part remain constant ; Free Love would only be
called into play for the loosening of unhappy marriages. Then why not
let the stable marriage-tie be the rule, with separation allowed in cases
where the marriage-union has become morally and physically impossible?
Why not have at least the existing marriage-law as among Protestants ?
But the whole statement, even if made in good faith, will not stand
examination.

" What then is an ' unhappy ' or relatively a ' happy ' marriage ? No
one is perfect, and therefore not a single marriage can ever hope to be
entirely 'happy.' First love must always yield to sober reality, after the
cunning of nature has secured its end for the preservation of the species.
In the indissoluble life-union of marriage, with the daily and hourly
contact between the inevitable imperfections of both parties, there neces-
sarily arise frictions and discords, which, if severance is free, will only
too easily give rise to the most ill-considered separations from the effect
of momentary passion ; and all the more readily if the one party have
begun to grow tedious to the other, or pleasant to a third party. The

288 SOCIALISM

from what is spiritual in human nature, and as this
is permanent, there is no probability that the
Church will ever cease to be a social force. We have
only to study with intelligence and care the state of
feeling and of opinion, and the relative strength of
parties and of tendencies in Italy, Spain, France,
Belgium, and Britain, to convince ourselves that
the religious question, far from having lost its

very essential advantage of the stable marriage-tie is just this, that it
secures the peaceable adjustment of numberless unavoidable disagree-
ments ; that it prevents the many sparrings and jarrings of private life
from reaching the public eye ; that it allows of openness on both sides, and
avoids the possibility of pretence ; that it induces self-denial for the sake
of others ; that it insures a greater proportion of mutuality in both
spiritual and physical cares for the general run of wedded couples — in
short, that for the majority of cases at least a relative possibility of
wedded happiness is attainable. Therefore the indissoluble marriage-tie
must still remain the rule, and separation the exception, confined to cases
where its persistence becomes a moral impossibility. But it is clear that
if once the emancipation of woman made it general for her to step out of
the house into public life, and if once the bond of common love and of
common care for the offspring were loosened, or even weakened, frequent
marriage changes would very easily become the rule, and permanent
unions only the exception. The training in self-conquest, in gentleness,
in consideration for others, in fairness, and in patience, which the pre-
sent family and wedded relations entail, would also be lost in the entrance
of all into public life outside the home. The gain to separate individuals
in point of sensual gratification through fugitive unions would be very far
from outweighing the loss of the ideal good attainable by man, and by

man only, through the channel of marriage Existing marriage

rights and married life are susceptible of further improvement, but this
is not to say that the problem of their personal, moral, industrial, and
social amelioration will be solved by facilitating for every one the break-
ing of the marriage-tie ; we may rather look to solving it by restoring,
perfecting, and generalising the external and moral conditions of the
highest possible happiness in binding unions. This can be done without
Social Democracy, and cannot be done with it. The new hetairism of
Free Love reduces man to a refined animal, society to a refined herd, a
superior race of dogs and apes, even though all should become productive
labourers, and spend a few hours daily in manual labour." (" Impossibility
of Social Democracy," pages 147-51.)

SOCIALISM AND SOCIAL ORGANISATION 289

interest and importance, is likely to be far more
agitated in the twentieth century of our era than it
has been in the nineteenth, to be more interwoven
with political and social questions, and to be the
source of more momentous changes in the develop-
ment of humanity. Those who fancy that they are
indicating a way of solving or of settling it when
they repeat such party catchwords as " Secularise
the State," " Dissociate Politics from Religion,"
" Separate Church and State," and the like, are
mistaken. These phrases solve nothing, settle no-
thing, and recommend what is as impossible as to
separate soul and body without producing death.
The Church may contest the action of the State,
and tyrannise over its subjects all the more for
being in so-called separation from it. The Church
necessarily acts on society with such power either
for good or ill that it is of the highest importance
that it should be for good. An enlightened pure, and
earnest Church, faithful to the principles and ani-
mated by the spirit of its Founder, is not less
essential to the right organisation of society, and to
the prosperity and progress of a nation than a good
civil government. Individuals become through con-
nection with it far more able to benefit their fellows
and serve their country.

What have Socialists to propose regarding organi-
sation in this sphere? Nothing, certainly, of any
value. The main body of them cherish the expecta-
tion of the disappearance of the Church. This only
shows their inability and unwillingness to look at
facts as they are. Even if a man disbelieve in the

29o SOCIALISM

truth of Christianity he must be credulous to sup-
pose that the power of the Christian Church will
not continue for centuries to be felt. Other Social-
ists say, we shall treat religion as a private affair,
and leave the Church to itself. That is so far good.
The Church can only organise itself aright by
working freely, and from within. Yet who that
will reflect can fail to see how utterly inadequate a
solution the answer is ? It simply means that with
a large portion of the work of social organisation
Socialism acknowledges itself to be incompetent to
deal. Socialism will let the Church alone, because
conscious of its inability to deal with it consistently
otherwise than in ways which would be deemed
intolerant and oppressive. Socialists forget in this
connection to ask, Will the Church let the social-
istic commonwealth alone ? Is neutrality possible
between a religious and an atheistic society ? Can
a self-governed Church co-operate or even perma-
nently coexist with a communistically or collectivis-
tically governed State ? Must the conditions on
which a Free Church holds property not be irrecon-
cilable with the laws by which a Socialist State
regulates property ? In none of the more prevalent
forms of contemporary Socialism is the Church
contemplated as an enduring and influential agent
of social amelioration.

Within the limits at my disposal it is impossible
to treat of the process of organisation which, in
consequence of the latest extension of the electorate,
is most visible at present — organisation in the
direction of more local self-government, of a greater

SOCIALISM AND SOCIAL ORGANISATION 291

representation of the poorer classes in the manage-
ment of municipal, parochial, and county affairs ; in
other words, organisation towards a fuller realisa-
tion of the democratic ideal, now supreme and
dominant in political life. This process involves
the devolution of power from a central legislature
to bodies with more limited spheres of control
and administration, and the more varied and
vigorous development of representative govern-
ment ; but it is in no respect of a necessarily
socialistic nature.

Nor can the organisation of science, art, and
literature, as bearing on that of society, be dis-
cussed, intimate and comprehensive although the
connection be ; but manifestly such organisation
should be chiefly brought about by the exertions of
scientists, artists, and literary men themselves — i.e.
by those most qualified to effect, and most directly
interested in effecting it — and only to a compara-
tively small extent by State regulation and encour-
agement.

Even as to industrial organisation my remarks
must be few and brief. It can only be satisfactorily
accomplished if effectuated chiefly from within by
the free yet combined action of those who are
specially engaged in industry. They have no right
to expect that it will be done for them by the
State, or at the expense of the community. There
is no need that it should be done for them, as they
have wealth and power enough to do it for them-
selves. Their own history is a conclusive proof,
whatever Socialists may say to the contrary, of

292 SOCIALISM

their power to combine, organise, and prosper under
a regime of liberty.

It is greatly to be desired that there were more
concerted and united action on the part of the
employers of labour in the various departments of
industry with a view to bringing their departments
into a thoroughly sound condition : that capitalists
and masters combined and co-operated, not merely
for self-defence against the workers, but also on
behalf of the workers, and for the general good of
trade. It is obvious that they are strong enough
and rich enough, if united and earnest, to remove
some of the most grievous of the evils of which
labour has to complain.

One of these is that exemplary men may, without
any fault of their own, after a lifetime of toil, when
strength fails, be left in utter destitution, solely
dependent on public charity. Can it be supposed
that the employers of labour in such departments as
the coal and iron trade, paper-making and publish-
ing, ship-building, brewing, etc., could not, if they
would, remove this stain on the civilisation of a
nation like Britain, and provide for their labourers
in old age pensions which would be as honourable as
those of the soldiers ? In some departments a
childless millionaire might do it at his death for the
whole trade in which he had gained his fortune, and
at the same time leave behind him a monument
which would most honourably perpetuate his name.
- Then there is the evil of concurrent periods of
protracted depression of trade and scarcity of
employment, urgently calling for provision against

SOCIALISM AND SOCIAL ORGANISATION 293

it being made when trade is prosperous and employ-
ment plenty ; for a system of organised insurance
which would carry those thrown out of work
through the evil days. The burden of such a
system should be borne partly by employers and
partly by employed. What is to be aimed at is
that in each industry all willing labourers should be
saved from the degradation of becoming the reci-
pients of charity. It is an aim which might in
some respects be more satisfactorily realised by
combined voluntary effort than by enforced taxa-
tion, although it is probably less likely to be so
realised. Employers would act wisely were they
freely to tax themselves, even to no small extent, in
order to attain it.

The movement for compulsory labour-insurance
against the evils involved in loss of work or of
capacity for work is still far from advanced, yet it
has within recent years made considerable progress
in various countries of Europe. It has, in all pro-
bability, an important future before it, and in con-
junction with the already established Savings Bank
system, may greatly improve the position of the
wage-earning classes. The principle on which it
proceeds is not in itself socialistic, but rather the
reverse ; it is the principle of requiring of indi-
viduals, trades, or classes which can provide for
themselves protection against the contingencies of
evil to which they are specially exposed that they
do so, instead of leaving the commonwealth to bear
the burdens which must fall upon it from their not
doing so. Long before Socialism took any interest

294 SOCIALISM

in the principle it had been embodied in such
institutions as the Scottish Ministers' Widows'
Fund, &c.*

The various forms of co-operative production and
industrial partnership which have been tried within
the last sixty years are the beginnings of a perfectly
legitimate movement which may be reasonably
hoped to have a great future before it. Its aim-
to make labourers also capitalists, sharers of profits
as well as recipients of wages — is admirable. In
principle it is unassailable. The difficulties im-
peding it are only difficulties of application, and
arise from causes which the growth of intelligence
and self-control, the spread of mutual confidence,
the acquisition of commercial experience, and the
increase of pecuniary means, will diminish. At the
same time it is easy to form visionary hopes in
regard to it. The goal at which it aims may be
reached otherwise, arid often better otherwise.
While it can hardly be too earnestly desired that
workmen in general should be also capitalists, there
may be in many cases no special advantage in their
being capitalists in the same business or concern in
which they are workmen. It is the union of capital
and labour in the same hands, in the same persons>
which is the great point, f

* Those who may wish to know what has been done through legislation
in Germany, Austria, Denmark, Hungary, Norway, Holland, Belgium,
Russia, Sweden, and Switzerland regarding such insurance as is referred to
in this paragraph will find full information in M. Maurice Bellom's
" Assurance contre la maladie." 1893.

t For a statement of opposite views as to the relation of Co-operation
and Socialism, see " Co-operation v. Socialism : being a report of a debate

SOCIALISM AND SOCIAL ORGANISATION 295

One of the most interesting yet difficult of the
themes connected with the industrial organisation
of society is that of participation in the product of
labour or profit-sharing by employe's. It is plain
that the condition of workmen must be greatly
improved even in countries like our own before this
system can become more than subordinate and
supplemental to that of wages ; but that in this
latter form it may increasingly, and with ever-
growing advantage, be introduced seems also certain.
The regularity and certainty of the labourer's re-
muneration, which are the great merits of the wages-
system, are necessarily gained at the expense of a con-
comitant variation in relation to demand and prices,
which is also a merit, and which can only be secured
through profit-sharing. Profit-sharing has many
modes, none of them without defects or easy of suc-
cessful adoption, but also none of them without advan-
tages or incapable of being followed within certain
limitations. As the great obstacle to the develop-
ment of profit-sharing is the want of a right under-
standing and of sufficient trust between employers
and employed, the extension of the system will be
at least a good criterion of the progress of a truly
harmonious social organisation.*

Hitherto workmen have combined chiefly in order

between H. H. Champion and B. Jones at Toynbee Hall." Manchester,
1887. As to Co-operation itself G. J. Holyoake's " History ot Co-operation
in England," and V. P. Hubert's " Associations Co-operatives en France et
a 1'Etranger " are specially informative works.

* On profit-sharing the two most instructive studies, perhaps, are Victor
Bohmert's " Gewinnbetheiligung," 1878, and Nicholas P. Oilman's "Profit-
Sharing between Employer and Employee," 1889.

296 SOCIALISM

to secure favourable terms for labour in the struggle
with capital. Such combination is necessary, yet
far from the only kind of combination necessary to
them. And one may well wish to see some combina-
tion of a higher and more constructive kind among
them ; more organisation for their general good, for
purposes of intellectual and moral improvement, and
even for rational amusement. The possibilities of
organisation of this kind, far from having been
exhausted by them, are as yet almost untouched.
Workmen cannot too clearly realise that any institu-
tion or movement which will prove of much benefit
to their class must either be their own work, or made
their own by cordial co-operative appropriation. Ex-
ternal help without self-help will come to little ; and
the self-help of a class, to be effective, must be
earnest, general, and systematised.

It is not difficult to perceive where the crux of
the problem of industrial organisation lies. In
ordinary times steady, intelligent, skilled, efficient
workmen are, in Britain at least, neither out of
work nor wretchedly paid. They have fully proved
that they can organise themselves ; and owing to
their organisation, numbers, and the importance of
the services which they render to the community,
they can give effective expression to their wishes as
to wages, the duration of the working day, and other
conditions of labour. They are probably as able to
protect themselves as are their employers. They
have manifestly outgrown the need for exceptional
State-protection, for grandmotherly legislation. Such
Socialism as Collectivists advocate, by restricting

SOCIALISM AND SOCIAL ORGANISATION 297

their liberty would only diminish their influence and
power.

While there is a large amount of destitution
among operatives, it is chiefly confined to two grades
of them. First, there are those who, although
willing to work, and to work diligently, bring to
their work merely physical strength and an honest
will, not intelligence and skill. Wherever there is
a numerous and increasing population such workmen
must be in constant danger of being greatly in
excess of the demand for them. They are so now in
this country. And hence there is in it a large body
of men who are badly paid, hardly driven, sorely
taken advantage of, preyed on by sweaters, misled
by agitators, and easily capable of being stirred up
to disorder, but feebly capable, or altogether in-
capable, of the sort of organisation which would
really strengthen and profit them.

What is to be done as regards them? This is
a crucial question. Socialism does not help us to
answer it. It is obviously, for the most part, an essen-
tially educational question. So educate all who are
to become workmen that they will become, or at least
be inexcusable if they do not become, intelligent and
skilled workmen, and the question will be answered as
far as it can be answered. But free Britain can thus
answer it just as well as a socialistic Britain could.
And it is her manifest interest to apply all her intelli-
gence and energy so to answer it ; to make it a prime
object of her policy to have all her workmen intelli-
gent and skilled — better workmen than those of
other countries. Of such workmen she can never

298 SOCIALISM

have too many, or even a sufficient number ; and
such workmen never can be very badly paid in a
free country. That she will ever perfectly solve the
problem indicated I am not so optimistic as to sup-
pose. I have little faith in absolute solutions in
politics ; I have much more confidence in what, to
use mathematical phraseology, may be called asymp-
totic solutions — continual approximations to ideals
never completely reached.

There is, secondly, a class of workmen whose
destitution is mainly self-caused ; mainly due to
intemperance, to idleness, and to other forms of vice.
It is impossible to follow in regard to them the
advice of Mr. Herbert Spencer — " Do nothing ; leave
' good-for-nothings ' to perish." The human heart
is not hard enough for that ; and human society is
not wholly guiltless of the faults even of the least
worthy of its members. On the other hand, simply
to give charity to the idle, the drunken, and dis-
solute, is to increase the evil we deplore, and to
divert charity from its proper objects. What is
wanted is a system which will couple provision for
the relief of the unworthy with conditions of labour
and amendment, so that their appeals for charity
can be refused with the knowledge that they have
only to work and be sober in order not to starve.
To devise an appropriate system of the kind is
doubtless difficult, but surely is not impossible.

CHAPTER IX.

SOCIALISM AND DEMOCRACY.

IN the preceding pages I have especially had in view
the Collectivism of Social Democracy, or, in other
words, Democratic Socialism. Other forms of Social-
ism seem to me to be at present comparatively un-
important. Our age is a thoroughly democratic
one. The democratic spirit pervades and moulds all
our institutions ; it raises up what is in accordance
with it and casts down what is contrary to it ; it
confers life and inflicts death, as it never did in any
previous period of the world's history. Contem-
porary Socialism manifestly draws most of its
strength from its alliance with Democracy. Not
unnaturally it rests its hopes of success mainly on
the full development of democratic principles and
feelings ; on the irresistible strength of the democratic
movement. Its adherents hope to gain the masses
to their views, and by the votes and power of the
masses to carry these views into effect.

The connection between Socialism and Democracy
being thus intimate and vital it is expedient to con-
sider for a little Democracy in itself, and in its
relation to Socialism.

What is Democracy? The etymology of the
word yields as good an answer as we are likely to

300 SOCIALISM

get. Democracy is rule or government by the
people ; it is the system of political order which
every one who is held bound to conform to it has a
share in. forming and modifying. A community or
nation is a Democracy when, according to its con-
stitution and in real fact, the supreme governing
authority, or rather the head source of political
power, is not an individual or a class but the com-
munity or nation itself as a whole. Such is the
general idea of Democracy ; the principle on which
it rests and in which it moves ; the end or goal to
which it tends ; the ideal in the realising of which
it can alone find satisfaction, self-consistency, and
completeness.

But it is only an idea or ideal. The ideal has
never been manifested on earth in any social form.
There has never existed a pure and complete
Democracy, any more than a pure and complete
Monarchy or Aristocracy. Every actual govern-
ment is mixed. There have been many communities
called Democracies ; but they have all been only
more or less democratic. The ancient " Demo-
cracies " were not States governed by the people.
They were governments in the hands of the poorer
classes of the people — the classes which had wrenched
power from the richer classes, yet who denied free-
dom to multitudes of slaves. In other words, they
were class governments. But government by a
class is essentially incompatible with a true notion
of Democracy, rule by the people, not by any class
or classes of it, rich or poor.

Nor has the democratic idea ever fully actualised

SOCIALISM AND DEMOCRACY 301

itself in modern times. Our own country has been
gradually becoming democratic, and is now some-
what strongly democratic ; but it is in no sense
strictly a Democracy. Large numbers of the people
have still not even an indirect share in the govern-
ment of the country. If every person is entitled to
even such a share in it our most advanced politicians
have not been very zealous in promoting the rights
of their fellow-citizens. We are still far from man-
hood suffrage ; and manhood suffrage is, as regards
the suffrage, only half-way to the democratic ideal ;
for all women are people, and if every man has a
right to vote as one of the people so has every
woman.

When we get, if we ever get, to manhood and
womanhood suffrage, then, but only then, shall we
be strictly a Democracy ; and even then only in
what may be called the lower sense of the term.
The government of the country will then be in-
directly in the hands of the people. The electorate
will be coextensive with the people. Every one will
have a share in the legislation of the nation to the
extent of having a vote in the appointment of one
of its legislators.

But will the attainment of this be a full realisa-
tion of the idea of Democracy, or likely to satisfy
the desires of Democracy ? The ancient Democracies
were much more democratic than that, and far from
so easily satisfied. In them the people directly
governed. The citizens of Athens were all members,
and even paid members, of its government. They
had vastly more influence on the internal and

302 SOCIALISM

external politics of Athens than the parliamentary
electors of Britain on the politics of Britain. Of
course, this was chiefly owing to the comparative
smallness of the territory and the comparative few-
ness of the citizens of Athens. The direct govern-
ment of extensive and populous countries by the
whole mass of their citizens is obviously impossible.
That a very large number of the inhabitants of
Britain, France, and the United States have any
share at all in the government of their respective
nations, they owe to the elaboration of that great
political instrument, the system of representa-
tion.

But the representative system is no development
of the idea of Democracy ; on the contrary, it is an
obvious and enormous limitation or restriction of it.
If Democracy be the entirely and exclusively legiti-
mate form or species of government it cannot con-
sistently adopt the representative system at all. It
cannot reasonably be expected to be content to
serve merely as the means of choosing an aristocracy.
If the democratic idea be an absolute and complete
truth ; if the central principle of its creed, the equal
right of all to a share in the government of their
country, be an absolute and inalienable right ; not
an equal share for each man in an election merely,
but an equal share in the entire government of the
country is the ideal which every thorough-going
democrat must have in view.

It is one, however, which is manifestly unattain-
able not only in the form of personal participation
in the government of countries like those of modern

SOCIALISM AND DEMOCRACY 303

Europe, but even through the methods of repre-
sentation adopted by the most democratic of these
countries. How, then, can a Democracy which has
a thorough and unqualified belief in the justice of
its own claims and in the certainty and complete-
ness of their realisation, act in accordance with its
faith, and vindicate its pretensions ?

The way in which it is most certain to try so to
act is to endeavour to minimise representation, and
to substitute for it, so far as possible, mere delega-
tion ; or, in other words, it is to insist that its
legislators and functionaries be wholly its servants
and instruments ; that their judgments and acts be
simply the reflections, and expressions of its own
mind and will. Such is the goal to which from its
very nature the absolute democratic idea strives
and tends. In this country we are already to such
an extent democratic that the strain of the move-
ment towards it is distinctly felt. No intelligent
observer, I think, can have failed to perceive that
the House of Commons is not unexposed to a danger
which cannot be warded off by any forms of pro-
cedure, rules, or laws of its own — the danger of
losing its deliberative independence, of becoming a
body of mere mandatories, not free to judge accord-
ing to reason and conscience, but constrained to
decide solely according to the wishes of their con-
stituents. It is as apparent, however, that we
should beware of this danger. When the electors
of this country fancy themselves competent to give
mandates regarding the mass of matters which
must be dealt with by its Legislature, common

304 SOCIALISM

sense must have entirely forsaken them. When
they find men willing to legislate as their mere
mandatories on affairs of national importance,
patriotism must have become extinct among our
so-called politicians. And should government by
mandate ever be established, such government must
of its very nature be so blind, weak, and corrupt
that it will be of short duration. Besides, govern-
ment by delegates is as incompatible as government
by representatives with the direct participation of
the people in the government, or, in other words,
with a full realisation of the democratic ideal of
government.

Hence certain fervent democrats in France, and
Spain, and Russia have advocated the splitting up
of Europe into a multitude of communes sufficiently
small to allow all the adult inhabitants to take a
direct share in their government. These communes,
they believe, would freely federate - into natural
groups, and in process of time form not only a
United States of Europe, but a Confederation of
Humanity. Insensate as this scheme is, it is not
unconnected with the democratic ideal of equality ;
and it rests on a faith in the possibilities and merits
of Home Rule and Federation which is at present in
many minds far in excess of reason. A real and
vital union when attained or attainable is always
to be preferred to mere confederation. A sense of
the equal right of all to rule which cannot tolerate
representative government will not find full satisfac-
tion in a delegative government, or even in the direct
and independent home rule of a small commune ; it

SOCIALISM AND DEMOCRACY 305

must demand, if not the absolute equality, at least the
nearer approximation to it, of self-rule, the rejection
of all authoritative and parliamentary, social and
public government. Beyond democratic Communism
or Collectivism there is democratic Anarchism,
the anarchist Communism or Collectivism, which
leaves every man to be a law unto himself and, so
far as his power extends, unto his neighbour ; which
declares that everything belongs equally to every one,
and nothing specially to any one, and which discards
every idea of reverence and obedience.

What precedes naturally leads us to ask, Is the
democratic idea an absolute and complete truth ?
Is the principle of equality on which Democracy
rests the expression of an absolute and inalienable
right ? Is a thoroughly self- consistent and fully
developed Democracy a possible thing ? Is it a
desirable thing ? Is Democracy the only legitimate
form of government ? Is it necessarily or always the
best government ?

These are questions which, with full conviction, I
answer in the negative. But I have to add that
the democratic idea is truer and less incomplete than
anv rival idea of government ; that the principle of
equality on which Democracy rests is not moving and
swaying the modern mind so widely and powerfully
as it does without reason or justification, any more
than the idea of unity which built up the monarchies
of Europe and the mediaeval Church worked without
a purpose and mission in earlier centuries ; that not
only is no other government more legitimate or
more desirable than Democracy, but that every other

306 SOCIALISM

government does its duty best when it prepares
the way for a reasonable and well-conditioned
Democracy ; and that although Democracy, far
from being necessarily good, may be the worst
of all governments, it can be so only through the
perversion of powers which ought to make it the
best of all governments.

It may be necessary that one man should rule a
community with almost unlimited and uncontrolled
power ; but it can only be so in evil times. The
rule of a few may often be better than the rule of
many, for the few may be fit and the many unfit ;
but that is itself a vast misfortune, and every
addition to the number of the fit is assuredly great
gain. That the rule of one should give place to the
rule of some, and the rule of some to the rule of all,
if the rule be at last as efficacious and righteous as
at first, is progress ; whereas to go from the rule
of all towards that of one alone is to retrograde. A
government in which any class of the people has no
share is almost certain to be a government unjust or
ungenerous to that class of the people, and, therefore,
to that extent a bad government. It may in certain
circumstances be foolish and wrong to extend political
power to all ; but it is always a duty to promote
whatever tends to make those from whom such
power is withheld entitled to possess it, by making
them able to use it wisely and rightly. In this
sense and to this extent every man, it seems to
me, is bound to be the servant and soldier of
Democracy. The true goal of life for each of us
in any sphere of existence is not our own selfish

SOCIALISM AND DEMOCRACY 307

good, or the good of any class or caste, but the
good of all ; and so the goal at which each of us
ought to aim in political life is the good government
of all, by the association and co-operation of all, in
the spirit expressed and demanded by these words
of Jesus : " Let him who would be the first among
you make himself the servant of all."

It is a duty, then, to work towards, and on behalf
of, Democracy ; but only towards, and on behalf of,
a Democracy which knows its own limitations, which
perceives that its distinctive truth is not the whole
truth, and that, therefore, to be exclusive and
thoroughly self-consistent and complete, instead of
being an obligation under which it lies, is a danger
against which it must always be anxiously on its
guard.

The truth distinctive of Democracy, I have said,
is not the whole truth of government. The truth

o

in Monarchy, the necessity of unity of rule and
administration, of a single, centralising, presiding
Will, is also a great and important truth. In all times
of violence and of discord it has come to be felt as
the supreme want of society. Wherever Democracy
rushes into extremes there sets in a reaction
towards unity in excess, the unity of despotism.

The truth in the idea of Aristocracy : the truth
that there must always be in society those who
lead and those who follow ; and that it is of almost
incalculable moment for a people that those who lead
it be those who are ablest to lead it ; its men of
greatest power, energy, and insight, its wisest and
best men : is likewise a truth which will never cease

308 SOCIALISM

to be of quite incalculable value. The nation which
does not feel it to be so, which fails to give due
place and respect to those endowed with the gifts
of real leadership, and accepts instead as good
enough to lead it empty and pretentious men,
flattering and designing men, demagogues and
intriguers, is a nation which will become well
acquainted with ditches and pitfalls, with mis-
fortune and sorrow.

Theocracy as a distinct positive form of government
has almost everywhere passed away, but the idea
which gave rise to it : the idea that the ultimate regu-
lative law of society is not the will of any man or of
any number of men but of God ; that every people
ought to feel and acknowledge itself to be under the
sovereignty of God : has in it a truth which cannot
pass away, whoever may abandon it, betray it, or
rise up against it. It is a truth with which society
cannot dispense. A people which deems its own
will a sufficient law to itself, which does not acknow-
ledge a divine and inviolable law over itself, will
soon experience that it has stripped itself of all
protection from its own arbitrariness and injustice.
Only in the name of a Will superior to all human
wills can man protest with effect against human
arbitrariness and tyranny. Recognition of the
sovereignty of God can alone save us from that
slavery to man which is degrading ; whether it be
slavery to one master or to many, to despotic kings
or despotic majorities.

In the interests, then, of Democracy itself we ought
to combat Democracy in so far as it is exclusive >

SOCIALISM AND DEMOCRACY 309

narrow, intolerant ; in so far as it will not acknow-
ledge and accept the truths in other forms of govern-
ment.

Democracy may tend to be, but is not bound to
be, republican. A constitutional monarch may be
the safest sort of president. From a democratic
point of view the general and abstract argumenta-
tion in favour of Monarchy may seem unsatisfactory,
and yet the Monarchy of a particular country may
have such a place in its history and constitution,
and such a hold on the imaginations and affections
of its people, that no democrat of sane and sober
mind will set himself to uproot and destroy it, and
so to sacrifice the tranquillity of a people for the
triumph merely of a narrow dogma.

More than this, whatever a Democracy may call
itself, it must be so far monarchical, so far add the
truth and virtue of Monarchy to its own, that there
shall be no lack of unity, strength, or order in its
action either at home or abroad. It will not prosper
in the struggle for existence unless it function with
the consistency and effectiveness of a single, central
sovereign Will. If through any fault of Democracy
the loyal, law-abiding citizens of Britain be allowed
to suffer violence and wrong from the lawless and
disloyal, and still more if through any fault of
Democracy Britain should have to endure defeat and
humiliation from a foreign enemy, the result must
inevitably be an indignant and patriotic revulsion
towards a more efficient and anti-democratic govern-
ment. Hence every wise friend of the cause of
Democracy in this land, as well as every lover of his

310 SOCIALISM

country, will sternly discountenance all tendencies
which would lead the Democracy of Britain to sym-
pathise with lawlessness or to be indifferent as to
the naval supremacy and military power of Britain.
Again, in so far as a Democracy fails to provide
for itself a true Aristocracy — raises to leadership not
its ablest, wisest, and best but the incompetent and
unworthy — it must be held not to satisfy the require-
ments of good government. I doubt very much
whether Democracy in Britain is satisfying this re-
quirement at present. I should be surprised to learn
that in the House of Commons there are as many as
forty men of remarkable political insight or ability. It
has been said, and there can be little doubt accurately
said, that were the average of intellect in the Royal
Society of London not greater than that in the
House of Commons, British science would be the
contempt of the world. Yet legislation, not less
than science, can only be successfully engaged in by
persons of exceptional brain power and thoroughly
trained intellects. To be quite candid, however, I
must add that what is most to be desiderated in our
political rulers is not so much brain power as moral
fibre ; not intellectual capacity but integrity.

On the only occasion on which I met J. S. Mill I
heard him say, " I entered Parliament with what I
thought the lowest possible opinion of the average
member, but I left it with one much lower." Parlia-
ment has certainly not improved since Mr. Mill's
time, and especially morally. The more indistinct
the principles, and the more effaced the lines of
action, on which the old parties proceeded are

SOCIALISM AND DEMOCRACY 311

becoming, the more the advantages of party govern-
ment are decreasing and the more its latent evils are
coming to light. Already the struggle of politics is
largely a conscious sham, an ignoble farce, the parties
pretending to hold different principles in order not
to acknowledge that they have only different
interests. Our whole political system is thus per-
vaded with dishonesty. What would in any other
sphere be regarded as lying is in politics deemed
permissible, or even praiseworthy. Ordinary parlia-
mentary candidates have of late years shown them-
selves unprecedentedly servile and untrustworthy.
A large majority of the House of Commons are of
use merely as voting machines, but without inde-
pendence of judgment, sensibility of conscience, or
anxiety to distinguish between good and bad in
legislation or administration. The House of Commons
has during the last decade greatly degenerated. And
it is still plainly on the down-grade.

Is there any remedy ? None, I believe, of a
short or easy kind. No merely political change
will do much good ; such a change as that of
the payment of members, one very likely to be
made before long, cannot fail to do harm. The
House of Commons has been reformed so much
and so often without becoming better, if not with
becoming worse, that all of us should by this time
see that the only real way of improving it is by
improving ourselves ; by each elector being more
independent, serious, and careful in the choice of his
representative ; more able to judge, and more con-
scientious in judging of his ability, force of character

3i2 SOCIALISM

and general soundness of view, while not expecting
him to think entirely as he himself does, or wishing
him to abnegate the reason and conscience by the
independent exercise of which alone he can either
preserve his self-respect or be of use to his country.

The House of Lords, unlike the House of Commons,
might obviously be greatly improved by direct
reform. The time can hardly be far off when no man
will be allowed to fill the office of a legislator merely
because he is the son of his father. The House of
Lords needs reform, however, not with a view to
rendering it more dependent or less influential ; but
in order to make it, through selection from wTithin
and election from without the peerage, if less purely
aristocratic in the conventional sense, more aristo-
cratic in the true sense ; so that not less but more
ability, wisdom, and independence, not less but more
eminence and influence, may be found in it.

With only one House of Legislature, with a merely
single- chambered Parliament, the nation would pro-
bably soon be among the breakers. Those who would
rather end than mend our Upper House are either
very thoughtless persons or persons who desire to see
revolution and confiscation. No large self-governing
nation can wisely dispense with such a safeguard
against its own possible imprudence and precipitancy
as is afforded by the system of two legislative
chambers.

The Crown has in this country been gradually
stripped of every vestige of the power by which
it can check or control Parliament. There is not
in Britain, as in the United States, a Supreme

SOCIALISM AND DEMOCRACY 313

Court of Justice independent of the Legislature and
entitled to pronounce null and void any law which
the Legislature may pass if it set aside the obliga-
tions of free contract or contravene any of the rights
guaranteed in the Constitution of the United States
as essential rights of men. We have no written
constitution ; no definite constitution. Mr. Gladstone
has affirmed, without having been, so far as I am
aware, contradicted, that Parliament is omnipotent,
or without limits to its right of action. If so, and I
imagine it is so, we are a free people living under a
theoretically pure despotism. If so, Parliament has
an unlimited right to do wrong. Of course, con-
fronting such a right there is a higher right, however
unconstitutional it may be, the inalienable right of
men to resist unjust laws, and to punish, in accord-
ance with justice, the authors of them. Our political
constitution, however, being so indeterminate that
the uttermost parliamentary arbitrariness has no
other boundary or barrier than insurrection, there is
all the greater need that our Upper House should
rest on a firmer and broader basis than it does ; and
that in both Houses of Parliament there should be a
greater number of truly wise and eminent men, real
leaders of the people, and fewer ignoble persons,
mere sham leaders.

When the two Chambers or Houses of Parliament
irreconcilably differ in opinion on questions of grave
importance, it seems proper that the nation itself
should decide between them, and that provision
should be made for its doing so otherwise than
through a dissolution of Parliament and a general

3i4 SOCIALISM

election. A general election, indeed, in the present
state of political morality in this country, makes
almost impossible the honest submission of a
special question, however important, to the national
judgment. It gives every opportunity to either
or both of the conflicting political parties to confuse
and pervert public opinion on the question in dispute
by connecting it with other questions, raising side
issues, and appealing to all varieties of prejudice and
of selfishness. The way in which the British people
has been thus befooled in recent years is deplorable.
In certain circumstances a clear and specific referen-
dum to the people would, perhaps, be the best method
of settling a disputed political question ; but recourse
to it in other than rare and very special cases in such
a country as Britain could hardly fail to have harm-
ful consequences.^

To proceed : no form of government can so little
afford to dispense with the essential truth of the
theocratic idea as Democracy. The more the
suffrage is extended, the more political power is
diffused, the more necessary it becomes, so far as
the political order and progress, security and wel-
fare, of a nation is concerned, that a sense of re-
sponsibility to God should prevail throughout the
nation. A Democracy in which the masses are
irreligious must be a specially bad government and
is specially likely to destroy itself. If a people be

* The chapter in Laveleye's " Democratic " on " direct government by
the referendum " is valuable owing to the amount of information which it
contains as to its operation in Switzerland. The conditions of Switzerland,
however, as Laveleye himself points out, are exceptionally favourable to
this kind of government.

SOCIALISM AND DEMOCRACY 315

without faith in an eternal and invisible God, how
can it have a reasonable faith in an eternal and
invisible law of right and duty which is no mere
expression of material fact or creation of human
will ? And if it have not faith in such a law what
rule can it devise as a standard for its own legisla-
tion or for its own obedience ? Will it take might
for right, and bow before accomplished fact, what-
ever it may be ? Surely that would be too mon-
strous. Will it be content with whatever a majority
decides, with whatever is the national will ? But
the mere will of a majority is no more binding on
reason or conscience than that of a minority ; the
mere will of a nation is no more sacred than that of
an individual ; mere will is not righteous will, but
may be either a tyrannical or a slavish will. If a
nation makes laws merely for its own convenience,
why should not any individual break them for his
own convenience ? Will tendency to produce happi-
ness or utility be a sufficient guide as to what laws
should be made and obeyed? No, for that, too,
leaves conscience untouched, cannot summon to self-
sacrifice, must end in a reign of selfishness. Only the
recognition of law as that which has its seat in the
bosom of God can make men at once free from law as
a law of bondage and willingly subject to it as the
law of their own true life, — as the law of order,
justice, and love, which gathers men into societies,
and unites them into one great brotherhood.

The distinctive and favourite principle of Demo-
cracy is Equality. All men are equal and have
equal rights. To the extent of the truth in it this

316 SOCIALISM

principle is valuable. Faith in it has achieved great
things ; it has inspired men to assail arbitrary pre-
tensions and privileges, and to put an end to many
unjust and injurious inequalities. Its mission for
good is doubtless far from as yet exhausted. But
no one ought to allow himself to become the slave
even of a great idea, or to follow it a step farther
than reason warrants. And the idea of equality is
very apt to be the object of an exaggerated and
impure passion. In countless instances the desire
for equality is identical with envy ; with the evil eye
and grudging heart which cannot bear to contemplate
the good of others.

The principle of equality is one not of absolute
but of relative truth. It has only a conditioned
and limited validity. There is, indeed, only one
sort of equality which is strictly a right : namely,
civil equality, equality before the law, the equal
right of every man to justice. And it is a right
only because the law must have due respect to cir-
cumstances and conditions ; because justice itself is
not equality but proportion, rewarding or punishing
according to the measure of merit or demerit.
Political equality, equality as to property, and
religious equality, unless simply applications of this
equality, simply forms of justice, are misleading
fictions which make equality what it ought never
to be — a substitute for justice, or the formula of
justice, or the standard of justice. Political equality
affirmed as an absolute principle can only mean that
every man has a right to an equal share in the
government of the country ; in other words, it can

SOCIALISM AND DEMOCRACY 317

only mean political anarchy. Equality in property,
similarly conceived of, necessarily implies commu-
nism, and a communism as inconsistent with even
the nationalisation of property as with its indi-
vidual appropriation ; in equivalent terms, it is
destructive of the very nation and incompatible
with the very existence of property. Religious
equality viewed as a separate and independent
right must signify that for the State there is no
difference between religion and irreligion, Chris-
tianity and Atheism ; that for the State religion
has no interest, no being. All such equalities when
presented as additional to civil equality, the equality
of all men before the law, the equal right of all men
to justice, are illusory and pernicious ; they have
worth and sacredness only as included in it.

The arbitrary exclusion, indeed, of any class of
the community from political activity is a wrong to
that class. For every exclusion adequate reasons
ought to be producible, and the sooner the need for
it can be done away with the better. As regards
the suffrage no reason either of expediency or of
principle can now be consistently urged in this
country against extending it to the utmost, as it
has already been granted even to illiterates. Rightly
or wrongly, we have already gone so far as to have
left ourselves hardly any real or even plausible
reason for refusing any serious claim to its farther
extension, its virtual universalisation. Resistance
to any such claim can only be based on invidious
grounds, and can have no other effect than to cause
a very natural irritation.

3i8 SOCIALISM

Granting to every person a vote, however, is
by no means to acknowledge that every person
is politically equal to every other, and still less
is it actually to create political equality. It
is a concession that the admission of all to the
suffrage is reasonable in the circumstances, not
that it is right in itself. It is quite consistent
with a denial of any right of the kind ; quite con-
sistent with the affirmation that no one has any
right to exercise so important a function as the
suffrage if he cannot do it rightly, i.e., to the benefit
of the nation. A nation which adopts universal
suffrage is perfectly entitled to devise counterpoises
which will remove or lessen any evils incidental to
the system. While leaving universal suffrage
intact, it may quite consistently provide for special
representation of labour, trade, and commerce, of
science, art, and education, and, in a word, of all the
chief institutions and interests of the common-
wealth. It may recognise the importance of the
fullest possible development of the freedom of indi-
viduals ; yet recognise also the folly and falsehood of
the notion that the nation is only the sum of its
individual units ; and may, in consequence, strive so
to combine corporative with individual representa-
tion as will preserve Democracy from rushing into
a ruinous Individualism, or becoming the prey of
Socialism.

There is valid reason for complaint of inequality,
in the sense of partiality and injustice, as regards
property, if all be not alike free to acquire or dispose
of it ; if any exceptional or special impediments be

SOCIALISM AND DEMOCRACY 319

put in the way of any class of persons either as to
its purchase or sale. This admission, however, is
far from equivalent to the affirmation of that
equality of right as to property which would
logically prevent the profitable use of it by any one.
There is no right to equal participation in property,
but only a right not to be inequitably prevented
from participation in it. The State is consequently
not entitled to enforce or aim at an equal distribu-
tion of property. Its function is to do justice,
neither more nor less ; and the sphere of justice as to
property is merely that of equal freedom to acquire
and to use it.

The State may err and do unjustly by favouring
one class of religious opinions and discouraging
another. In the name of Christianity it may act
in a very unchristian way towards atheists and
other non-christians. It is bound to respect the
conscientious convictions of the least of associations
and of every single individual. It may provide
that no man shall be excluded from Parliament
because of atheism or disbelief in Christianity, and
yet hold that it thereby only shows a just, a
generous, and a Christian spirit. Nothing in what
has just been said implies that for the State
religion and irreligion, Christianity and atheism,
are equal ; or is even inconsistent with maintaining
that for the State no difference, no distinction, is
more profound and vital than that between religion
and irreligion ; that the distinction between virtue
and vice is not more so ; that the distinction
between knowledge and ignorance is not so much

320 SOCIALISM

so. It is of small importance to the State whether
its citizens are taught algebra or not in comparison
with whether or not they are imbued with the
spirit and principles of the Gospel. A State cannot
fail to feel itself bound to provide for the teaching
of the religion in which it believes, unless it can
get the duty done for it by the spontaneous zeal of
its members. Were there no separate Christian
Church, a sincerely Christian State would inevit-
ably undertake itself to discharge the duties of a
Church, and so transform itself into a Church-State
or State-Church, in which Church and State would
be only functionally, not substantively distinct.

There is another respect in which every patriotic
man and true friend of Democracy must seek to
guard against the one-sidedness of the especially
democratic principle. He must be careful to dis-
tinguish between arbitrary and artificial inequali-
ties and essential and natural inequalities. The
more ready he may be to assail, to diminish, to cast
down the former, the more anxious should he be to
defend, and to allow free play and full development
to the latter. Equality of conditions is not an end
which ought to be aimed at. It is a low and false
ideal. The realisation of it, were it possible, which
it fortunately is not, would be an immense calamity.
It would bring with it social stagnation and ex-
tinction. Mankind must develop or die, and
development involves differentiation, unlikeness,
inequality. The only equality which can benefit
society is the equality of justice and of liberty.
Let equality be regarded as a truth or good in

SOCIALISM AND DEMOCRACY 321

itself; let it be divorced from justice and opposed to
liberty ; let the free working of the powers in
regard to which men are unequal be repressed, in
order that those who are of mean natures may have
no reason to be jealous of any of their fellows ; and
society must soon be all a low and level plain, and
one which continually tends to sink instead of to
rise, for it is just through the operation of natural
inequalities that the general level of society is
always being raised in progressive communities.
The material wealth, the intellectual acquisitions,
and the moral gains which constitute the riches of
mankind at the present day would never have been
won and accumulated if the manifold special
energies and aptitudes of individuals, if all natural
inequalities, had not been allowed free scope.

The direst foe of Democracy has been excess of
party spirit. When moderated by, and subordi-
nated to, patriotism, the conflict of parties may be
healthful and stimulating. It has thus been often
largely conducive to the growth and prosperity of
democratic States. But it has generally ruined
them in the end ; and, perhaps, it will always
succeed in ruining them. For it tends to become
increasingly less honest and more selfish ; to grow
keen and embittered as a struggle for power and its
advantages in proportion as it ceases to have mean-
ing and to be ennobled by faith in principles or
generous ideals.

Besides, while in every Democracy there will be
a struggle of political parties, parties will always
feel that they need organisation, and organisation

322 SOCIALISM

must be effected and developed through associa-
tions. But unless political intelligence, indepen-
dence, and zeal are general in a community,
political associations may easily become the seats
of wire-pullers, adroit enough to juggle the mass
of the people out of their rights, to dictate to
Parliament what it shall do, and to subject what
ought to be a great and free Democracy to the
sway of a number of petty and intriguing oli-
garchies. The greatest Democracy on earth — that
of the United States of America — has submitted
to be misrepresented, deceived, and plundered in
the most shameless and humiliating manner by its
political committees. It has known their character ;
it has despised them ; it has groaned over their
doings ; but somehow it has not been able to deliver
itself from them. It has needed for its emancipation
from their power and methods more moral and poli-
tical virtue than it possessed. Only of late years has
it attempted to resist and restrain them.

A great deal of labour, and wisdom, and virtue,
in fact, are needed in order that Democracy may
be a success. Although at its conceivable best
Democracy would be the best of all forms of
Government, it may not only be the worst of all
Governments, but is certainly the most difficult
form of Government to maintain good, and still
more to make nearly perfect. It demands intelli-
gence, effort, self-restraint, respect for the rights
and regard for the interest of others, morality,
patriotism, and piety in the community as a whole.
Without the general diffusion of these qualities

SOCIALISM AND DEMOCRACY 323

among those who share in it, it easily passes into
the most degenerate sort of Government.

This is why history is the record of so many
Democracies which have deceived all hopes based on
them, and failed ignominiously. It is why they have
so frequently reverted into absolute Monarchies and
Oligarchies. It is why they have so often passed
through a state of agitation and disorder into one
of lethargic subjection to despotic rule.

Democracy can only succeed through the energy,
intelligence, and virtue of the general body of its
members ; through their successful resistance to
temptations, their avoidance of dangers, their reso-
lute overcoming of difficulties, their self-restraint and
discipline, their moral and religious sincerity and
earnestness. From Plato downwards all who have
intelligently speculated on Democracy have seen
that the problem on the solution of which its des-
tiny depends is essentially an educational problem.
A Democracy can only endure and flourish if the
individuals who compose it are in a healthy
intellectual, moral, and religious condition.

In the foregoing remarks I have insisted mainly
on the limitations of the democratic principle, and
<>n the dangers to which Democracy is, from its
very nature, exposed. To have dwelt on its strong
points would have been, so far as my present object
is concerned, irrelevant ; and is, besides, work which
is constantly being done, and even overdone, by
gentlemen who are in search of parliamentary
honours, and by many other smooth-tongued flat-
terers of the people. As I have sought, however, to

324 SOCIALISM

indicate the limitations, weaknesses, and dangers of
Democracy, I may very possibly be charged with
taking a pessimistic view of its fortunes and future.
I do not admit the applicability of the charge.

History does not present an adequate inductive
basis from which to infer either optimism or
pessimism. Although faith that the course of
humanity is determined by Divine Providence implies
also faith in that course leading to a worthy goal, this
falls short of optimism, while manifestly incompatible
with pessimism. That the democratic ideal of Govern-
ment contains on the whole more truth than any of
its rival ideals, and that it has, for at least two
centuries, been displacing them and realising itself
at their expense in the leading nations of the world,
may warrant in some measure the hope that in the
long run it will universally and definitively prevail,
provided it appropriate and assimilate the truths
which have given to other ideals their vitality and
force ; but between such a vague and modest hope
as this and any attempt at a confident or precise
forecasting of the fate of Democracy there is a vast
distance. Whether it will finally triumph or not,
and, if it do, when, or in what form, or after what
defeats, it is presumption in any man to pretend to
know. No mortal can even approximately tell what
its condition will be in any country of Europe a
thousand, or a hundred, or even fifty years hence.

No one can be certain, for instance, whether its-
future in Britain will be prosperous or disastrous,
glorious or the reverse. The future of Britain itself
is too uncertain to allow of any positive forecast in

SOCIALISM AND DEMOCRACY 325

either direction being reasonable. The ruin of
Britain may be brought about at any time by quite
possible combinations of the other great military
and naval powers. The British people may also
quite possibly so behave as to cause the ruin of
their country. Those who profess unbounded trust
in the British people, or in any people, are the suc-
cessors of the false prophets of Israel, and of the
demagogic deceivers of the people in all lands and
ages. They belong to a species of persons which has
ruined many a Democracy in the past ; and there
is no certainty that they will not destroy Demo-
cracy in Britain or in any other country where it at
present prevails.

On the other hand, there is nothing to forbid the
hope that Democracy in Britain will have a length-
ened, successful, and beneficent career. Why should
it listen to flatterers or believe lies ? Why should it
not, while asserting and obtaining its rights, keep
\sithin those limits of Nature and of reason which
cannot be disregarded with impunity ? Why should
it not recognise its weaknesses and guard against
them ? Why should it not discern its dangers and
avoid them ? Why should it not be prudent, self-
restrained, just, tolerant, moral, patriotic, and
reverent? Why should it not strive after noble
ends and reach them by the right means and by
^vll-devised measures? I know not why it should
not. Therefore I shall not anticipate that it will
not.

This is certain, however, that if Democracy in
Britain or elsewhere is to have a grand career, it

326 SOCIALISM

must work for it vigorously and wisely. It will not
become powerful, or prosperous, without toil or
thought ; not through merely wishing to become so,
or even through any amount of striving to become
so, which is not in accordance with economic, moral,
and spiritual laws. It will not become so, if it
adopt the dogmas of Socialism ; for, these are, alike
as regards the conduct and concerns of the material,
moral, and religious life of communities, so false and
pernicious that Democracy by accepting them cannot
fail to injure or destroy itself.

The creed of Social Democracy is the only social-
istic creed which requires in this connection to be
considered. It is substantially accepted by the
immense majority of contemporary Socialists. The
really socialistic groups which dissent from it are of
comparatively small dimensions and feeble influence.
Is it, then, the expression of a faith on which
Democracy can be reasonably expected to endure
or prosper ?

Certainly not as regards the distinctive economic
tenets which it contains. The views to which Social
Democracy has committed itself on the nature of
economic laws, on value and surplus value, on com-
petition and State-control, on labour and wages, on
capital and interest, on money, on inheritance, on
the nationalisation of land, on the collectivisation of
wealth, and other kindred subjects, are of a kind
which cannot stand examination. Some of them
have been dealt with in previous chapters, and have
been shown to be erroneous and unrealisable. The
others are of a like character.

SOCIALISM AND DEMOCRACY 327

The economic doctrine of Social Democracy is
thoroughly anti-scientific wherever it is peculiar or
distinctive. It has been widely accepted, but only
by those who were predisposed and anxious to believe
it ; not by impartial and competent economists, or
any other students of it who have made their assent
dependent on proof. It owes its success not to the
validity of the reasons advanced for its doctrines, but
to the wide-spread dissatisfaction of the working-
classes with their condition ; or, as Dr. Bonar ex-
presses it, to their " belief that they are now the
tools of the other classes and yet worth all the
rest." *

This state of feeling, however it may be accounted
for, is of itself a very serious fact, and will be lightly
regarded only by the foolish. Whatever is just and
reasonable in it should find a generous response. For
whatever is pathological in it, an appropriate remedy
should be sought. Its prevalence should produce
general anxiety for the material, intellectual, and
moral amelioration of the classes in which it
threatens to become chronic. But it will never be
either satisfied or cured by concessions to, or applica-
tions of, the economic nostrums of Social Democracy.
To fancy that it will is the same absurdity as to
imagine that a fevered patient may be restored to
restfulness and health by complying with the dis-
tempered cravings and exciting and confirming the
delirious illusions which are the effects and symptoms
of his malady.

* " Philosophy and Political Economy," p. 353.

328 SOCIALISM

According to the teaching of Social Democracy
there are no natural laws in the economic sphere,
and especially in that of the distribution of wealth,
but only laws which are the creations of human will,
made by society and imposed on itself. But this teach-
ing is the reverse of true, and it directly encourages
men to expect from society what it cannot give them,
and necessarily embitters them against it for not
bestowing on them what is impossible. According to
the same teaching, labour is the sole cause of value,
and the labouring classes alone are entitled to all
wealth. This is no less false, and it equally tends to
spread in a portion of the community unwarrantable
hatred against another portion, and to generate ex-
travagant expectations in connection with proposals
of the most mischievous kind. The suppression of
the wage-system, as recommended by Socialism,
could not fail to destroy the chief industrial enter-
prises of a country like Britain ; the abolition of
money would paralyse its commerce. The measures
of confiscation advocated by it under the names of
expropriation, nationalisation, and collectivisation,
would take away indispensable stimuli to exertion
and prudence, individuality and inventiveness, and
so end in general impoverishment and misery. The
social unrest of which Socialism is the symptom
cannot be allayed with doses of Socialism either
pure or diluted. The distinctive economic tenets of
Socialism are fatal economic errors. But it is only
on economic truths that economic well-being can be
founded. And this applies in an even special degree
to democratic societies as being self-governing

SOCIALISM AND DEMOCRACY 329

societies, or, in other words, societies ruled by public
opinion, and, therefore, societies in which it is of
the last importance that public opinion should be
true opinion.

The ethics of Social Democracy will come under
consideration in the next chapter, and therefore it is
only requisite to say here that it is not better than
its economics. It is an ethics which treats indi-
vidual morality as almost a matter of indifference,
and which fatally sacrifices individual rights to
social authority. Its teaching as to domestic rela-
tions and duties is unhealthy. The justice in-
culcated by it is largely identical with what is
commonly and properly meant by injustice. Such a
moral doctrine must be pernicious to the life of any
society, but especially to that of a democratic
society. All who have thought seriously on forms of
government and of society have recognised that the
democratic form is the one which makes the largest
demand for the personal and domestic virtue of its
members ; the one to the security and strength of
which the general prevalence of settled and correct
conceptions of justice is the most absolutely indis-
pensable. It is to an exceptional degree true of
democratic societies that in them the social problem
is a moral problem. A Democracy pervaded by the
ethical principles of Social Democracy must soon
become disorganised and putrid.

Social Democracy has been able to inspire large
numbers of men with a sincerity and strength of
faith, and an intensity of zeal seldom to be found
dissociated from religion. Hence, perhaps, in a

330 SOCIALISM

loose way it may be spoken of as religious. Of
religion, however, in the ordinary sense of the term
it has none. It acknowledges no Supreme Being
other than the State or Society ; no worship but
that of Leviathan. Its cult is identical with its.
polity. It rests on a materialistic view of the uni*
verse and of life, and recognises no other good than
such as is of an earthly and temporary nature. It
is not merely indifferent to religion but positively
hostile to it. It not only despises it as superstition,
but hates it as the support of tyranny and the
instrument of severity. Its motto might be that of
Blanqui, Ni Dieu ni maitre. If it triumph another
age of religious persecution will have to be
traversed. But reason and history alike lead us to
believe that faith in God and reverence for God's-
law are essential to the welfare of societies ; that
any people which accepts a materialistic and
atheistic doctrine condemns itself to anarchy or
slavery, to a brief and ignoble career. What it
calls liberty will be licentiousness, and the more of
it it possesses, the shorter will be its course to self-
destruction. On this subject, however, I need not
dwell as I shall have to treat of Socialism in relation
to religion in a subsequent chapter.

Socialism, it may now be perceived, is dangerous
to Democracy, inasmuch as it tends to foster and
intensify what is partial and exclusive in the demo-
cratic ideal. It urges it on to reject the truth
which gave significance and vitality to the theo-
cratic ideal. It is anti-monarchical, and will only
tolerate a republican form of government even

SOCIALISM AND DEMOCRACY 331

where monarchy would be practically preferable. It
errs as much through jealousy of social inequalities
as Aristocracy does through pride in them. It
strives after social equality as a good in itself, even
when it is an equality only to be obtained by
levelling down, by general compression. In this
respect it is peculiarly dangerous in a democracy
because it seduces it through its chief weakness.
Where each man has some share in government,
many are apt to think all should have an equal
share. The ordinary mind is rarely just towards
the exceptional mind. Average human nature may
be easily persuaded to aid in pulling down whatever
seems to it so high as to overshadow itself.

Socialism is jealous even of the inequality neces-
sarily implied in the parliamentary system, and
hence does not interest itself in the real improve-
ment of the system. The parliament of a nation
ought to be truly representative of the nation as an
organic whole, of the steady, persistent will and
general pervading reason of the commonwealth, and
not merely of fluctuating majorities gained by elec-
tion tricks. But a parliament thus representative
is one naturally very difficult to secure, and, per-
haps, especially so, when "the democratic spirit is
dominant. Democracy arrived at a certain stage of
development demands universal suffrage ; and the
claim may be one which neither ought to be nor can
be refused. But universal suffrage will never of
itself ensure to a nation a true parliamentary repre-
sentation of it as a whole, or in the entirety of its
interests. It can only yield a representation of

332 SOCIALISM

individuals ; and the governmental majority which
results from it may conceivably be a majority of one
and may even have been returned by a minority of
the electors. Education, art, science, and other
great national interests may be left wholly unrepre-
sented in the legislative body. Interests too strong
politically to be left altogether unrepresented may
only be represented in a one-sided way. Does
Socialism warn Democracy of its danger in this
respect, or suggest to it any remedy for the evil ?
On the contrary, it encourages that excessive con-
fidence in the virtues of universal suffrage which
generally prevails in democratic communities, and
still more the excessive and equally prevalent
jealousy of any representation over and above that
of individuals alone.

Yet Socialism has not like common Democracy
any admiration of the parliamentary system. Prob-
ably no class of persons estimates the worth of our
time-serving politicians at a lower figure, or is less
deceived by them, than Socialists. The socialistic
criticism of parliamentaryism has always been of a
searching and unsparing kind, not lacking in truth,
but erring on the side of severity. It has, however,
not been criticism intended to improve the constitu-
tion, or efficiency, or morality of parliament, but
either to make it despised and hated, or to make it
a better instrument for the introduction of a system
which will dispense with it.

Socialists see in a parliament an instrument which
they hope to get possession of, in order to nationalise
land and to collectivise property. When the instru-

SOCIALISM AND DEMOCRACY 333

ment has served their purpose they do not mean to
preserve it, but to break it, and cast it aside. They
have, therefore, no desire to improve it as an instru-
ment for directing national energies and supplying
national wants. Their aim is to render it a more
effective instrument of revolution during the period
of transition between Capitalism and Collectivism.
It is least intolerable to them when exclusively a
representation of individuals, and when members
are paid, and as dependent as possible. They would
prefer, however, direct government or delegation
with an imperative mandate to representation in the
ordinary sense of the term.

Socialism, in fact, has no just claim to the credit
of taking an organic view of society. It is at one
with Individualism in treating society as an aggre-
gation of units. What Social Democracy proposes
to do is to compress all the individual units com-
posing a community or nation into an economic
system which will secure for each unit the maximum
of material enjoyment for the minimum of necessary
physical labour. In this conception there is no
recognition of the true nature of society, of its.
nature as an organic whole, with interests of a pro-
perly social, moral, and spiritual character. Such
Socialism is obviously individualistic in its ideal
and aims. It differs from Individualism only in its
employment of social force and pressure in order to
realise its ideal and reach its aims. "Economical
Socialism," writes Mr. Bosanquet, " is no barrier
against Moral Individualism. The resources of the
State may be more and more directly devoted to

334 SOCIALISM

the individual's well-being, while the individual is
becoming less and less concerned about any well-
being except his own." * Collectivism is a Socialism
of this kind, and hence its influence on Democracy
must necessarily be evil.

Further, Socialism must act unfavourably on
Democracy in so far as it infuses into it its own
excessive faith in the rights and powers of the
State. The distinctive tendency of Socialism is
unduly to extend I the sphere and functions of the
State, and to make individuals completely depen-
dent on corporate society. For the Socialist the
will of the State should be revered as authoritative
in itself and accepted without question as the
supreme and comprehensive law of human conduct.
This reverence and obedience it does not receive, and
is not entitled to receive, at present, because it is
confounded with government, as contradistinguished
from society ; but when this opposition is done away
with, and the State will become the expression or
personification of organised society, of the socialised
commonwealth, there can be no higher source of
authority in the universe, no worthier object of
worship ; and then no one must be allowed to show
it disrespect or to challenge its behests. " Socialists,"
says one of the most scientific and learned among
them, " have to inculcate that spirit which would
give offenders against the State short shrift and the
nearest lamp-post. Every citizen must learn to say
with Louis XIV., LEtat c'est moi." t

* " Essays and Addresses," p. 70.

t Carl Pearson, " Ethic of Free Thought," p. 324.

SOCIALISM AND DEMOCRACY 335

Quite so. Contemporary Socialism desires to serve
itself heir to the Absolutism of past ages. Its spirit
is identical with that of all despotisms. It seeks to
deify itself, and means to brook no resistance to its
will. The Socialist in saying L'JEtat c'est moi will only
give expression to the thought which animated the
first tyrant. If Socialism can impregnate and inspire
the Democracy of our time with this spirit, society
in the near future will lie under the oppression of a
fearful despotism.

Socialists are striving with extraordinary zeal and
success to convert the adherents of Democracy to their
faith. They fancy that if they can succeed in doing
so they are certain to gain their ends and to establish
Socialism throughout the whole of Christendom at
least. It seems to me that they are too hasty in
coming to this conclusion. They ought to consider
not only whether or not they can socialise Demo-
cracy, but whether or not a socialist Democracy can
live. The latter question is the more important of
the two.

I grant that it is quite possible that Demo-
cracy may be so infatuated and misled as to
adopt the principles and dogmas of Socialism. I
deem it even not improbable that early in the
approaching century in several of the countries of
Europe the socialistic revolution may be so far
successful that for a time the powers of government
will be in the hands of socialistic leaders who will
make strenuous efforts to carry out the socialistic
[in* gramme.

Socialism abusing the forces of Democracy may

336 SOCIALISM

bring about a terrible revolution. Will, however,
the revolution thus effected by it found the state of
things that Socialism promises, and one at the
same time satisfactory to Democracy ? History
affords us no encouragement to expect that it will.
Hitherto all revolutions wrought by Democracy
with a view not to the attainment of reasonable
liberties but to equality of material advantages — i.e.,
all essentially socialistic revolutions — have led only
to its own injury or ruin. Greece and Rome not
merely reached a democratic stage, but they passed
through it into Csesarism. May not the nations of
modern Europe which have reached the same state
share the same fate ? Nay, must they not have the
same fate unless they avoid the same faults ? Is it
not inevitable that any revolution which they can
conceivably effect under the influence of passion for
an equality inconsistent with freedom, of a perverted
sense of justice, of party fanaticism, and the desire
of plunder, will speedily be found to end in the
triumph of anti-democratic reaction ? It has always
been so ; and probably always will be so. The
primary necessity of society is order, security ; and
to obtain that it will always sacrifice anything
else.

At a time when Karl Marx had hardly any
followers in Britain he gave expression to the con-
viction that it was in Britain that his system would
be first adopted. He based his conviction on what
is certainly a fact, namely, that the British Con-
stitution presents no obstacle to the adoption of any
system. If Socialists so increase as to be able to

SOCIALISM AND DEMOCRACY 337

elect a majority of the members of the House of
Commons the whole socialistic programme may be
constitutionally converted into law, and constitution-
ally carried into effect at the point of the bayonet.
Thus far Marx saw quite clearly. And, possibly,
the time may come when the people of Britain will
be so infatuated as to send to Parliament a socialist
majority.

But would a socialist Parliament even with a
socialist majority of the people at its back be able
to establish a collectivist or communist regime ?
Would not the minority opposed to it be superior
in all the chief elements of power, except numbers,
to the majority supporting it ? And would not that
minority have every motive to induce it to make
the uttermost resistance to the order of things
sought to be introduced ? The immediate effect of
Pa i-l lament passing into law a collectivist programme
would not be the establishment of Collectivism but
the origination of social and civil war, out of which
there has always come, and must come, the repression
of free parliamentary government, and the substitu-
tion for it of military and absolutist government.

Our English House of Commons has slowly and
insensibly acquired the enormous power which it
possesses because it has on the whole deserved it ;
because, more than any other representative
assembly in the world, it has justified national
confidence in its practical wisdom, its patriotism, its
regard for its own honour, and its respect for the
liberties and rights of the citizens. When it loses
the qualities to which it owes its power, and uses

Y

338 SOCIALISM

that power to give effect to demagogic passions and
socialistic cupidities, it will suddenly fall from the
proud height to which it has slowly risen. Those
who excite our English Democracy to revolution
with a view to the introduction of a collectivist
millennium are really working towards the establish-
ment not of Social Democracy but of strong Indi-
vidual Government.

So many Democracies have ended in Despotisms
that many have concluded that they all must do so ;
that there is a law of nature, an invariable law of
history, which determines that Democracy must
always give place to autocratic government. Most
Democracies have been short-lived ; some historians
and theorists believe that they all will be so.
" Democracies," says Froude, " are the blossoming
of the aloe, the sudden squandering of the vital
force which has accumulated in the long years when
it was contented to be healthy and did not aspire
after a vain display. The aloe is glorious for a
single season. It progresses as it never progressed
before. It admires its own excellence, looks back
with pity on its own earlier and humbler condition,
which it attributes only to the unjust restraints in
which it was held. It conceives that it has dis-
covered the true secret of being * beautiful for
ever,' and in the midst of the discovery it dies."'*

I am not of opinion that Democracy must be
short-lived, or even that it must die at all. All
democracies not killed by violence have, so far as I
can make out, died, not because they were under

* "Oceana,"p. 154.

SOCIALISM AND DEMOCRACY 339

any necessary law of death, but because they chose
the way of death when they might have chosen that
of life. As so many of them, however, have in the
past chosen the way of death, the way which leads
through disorder to despotism, I fear that many of
them will do the same in the future.

This feeling is not lessened but intensified by the
obvious fact that the friends of Democracy are in
general unconscious of its having now any great
risks to run. The present generation, as the late M.
Cournot has well pointed out, is, in comparison with
that which preceded it, somewhat indifferent to
liberty, and ready to endure and impose encroach-
ments on it which promise to be advantageous. This
is due partly to the diffusion among the people of
socialistic principles but partly also to the confidence
that liberty can no longer be seriously endangered.
This confidence is inconsiderate, and itself a serious
danger. The liberty which is thought to be in no
danger is almost always a liberty which is in the
way of being lost. It should be remembered that
Democracies not only may destroy themselves, but
that when once they have entered on " the broad
way," it is naturally less easy for them to retrace
their steps, or even to moderate cheir pace towards
destruction, than for Monarchies or Aristocracies.
Just because they live much more unrestrainedly
and intensely their evils come much more quickly to
a head.

Words which I have elsewhere used when speak-
ing of De Tocqueville's famous work on " Democracy
in America " may here serve to complete my

340 SOCIALISM

thought. " A part of the task which De Tocque-
ville attempted in that treatise was one which the
human intellect can as yet accomplish with only
very partial success, namely, the forecasting of the
future. Induction from the facts of history is too
difficult, and deduction from its tendencies too
hypothetical, to allow of this being done with much
certainty or precision; hence it is not to be wondered
at that several of his anticipations or prophecies
have not yet been confirmed, and seem now less
probable than when they were first enunciated. It
is more remarkable that he should have been so
often and so far right ; and that he should have
been always so conscious that he might very possibly
be mistaken ....

" He shared in democratic convictions, but with
intelligence and in moderation. He acknowledged
that Democracy at its conceivable best would be the
best of all forms of government ; the one to which
all others ought to give place. And he was fully
persuaded that all others were rapidly making way
for it ; and that the movement towards it, which
had been so visibly going on for at least a century,
could by no means be arrested. He elaborated his
proof of the irresistibility and invincibility of the
democratic movement, and he emphasised and
reiterated the conclusion itself, because he deemed
it to be of prime importance that men should be
under no illusion on the matter. He succeeded at
once in getting the truth generally accepted ; and
there has been so much confirmation of it since 1835
that probably no one will now dream of contesting

SOCIALISM AND DEMOCRACY 341

it. At present Russia and Turkey are the only
absolute monarchies in Europe, and it seems im-
possible that they should long retain their excep-
tional positions. There is nowhere visible on the
earth in our day any power capable of resisting or
crushing Democracy. If there be none such it does
not follow that it will not be arrested in its pro-
gress ; but it follows that it will only be arrested by
itself.

" That it may be thus arrested De Tocqueville
saw ; that it would be thus arrested he feared.
While sensible of its merits he was also aware of its
defects, and keenly alive to its dangers. While he
recognised that it might possibly be the best of all
governments, he also recognised that it could easily
be the worst, and that it was the most difficult
either to make or to keep good. The chief aim of
his work, indeed, was to demonstrate that Demo-
cracy was in imminent peril of issuing in despotism ;
and that the more thoroughly the democratic spirit
did its work in levelling and destroying social
inequalities and distinctions, just so much the less
resistance would the establishment of Despotism
encounter, while at the same time so much the more
grievous would be its consequences.

" As regards France, his gloomiest forebodings
were realised. She had shown, by the Revolution
of July 1830, that she would submit neither to
autocratic nor to aristocratic government; and in
i S;,5 she was chafing under plutocratic rule, rapidly
becoming more democratic, and getting largely
imbued with the socialistic spirit which insists not

342 SOCIALISM

only on equality of rights but on equality of con-
ditions. The Guizot Ministry (1840-48), by blindly
and obstinately refusing to grant the most manifestly
just and reasonable demands for electoral reform,
greatly contributed to augment the strength and
violence of the democratic movement, until at length
it overthrew the monarchy, and raised up a republic,
one of the first acts of which was to decree universal
suffrage. But in 1852 the workmen and peasants
of France made use of their votes to confer absolute
power on the author of a shameful and sanguinary
coup d'etat, and Caesarism was acclaimed by
7,482,863 Ayes as against 238,582 Noes. There
could be no more striking exemplification or impres-
sive warning of the liability of Democracy to cast
itself beneath the feet of despotism.

" Yet history, so far as it has gone since De
Tocqueville wrote, has not, on the whole, shown
that Democracy is more than liable thus to err ; has
not tended to prove that it must necessarily or will
certainly thus err. For the last twenty years
France has been organising herself as a democracy
according to the principles of constitutional liberty.
America, even while passing through a great war,
gave not the slightest intimations of desire for a
Caesar. Instead of being less there is far more
inequality of conditions in the United States to-day
than there was in 1835. In no other country, in
fact, have such inequalities of wealth been developed
during the last half- century ; arid inequality of
wealth necessarily brings with it other kinds of
inequality. In no country is the establishment of a

SOCIALISM AND DEMOCRACY 343

despotism so improbable. It should be observed,
however, that the only way in which we can con-
ceive of such an event being brought about is one
which would be in accordance with De Tocqueville's
theory. Let the conflict between labour and capital
in America proceed until the labourers attempt to
employ their political power in the expropriation of
the capitalists ; let the Democracy of America
become predominantly socialistic, in the sense of
being bent on attaining the equality which requires
the sacrifice of justice and of liberty ; and there will
happen in America what happened about two thou-
sand years ago, in the greatest republic of the
ancient world, a Caesar will be called for and a
Caesar will appear, and Democracy will be controlled
by despotism."

* " Historical Philosophy in France and French Belgium and Switzer-
land," pp. 521-3.

CHAPTEK X.

SOCIALISM AND MORALITY.

SOCIALISM has always occupied itself mainly with
the economic organisation of society. It does so at
the present day not less than during the earlier
periods of its history. Its advocates are still chiefly
engaged in urging the transference of property from
individuals and corporations to the State, and in
explaining how the production, distribution, and
consumption of wealth may be so regulated as best
to secure the advantages which they deem a social-
istic system capable of conferring. At the same
time, Socialism has, of course, not ignored morality
or the relations of morality to its own theses and
proposals. No scheme of social organisation can
afford to do that. Socialisation obviously cannot
be effected independently of moralisation. Any
proposed solution of a social problem is sufficiently
refuted as soon as it is shown logically to issue in
immorality. As the Duke of Argyll pithily says :
" In mathematical reasoning the ' reduction to
absurdity ' is one of the most familiar methods of
disproof. In political reasoning the ' reduction to
iniquity ' ought to be of equal value."

* " The Unseen Foundations of Society," p. 419.

SOCIALISM AND MORALITY 345

Besides, Socialism has itself moral presuppositions
and tendencies which obviously demand considera-
tion and discussion : moral presuppositions and ten-
dencies which its adherents must defend, and which
those who reject it are certain to regard with
disfavour.

Accordingly in the present chapter we shall treat
of the bearing of Socialism on Morality.

Socialists charge Political Economists with having
taught as science a system of doctrine which is non-
moral or even immoral. They denounce Economics
as it has been presented by its best accredited
teachers as not only a dismal and unfruitful science,
but one which has been falsified and vitiated by
being severed from, and opposed to, Ethics. They
profess to be alone in possession of an ethical Econo-
mics— an economic theory capable of satisfying the
heart and conscience as well as reason and self-
interest. But both the censure and the claim are
based on very weak grounds.

One of these grounds is that Economics takes a
narrow, unnatural, and unethical view of what ought
to be its own object and scope. It is said that it
confines itself to the study of wealth ; subordinates
man to wealth ; assumes that wealth includes the
s;ii isfaction of all human desires, even while confining
itself to those material things and corporeal services
which minister chiefly to the appetencies and vanities
of the lower nature ; practically raises wealth, so
understood, to the rank of an end in itself; and by
exclusively dwelling on it encourages the delusion
that it is the chief end of life.

346 SOCIALISM

The Socialists and semi-Socialists, however, who
have sought by arguing thus to bring home to
Economists the charge of doing injustice to morality
have only made apparent the defectiveness of their
insight.

In order to advance the study of any science v
its cultivators must concentrate their attention
on the facts and problems appropriate to it, and
not allow their thoughts to roam abroad. The
economist must do so equally with the mathe-
matician or the biologist. He must fix his attention
on economic processes just as the mathematician
does on quantitative relations and the biologist on
vital phenomena. But all economic processes are
concerned with wealth, are phases or changes of
wealth, in a sense so definite that it may be called
its economic sense ; and wealth so understood is an
object sufficiently precise and distinct, as well as
sufficiently extensive and interesting, to be the
subject of a science. It has reasonably, therefore,
been assigned to, or appropriated by, Economics as
its subject.

And this being so, it is not only the business,
but the entire and only legitimate business, of the
economist as a pure or strict scientist to investigate
the nature, conditions, laws, and consequences of
the production, distribution, and consumption of
wealth. To condemn him for devoting himself
specially to this task, and leaving it to others to
speculate on the welfare of nations or the prospects
of humanity, is as foolish as it would be to censure
a mathematician for prosecuting his abstract and

SOCIALISM AND MORALITY 347

exact deductions and calculations to the neglect of
discoursing on the harmonies of the universe.

While, however, as a scientific specialist he not
only may but ought to confine himself within the
limits of his special science, he should also endeavour
to form as philosophical a view as possible, as com-
prehensive, profound, and accurate a view as pos-
sible, of the relations of that science to others,
and especially to contiguous and closely connected
sciences, such as psychology and ethics and their
derivatives. This is the natural and appropriate
preventive of the evils incident to exclusive and
excessive specialisation in Economics ; and econo-
mists have been gradually and increasingly realising
its importance. There is no warrant for represent-
ing them as less sensible of the necessity of giving
heed to the relations of political economy with
other sciences than are socialistic theorists. They
do not overlook that Economics has psycho-
logical bases, and is a science of the social
order ; and consequently subordinate man to
wealth.

To the economist wealth is not a merely material
fact but a human and social fact. It is not with
wealth as a complex of external objects, but as the
subject of human interests and of social processes
that Political Economy is concerned. Man, in the
view of the Economist, is the origin and end, the
ground, medium, and rationale of wealth ; and wealth
can have neither meaning nor even being apart from
man, and from the rationality, the freedom, the re-
sponsibility, the capacities of feeling and of desire,

348 SOCIALISM

and the social bonds and affinities which are dis-
tinctive of man.

In like manner Economics has been neither severed
from, nor opposed to, Ethics by any of its intelligent
cultivators. They have merely refused crudely
and confusedly to mix two distinct disciplines.
Pure Economics, it is true, does not attempt more
than to explain the facts and to exhibit the laws
of wealth ; it does not pronounce on their moral
characters or discuss their moral issues ; yet it deals
with all moral elements or forces which are econo-
mic conditions or factors to the extent that they
are so ; tracing, for instance, how idleness, drunken-
ness, dishonesty, profligacy, and the qualities
opposed to them, operate in the various spheres of
economic life. It is thus helpful to morality.
" By demonstrating the material advantages gained
through the exercise of such virtues as industry,
providence, and thrift, and by showing the harm
that springs from sloth, improvidence, and unthrift,
political economy supplies very efficacious and
practical motives for virtuous action, motives, too,
which have a hold upon those not moved by the
unaided maxims of ethics pure and simple."

Further, although the Economist cannot reason-
ably deem it a part of his dutv as a scientific specialist
to treat of the right use or abuse of wealth, or of
the duties of men in connection with the acquisition
and employment of wealth, he will be the first to
recognise that the moralist should do so, and may

* L. Cossa, "Introduction to Political Economy," p. 29.

SOCIALISM AND MORALITY 349

confer great benefit on society by doing so.
Economic Ethics is a very necessary and important
branch of instruction at the present day. Obviously
it is one which can only be properly taught by those
who have studied Economics with sufficient care
and without prejudice.

It is not scientific Economists but certain Social-
ists of a sentimental type who have either taught
or implied that wealth is the satisfaction of all
wants, or the chief end of life, or even in any
instance or reference an end in itself. No genuine
Economist has been so foolish as to inculcate or
suggest that what he calls wealth, however abund-
antly produced or wisely distributed it may be, is
necessarily creative either of wealth or of virtue.*

* The error to which reference is made has not, perhaps, been refuted
better by any subsequent economist than by Pelegrino Rossi in the
second lecture of his "Cours d'Economie Politique " (1840). As the point
is a not unimportant one, either in itself or in the controversy between
economists and Socialists, I shall here summarise his argument : " Wealth,
material prosperity, and moral development, although not unrelated, are
not necessarily conjoined or uniformly connected. The poverty or wealth
of a man is not a criterion of his happiness, and still less of his moral
worth. As it is with individuals so is it with nations. A poor State may
be prosperous and, as Sparta proves, powerful ; and a wealthy State may
abound in wretchedness and be on the eve of ruin. So both the wealth
and general prosperity of a people may be great while its moral develop-
ment is most backward. The working classes of a country may be com-
fortable and contented, their means of living cheap, and of enjoyment
abundant, yet in that country the intellectual and moral faculties of men
may be repressed and deadened, and the higher life of spiritual freedom
almost extinct. Nations, then, like individuals, may be judged of as to
wealth, material well-being, and moral development. To attain each of
these supposes a certain use of human faculties ; demands certain means,
a certain action of man on the external world, and of man on man. To
multiply wealth labour properly so-called is necessary, labour enlightened
by physical, chemical, and mechanical knowledge, and furthered by the
combination of many persons in a common work but with different f unc-

350 SOCIALISM

It is among Socialists that we find those who fancy
that Economics may be regenerated and ennobled
by identifying — i.e., confounding — wealth with weal
or well-being, and so including in it not only those
things to which Economists restrict the term but the
pleasures of imagination and affection, purity of
heart, peace of conscience, and the satisfactions
which religion confers. Obviously, there can be no
common science of things so different. And as
obviously thus to elevate and extend the meaning
of the term wealth can have no tendency to lead

lions. The wealth so produced will distribute itself among its producers
according to certain laws which are the work of no one but the necessary
consequence of the general facts of production. The material welfare of
a nation requires another and wider application of knowledge and energy.
It requires a wisely contrived social organisation, and good laws, and the
use of many arts and sciences for the public benefit. Moral development
calls for the exercise of faculties of still another order. It appeals to our
noblest sentiments, to conscience and to reason, for it consists not in
abundance of wealth and of the enjoyments of the material life, but in the
•culture and elevation of the spiritual nature, so as to bring out the full
dignity which belongs to it. These three ends of action thus suppose
the use of different means. He who merely wishes wealth, he who seeks
material happiness, and he who aims at moral development, must act in
different ways. The three ends may not be incompatible; but he who
not content with the first desires also to secure the second, and from that
to rise to the third, cannot restrain his actions within the same limits as
he who looks exclusively to the first. If, therefore, political economy were
merely an art — if it were a mere means towards an end, and that end were
wealth — it would still have a distinct sphere of its own, and need not be
confounded with politics or ethics or any other science or art. But the
application of human knowledge to a definite end, the employment of indi-
vidual and social forces for a practical result, is not science ; and political
economy may and does claim to be a science. Sciences must be classed
according to their objects and not according to their uses. A science has,
properly speaking, no use, no end. When we consider what use we can
make of it, what end we can gain by it, we have left science and betaken
ourselves to art. Science, whatever be its object, is only the possession of
the truth, is only the knowledge of the relations which flow from the
nature of things."

SOCIALISM AND MORALITY 351

to the due subordination of what is ordinarily
called wealth to morality.*

It is also specially among Socialists that we find
the delusion prevailing that the kingdom of heaven
may be established on earth by merely reorganising
the means and methods of the production and dis-
tribution of wealth ; that man is the creature of

* The views on Economics propounded by Mr. Ruskin in " Unto this

Last " and other writings are all supposed by him to be dependent on his

definition of wealth as " the possession of the valuable by the valiant," and

on the thesis that "there is no wealth but life, life including all the powers

of love, of joy, and of admiration." Whether they are in reality logically

derivable from them may well be questioned, but they are certainly quite

as vague as if they were. The most definite and distinctive of them is

that all labour ought to be paid by an invariable standard, good and bad

workmen alike, if the latter are employed at all. " The natural and right

system respecting all labour is that it should be paid at a fixed rate, but

the good workman employed, and the bad workman unemployed. The

false, unnatural, and destructive system is, when the bad workman is

allowed to offer his work at half-price, and either take the place of the

good, or force him by his competition to work for an inadequate sum. So

far as you employ it at all, bad work should be paid no less than good work ;

as a bad clergyman takes his tithes, a bad physician his fee, and a bad

lawyer his costs ; this I say partly because the best work never was nor ever

will be done for money at all, but chiefly because the moment the people

know they have to pay the bad and good alike, they will try to discern the

one from the other, and not use the bad. A sagacious writer in Tlie

ti-t,t*intni asks me if I should like any common scribbler to be paid by Smith,

Elder & Co. as their good authors are. I should if they employed him ;

but would seriously recommend them, for the scribbler's sake, as well as

their own, not to employ him."

How is it that a man of so much genius as Mr. Ruskin could regard
such a method of recompensing labour as " the natural and right system "
when it is so obviously unnatural and so manifestly unjust? Plainly
because his standard of judgment is neither the laws of nature nor of
justice but a private " ideal," a personal preconception. To count unequals
as equal is unnatural. To pay for bad work as much as for good is unjust.
To refuse to employ "bad," i.e., inferior workmen, at all is an excessively
aristocratic as well as arbitrary rule ; and would not only bear hard on
the "common scribbler," but reduce to beggary common workmen of all
kinds.

352 SOCIALISM

circumstances, and that the moral and spiritual
development of society is ultimately dependent on
exclusively material conditions. Bax and Bebel,
Gronlund and Stern, and indeed the whole main body
of the Collectivists as well as of the Anarchists of to-
day, are as much under the influence of this shallow
error as was Robert Owen. They exaggerate the
plasticity of human nature and assume the irrespon-
sibility of man. They fail to perceive that the
history of man has been mainly not a product of
matter, but the work of man ; that society has been
far more the creation of individuals than individuals
of society ; that economic development has been at
least as dependent on ethical development as the
latter on it ; that morality is not only so far the
fruit of civilisation but also its root and vital sap ;
and that the great obstacle to social progress and
prosperity is not the defectiveness of social arrange-
ments or of industrial organisation but the persis-
tency of individual human vices.

Economists as a class have not thus erred. They
have seen more clearly the limits both of the power
of material conditions and of the science which
treats of wealth. They have recognised that there
is a vast deal which wealth, however distributed or
manipulated, cannot accomplish, and that the most
exhaustive knowledge of its nature and laws can
be only a part of the knowledge required for the
solution of such a problem as how to make a nation
happy or how to guide humanity towards self-
perfection. Economics, strictly scientific in its
methods and definitely limited in its sphere, must,

SOCIALISM AND MORALITY 353

they have admitted, be content merely to yield a
few certain specific conclusions capable, in con-
junction with those drawn from other sciences, of
being applied with good effect to answer great and
complex questions which can never be resolved by
any single science or even perhaps in any purely
scientific manner.

The main argument on which Socialists rely in
support of the allegation that Economics as com-
monly taught is in its general tendency unfavour-
able to morality, is that it assumes human nature to-
be essentially selfish, fundamentally egoistic ; and
that it builds itself entirely up on this assumption.
They say that it lays down as premisses what are
only forms or applications of its primary assumption
of the selfishness of human nature, and that from
these premisses — the principles of least sacrifice, of
unlimited competition, and the like — it deduces its
chief doctrines. Hence they condemn it, and
demand a new Economic based either entirely or
largely on sympathy and benevolence ; on what
they call " altruism."

In arguing thus thorough -going Socialists, such
as the Social Democrats, have not stood alone, but
have been encouraged and supported by so-called
Academic and Christian Socialists of all shades and
varieties. Mr. Thomas Davidson, favourably known
by his contributions to philosophy and especially to
the knowledge of the philosophy of Rosmini, has
presented the argument as skilfully, perhaps, as
any other writer ; and, therefore, I shall quote his
statement of it, indicating where I have omitted

354 SOCIALISM

sentences which I think can be dispensed with
without injustice.

" One of the avowed and cardinal assumptions of the political
economy of selfishness is this, that every man tries to obtain as
much of the means of satisfaction as he can, with the smallest
possible amount of labour. Along with this, it makes the tacit
assumption that means of satisfaction is wealth, and that the
more material wealth a man has, the greater is his power of
satisfying his desires. It makes also the further assumption
that trouble and labour are synonymous terms, and, hence, that
labour is pain, submitted to only for the sake of subsequent
pleasure.

" Now, all these assumptions rest upon a more fundamental
assumption, that man is simply an animal, whose sole desire
is to satisfy his animal appetites. But set out with the contrary
assumption, that man is a rational being, whose true satisfaction
is found in spiritual activity. Spiritual activity, let me now
add, consists of three things, pious intelligence, unselfish love,
practical energy, guided by intelligence and love to universal
ends. Upon my assumption, all the three assumptions of the
economy of selfishness fall to the ground, being entirely incom-
patible with a moral element in man's nature. Let us consider
these assumptions, beginning with the second.

" Is it in any sense true that, to a moral being, the only means
of satisfaction is wealth, and that the more wealth he has, the
more readily he can satisfy his desires? Is it true that all
satisfactions can be obtained for material wealth? Is it true
that even any of the highest satisfactions can be bought for it ?
Will wealth buy a pure heart, a clear conscience, a cultivated
intellect, a healthy body, the power to enjoy the sublime and
beautiful in nature and in art, a generous will, an ever-helpful
hand — these deepest, purest satisfactions, of human nature?
Nay, not one of these things can be bought for all the wealth of
ten thousand worlds t and not only so, but the very possession
of wealth most frequently stands in the way of their attain-
ment What shall it profit a man if he gain the whole

world, and be a mean, contemptible, human pig, finding satis-
faction only in varnished swinishness ? My God ! I had rather

SOCIALISM AND MORALITY 355

be a free wild boar, basking and fattening in the breezy woods,
without a soul and without a mind, than, having a soul and a
mind, to prostitute them in grovelling for wealth, and craving
the satisfactions which it can give. It is not true, then, that
wealth is the only means of satisfaction, or that true human
satisfaction bears any ratio to wealth.

" Again, is it true that labour is necessarily trouble and pain ?
Let us see. I know of no sadder and more humiliating reflection
upon the position of labour in our time and country, no clearer
proof of the moral degradation entailed by our present economic
system, than the prevalent conviction that labour is pain and
trouble. We hear a great deal declaimed about the honourable-
ness of labour, as if that were a fine, new sentiment, instead of
being something which it is a disgrace ever to have doubted ;
but we hear hardly a word about the delights and satisfactions
-of labour. And the reason is, alas ! that there are no delights
or satisfactions in it. But is this state of things a necessity ?
Or is it only a temporary result of an evil system ? There is not
a shadow of doubt about the matter. Labour is not in itself
pain and trouble, and it is only a wicked and perverse economy
that now makes it so. Labour, on the contrary, under a wise
economy, is to every rational being a pleasure, not something to
be avoided, but something to be sought. Labour with a view

to good ends is rational men's natural occupation Let

labour be placed in clean, healthy, and attractive surroundings ;
let it never overtask the brain, nerves, or muscles ; let it receive
its just reward ; let it leave a man with time to cultivate his
mind, and to meet with his fellows in friendly ways ; let it be
honoured ; let it be pursued with hope and the sense of progress,
and, so far from being trouble and pain, it will be delight and

joy-

" It is the greatest possible mistake to suppose that, under true
human conditions, men try to get as much as they can with
the least possible amount of trouble. This is true only under
animal or inhuman conditions. In all natural labour, men
enjoy the pursuit of the result more than the result itself ; for

it is the pursuit alone that has a moral value Artists

often paint their best pictures for themselves, just for the delight
of practising their art. The sportsman will spend whole days

356 SOCIALISM

in hunting game which he could buy in the market for a few
cents or dollars. And so it is generally. Man, as soon as he
rises above the animal stage, makes no attempt to avoid labour,
as a trouble and a pain ; he rather seeks it as a delightful
exercise of his faculties. There is nothing in the world so
satisfactory as labour for a rational end.

"The baselessness of the two assumptions with regard to
satisfaction and labour having been shown, the third falls to the
ground of itself. Since material wealth is not the means to the
highest satisfaction, and labour is not a synonym for pain and
trouble, it follows at once that it is not at all true that men
seek to obtain the largest amount of satisfaction with the
smallest amount of labour. Thus, one of the most fundamental
assumptions of the current political economy proves utterly
untenable, when applied to rational beings. By attempting so to
apply it, economists have been forced to bring men down to the
level of the brutes. Many of them, consequently, have gone to
work to prove that man, in his economic relations at least, is
governed by brute laws, over which he has no control ; for
example, the law that every man must buy in the cheapest
market and sell in the dearest. Assuming selfishness to be the
only motive power in political economy, they have been forced
to the conclusion that man is governed entirely by animal laws,
and they have accepted the conclusion. A puerile enough pro-
cedure, surely !

"In a true political economy, suited to human beings, the
whole of human nature, and not merely its lower, animal part,
must be taken into account, and wealth must be looked upon,
not as at an end, but as a means to the building up and per-
fecting of that nature. We must no longer ask how, given
human nature as purely selfish and certain other conditions,
wealth will be produced and distributed ; but how wealth must
be produced and distributed in order to pave the way for the
perfecting of human nature in the whole hierarchy of functions,
headed by the moral ones."*

* "The Moral Aspects of the Economic Question," pp. 6-n. Index
Association: Boston, 1886.

SOCIALISM AND MORALITY 357

A few remarks should suffice to dispose of the
argument thus urged.

In the first place, then, it rests entirely on a
single assumption — the assumption that Political
Economy assumes human nature to be essentially
selfish, fundamentally egoistic. Is there any warrant
for the assumption? Has any evidence been pro-
duced in proof of the charge which it implies?
None. And it is even certain that none can be
produced.

Not one economist of repute has been shown to
have taught the doctrine in question. The charge
of having done so has been insinuated against
Say, Eicardo, Malthus, Gamier, Bastiat, and
even Adam Smith ; but recklessly and falsely.
All these authors have given distinct expression
to their belief that man is distinctively and
pre-eminently a rational and moral being ; and
that the sympathetic affections or fellow-feelings
are as essential to human nature as the private
appetencies or self- feel ings. None of them re-
garded selfishness or egoism, in the popular and
correct acceptation of these terms, as a normal
or legitimate constituent of human nature at all.
They deemed it, and very properly, an excessive
and perverted development of self-feeling, a dis-
creditable passion, a vice.

Let our Scottish economists be cited in proof.
The ethical views of Francis Hutcheson, Adam
Smith, Adam Ferguson, David Hume, Dugald
Stewart, and Thomas Chalmers, are as well
known as those which they held on economic

SOCIALISM

subjects. Did they, then, represent human
nature as fundamentally selfish, or even assign
a small place or low rank to altruistic prin-
ciples? No one who knows anything about them
will answer in the affirmative. When they erred
as moral philosophers it was chiefly in the contrary
direction of resolving virtue into benevolence, sym-
pathy, or the like. In a word, the argument under
consideration has for its corner stone not a certified
truth but an inexcusable misrepresentation.

It is a natural consequence of this initial error
that the argument should proceed to affirm that
Political Economy assumes that "man is simply an
animal, whose sole desire is to satisfy his animal
appetites." Thus to reason, however, is merely to-
support one calumny by another. Political Economy
assumes nothing of the kind attributed to it.
Political Economists have taught nothing of the
kind. Political Economy has owed almost nothingk
to materialists, or to those who resolved all the
affections and faculties of human nature into im-
pressions of sense. It is not scientific Economics
but Utopian and revolutionary Socialism which has-
sprung from the crude materialistic sensism of the
eighteenth century. And such Socialism, it must
be added, has never purged itself from the evil
qualities derived from its origin. They have never
been more manifest in it than they are at pre-
sent. If we wish to trace back the succession of
the theorists of modern Collectivism to the man
with the strongest claim to be regarded as its-
founder, we shall have to pass from one materialist

SOCIALISM AND MORALITY 359

to another until we come to the author of the
"Code de la Nature" (1756), the Abbe Morelly.
It was on the hypothesis of materialistic egoism ;
the hypothesis that man is simply a physical and
sentient organism, whose sole end or summum
bonum is pleasure ; that he rested his proposals for
the suppression of private property, the collectivisa-
tion of wealth, and the common enjoyment of the
products of labour ; and it is on the same hypo-
thesis that the same proposals have been generally
rested ever since.

The eloquent protest of Mr. Davidson against
the notion that wealth can satisfy all man's wants,
or even purchase any of the highest human satisfac-
tions, must commend itself to every mind not sordid
and ignoble. But its relevancy as against Econo-
mists is more than doubtful. For Economists are
just the persons who take pains so to define wealth
as to make it plain that it is what satisfies only some
wants, and these wants which, although universally
important, are not among the highest. It is no
principle or doctrine of Economics that wealth is an
end or good in itself, or even a necessary means
to such end or good. The selfishness, the avarice,
which so regards it, is a passion which will find no
justification in Economics, and which must have its
sources elsewhere.

When a writer defines wealth as co-extensive
with human weal, as Mr. Ruskin does, or declares
that it can only be properly defined "in terms
of man's moral nature," as Mr. Davidson does,
he, in my opinion, justly lays himself open to

360 SOCIALISM

the charge of using language calculated to favour
the notion that wealth can satisfy all wants, and
that material wealth shall have ascribed to it
a place and dignity to which it is not entitled.
Contrary to his intention he falls into the very
fault of which he accuses economists notwithstand-
ing that they had carefully avoided it.

Social Democrats arid other advocates of Col-
lectivism have, of course, not erred in the same way
as those who like Mr. Ruskin and Mr. Davidson
have approached Socialism from the side of idealism ;
but it is they, and not economists, who specially
deserve censure for ascribing an excessive impor-
tance to wealth. It is Collectivism which proposes
to convert entire society into a vast association for
the production of wealth, and to exempt no class of
persons, male or female, from the compulsion of
giving several hours daily to industrial labour.
There is, in fact, no characteristic of Collectivism
more conspicuous than the predominance which it
assigns to the economic interests of society over all
others ; than what Cathrein calls its " einseitige
Betonung des wirthschaftlichen Lebens." It
assumes that if a satisfactory economic organisa-
tion be attained all other needed organisation will
follow and perfect itself as a matter of course.
" Seek first equality of wealth and the happiness
which that can give you," and all other blessings
will be added to you, is its first and great com-
mandment as well as its chief and special promise.

Economists will admit as readily as other people
that labour is very often a great deal more dis-

SOCIALISM AND MORALITY 361

agreeable and painful than it need be or ought to
be. But, certainly, they will also demand more
proof than any man's mere word for regarding
labour as in no degree pain and trouble, but delight
and joy. Labour is not play. Not only a wicked
and perverse economy but also the nature of things
and the nature of man render necessary hard, pro-
longed, wearisome labour. If labour involved no
pain or trouble, no self-denial or self sacrifice, it
would be no moral discipline and would deserve
neither honour nor reward.

That " men seek to obtain the largest amount of
satisfaction with the smallest amount of labour " is
a principle which Economists will not refuse to
accept the responsibility of maintaining. But, says
Mr. Davidson, " it proves utterly untenable when
applied to rational beings." Indeed ! Has he ever
met with a single rational being to whose conduct
it would not apply in strictly economic relation-
ships? What rational being will not prefer, other
things being equal, little labour to much, large
wages to small? If, indeed, so far from other
things being equal, the little labour and the large
wages require the violation of the moral laws of
purity, of justice, or of charity, then every good
man will prefer to them much labour and small
pay ; but then, also, by doing so he will not in the
least violate the principle laid down by Economists.
The economic principle is no longer alone, and con-
sequently is no longer to be alone considered.
Besides, the largest possible amount of pay for the
least possible amount of labour will in such circum-

362 SOCIALISM

stances bring with it no "satisfaction" to any
properly "rational being." What will it profit a
man although he gain the whole world and lose his
own soul ?

The allegation that economists by accepting the
principle in question "have been forced to bring
men down to the level of the brutes" has. only this
modicum of truth in it, that brutes would all perish
if they were such incarnate absurdities as to prefer
wasting their energies and advantages to profiting
by them. It might, however, be as relevantly said
that acceptance of the principle ' brings men down
even to the level of inanimate agents, inasmuch as
winds and waters and other elements and powers of
nature always follow the path of least resistance.
It is surely no degradation to reason to accept and
apply of its own free choice a principle which is
both rational and natural.

Economists do not say that "every man must
buy in the cheapest market and sell in the
dearest ; " or that any man must. They never say
" Thou must, or Thou shalt." They lay down no
precepts. They are content to indicate what eco-
nomic results will, under given conditions, follow from
any given course of economic action. Any man can
buy and sell at an economic disadvantage if he
pleases. Most men occasionally do so, and from
a variety of motives. And why should they
not? There are occasions when no one is under
obligation to act on economic principle, or from an
economic motive. All that Economists maintain as
to the principle which so offends Mr. Davidson, and,

SOCIALISM AND MORALITY 363

it may be added, Mr. Ruskin, is that it is true in
the sphere of Economics : that if a man does not buy
in the cheapest market and sell in the dearest he
will not buy and sell to full economic advantage ;
and will not grow rich, or at least as rich as he
otherwise would. Its truth has been denied only
by those who have failed to understand its meaning.

Economics, then, does not assume the essential
or exclusive selfishness of human nature. It
assumes merely that when any man buys or sells
labour or commodities his actions have a motive
satisfactory to himself; have in view some good or
advantage which he deems will be a sufficient
recompense for his toil and trouble. It assumes
self-interest in this sense and to this extent.

But self-interest thus understood is not selfishness
any more than it is benevolence. It does not even
necessarily imply self-love any more than benevo-
lence. The (self) interest in labour or trade may
spring, indeed, exclusively from a desire to gratify
my own appetites, but it may also spring from a
desire to promote the welfare of my relatives, my
fellow-citizens, my fellow-men. My interest in
carrying on business may arise mainly or even
wholly from my desire to make wealth in order to
give it away for beneficent and noble ends. Econo-
mics does not take account of the characters and
varieties of the motives which underlie the self-
interest which it assumes ; but neither does it pro-
nounce these motives to be of one kind or character.
It stops short at the self-interest, and leaves to
psychology and ethics the consideration of the

364 SOCIALISM

ulterior motives, the mental and moral states, in
which the self-interest originates.

That most of the actions which are concerned
in the production and distribution of wealth have
their ultimate source in self-love, and very many of
them in selfishness, is not, indeed, to be denied.
It is a fact, although one for which neither Econo-
mics nor Economists are responsible. Men do not
directly produce wealth for others, but for them-
selves, even when they forthwith transfer it to
others. They must in the first place get it to them-
selves. It is only when they have got it that they
can give it away. Traders who profess to sell their
goods at tremendous sacrifices are necessarily
humbugs. Theorists who profess to found Econo-
mics on altruism unconsciously occupy in science a
corresponding place to that which such traders occupy
in practice.

Strictly speaking, Economics does not assume
either egoism or altruism, but only self-interest in
a sense in which it may be either egoistic or altru-
istic. Even, however, if it did distinctly assume
self-love to be the motive force of economic life
it could not in fairness simply on that ground be
condemned as immoral or debasing in its teaching.
Self-love is not selfishness ; not egoism understood,
as it generally is understood, as equivalent to
selfishness. It is a rational regard to one's own
good on the whole. It involves a general notion of
happiness or well being, and not mere love of
pleasure or aversion to pain. It presupposes experi-
ence of the satisfactions obtained through our

SOCIALISM AND MORALITY 365

particular affections ; groups and co-ordinates, as it
were, these satisfactions ; and seeks to obtain them
in such a regulated way as to secure true and
permanent happiness. It is essentially based on
reflection, necessarily calm and deliberative ; and is
rather a habit of the whole mind or cast of character
than a single principle, however composite.

Such being the nature of self-love, we may easily
see what acting from it is not, which is what here
specially concerns us.

For example, the man who acts from self-love
thus understood must be one who does not seek too
keenly, or estimate too highly, the pleasures yielded
by any particular appetite or passion. To yield in
excess to the cravings or affections of nature, to
yield at all to feelings which are in themselves
unnatural or excessive, is to act not from but
against self-love. It is to sacrifice the whole to the
part, permanent and rational happiness to temporary
and unworthy gratification.

Again, self-love is not selfishness, and acting from
the one principle is quite different in character from
acting from the other. Self-love aims at the com-
pletest and highest good of self. Selfishness aims at
seizing and keeping for oneself, at alone possessing
and enjoying, what it considers good ; and being
thus excessive desire of exclusive possession, it dis-
regards the highest and most satisfying goods, those
which cannot be exclusively attained or possessed —
truth and beauty, moral and spiritual goodness. It
concentrates itself on material advantages; clings
exclusively to wealth ; and finds its fullest ex-

366 SOCIALISM

emplification in the miser, whom it engrosses and
degrades until he becomes almost as insensible to
self-respect, to the voice of conscience, to generous
feelings, or religious influences, as, in the words
of Salvian, " is the gold which he worships."

Further, self-love is not opposed, as selfishness is,
to benevolence. There may be an occasional
contrariety, to use Butler's phrase, between self-love
and benevolence as there may be between self-love and
other affections ; but both in themselves and in the
courses of conduct to which they lead self-love
.and benevolence are in essential harmony. Love
wholly engrossed with self is not rational self-love.
It is irrational not only in its exclusiveness and
injustice even, but also in its futility and self-
€ontradictoriness, for it necessarily defeats its own
end, the happiness of self. The benevolent affec-
tions are among the richest sources of personal
happiness. The man who loves himself only
loves himself very unwisely, for he so loves himself
that he can never be happy. On the other hand, no
man who does not care for his own true good will
care for the true good of others. Ruining one's self
is not the way to be most helpful to others.*

Self-love, it must be added, is desire not of
illusory and fleeting advantage to self, but of the
real and lasting good of self. " Thou shall love thy
neighbour as thyself." The love of thyself is as

' Self-love but serves the virtuous mind to wake,
As the small pebble stirs the peaceful lake ;
The centre moved, a circle straight succeeds ;
Another still, and still another spreads.

SOCIALISM AND MORALITY 367

legitimate as the love of thy neighbour. Only,
however, when it is of the same kind. The second
commandment is "like unto" the first and great
commandment in that it enjoins only pure, true love.
" Thou shalt love the Lord thy God with all thy
heart, and with all thy mind." To Him who is
Absolute Truth, Perfect Goodness, Infinite Holy
Love, thou shalt give an unrestrained, unlimited,
unswerving, true, pure, and holy love. And thou
shalt love thy neighbour as thyself. But how, then,
mayest thou love either thy neighbour or thyself?
Only with a love which is true love ; which seeks
thy own true good and his ; which aims always at
what will ennoble, never at what will debase thee
or him ; which prefers both for thyself and for
thy neighbour the pain and the poverty which
discipline and purify the spirit to the pleasure and
prosperity that seduce and corrupt it ; which does
not forget at any time to ask both as regards
thyself and thy neighbour, What is a man profited,
if he shall gain the whole world, and lose his own
soul ? or what shall a man give in exchange for
his soul ? and which, in a word, in no way with-
draws thee from, or diminishes in thee, the love
thou owest to God, but is itself a form and mani-

Friend, parent, neighbour, first it will embrace,
His country next, and next all human race.
Wide and more wide the o'erflowings of the mind
Take every creature in of every kind."

These well-known lines of Pope are only true of true self-love— i.e., the
self-love which, like the various forms of benevolence itself, implies and is
-akin to *' the virtuous mind."

368 SOCIALISM

festation of that love. From God all true love
comes, and in Him all true love lives. True love
of self is as essentially in harmony with love to
God as with love to man.^

Socialists, we have now seen, have failed to prove
that Economics is antagonistic to morality. How,
we proceed to inquire, is their own doctrine related
to morality ?

Morality is essentially one, inasmuch as it
springs from an internal principle of reverence for
rectitude, of love of ethical excellence, which should
pervade all the activities and manifestations of the
moral life. Where any branch of duty or virtue
is habitually disregarded, there the root of morality
must be essentially unsound. No moral excellence
can be complete where the entire moral character
is not simultaneously and harmoniously cultivated.
Yet there are many virtues and many duties ; and
these may be arranged and classified in various
ways, of which the simplest certainly, and the best
not improbably, is into Personal, Social, and
Religious, t

Man occupies in the world three distinct yet con-
nected moral positions. Hence arise three distinct

* For confirmation of the positions laid down in the preceding three
pages the reader is referred to Bishop Butler's two sermons " Upon the
Love of our Neighbour '' (xi.-xii.). A vast amount of worthless writing on
egoism and altruism has appeared in recent years implying on the part of
its authors lamentable ignorance of the teachings of these invaluable
discourses.

f No opinion is here expressed as to how either the ethical or the science
which treats of it may be most appropriately distributed.

SOCIALISM AND MORALITY 369

yet connected species of moral relationship. Man
is a rational and responsible agent, cognisant of
duty towards himself, of obligations to restrain
and control, improve and cultivate, realise and
perfect himself. As such the moral law has a wide
sphere for authority in his conduct as an individual ;
as such he is the subject of personal virtues and
vices. He is also a social being, bound to his
fellow creatures by many ties, and capable of
influencing them for good or ill in many ways. As
such he has social duties, and can display social
virtues. He is, further, a creature of God, mani-
foldly related to the Author of Life, the Father
of Spirits, the Supreme Lawgiver. And as such
he has religious duties and ought to cultivate the
graces of a pious and devout mind.

But already at this point true ethics and the
ordinary ethics of Socialism come into direct and
most serious conflict. The vast majority of con-
temporary Socialists recognise only the obliga-
toriness of social morality. They refuse to acknow-
ledge the ethical claims of either the personal or
religious virtues. The former, in so far as they take
notice of them at all, they judge of only from the
point of view of social convenience ; the latter they
treat as phases of either superstition or hypocrisy.
They thus set themselves in opposition to two-thirds
of the moral law. The triumph of their doctrine
would thus involve a tremendous moral as well as
social revolution.

It would be most unfair to charge all Socialists
with discarding religious morality. There are

2 A

370 SOCIALISM

Socialists, real Socialists, men prepared to accept
the whole economic and social programme of Social
Democracy, who retain their belief in God and
acknowledge the obligations of religion. There are
among thorough-going Socialists some Anglican
High-Churchmen, and a still greater number of
zealous members of the Roman Catholic Church.
Of course, all these have a religious morality —
theistic, Christian, or churchly and confessional, as
the case may be. But such Socialists are com-
paratively few, compose no homogeneous body, and
possess little influence. It is enough to note that
they exist.

Contemporary Socialism viewed as a whole un-
questionably rests on a non-religious conception of
the universe, and is plainly inconsistent with any
recognition of religious duty in the ordinary accepta-
tion of the term. As a rule, when the Socialist
speaks of his religion, he means exactly the same
thing as his polity ; and should he by chance talk
of religious duty, he understands thereby simply
social duty.

The truth on this point is thus expressed by
a good socialistic authority: "The modern social-
istic theory of morality is based upon the agnostic
treatment of the supersensuous. Man, in judging
of conduct, is concerned only with the present
life ; he has to make it as full and as joyous as
he is able, and to do this consciously and scienti-
fically with all the knowledge of the present, and all
the experience of the past, pressed into his service.
Not from fear of hell, not from hope of heaven, from

SOCIALISM AND MORALITY 371

no love of a tortured man-god, but solely for the
sake of the society of which la m a member and the
welfare of which is my welfare — for the sake of my

fellow-men — I act morally, that is, socially

Socialism arises from the recognition (i) that the
sole aim of mankind is happiness in this life, and
(2) that the course of evolution, and the struggle of
group against group, has produced a strong social
instinct in mankind, so that, directly and indirectly,
the pleasure of the individual lies in forwarding the
prosperity of the society of which he is a member.
Corporate Society — the State, not the personified
Humanity of Positivism — becomes the centre of the
Socialist's faith. The polity of the Socialist is thus
his morality, and his reasoned morality may, in the
old sense of the word, be termed his religion. It is
this identity which places Socialism on a different
footing to the other political and social movements
of to-day."*

This elimination of religious duty from the ethical
world seems to me a fatal defect in the socialistic
theory. I am content, however, to leave it uncriti-
cised. It could not be left altogether unindicated.

Socialism also sacrifices personal to social morality.
It ascribes to the conduct and habits of individuals
no moral character in themselves, but only so far as
they affect the happiness of society. It sees in the
personal virtues no intrinsic value, but only such
value as they may have when they happen to be
advantageous to the community. Utilitarianism

* Karl Pearson, "The Ethic of Free Thought," pp. 318-9.

372 SOCIALISM

tended to induce this sort of moral blindness, and
some of its advocates went far in the direction of
thus doing injustice to the personal virtues. But
Socialism errs in the same way uniformly and more
strenuously, peccat fortiter. And it is not difficult
to see why.

Socialism naturally bases its moral doctrine on
utilitarianism, on altruistic hedonism : naturally
assumes that the sole aim of mankind is happiness
in this life, the happiness of society ; and that virtue
is what furthers and vice what hinders this aim. It
tends, therefore, as all altruistic hedonism does to
identify " right " and " wrong " with social and
anti-social; to conclude that there would be no
morality at all if men did not require the sympathy
and help of their fellow -men ; and so to merge
private in public ethics.

Further, Socialism is carried towards the same
result by holding that morality is merely a product
of social development, or, as Marx said of Capital,
"an historical category." It represents economic
factors as the roots of human culture, and morals as
only a portion of its fruits ; the material conditions
of society as the causes which determine social
growth, and the civilisation which has thence re-
sulted as the source of all the ethical perceptions,,
feelings, and actions now in the world. It still, as in
the days of Owen and Saint-Simon, traces character
to circumstances ; believes in the almost boundless
power of education ; depreciates the reality, persis-
tency, and efficacy of the operation of moral forces
in the life and history of mankind ; and looks at

SOCIALISM AND MORALITY 373

spiritual processes through the obscuring and falsify-
ing medium of a superficial empiricism. Hence it
overlooks fundamental ethical factors ; fails to recog-
nise that history is just as much a moral creation as
morality is an historical production ; and does not
see that were there no specifically personal virtue
there would be no genuinely social virtue.

The chief reason of the socialist view has yet to be
given. Socialism of its very nature so absorbs the
individual in society as to sacrifice his rights to its
authority. This is its differential feature. Where the
individual is fully recognised to be an end in himself, a
true moral agent entitled and bound to strive after his
own highest self-realisation, independently of any
authority but that of Him of whose nature and will
the moral law is the expression, there can be no real
Socialism. In Social Democracy we have a some-
what highly developed form of Socialism, although
one which finds it convenient to be either silent or
ambiguous on essential points where the necessity of
choosing between slavery and freedom so presents
itself that it cannot safely pronounce for the former
and cannot consistently pronounce for the latter.
It demands that society should be so organised that
every man will have his assigned place and allotted
work, the duration of his labour fixed and his share
of the collective produce determined. It denies to
the individual any rights independent of society ;
and assigns to society authority to do whatever it
deems for its own good with the persons, faculties,
and possessions of individuals. It undertakes to
relieve individuals of what are manifestly their own

374 SOCIALISM

moral responsibilities, and proposes to deprive them
of the means of fulfilling them. It would place the
masses of mankind completely at the mercy of a
comparatively small and highly centralised body of
organisers and administrators entrusted with such
powers as no human hands can safely or righteously
wield.

Such a doctrine as this is even more monstrous
when looked at from a moral than from an economic
or a political point of view. It is above all the
moral personality which it outrages and would
destroy. It makes man —

" An offering, or a sacrifice, a tool
Or implement, a passive thing employed
As a brute mean ; "

and nothing

" Can follow for a rational soul
Perverted thus, but weakness in all good,
And strength in evil."

On this point the following words of a very acute
and thoughtful writer will convey my conviction
better than any which I could frame of my own.
"A State Collectivism in which the unqualified
conception of an ' organism ' logically lands us, by
restraining the free activity of each self-conscious
personality, strikes not only at the liberty of the
citizen in the vulgar acceptance of the term 'liberty,'
but cuts off at the fountain-head the spring of the
entire spiritual life of man. It is profoundly im-
moral ; for, with free activity must perish all that
distinguishes man from animal, and all must go in
religion, philosophy, literature, and art by which
human life has been exalted and dignified. If these

SOCIALISM AND MORALITY 375

things still held a place in the life of the race it
would be as a dim tradition of happier epochs. It
has not been the race as a collective body which has
created literature, and art, and religion — no, not
even political institutions and laws — but great
personalities, in presence of whose genius the mass
bowed the head in submission or acquiescence. An
organised and consistent Collectivism would, like an
absolute paternal despotism, be the grave of dis-
tinctive humanity."

Men would wholly belie their manhood if they
submitted to such a system. It is one which can
only be accepted by a senseless and servile herd of
beings unworthy of the name of men. Only a
slavish heart will yield to society the obedience
which is claimed. Only a man without either living
faith in God or a real sense of duty will so set
society in God's place or so conform to whatever it
may decree as Collectivism expects. Society is
mortal ; men are immortal. Society exists for the
sake of men ; men do not exist for the sake of
society. Men are primarily under obligation to
God ; only secondarily to society. The laws of
society are laws only in so far as they are in ac-
cordance with right reason. When they are contrary
to divine and eternal law they can bind no one.
An unjust law, as Thomas Aquinas has said, is not
law at all, but only a species of violence.

When acting within its proper sphere, society,
organised as the State or Nation, may, in certain

* S. S. Laurie, '• Ethica," p. 227.

376 SOCIALISM

circumstances and for good reason shown, exact
from its members the greatest sacrifices. If invaded
by a foreign enemy it may without scruple send
every man who is capable of bearing arms to the
battle-field or draw to exhaustion on the resources
of its richest citizens in order to enable it to repel
the common foe. But it has no right to dictate to
any of its members what they shall do for a living,
so long as they can make an honest living for them-
selves ; and if it so dictate it has no right to
expect from them obedience, and should receive
none. If society enacts that certain individuals
shall labour either unreasonably many or unreason-
ably few hours a day, those with whose freedom it
thus interferes will act a patriotic part if they set
its decree at defiance and brave the consequences
of so doing. If it attempts to take from them arbi-
trarily and without compensation property justly
earned or legitimately acquired, they will do well
to resist to the utmost such socialistic tyranny and
spoliation, whatever be the penalties thereby
incurred It is only by acting in this spirit that
the rights of individuals have been won ; it is
only by readiness to act in it that they will be re-
tained. It is only when this spirit of personal
independence based on personal responsibility, of
the direct relationship of the individual as a moral
being to the moral law and its author, has become
extinct that a logically developed Socialism can be
established ; and where it is extinct all true morality
will be so likewise.

The reason why Socialism thus comes so grievously

SOCIALISM AND MORALITY 377

into conflict with morality is none other than its
root-idea, its generative error — a false conception
of the relation of individuals to society.

A true conception of the relation must be neither
individualistic nor socialistic.

It must not be individualistic. Society is not
merely the creation of individuals, or a means
to their self-development ; it is further so far
the very condition of their being, and the medium
in which they live materially, intellectually, and
morally. While the individual has natural rights
independent of society and as against society, these
are not rights which imply " a state of nature "
anterior to society, but rights grounded in the con-
stitution of human nature itself. There are no
personal duties wholly without social references.
The mere individual, the individual entirely ab-
stracted from society, is a pure abstraction, a non-
entity. The individualistic view of the relation of
man to society is, therefore, thoroughly false.

Not more so, however, than the socialistic view.
It in no way follows that because the individual man
exists in and by society he is related to it only as
chemical elements are related to the compounds
which they build up, or as cells to organisms, or as
the members of an animal body to the whole. Man
is not so related to society, for the simple reason that
he is a person, a free and moral being, or, in other
words, a being whose law and end are in himself, and
who can never be treated as a mere means either for
the accomplishment of the will of a higher being or
for the advantage of society without the perpetration

378 SOCIALISM

of moral wrong, without desecrating the most sacred
of all things on earth, the personality of the human
soul. With reference to the ultimate end of life man
is not made for society but society for man. Hence
the sacrifice of the individual to society which
Socialism would make is not a legitimate sacrifice
but a presumptuous sacrilege.^

Now all this bears directly on the pretensions of
Socialism to be a solution of the social question. It
proves that these pretensions are largely mere pre-
tensions— false pretensions. The social question is
mainly a moral question ; and the key to every
moral question is only to be found in the state of
heart of individuals, in goodness or badness of will.
The kingdom of heaven on earth does not begin in
the world without, but works outwards from the
heart within. It can be based on no other founda-

* " The term ' organism,' useful as it is, is not applicable to the State at
all save in a metaphorical way. An organism is a complex of atoms such
that each atom has a life of its own, but a life so controlled as to be wholly
subject to the ' idea' of the complex, which complex is the total 'thing'
before us. Each part contributes to the whole, and the idea of the whole
subsumes the parts into itself with a view to a specific result, and can omit
no part. As regards such an organism we can say that no part has any
significance except in so far as it contributes to the resultant whole, which
is the specific complex individuum. It is at once apparent that this fur-
nishes an analogy which aids and may determine our conception of an
harmonious State, just as it does of an harmonious man. But it is at best
an analogy merely

" Unlike the atoms of a true organism, it has to be pointed out that
the atoms of society are individual, free, self-conscious Egos, which seek
each its own completion — its own completion, I repeat, through and by

means of the whole These free atoms have a certain constitution

and certain potencies which bring them into a specific relationship to
their environment, including in that environment other free atoms. It is
that independent constitution and these potencies which, seeking their
own fulfilment as vital parts of the organic spiritual whole which we call

SOCIALISM AND MORALITY 379

tion than the moral renovation of individuals — the
metanoia of John the Baptist and the precepts of
the Sermon on the Mount. The great bulk of human
misery is due not to social arrangements but to
personal vices. It is unjust to lay the blame of the
sufferings caused by indolence, improvidence, drunk-
enness, licentiousness, and the like, chiefly on the
faulty arrangements of society, instead of on the evil
dispositions of those who exemplify these qualities
or habits. Society may not be indirectly or wholly
guiltless in the matter ; but those who are directly
and mainly guilty are, in general, the individuals
who involve themselves and others in misery through
shirking duty and yielding to base seductions. The
socialistic teaching which studiously refrains from
offending the lazy loafer, " the wicked and slothful
servant," the drunkard whose self-indulgence is the

a man, find the whole world, including other persons, to be only an occa-
sion and opportunity of self-fulfilment ; and on these it has to seize if it
would be itself. Brought by the necessity of its own nature into commu-
nities of like Egos, each gradually finds the conditions whereby its life
as an individual can be best fulfilled. It is the law of their inner activity
as beings of reason, of desire, and of emotion, which gradually becomes
the external law which we call political constitutions, positive statute, and
social usage. Thus generalised and externalised, the ' relations of persons *
become an entity of thought, but this abstract entity exists only in so far
as it exists in each person. To this generalisation of ends and relations
we may fitly enough apply the word and notion * organism,' for the meta-
phorical expression here, as in many other fields of intellectual activity,
helps us to realise the whole. But we have to beware of the tyranny of

phrases The Ego does not exist for what is called the ' objective

will,' but the reverse. So far from the 'atom,' the self-conscious Ego,
having significance only in so far as it contributes to the organism, the so-
called organism has ultimate significance only in so far as it exists for
the free E^o. The 'organic' conception, if accepted in an unqualified
sense, would reduce all individuals to slavery, and all personal ethics to
slavish obedience to existing law." — S. S. Laurie, " Ethica," pp. 209-12.

380 SOCIALISM

sole cause of his poverty, the coarse sensualist who
brings on himself disease and destitution, and the
like ; and which even encourages them to regard
themselves not as sinners but as sinned against, the
badly used victims of a badly constituted society :
this teaching, I say, is the most erroneous, the least
honest or faithful, and the least likely to be effective
and beneficial that can be conceived.^

Let us pass on to the consideration of the relation-
ship of Socialism to Social Morality. Here I shall
say nothing of the moral life of the family, domestic
ethics, although Socialism is notoriously very vulner-

* The corresponding individualistic error would be that social en-
vironment has no influence or but slight influence on individual char-
acter. As we reject Individualism equally with Socialism, we have
naturally no sympathy with this error. It is obviously inconsistent with
facts. The characters of men are to a large extent affected by their
material and moral surroundings. As the physical medium may be such
as to poison and destroy instead of strengthening and developing the
physical life, so may it be as regards the moral medium and the moral
life. Endeavours after the personal improvement of those who are placed
in circumstances unfavourable thereto should be accompanied by attempts
at modifying the circumstances. To hope to do much good to those who
are condemned to live amidst physically and morally foul conditions by
so individualistic a method as merely distributing religious tracts among
them is foolish. To refuse to aid in modifying these conditions for the
"better on the plea that those so situated ought " to reform themselves "
must be merely pharisaical pretence.

Prof. Marshall (" Principles of Economics," vol. i. p. 64) perhaps credits
Socialists somewhat too generously with having shown the importance in
economic investigations of an adequate recognition of the pliability of human
nature. Should this merit not rather be ascribed to the Economists of the
Historical School ? Is the contribution of Karl Marx, for example, to the
proof or the relativity of economic ideas and systems not very slight indeed
in comparison with that of Wilhelm Koscher ? Nay, has the former in this
connection done much more than exaggerate, and distort and discolour with
materialism — i.e., metaphyics — the historic and scientific truth set forth by
the latter ?

SOCIALISM AND MORALITY 381

able at this point. I have touched on it, however,
in chapter viii., and I refrain from returning to it.

Socialism is morally strongest in its recognition of
the great principle of human brotherhood. In all its
forms it professes belief in the truth of the idea of
fraternity. It proclaims that men are brethren, and
bound to act as such ; that they are so members one
of another that each should seek not only his own good
but the good of others, and, so far as it is within his
power to further it, the good of all. It vigorously
condemns two of the greatest plagues which have
scourged humanity : war and the oppression of the
poor and feeble ; and it glorifies two of the things
which most honour and advantage humanity : labour
and sympathy with those who are in poor circum-
stances and humble situations. Its spirit is directly
and strongly opposed to that which ruled when war
was deemed the chief business of human life, and
when the laws of nations were made by and on
behalf of a privileged few ; it is a spirit which
recognises that the work which man has to do on
earth ought to be accomplished chiefly through
brotherly co-operation, and that society cannot too
earnestly occupy itself with the task of amelio-
rating the condition of the class the most numerous
and indigent.

There we have what is noblest and best in
Soc ialism; what has made it attractive to many
men of good and generous natures. Thus far it is
the embodiment and exponent of truth, justice, and
charity ; great in conception, admirable in character,
and beneficent in tendency. Were Socialism only

382 SOCIALISM

this, and wholly this, its spirit would be identical
with that of true morality, as well as of pure
religion, and every human being ought to be a
Socialist.

But Socialism is much else besides this, and often
very different from this. It often directly con-
tradicts the principle, and grievously contravenes
the spirit, of brotherhood ; often appeals to motives
and passions, and excites to conduct and actions,
the most unbrotherly. As yet it has done little
directly, little of its own proper self, to propagate
the spirit of brotherhood, and to spread peace or
goodwill or happiness among men. As yet it has
led chiefly to hatred and strife, violence and blood-
shed, waste and misery ; and only occasioned good
by convincing those who are opposed to it of the
necessity of seeking true remedies for the evils
which it exhibits but also intensifies. The leaders of
Socialism have largely acquired their power by
appealing not to the reasons and consciences, but
to the envy, the cupidity, and the class prejudices
of those whom they have sought to gain to their
views. The power which they have thus obtained
has undoubtedly been formidable ; but the respon-
sibility which they have incurred has also been
terrible.

Let us not be misunderstood. We blame no man
for stirring up the poor to seek by all reasonable
and lawful means the betterment of their condition ;
nor for agitating in any honourable way to make
the community or the Government realise the duty
and urgency of solicitude for the wellbeing of the

SOCIALISM AND MORALITY 383

labouring population ; nor for exposing whatever
seems to him oppression or injustice on the part of
capitalists ; nor for taking an active part in re-
sisting the selfish demands of employers, or in sup-
porting the just claims of workmen, so long as in
his ways of doing so he does not contravene any
principle of morality. We fully admit that by all
such action the spirit of brotherhood is not violated
but exemplified, even when the action may give
much offence to those who are in the wrong, and to
those who sympathise with them. But we are
morally bound to condemn those who strive to
create discontent and division among men, and to
foster and excite the spirit of social disorder, by
flattering certain classes and calumniating others,
or by appealing to envy and covetousness. And,
unfortunately, it is impossible to exonerate Socialists
from the charge of having done this to a deplorable
extent. In every country where Socialism is preva-
lent, abundant proof of the charge is to be found
in the speeches of its acknowledged leaders, in the
articles of its party periodicals, and in the actions
of its adherents.

That Socialism should have thus been so unfaith-
ful to its profession of belief in fraternity has been
the necessary consequence of its aiming mainly to
secure class advantages, to further party interests.
It has persistently represented the solution of the
social question as only to be obtained through a
triumph of what it calls the fourth estate, similar to
that which the third estate gained in France by the
revolution which at the close of last century

384 SOCIALISM

abolished the absolute control of an individual
will, and swept away the unjust privileges of the
nobles and clergy. By this victory the Third
Estate is represented as having gained for itself
political supremacy, wealth, and comfort. But, we
are told that, while it has been prospering, another
estate has been rapidly growing up under its
regime, and rapidly increasing in numbers and in
wretchedness ; and that this Fourth Estate is now
rapidly rising all over the world against the rule of
the third estate, as that estate rose in France
against monarchical despotism and the domination
of the two higher estates ; that is demanding its
full share of enjoyment, wealth, and power ; and
is resolved so to reorganise the constitution and
administration of society as to give effect to its will.^
This description of the social situation is very
inaccurate and misleading. There is no Fourth
Estate at present in any of the more advanced
nations of the world in the sense in which there
was a Third Estate in France before the devolution.

* In a paper entitled "La Pre'tendue Antinomic de Bourgeoisie et de
Peuple dans nos Institutions Politiques " (published in the " Compte Rendu
des Seances et Travaux de 1'Acad. d. Sciences Morales et Politiques,"
Aout, 1893), M. Doniol has made an interesting contribution to the
history of the imaginary distinction between bourgeoisie and peuple. It
originated in the use of the designation la bourgeoisie de 1830 as a party
nickname. Jean Keynaud (in the art. " Bourgeoisie " in the " Encyclope"die
Nouvelle," 1837) employed the term 'bourgeoisie to denote those whom
Saint-Simon had termed "free " in the sense of being " above want." The
notion that the terms bourgeoisie and peuple denote a real antinomy of
"classes " or " estates " was raised into a theory and popularised by Louis
Blanc's "Histoire de Dix Ans" and " Histoire de la Ke volution Frangaise"
(torn. i.). The only semblance of foundation for it was the existence of a
property qualification for voting.

SOCIALISM AND MORALITY 385

The victory of the Third Estate, in France as every-
where else, was a victory over privilege, not the
transference of privilege to itself. The rights which
it gained were " the rights of man," and were
gained for all men. Its victory destroyed " estates"
in the old sense, and removed the foundations on
which any such new estate can be raised.

The putting forward of the claims of a Fourth
Estate in the socialistic fashion necessarily implies a
proposal to undo the work which the Third Estate
accomplished ; to reintroduce protection and privi-
lege ; to withdraw the common rights of men in order
to equalise conditions by favouring some at the ex-
pense of others ; and, in a word, to suppress natural
liberty and to violate justice. Were Socialists,
however, to do otherwise they would virtually
admit that the economic and other evils under
which society is suffering are of a kind to be dealt
with not by such revolutions as may be necessary to
n'ain essential rights and natural liberties but by
such reforms — i.e., such measures of adjustment and
improvement — as will always be needed to ensure the
proper exercise of rights, and to prevent the abuses
of liberties, which have been gained.

Accordingly they persist in presenting an exag-
gerated and distorted view of the social situation.
And in order to give plausibility to it they de-
nounce as akin to those social and civil distinctions
against which the France of the Revolution so '
justly protested, others which are of an entirely
different character. But they are thereby inevi-
tably led to deny the principle and to contravene

2 B

386 SOCIALISM

the spirit of fraternity. Whenever, for example,
they represent the distinction between rich and
poor as equivalent in itself to one between the
privileged and the oppressed, they set the poor
against the rich by teaching error. There is
nothing unjust in men having very unequal shares
of wealth. To prevent the freedom of choice and
conduct the exercise of which leads some to wealth
and others to poverty would be manifestly unjust
so long as that freedom was not immorally and
dishonestly applied. To equalise fortunes by the
employment of force and the suppression of liberties
would be manifestly to oppress those levelled down
and unfairly to favour those levelled up.

Besides, when liberty is only limited by justice there-
is no absolute division or distinction between rich and
poor : they do not form separate castes or even dis-
tinct " estates." There is, in this case, a continuous
gradation from the richest of the rich to the poorest
of the poor, and there is no inequality of rights,
such as there was between the nobility and clergy
of France and the great bulk of the French people
before the Revolution.

Socialists must likewise bear the responsibility of
having seriously violated the principle of fraternity
by habitually representing capitalists, both good
and bad, as the enemies and oppressors of the
working classes. They have thus spread hatred
and enmity among those who ought to live on
terms of friendly and fraternal relationship. And
they have similarly erred by indulging in much
mischievous abuse of the shop-keeping and trading

SOCIALISM AND MORALITY 387

community, or bourgeoisie as they call it. They
have represented it as a non-productive and parasitic
body composed of peculiarly narrow-minded, pre-
judiced, and selfish persons, and manual labourers
as mentally and morally superior to them, and the
only true authors of national wealth. At the same
time, further to deceive and embitter those whom
they have thus flattered, they are accustomed to
describe them as the proletariat — i.e., to apply to
them a term of insult and shame, one only applica-
ble to the idle, servile, improvident, and dissolute,
and wholly inappropriate to men who honestly labour
for their bread. While, then, Socialists have placed
the word " fraternity " conspicuously in their pro-
grammes and on their banners, they have, in
general, deplorably disregarded and dishonoured it
in their speeches, writings, and actions. I rejoice
to acknowledge that there are exceptions, signal
and noble exceptions, to this statement; but as a
general statement it cannot be disputed.

The thought of fraternity readily suggests that
of charity, for brethren ought to love and aid one
another. A man who really feels the brotherhood of
iin'ii cannot but recognise in every sufferer the appro-
priate object of his sympathy, nor can he fail to do
his part in supplying the wants of the needy. How,
then, is Socialism related to charity, understanding
the term in its ordinary signification? Socialism
aims at suppressing the need of charity, at least so
far as poverty constitutes the need. It professes to
be a complete solution of the problem of misery. It

388 SOCIALISM

undertakes to secure that there shall be no poor,
but that all men shall be equally rich, or at least
sufficiently rich. What are we to think of it in this
respect ?

It would not be fair to charge it with want of
charity. If it err as to charity it is owing to its
feeling of charity. And it is commendable in aiming
at reducing the need for charity. If poverty could
be abolished by us we undoubtedly ought to abolish
it. It is a duty to strive to get rid of it so far as is
possible without causing evils even worse than
itself. Socialistic teaching as to charity is healthily
counteractive of much churchly teaching on the
subject which has done enormous mischief.

In Palestine at the time of Christ, and generally
throughout the Roman Empire in the early centuries
of Christianity, charity in the form of almsgiving,
or at least of relief which involved no demand for
labour or exertion from the recipient, was not only
an appropriate, but almost the only way, of relieving
poverty. In inculcating brotherly love, Christ
naturally enjoined His hearers to show it in what
was the only form in which they could show it.
But unfortunately his exhortations to almsgiving
have been widely so misunderstood and misapplied
as to have enormously increased the power and
wealth of the Church and the number and degrada-
tion of the poor. In several countries of Europe
so-called charity has, perhaps, done more harm than
•even war. To provide remunerative work, and so to
make almsgiving as unnecessary as possible, is what
is most required at the present day. A man who

SOCIALISM AND MORALITY 389

establishes a successful manufactory in the west of
Ireland would thereby do much more good there than
by giving away a large fortune in alms.

But it is one thing to be aware of the abuses of
charity and another to deny such need for it as
really exists, or to fancy, as Socialists do, that the
need for it is temporary, and may be easily got rid
of. I fear that vast as are the sums at present
spent in charity, they are not vaster than are re-
quired ; an-:l that comparatively few people who give
with discrimination and after due inquiry, give too
much in charity. I confess even to not seeing any
probability that our earth will become free from
sorrow and suffering, pain and poverty, so long as
the physical constitution and arrangements of the
world remain generally what they are, and especially
so long as human nature and its passions are not
essentially changed.

Will the adoption of Communism or Collectivism
prevent earthquakes and tempests, pestilence and
disease, drought and famine, catastrophes and acci-
dents? Will it expel from the hearts and lives
of men selfishness and folly, improvidence, envy,
and ambition ? If not, or, in other words, if the
old order of things continues, if the world is not,
through some great material change and spiritual
manifestation, transfigured into a new earth with
a regenerated humanity, we may expect our earth
to remain a place where charity will find abundant
opportunities for exercise.

It is not nearly so probable that a communistic or
collectivistic organisation of society would diminish

390 SOCIALISM

the need for charity as it is that it would weaken
the motives to it and deprive it of resources.
Without freedom and the consequent inequality of
fortunes there might well have been far more misery
in the world than there has been, while there could
not have been the wonderful development of charity
and of charitable institutions which is so conspicuous
in the history of Christendom.

Socialists would abolish charity by providing work
for, and rendering it compulsory on, all who are
capable of working, and by granting to those who
are incapable the supply of their wants in the name,
not of charity, but of justice. Are they sure, how-
ever, that they could always provide work for all
who need it ? Are they sure that they could always
provide it on such terms as would be tolerable to
workmen ? If they are, one would like very much
to know their secret. If they have one, they have
not yet divulged it. As for the idle and dissolute,
those whose poverty is voluntary and disgraceful,
how are Socialists to compel them to maintain them-
selves by labour except by violence or starvation ?
But we could do it by these means without Socialism ;
we are only prevented from doing it by our respect
for human liberty and our soft-heartedness.

Then, although calling what is really of the nature
of charity "justice" is very characteristic of Social-
ism, it is also a worse than useless device. It can
only do harm to confound the provinces of justice
and of charity. We ought to give to justice all that
belongs to it, and seek in addition to diffuse and
deepen the feeling of the obligatoriness of charity ;

SOCIALISM AND MORALITY 391

but we ought not to encourage men to claim pre-
tended rights, and deaden in them the sense of
gratitude for acts of kindness and generosity.

Individuals, voluntary associations, and the Church
have often, in their dispensation of charity, com-
mitted serious mistakes, and aggravated the evils
which they desired to remove. But they have not
erred more grievously than has the State. The old
English Poor Law was the cause of an enormous
amount of poverty and of demoralisation. " England,"
says Fawcett, " was brought nearer to the brink of
ruin by it than she ever was by a hostile army." *

It would be a deplorable policy to entrust the
State with the exclusive right to deal with the
problem of poverty, or with the means of satisfying
all the demands of poverty. The result would
;i-suredly be that the State would waste and abuse
the resources foolishly confided to it, and that idle-
ness and vice would be encouraged. The State in
its dealings with poverty should only be allowed to
act under clear and definite rules, and should be
kept rigidly to economy. While it ought to see
that all charitable societies and institutions regularly
publish honest accounts, and should from time to
time carefully inquire into and report on the good
and evil results which they are producing, it should,
instead of seeking to substitute its own action for
free and spontaneous charity, encourage such charity,
and only intervene in so far as may be necessary to
supply its deficiencies.

* " Socialism ; its Causes and Remedies," p. 25.

392 SOCIALISM

Socialism vainly pretends to be able to do away
with poverty and misery. But, of course, it could
abolish true charity, and arrest the free mani-
festations of it. It could everywhere substitute
for spontaneous and voluntary charity what is
already known among us as " legal charity " and
" official charity." That, however, would be the
reverse of an improvement. " Legal charity " is a
contradiction in terms : there can be no charity
where there is a legal right or claim, and no
choice or freedom. So is " official charity," because
even when officials are allowed some degree of
liberty and discretion in giving or withholding,
what they give is not their own. Hence neither
legal nor official charity can be expected to call
forth gratitude.

But, although charity does not work in order to
obtain gratitude, it cannot accomplish its perfect
work without evoking it. For gratitude itself is
an immense addition to the value of the gifts or
effects of charity. It makes material boons moral
blessings. It is an intrinsically purifying and
elevating emotion, and can never be experienced
without making the heart better. When we know
it to be sincere, it is the best evidence we can
have that he who is now receiving a kindness
will in other circumstances be ready to bestow one.
Charity to be fully and in a high sense, effective,
must be obviously self-sacrificing, and capable
of adapting itself to the particular wants of in-
dividuals. The State, acting through law and
officials, is incapable of a charity thus real and

SOCIALISM AND MORALITY 393.

efficacious. It makes no sacrifice, and it cannot
individualise.*

Socialism has been to a certain extent favourable
to the diffusion of international or cosmopolitan
feeling. It has laboured with success to convince
the workmen of different nations that they have
common interests. It has taught them to organise
themselves internationally with a view to promote
these interests. We may well believe that the
range of their intellectual vision and of their moral
sympathies has been thereby also extended. Pos-
sibly the section of British workmen which is most
under the influence of socialistic feelings and ideas
is the portion of the British people which is least
insular in its thoughts and sentiments. Socialism,
simply through awakening workmen to a sense of
the solidarity of their interests over all the civilised
world, has, doubtless, also helped them in some
measure towards a true appreciation of the brother-
hood of mankind.

And, it must be added, Socialism has further
directly inculcated human fraternity. It has ex-
plicitly proclaimed universal brotherhood, the love
of man as man, irrespective of race, country, and
religion. Socialists deserve credit for the earnest-
ness with which they have recommended peace

* There is no " individualising," in the sense meant, when a Government
official admits the claims of certain applicants for poor-law relief and
refuses those of others. The official is only empowered to decide to what
legal categories the applicants belong. There should be no administrative
freedom beyond what is conferred by the law administered.

394 SOCIALISM

between peoples; for the emphasis and outspoken-
ness with which they have condemned the wars
which originate in personal ambition, in the pride
or selfishness of dynasties, and in the vanity or
envy, the blind prejudices or unreasoning aversions
of nations. They have certainly no sympathy with
Jingoism.

Yet on the whole Socialism does not tend to give
to the world peace. It is far indeed from being really
rooted as some have pretended in the love of man as
man. The fraternity which it proclaims is narrow,
sectional, and self-contradictory. Such love as it
can be honestly credited with possessing is very
inferior to the pure, unselfish, all-embracing affection
enjoined by Christ and eulogised by St. Paul. It is a
class feeling, partial in its scope, mixed in its nature,
half love and half hate, generous and noble in some
of its elements but envious and mean in others.^

Hence while Socialism denounces the wars for
which Governments are responsible, it at the same
time inflames passions, favours modes of thought,
and excites to courses of conduct likely to give
rise to wars even more terrible and fratricidal.

* The effectiveness of the socialistic conception of fraternity is by no
means visible only in bad feelings and bad actions towards those who are
not manual labourers. It is likewise very strikingly exhibited by the
^xtert to which Socialism belies its professions of sympathy even with the
operative classes. Socialistic legislation &nd socialistic intervention in
regard to labour have been largely characterised by injustice and cruelty
to the classes of workers most in need of fair treatment and generous aid ;
largely in favour of the strong and to the injury of the weak — expatriated
foreigners, non-unionists, and women. This aspect of Socialism, especially
as it has manifested itself in France, has been effectively dealt with by
M. Yves Guyotin "La Tyrannic Socialiste," 1893.

SOCIALISM AND MORALITY 395

The enmities of class which it evokes may easily
lead to greater horrors than those of nations. It is
mere credulity to suppose that Socialism is tend-
ing to the abolition of war. Wherever there is
prevalent a militant and revolutionary Socialism
civil war must be imminent and large armies prime
necessities. Were Socialism out of the way we
might reasonably hope that the calamity of a great
European war would not be wholly without com-
pensation, inasmuch as it might issue in a general
disarmament. But so long as in every country of
Europe there exists a Socialism ready in the train
of such a war to imitate the deeds of the Parisian
Commune we cannot reasonably cherish any hope of
the kind. At present our civilisation, it has been
aptly said, "has an underside to it of terrible
menace ; as, in ancient Athens, the Cave of the
Furies was underneath the rock, on whose top sat
the Court of the Areopagus. The Socialism of our
day is a real Cave of the Furies. And the Furies
are not asleep in their Cave."* The socialistic spirit
must be expelled before there can be social peace.

Further, while Socialism has so far favoured
internationalism it has, as a general rule, discoun-
tenanced patriotism. Of course, no one denies that
there has often been much that was spurious and
foolish, blind and evil, in patriotism, or at least in
what professed to be patriotism ; much, in a word,
•deserving of censure and contempt. For discoun-
tenancing anything of that nature no blame attaches

* R. D. Hitchcock, "Socialism," p. i (1879).

396 SOCIALISM

to Socialism. But unfortunately it has also assailed
patriotism itself. Pages on pages might be filled
with quotations from socialistic publications in proof
of this. Mr. Bax does not misrepresent the common
strain and trend of socialistic opinion and sentiment
on the point when he writes thus : — " For the
Socialist the word frontier does not exist ; for him
love of country, as such, is no nobler sentiment
than love of class. The blustering ' patriot ' bigot>
big with England's glory, is precisely on a level with
the bloated plutocrat, proud to belong to that great
* middle class/ which he assures you is ' the back-
bone of the nation.' Race-pride and class-pride are,
from the standpoint of Socialism, involved in the
same condemnation. The establishment of Socialism,
therefore, on any national or race basis is out of the
question. No, the foreign policy of the great inter-
national socialist party must be to break up those
hideous race monopolies called empires, beginning in
each case at home. Hence everything which makes
for the disruption and disintegration of the empire
to which he belongs must be welcomed by the
Socialist as an ally."^

That those who are blind to the significance of
individuality should thus see nothing to admire in
nationality is just what was to be expected. Nation-
ality is for a people what individuality is to a person,
— that in it which determines its distinctive form of
being and life, which confers on it an organic and

* "The Religion of Socialism," p. 126. On the relation of Socialism to
patriotism the reader may profitably consult Bourdeau, pp. 86-91 of the-
work already mentioned.

SOCIALISM AND MORALITY 397

moral character, and which impels it to assert and
maintain its rights to a free and independent
existence and to a national and full self-realisation.
Socialism is only logical when it proposes to treat
national individuality in the same manner as personal
individuality. But it is none the less erroneous on
that account.

Nationality is a great and sacred fact. No other
principle has been seen in our own age to evoke an
enthusiasm more intense, sacrifices more disinter-
ested, exertions more heroic, than that of nationality.
Faith in it has built up nations under our very eyes.
When the peoples of Europe renounce this faith
which has been instilled into them by the words and
examples of a Gioberti and Mamiani, a Mazzini,
Garibaldi and Kossuth, a Quinet and Hugo, and a
host of kindred spirits, for belief in the principle of
national disruption and disintegration inculcated by
socialists and anarchists, sophists and sceptics, they
will make a miserable exchange. The sense of
nationality and of its claims, the love of country,
patriotism, is neither a fanatical particularism nor a
formless egotistical cosmopolitanism. It no more
excludes than it is excluded by the love of humanity.
Purged from ignorance, so as to be no blind instinct
such as makes the wild beast defend its forest or
mountain lair, and purged from selfishness, so as to
manifest itself not in contempt or enmity towards
strangers but in readiness to make whatever sacrifices
the good of our own countrymen calls for, it is a
truly admirable affection, binding, as it does, through
manifold ties of sympathy the members of a common-

398 SOCIALISM

wealth into a single body, raising them above them-
selves through a consciousness of duties to a land
and people endeared to them by a thousand memories
and associations, and so inducing and strengthening
them to conform to all the conditions on which the
harmony and happiness of national life depend.^

We pass on to consider how Socialism stands
related to justice. Justice and benevolence, right-
eousness and goodness, are neither identical nor
separable. The goodness which does not observe
and uphold justice is not true goodness ; the justice
which does not seek to promote the ends of good-
ness is not true justice.

True love of man seeks the highest good of man,
which certainly includes righteousness (justice) ; it
will use any means, however painful, which will

* Bishop Westcott has in the following lines beautifully indicated how
true patriotism will operate in social and economic life : — " The Christian
patriot will bend his energies to this above all things, that he may bring^
to light the social fellowship of his countrymen. He will not tire in urging
others to confess in public, what home makes clear, that love and not
interest is alone able to explain and to guide our conduct — love for some-
thing outside us, for something above us, for something more enduring
than ourselves : that self-devotion and not self-assertion is the spring of
enduring and beneficent influence : that each in his proper sphere — work-
man, capitalist, teacher — is equally a servant of the State feeding in a
measure that common life by which he lives : that work is not measured
but made possible by the wages rendered to the doer ; that the feeling of
class is healthy, like the narrower affections of home, till it claims to be
predominant : that we cannot dispense, except at the cost of national
impoverishment, with the peculiar and independent services of numbers
and of wealth and of thought, which respectively embody and interpret
the present, the past, and the future : that we cannot isolate ourselves as
citizens any more than as men, and that if we willingly offer to our country
what we have, we shall in turn share in the rich fulness of the life of all."
— " Social Aspects of Chiistianity," pp. 45-6.

SOCIALISM AND MORALITY 399

stimulate and aid man to realise his highest good,
and to become what he ought to be. The sense of
justice can be satisfied with nothing short of the
realisation of righteousness itself ; it cannot seek or
be satisfied with punishment for its own sake. A
man who punishes merely because punishment is
deserved, and rests content when deserved punish-
ment is inflicted, cannot be a good man, inasmuch
as he seeks not the good of the person he punishes.
And he is not even a just man, for it is not the
realisation of righteousness but only the punishment
of crime that he seeks. Any being who is in the
highest and widest sense just, who is truly and com-
pletely righteous, must be also benevolent, gracious,
and merciful, because a genuine and perfect right-
eousness desires not only to punish sin but to destroy
it and to make every being wholly righteous ; and
the attainment of this can alone satisfy also absolute
love, generosity, and compassion. Conversely where
there is perfect love, a faultless and unlimited bene-
volence, it must seek the righteousness through
which alone its end, the utmost welfare of all, can
be reached.

Socialism does well then when it insists that
human society ought to be founded on justice arid
that all the relations of men in society should be
conformed to justice. There may be virtues which
deserve at times more praise than justice, but it is
only when they are in accordance with justice. All
attections and all courses of conduct into which the
sense of justice does not to some extent enter, are
not entitled to be regarded as virtues ; and if con-

4oo SOCIALISM

trary to justice they are vices. Every State, com-
monwealth, nation, ought to be ethically organic and
healthy, and it can only be so when unified, inspired,
and ruled by the idea of justice, negative and
positive.

While Socialism, however, rightly dwells on the
necessity and importance of justice in the institutions
and conduct of society it fails to conceive aright of
its nature. Its exaggerated conception of the claims
of the State and its erroneous economic doctrines
make it impossible for those who accept them not to
entertain also the most perverted views of justice.

Mr. Henry George must leave on every reader of
his eloquent pages the impression of being an ex-
ceptionally large-minded, good-hearted, rich-natured
man. And yet how deplorably false to his better
self have his socialistic illusions caused him to be.
As we have already had to indicate, his sovereign
remedy against poverty is the appropriation by the
State of the value of land without compensation to
its owners. He has also argued that the nations of
the world should repudiate their debts. And he has
blamed the Government presided over by honest
Abraham Lincoln for not devolving the whole cost
of the war which preserved the American union and
abolished slavery on a few wealthy citizens ; for
" shrinking from taking if necessary 999,000 dollars
from every man who had a million." Compared with
such views as these, Weitling's justification of petty
theft as a legitimate means of redressing social
wrongs seems almost pardonable. One may easily
find far more excuse for an ignorant and wretched

SOCIALISM AND MORALITY 401

common pickpocket stealing a handkerchief or a
purse than for great and civilised nations, jealous of
their honour and reputation, committing such acts
of gigantic villainy as those of which Mr. George
approves.

I have just referred to Mr. George merely for the
sake of illustration. He is not at all exceptional in
the reference under consideration ; and, as a matter
of course, does not go even so far in the advocacy
of iniquity as those who are more thoroughgoing
Socialists. Mr. Gronlund, for example, holds that
men have got no natural rights whatever ; that the
State gives them all the rights they have ; that it
" may do anything whatsoever which is shown to be
expedient " ; and that, as against it, " even labour
does not give us a particle of title to what our hands
and brains produce."

All thorough Socialists who think with any degree
of clearness, must be aware that what they mean by
justice is what other people mean by theft. But few
of them, perhaps, have so frankly and clearly avowed
that such is the case, as Mr. Bax in the following note-
worthy sentences : — " It is on this notion of justice
that the crucial question turns in the debates be-
tween the advocates of modern Socialism and modern
Individualism respectively. The bourgeois idea of
justice is crystallised in the notion of the absolute
right of the individual to the possession and full
control of such property as he has acquired without
overt breach of the bourgeois law. To interfere with
this right of his, to abolish his possession, is in
bourgeois eyes the quintessence of injustice. The

2 c

402 SOCIALISM

socialist idea of justice is crystallised in the notion
of the absolute right of the community to the posses-
sion or control (at least) of all wealth not intended
for direct individual use. Hence the abolition of the
individual possession and control of such property,
or, in other words, its confiscation, is the first
expression of socialist justice. Between possession
and confiscation is a great gulf fixed, the gulf
between the bourgeois and the socialist worlds. . . .
Justice being henceforth identified with confiscation
and injustice with the rights of property, there
remains only the question of 'ways and means.'
Our bourgeois apologist admitting as he must that
the present possessors of land and capital hold pos-
session of them simply by right of superior force,
can hardly refuse to admit the right of the proletariat
organised to that end to take possession of them by
right of superior force. The only question remaining
is how ? And the only answer is how you can. Get
what you can that tends in the right direction, by
parliamentary means or otherwise, bien entendu, the
right direction meaning that which curtails the
capitalist's power of exploitation. If you choose to
ask, further, how one would like it, the reply is, so far,
as the present writer is concerned, one would like it to
come as drastically as possible, as the moral effect
of sudden expropriation would be much greater than
that of any gradual process. But the sudden expro-
priation, in other words the revolutionary crisis, will
have to be led up to by a series of non-revolutionary
political acts, if past experience has anything to say
in the matter. When that crisis comes the great

SOCIALISM AND MORALITY 405.

act of confiscation will be the seal of the new era ;
then and not till then will the knell of civilisation,
with its rights of property and its class-society be
sounded ; then and not till then will justice — the
justice not of civilisation but of Socialism — become
the corner-stone of the social arch." *

The reasoning in the above passage may commend
itself to advanced Socialists, and has probably been
in substance employed and approved of from time
immemorial by the members of the ancient fraternity
of thieves ; but looked at from a logical and dis-
passionate point of view it is far from convincing.

Mr. Bax's " bourgeois " is one of his favourite
" abstractions," but as mythical as " the man in
the moon." What he calls " the bourgeois idea of
justice " is one too crude and absurd to have been
ever entertained by any minority however small.
If he had known of even one " bourgeois apologist "
who admitted "that the present possessors of land
and capital hold possession of them simply by right
of superior force," he would doubtless have been
ready enough to give us his name. His " bourgeois,"
" bourgeois idea of justice," and " bourgeois apo-
L'ijist" are, in short, mere fictions of his own
invention.

It must be admitted, however, that Mr. Bax
has represented his Socialist as just as devoid of
either common or moral sense as his bourgeois.
He represents him as maintaining "an absolute
right " of confiscating the property of indi-

* "The Ethics of Socialism," p. 83.

404 SOCIALISM

viduals. Socialists generally believe in no " abso-
lute rights," and especially in no " absolute rights "
of property. Does Mr. Bax himself hold that
either the possession or confiscation of property is
absolutely either just or unjust ? Does he believe
that the justice or injustice of either the one or
the other is not dependent on moral reasons or
does not presuppose a moral law ? If he does not
he has no right to identify a struggle for justice
with a mere struggle of opposing forces. If he
does he ought to hold that might is right, and
that confiscation and expropriation by the right
of superior force will be justice even in the era of
Socialism.

The defectiveness of the socialistic idea of justice
makes itself apparent in the socialistic Claim of
Rights. The rights which Socialists maintain should
be added to those already generally and justly
recognised are imaginary rights and inconsistent
not only with those which have been gained, but
with one another.

They are reducible to three — the right to live ;
the right to labour ; and the right of each one to
receive the entire produce of his labour.

(i) There is the right to live, the right to exist-
ence. By this right is meant the right to be
provided with a living, the right to be guaranteed
a subsistence. It assumes that society owes to
each of its members as much as he needs for his
support, and that those of them who have not
been able to procure this for themselves are entitled
to claim it as their due, and to take it.

SOCIALISM AND MORALITY 405

Says J. G. Fichte : " All right of property is
founded on the contract of all with all which runs
thus : We hold all on the condition that we leave
thee what is thine. As soon therefore as any one
cannot live by his labour that which is his own is
withheld from him ; the contract, consequently, so
far as he is concerned, is entirely annulled ; and
from that moment he is no longer under rightful
obligation to recognise any man's property- In
order that such insecurity of property may not thus
be introduced through him, all must, as a matter of
right and of civil contract, give him from what
they themselves possess enough on which to live.
From the moment that any one is in want there
belongs to no one that portion of his property
which is required to save the needy one from
\vju it, but it rightfully belongs to him who is in
want."*

This so-called right found an influential advocate
in Louis Blanc, and received the sanction of the
Provisional Government of France in 1848. A real
right, however, it is not. And the State which
acknowledges it to be such is unlikely to be able to
fulfil what it undertakes. A right constituted by
mere need is one which so many may be expected
to have that all will soon be in need. Society as at
present organised has entered into no contract,
come under no obligation, which binds it as a
matter of right to support any of its members. It
is their duty to support themselves, and they are

* •' Werke," iii. 213.

4o6 SOCIALISM

left free to do so in any rightful way, and to go to
any part of the world where they can do so.

Of course, were society organised as Social
Democracy demands : were the collectivist system
•established : it would be otherwise. When society
deprives individuals of the liberty of providing for
themselves where and how they please ; when it
appropriates the capital and instruments of labour
of all the individuals who compose it ; it obviously
becomes its bounden duty to supply them with
the means of living. That the establishment of
Socialism, however, would thus originate such a
right is no indication that it is a genuine right,
while it is a weighty reason for not establishing a
system which would impose on society so awful a
responsibility.

" Society," thus wrote the late Dr. Roswell D.
Hitchcock, " in absorbing the individual, becomes
responsible for his support ; while the individual, in
being absorbed, becomes entitled to support. This
was the doctrine of Proudhon's famous essay.
Nature, he said, is bountiful. She has made ample
provision for us all, if each could only get his part.
Birth into the world entitles one to a living in it.
This sounds both humane and logical. And it is

o

logical. The right of society to absorb, implies the
duty to support ; while the duty of the individual
to be absorbed, implies the right to be supported.
But premiss and conclusion are equally false.
Society has no right to absorb the individual, and
consequently is under no obligation to support him
so long as he is able to support himself; while the

SOCIALISM AND MORALITY 407

individual has no business to be absorbed, and no
right to be supported. Experience has taught us to
beware of the man who says that society owes him
a living. The farmer has learned not to leave his
cellar door open, when such theorists are about.
Society has entered into no contract to support
anybody who is able to support himself, any more
than Providence has entered into such a contract.
Providence certainly is a party to no such contract ;
or there was a flagrant breach of contract in the
Chinese famine lately ; and there have been a great
many such breaches of contract, first and last." *

The denial of the right in question does not
imply the denial of duty on the part either of
individuals or of communities towards those who
are in want. Duty and right are not always and
in all respects co-extensive. The individual is in
duty bound to be not only just but generous and
charitable towards his fellow-men ; but they have
no rights 011 his generosity and charity, as they
have on his justice. The only right which a man
has that is co- extensive with his duty is that of
being unhindered in the discharge of his duty. As
iv-urds his rights in relation to others his duty may
very often be not to assert or exercise them.

So with a community. A community may often
be morally bound to do far more on grounds of
liu inanity and expediency than it is bound to do of
strict right or justice. For example, although
parents have not a natural right to demand that

* "Socialism," pp. 49-51.

4°8 SOCIALISM

the State shall educate their children, and may
rightfully be compelled by it to educate them at
their own cost, yet it is of such vast importance to
a State to have all its citizens, even the poorest,
physically and intellectually, morally and spiritually,
well-trained, that it may be amply justified, from
the point of view of the national welfare, in pro-
viding for all its young people an adequate educa-
tion, the burden of defraying the expenses of which
may fall chiefly on the richer class of parents, and,
to a considerable extent, on those who are not
parents.

Holding that the support of the poor who are
unable to work is only a matter of charity, does not
imply that support is not to be given, or that in the
case of the deserving poor it ought not to be given
liberally and in such a way as may inflict no sense
of humiliation on the recipients. When men have
worked steadily and faithfully during the years of
their strength in any useful occupation a system
securing for them pensions in old age would only, I
think, be the realisation of a genuine right which
they had fairly and honourably earned. Those who
bring about the realisation of this right will deserve
to rank high among the benefactors of the working
classes and among true patriots.*

(2) The right to labour. It should be dis-
tinguished from " the right to existence," although

* There is a good essay by Dr. Julius Platter on Das Reclit auf Existenz
in his " Kritische Beitriige zur Erkenntniss unserer socialen Zustande und
Theorien," 1894. The lengthy chapter professedly devoted to the droit
d V existence in Malon's " Socialisme Integral" (t. ii. pp. 119-168) really
treats of charitable assistance, public beneficence, and social insurance.

SOCIALISM AND MORALITY 409

it has often been confounded with it. The right to
labour can belong only to those who are capable of
labour, and implicitly denies to them the right to
existence, the right to be supported, merely because
of destitution. Were the right to existence affirmed
without condition or limit few would be likely to
claim a right to labour for such means of existence
as they already had an acknowledged right to
simply in virtue of needing them.

The " right to labour " (droit au travail) is alto-
gether different from the " right of labour " (droit
(Ir travailler) which Turgot, in a famous edict
signed by Louis XVI. in 1776, describes as "the
property of every man, and of all property the first,
the most sacred, and the most imprescriptible."
By the "right of labour" was meant the right of
every man to feel freedom as a labourer ; the right
of every man to be uninterfered with by Monarchs
or Parliaments, by Corporations or Combinations,
in his search for labour, in the exercise of his
faculties of labour, and in the disposal or enjoyment
of the products of his labour. The " right to
labour " means a right on the part of the labourer
to have labour supplied to him, and necessarily
implies that labour must be so organised and regu-
lated that all labourers can be supplied with labour.
The one right — that affirmed by physiocratists,
economists, free-traders, and liberals of all classes—
signifies a right to such liberty as cannot be with-
held without manifest injustice. The other right —
that demanded by Socialists— signifies a right to
such protection as can only be secured through the

4io SOCIALISM

withdrawal of liberty. What is claimed by the
spurious right is virtually the abolition of the
genuine one.

The basis of right is not charity but justice.
Hence a right may not be withheld from any one ;
whoever is refused his right is defrauded. Any
State which recognises the right to labour breaks
faith with the citizens, deceives and mocks them,
if it fail to supply them with the labour of which
they are in need.

But can a State reasonably hope to be able to
provide labour for all its citizens who may be in need
of it ? Not unless it be invested with vast powers.
Not unless it be allowed to dispose of the property
and to control the actions of its members to a most
dangerous extent.

Recognition of the right to labour must, it is
obvious, of itself create an extraordinary demand
for the labour which the State acknowledged itself
bound to supply. For it could not fail to take away
from individuals the motives which had constrained
them to seek labour for themselves, to be careful
not to lose it when they had got it, and to make
while they had it what provision they could for
supporting themselves when they might not have
it. In other words, the State, by assuming the
responsibility of finding and providing labour for the
unemployed would necessarily encourage indolence
and improvidence, favour the growth of irregular
and insubordinate conduct among those engaged in
industrial occupation, diminish individual enterprise
and energy, and deaden the sense of personal

SOCIALISM AND MORALITY 411

responsibility. And the obvious consequence of its
thus demoralising its citizens by leading them to
trust to its intervention instead of depending on
their own exertions is that it would find itself
necessitated to employ and support them in large
numbers, and in always increasing numbers, as they
would become continually less inclined and less fitted
to take care of themselves.

It would, of course, be in seasons of industrial and
commercial depression, when there was least demand
for the products of labour at prices which would
cover the cost of their production, that the greatest
number of men would apply to the State to imple-
ment its declaration of the right to labour. But
during such a season a British Government, were
the right to labour embodied in British law, might
find itself bound to provide labour for millions of
persons. To meet such an obligation it would require
to have enormous wealth at its disposal ; and that
it could only procure by an enormous appropriation
of the capital of individuals.

The right of the citizens to labour implies the
duty of the State to provide labour. But to provide
labour means providing all that renders labour
possible ; all the money, materials, tools, machinery,
buildings, &c., required for carrying on labour.
That clearly involves on the part of the State
the necessity of incurring vast expense, and, if
only a temporary emergency be met thereby, vast
loss.

Further, the so-called right in question implies
the right to appropriate labour, to be paid at the

412 SOCIALISM

current and normal price of such labour. The State,
and public bodies, have often in hard times given
masses of the unemployed work and wages. But the
work given in such cases has always been work of
the kind which it was supposed that any person
could do somehow, and which it was not expected,
perhaps, that any person would do well ; and the
wages given have generally been only such as were
deemed sufficient to keep hunger away. Now, that
is consistent and defensible in the present state of
opinion and of law, but not if the unemployed be
recognised to have, instead of merely the claim
which destitution has on humanity and charity, a
real and strict right to be provided with labour. In
the latter case there could be no justification of
setting the most dissimilar classes of workmen to the
same kind of work, without regard to what they were
severally fitted for. If a weaver or watchmaker has
a right fco be provided with the means or instruments
of labour those which they are entitled to receive
cannot be the pick, spade, and wheelbarrow of a
navvy.

Further, if there be a right to labour men em-
ployed by the State ought in no circumstances to
be paid less for their labour than men of the same
class who are employed by private individuals. In
a word, if there be a right to labour it must be one
which may well be formulated as it was by Proudhon
in the following terms ; " The right to labour is the
right which every citizen, whatever be his trade
or profession, has to constant employment therein,
at a wage fixed not arbitrarily or at hazard,

SOCIALISM AND MORALITY 413

but according to the actual and normal rate of
wages. "*

But the acknowledgment by the State of the
right to labour thus understood would obviously
lead to the destruction of the present economic
regime. It would make it necessary for the State
to undertake such an organisation of labour as
would produce a complete social revolution. It
would devolve on it the duty of engaging in every
kind of industry and trade ; of becoming a capitalist
and an undertaker and manager of labour to an
enormous and indefinite extent. The end of this
could only be that the State would find itself com-
pelled to suppress all freedom and competition in
the sphere of economics, to appropriate all the
means and materials necessary to the carrying on
of all branches of industry and commerce, and to
take all labour into its own employment and under
its own guidance. The affirmation of the right of
individuals to labour is thus by implication the
denial of their right to property. The former right
can only be given effect to through a transference of
the ownership of the means of production from
private holders to the State or community. Well
might Proudhon say, as he did one day in 1848
while engaged in a discussion with the then French
Minister of Finance : " Oh ! mon Dieu, Monsieur
Goudchaux, si vous me passez le droit au travail, je
vous cede le droit de propridteV'

Notwithstanding, however, that the whole social-

* " Le Droit au Travail et le Droit de Proprictu," p. 13, ed. 1850.

414 SOCIALISM

istic system would naturally evolve and establish
itself from acceptance of the right to labour, con-
temporary Socialism has shown little zeal to get the
right affirmed and guaranteed by law. This may
on first thoughts seem strange ; but Socialists have
had considerable reason for their reticence and self-
restraint in this respect. To recognise the right in
the existing economic order would in all likelihood
speedily result in such serious troubles as would dis-
credit those who were responsible for the step and
cause a reaction from Socialism. Doing so proved
fatal to the French Republic of 1848. Even Victor
Considerant and Louis Blanc acknowledged this,
although they contended, and perhaps justly, that
the workmen of Paris left the Provisional Govern-
ment no option in the matter. The events of that
period form a page of history bearing on the right
to labour not easy either to forget or misinterpret ;
and they go far to explain why since 1848 the right
in question has been so little insisted on by the
advocates of Socialism.^

Apparently Socialists have, in general, come to
see that the right to labour cannot be made effec-
tive in the capitalist era. Possibly those of them
who have reflected on the subject may have felt

* In the present year there has been a movement in Switzerland in
favour of the inscription of the right to labour in the National Statute
Book. At the date of writing this note (June 3Oth) I do not yet know
whether or not the 50,000 signatures of legally qualified voters required
by Swiss law to be appended to any petition for an alteration of the Swiss
Constitution have been obtained ; but I believe it to be very unlikely
that the alteration proposed will receive much support in the Federal
Assembly, where, I understand, there are not more than three or four
Socialist deputies.

SOCIALISM AND MORALITY 415

that it would be difficult to prove that it could be
made effective even in the collectivist era. In my
opinion that would be very difficult indeed to
prove.*

The right to labour as understood by Socialists
finds no support in the idea or sense of justice. The
claim to be unhindered in the search for labour and
in the exercise of one's powers of labour for one's
own advantage is manifestly just. The claim to be

* In an article on "The Right to Labour," published in the May and
June numbers of The Free Review, Mr. J. T. Blanchard make.? a praise-
worthy attempt to show under what conditions the right to labour can be
made effective in the Socialistic regime. He regards them as these three :

(1) The f/rotcing utilisation of all the forces of nature, including land;

(2) A wise regulation of the birth-rate; and

(3) A widening of markets, an increase in the demand for goods.

As to (i), Mr. Blanchard has forgotten to deal with the arguments of
those who contend that under a regime which would suppress individual
initiative and enterprise, and dispense with motives to personal exertion
to the extent that Collectivism inevitably must, the utilisation of the forces
of nature would proceed more slowly than now. This is a large and serious
omission.

As to (2), most Socialists will probably be surprised and disappointed to
hear that any regulation of the birth-rate will be needed in the Collectivist
era. What surprises and disappoints me is that Mr. Blanchard should not
have told us what he means by "a wise regulation of the birth-rate." Can
any other regulation of it be wise than such as may be effected through so
moralising men and women that they will be habitually self -restraining,
prudent, and right-minded 1 If Mr. Blanchard means by " wise regulation"
what some of his collaborateurs — what the members of the Malthusian
' e and many Socialists — mean by it, it is what would lead to the
most shocking demoralisation of the labouring classes. Like Mr. Blanchard,
I accept every essential proposition contained in the theory of Malthns.
But Malthus would have disowned with horror the Malthusian League.

to (3), Mr. Blanchard does not seem to realise that consumption is
conditioned and limited by production ; that markets cannot be widened
ad hfiitttni; that an effective demand for goods is one which implies
possession of the means of paying for them. Failure to perceive this
elementary truth is often apparent in the writings and reasonings of
Socialists.

416 SOCIALISM

provided with labour by the labour and at the
expense of others is of an entirely different character,
and manifestly unjust.^

(3) The right of the labourer to the whole
produce of his labour. This alleged right had been
announced and advocated more than half a century
before Marx undertook its defence. Among those
who preceded him were William Godwin, Charles
Hall, William Thompson, Enfantin and Proudhon.t

According to these precursors of Marx, what the
labourer is naturally entitled to receive in return
for his labours is the entire use of all the things
which he actually produces by it ; and what
prevents him from obtaining his due, the whole
fruit of his labour, and compels him to accept
instead, under the name of wages, a mere fraction
thereof, is the power which wealth gives its
possessors to take advantage of those who are in
poverty. Hence they regarded rent, interest, profits,
and, in a word, all the components of the wealth

* The most important book on .the right to labour is : — " Le Droit au
Travail ti, 1'Assemblee Nationale, recueil complet de tous les discours
prononces daos cette memorable discussion par MM. Fresneau, Hubert
Delisle, Levet, Cazales, Lamartine, Gaultier de Bumilly, Pelletier, A. de
Toqueville, Ledru-Eollin, Duvergier de Hauranne, Cremieux, Barthe,
Gaslonde, De Luppe, Arnaud (de 1'Arriege), Thiers, Considerant, Bouhier
de 1'Ecluse, Martin-Bernard, Billault, Dufaure, Glais-Bizoin, Goudchaux,
Lagrange, Felix Pyat et Marius Andre (textes revus par les Orateurs),
suivis de 1'opinion de MM. Marrast, Proudhon, L. Blanc, Ed. Laboulaye et
Cormenin ; avec des observations inedites par MM. Leon Faucher, Wolowski,
Fred. Bastiat, de Parien, et une introduction et des notes par M. Joseph
Gamier. Paris, chez Guillaumin et Cie. 1848."

t The history of the claim put forth on behalf of labour to a right to
the full product has been carefully traced by Professor Anton Menger —
"Das Recht auf den vollen Arbeitsertrag in geschichtlicher Darstellung."
1891.

SOCIALISM AND MORALITY 417

of the rich, as appropriations of the products of
the unpaid labour of the poor.

Marx accepted this doctrine, argued very ela-
borately and ingeniously in its support, and had
extraordinary success in persuading certain classes
of persons to believe that he had proved it. Such
was his relationship to it. He did not originate it.
And, as has been shown in former chapters, he did
not really prove it. There is no likelihood that it
ever will be proved.

The right in question has never been recognised
in practice. The " state of nature " to which some
would trace it back, is itself a myth. Where social
bonds are weak and loose, as among many rude
peoples, right is largely confounded with force,
and the prevalent rule of distributing wealth is

"the simple plan,

That they should take who have the power,
And they should keep who can."

Where social bonds are strong and firm, where the
principle of liberty or individuality is feeble in
comparison with that of authority or of society,
and the man is merged in the family, clan, city,
or nation, the produce of the labour of all the
members of the community is regarded as belong-
to its head, to the patriarch, chief, or king.
The rights of labour are more fully acknowledged
at the present day than they have been in any
previous period of the world's history. But no-
where even now do labourers of any class receive
in return for their labour all that it produces.

2 D

418 SOCIALISM

Ought they to receive all that their labour
produces ? This question suggests the naturally
prior one : What is meant when we affirm that
all that labour produces should belong to those
whose labour it is ? And obviously this latter
question may be answered in two ways. For,
labour may either be credited with producing all
that it is the direct factor of producing — all that it
seems to immediate outward sense to produce ; or,
it may be granted that labour is so dependent on
and aided by other factors of production that its
real produce is less than its apparent produce, and
it is only entitled fully to receive the former.
The first meaning is the only one which is either
clear or definite. It is also the only one which
admits of any socialistic application. Let us, there-
fore, realise what it implies.

Houses are things produced by labour. Here,
let us say, is a house worth five thousand pounds.
Apparently it is wholly the product of the labour '
expended on it ; directly it is exactly in every
respect what that labour has made it to be. If,
then, the right under consideration, understood as
indicated, be a real right, the house itself is the
natural and just reward of the labours of those
engaged in the building of it, and they have been
defrauded unless they have received either the
house itself, or its full equivalent — i.e., as much
in wages as would purchase the house.

The claim which the right alleged, thus under-
stood, would confer is certainly not one that can
be charged with obscurity or vagueness. It is

SOCIALISM AND MORALITY 419

beautifully clear and definite. But it is none the
less a very extraordinary one. It is so exorbitant
that workmen, by insisting on it, would ruin instead
of enriching themselves. Were those whose occupa-
tion it is to build houses to claim to be the
proprietors of the houses which they built nobody
would employ them. The trade of building houses
would cease to exist. Every man would be com-
pelled to build his own house or to do without
one.

In existing social conditions the claim is also
manifestly unjust. Labour divorced from land and
capital cannot be entitled to receive the whole pro-
duce. Before the workmen who make a house can
claim with any appearance of justice to have earned
it by making it, the ground on which it stands, the
materials of which it is composed, the capital ex-
pended on their maintenance when engaged on it,
and everything else required to attain the result
reached, must have been their own. But none of these
conditions are fulfilled, or can be fulfilled, so long as
the old order based on the individual appropriation
of land and capital endures.

True, Socialists maintain that the conditions ought
to be fulfilled ; that land and other national agents
should be free to all ; that capital should bear no
i i it *Test or profit ; and, in short, that every institution
and arrangement which prevents the labourer from
receiving the full produce of his labour shall be done
a\\av with. But even were this proved it would not
in the least follow that the abstractions from the
produce of labour referred to are not morally de-

420 SOCIALISM

manded in society as actually constituted ; all that
would be made out is that it is a duty to endeavour
so to reconstitute society that there will be no
warrant for such abstractions, and that the claims of
perfect or ideal justice in regard to the remuneration
of labour should be satisfied. Until, however, the
revolution effecting such reconstruction has been
accomplished in a just way the rights inseparable
from the actual constitution of society cannot justly
be disregarded.

I do not admit, of course, that Socialists have
shown that there is any ethical necessity for such a
reconstitution of society as would secure to labour
alone all that is produced. In previous chapters (iv.-
vii. ) I have argued to the contrary, and endeavoured
to point out the futility of their reasons for repre-
senting private property in land and capital, rent,
interest, and profits as essentially unjust.

Nor do I grant that even were society organised
on collectivist principles labour would or could be
put in possession of the whole produce. There must
still be abstractions therefrom of the same nature as
those which are now made, although they might,
perhaps, be called by different names. That they
would be less in proportion to the whole produce
than at present is very doubtful.

There has never yet been delineated an ideal of
society which would, if realised, secure to labour all
that Socialists promise it. The ideal of Social
Democracy could, it is obvious, only be carried out
by a system of officialism not likely to be less expen-
sive and burdensome than landlordism or capitalism.

SOCIALISM AND MORALITY 421

No social state, indeed, is conceivable in which the
so-called right of labour to the entire produce can
be satisfied. Wherever there are social ties and
obligations men must give as well as get, pay for
assistance afforded as well as be paid for services
rendered. The only state of human existence in
which labour can be reasonably expected to get the
entire produce is a non-social state. A man has only
to renounce all social advantages, to go where the
bounties of nature are still unappropriated and to
employ in his labour his own resources and instru-
ments, skill and strength, and he will not only
deserve but actually get all that he produces. Yet
what he gets will most probably be much less than
he might have got in the social state, notwithstand-
ing its inevitable burdens.

If labour be allowed to be only one of the factors
of production, and all that it produces only a part of
what is produced, the right of labour to all that it
produces can, of course, only mean a right to such
part of what is produced as may be its due, as may
be reasonable and just. The right thus understood
cannot be denied, but neither is it worth discussing.
What is it that is due, reasonable, just ? We are
left to find that out ; and no one has yet discovered,
or is likely to discover, that what is due to labour is
any definite proportion or invariable quantity of the
total produce of the work done in any occupation or
tmde, community or nation.

We have now seen the defectiveness of the
socialistic idea of justice, and how it has given rise

422 SOCIALISM

to demands for fictitious rights. It has still to be
added, however, that socialistic teachers have been
particularly chargeable with the error of dwelling
too exclusively on rights and insisting too little on
duties. All who are ambitious of being party
leaders are sure to be tempted thus to err, seeing
that all classes of men with class aims, with party
interests, prefer hearing of their rights to being re-
minded of their duties. Working men will hear you
gladly if you expatiate on their rights and the duties
of their employers. Employers will admire your good
sense if you defend their rights and dwell on the
duties of the employed. To teach to rich and poor,
employers and employed, to all classes of men alike,
the obligations of duty first, and their rights next,
and as arising from the discharge of their duties,
is very far from being the shortest or the easiest
path to popularity or to any of the ends which the
demagogue seeks. But it is the only one which
will be pursued by those who aim solely and
unselfishly either at the private or the public good
of men.

Rights, indeed, are precious and sacred. Often
when we might forego them were they merely our
own, we are in duty bound to assert and vindicate
them because they are also those of others. In the
course of the struggle for " rights " great and in-
dubitable services have been rendered to mankind.
Nevertheless, the alone properly supreme and guid-
ing idea of life, whether personal or social, is not
that of right but of duty. Only the man whose
ruling conviction is that of duty can be morally

SOCIALISM AND MORALITY 423

strong, self- consistent, and noble ; can control his
own spirit, conquer the world, sacrifice himself for
others, and in all relations act as becomes a being
in whose nature there is so much that is spiritual
and divine. Only a nation pervaded by a sense of
the supremacy of duty, and by that respect for
divine law, and that recognition of the claims of
self-denial and self-sacrifice for others, for ideal ends,
and for great causes, which are involved in the
sense of duty, can be one in which class properly
co-operates with class for the good of the whole, in
which individual and sectional interests apparently
conflicting are successfully harmonised, and in which
the citizens, notwithstanding all natural inequalities
and all diversities of position and circumstance, form
a true brotherhood.

Tell men only of their rights ; tell them only that
others are wronging them out of their rights to

o o o

liberty, to property, to power, to enjoyment, and
that they must assert and secure their rights ;
and you appeal, indeed, in some measure to their
conscience, their sense of justice, but you appeal
as much or more to their selfishness, hate, envy,
jealousy ; and if you infuse into them a certain
strength to cast down and pull to pieces much
which may deserve demolition, you render them
unlikely to stop where they ought in the work of
destruction, and utterly unfit them for the still
more needed work of construction. Hence all revo-
lutions which have been effected by men prejudiced
and excited through such teaching have been, even
when essentially just, disgraced by shameful ex-

424 SOCIALISM

cesses, and only very partially, if at all, successful.
Those who have gained rights which they have been
taught to think of as advantages, but not as
responsibilities, always abuse them. No society
in which men who have been thus perverted and
misled are in the majority, no society in which the
sense of duty does not prevail, can fail to be one
in which class is at constant war with class ; can
enjoy peace, security, or prosperity.

This truth has found its worthiest prophet and
apostle in Joseph Mazzini ; and to his writings, and
especially to his work " On the Duties of Man," I
refer such of my readers as desire fully to realise its
significance. He rightly traced to disregard of it
much of the moral weakness and disorganisation of

o

that Democracy for the advance and triumph of
which he so unselfishly laboured ; and he justly held
the one-sided moral teaching of the revolutionary
and socialistic propagandists of the age to have
been largely responsible for that disregard itself.
There has certainly been no improvement in this
respect since he wrote. The Socialism of to-day is
more radical and revolutionary in its proposals, more
intent on class and party advantages, and more averse
to dwell on the supreme and universal claims of duty
than were the forms in which Socialism appeared in
the earlier half of the century. The spirit which
animates Social Democracy is the very spirit which
Mazzini was so anxious to see cast out of Democracy.
The Mazzinian and the Marxian ideals of democratic
society are moral contraries. Immense issues
depend on which of them may prevail.

SOCIALISM AND MORALITY 425

While the common error of Socialists is insisting
on rights in a way inconsistent with the primacy of
duty, the error of uprooting and annulling rights
through affirming a false conception of duty is
not unknown among them. Mr. Gronlund, for
example, conceiving of the State as strictly an
organism, and actually related to its citizens as a
tree to its cells, denies that individuals have any
natural rights, and affirms that the State gives
them whatever rights they have. " This conception
of the State as an organism," he says, " consigns
* the rights of man ' to obscurity and puts duty in
the foreground." * And certainly it consigns the
rights of man to obscurity ; entirely robs man of his
essential and inalienable rights as a moral agent.
But this is done not by putting duty in the fore-
ground ; it is done by obliterating duty, and sub-
stituting for it servility. What is got rid of is
morality altogether, alike in the form of duty and
of right.

Other Socialists reach a similar result by investing
the will of the majority with absolute authority in
the moral sphere. It is interesting to note, how-
ever, that those who prefer this course consider that
the will of the majority is only to be thus revered as
the source and law of right and duty when it has
adopted a socialistic creed. At present " the will
of the majority " is only a bourgeois idol, which
may properly be treated with contempt, but in the
enlightened era which is approaching it will be a

* " The Co-operative Commonwealth," p. 84.

426

SOCIALISM

socialist deity, and its decrees must be reverently
received and implicitly obeyed. This is the social-
istic form of the cultus of the majority. In every
form, however, any such cultus is obviously incom-
patible with a true view of the nature and claims
of morality.

CHAPTER XL

/

SOCIALISM AND RELIGION.

How is Socialism related to Religion ? To this
question different and conflicting answers have been
given.

i. Some have held that there is no essential
relation, no natural or necessary connection, be-
tween them. It cannot be denied that they may
act, and really do act, on each other ; but it may
be denied that they ever so act otherwise than
casually, or, in other words, owing to the influence
of circumstances, the conjuncture of contingencies.
And this denial has been made. Socialism, accord-
ing to those to whom I refer, is occupied only with
economic interests, and has properly nothing to do
with religious concerns, while Religion is a " private
affair," one intrinsically spiritual and individual.
A Socialist may be of any religion or of no religion.
In discussing Socialism it is irrelevant to refer to
Religion. To attach any importance to impu-
tations of materialism, infidelity, and atheism
against Socialists is "bad form"; it is to have
recourse to an unfair and happily almost obsolete
style of controversy. " We have found by the
experience of centuries that these weapons are
tin- most readily turned against the best and wisest

428 SOCIALISM

men, and we no longer employ them in our political
and economic warfare." *

There must be admitted to be some truth in this
view. The economic and the religious questions
in Socialism are not only separable but ought to
be so far separated. Socialists are fully entitled
to expect that their economic hypotheses will be
judged of, in the first place at least, on economic
grounds, apart from religious and all other non-
economic considerations. The critic of Socialism
may be justified in confining his attention to its
economic doctrine. No person is bound to treat of
any subject exhaustively. That there are religious
as well as non-religious Socialists is undeniable ;
and to impute falsely materialism, infidelity, or
atheism to any man, wise or foolish, good or bad,
is obviously unjustifiable. The experience of cen-
turies has undoubtedly shown it to be grievous
error to drag Religion irrelevantly into any dis-
cussion, or so to make use of it as to embitter
and degrade any discussion.

Still the view in question is, in the main,
erroneous. There is not enough of truth in it to
have gained it much acceptance. Of all views on
the relation of Religion to Socialism, it is the one
which fewest people have been found to adopt.
And Socialists have as generally and decidedly
rejected it as non-Socialists. The religious among
them are almost unanimous in holding that

* Mr. Bosanquet in the Preface to his translation of Schaffle's " Im-
possibility of Social Democracy."

SOCIALISM AND RELIGION 429

Religion, as they conceive of it, is necessary to
the completeness and efficiency of their Socialism.
The non-religious among them, with rare exceptions,
look on Religion as naturally antagonistic to the
growth and triumph of all genuine Socialism.

It would have been strange if it had besn other-
wise. Socialism is not pure science, not mere
theory ; it is a doctrine or scheme of social organisa-
tion. Can any such doctrine or scheme ignore
or exclude consideration of Religion, and yet not
be seriously defective ? Surely not. Social organi-
sation is not merely economic organisation ; it
implies the harmonising of all the factors, insti-
tutions, and interests of society, political, moral,
and religious, as well as economic. Economic
organisation, indeed, can no more be successfully
effected if dissevered from religion than if dissociated
from morality or political action. The life of a
society, like the life of an individual, is a whole,
and all the elements, organs, and functions which
such life implies are so intimately interconnected
that each one influences and is influenced by all
tin* others. They cannot be separated without
injury or destruction to themselves and the entire
< >i -aiiism. Dissection is only practicable on the dead.
All attempts at mere economic organisation must
necessarily be unsuccessful ; and so far from its
being irrelevant in discussing Socialism to refer to
Religion any examination of Socialism which does
not extend to its religious bearings must be in-
complete. The experience of centuries should indeed
warn us to be on our guard against recklessly

430 SOCIALISM

charging economic or political systems with atheism,
but it should no less warn us against fancying that
such systems may ally themselves with atheism or
irreligion without loss of social virtue or value.

2. Another view of the relation between Social-
ism and Religion is that it is one of identity ; that
they are. substantially the same thing ; that
Socialism in its perfection is Religion at its best.

This is a view which has been widely entertained.
The Socialism which appeared in France in the
early part of the present century, although it
originated in the irreligious materialism and revo-
lutionary radicalism of the latter part of the pre-
ceding century, came gradually after the Restora-
tion to assume an anti-revolutionary and com-
paratively religious character and tone. Saint-
Simon closed his career with presenting his social
doctrine as a New Christianity, the result and
goal of the entire past religious development of
humanity ; and on this New Christianity Enfantin
and his adherents sought to raise the New Church
of the future. Fourier, Considerant, Cabet, and
Leroux all felt that society could not be held to-
gether, reinvigorated, and reorganised by mere
reasoning and science, but required also the force
and life which faith and religion can alone impart.
At the same time, like Saint-Simon, they regarded
historical Christianity as effete and sought to
discover substitutes for it capable of satisfying both
the natural and the spiritual wants of man. The
great aim of Auguste Comte from 1847 until his
death in 1857 was so to transform his philosophy

SOCIALISM AND RELIGION 431

into a religion that it would be adequate to the
task of organising and regulating all the activi-
ties and institutions of humanity. In Germany
Fr. Feuerbach,* Josiah Dietzgen,t Dr. Stamrn,^
Julius Stern, § and others, have presented sub-
stantially the same view.

In England it has found an advocate in Mr. Bax.
The following words of his are as explicit as could
be desired : "In what sense Socialism is not
religious will be now clear. It utterly despises the
* other world ' with all its stage properties — that
is, the present objects of religion. In what sense
it is not irreligious will be also, I think, tolerably
clear. It brings back religion from heaven to
earth, which, as we have sought to show, was its
original sphere. It looks beyond the present
moment or the present individual life, indeed,
though not to another world, but to another and
a higher social life in this world. It is in the hope
and the struggle for this higher social life, ever-
\vi( lining, ever- intensify ing, whose ultimate possi-
bilities are beyond the power of language to express
or of thought to conceive, that the Socialist finds
his ideal, his religion. He sees in the reconstruction
of society in the interest of all, in the rehabilitation,
in u higher form and without its limitations, of the
old communal life — the proximate end of all present

* " Die Religion der Zukunft," 1843-5.
t " Die Religion der Socialdemokratie," 3 Aufl., 1875.
£ " Die Erlosung der darbenden Menschheit," 3 Aufl., 1884.
§ "Die Religion der Zukunft," 3 Aufl., 1889, and "Thesen Uber den
Socialismus," 4 Aufl., 1891.

432 SOCIALISM

endeavour .... In Socialism the current antago-
nisms are abolished, the separation between politics
and religion has ceased to be since their object-
matter is the same. The highest feelings of
devotion to the Ideal are not conceived as different
in kind, much less as concerned with a different
sphere, to the commoner human, emotions, but
merely as diverse aspects of the same fact. The
stimulus of personal interest no longer able to
poison at its source all beauty, all affection, all
heroism, in short, all that is highest in us ; the
sphere of government merged in that of industrial
direction ; the limit of the purely industrial itself
ever receding as the applied powers of Nature
lessen the amount of drudgery required ; Art, and
the pursuit of beauty and of truth ever covering
the ground left free by the ' necessary work of the
world ' — such is the goal lying immediately before
us, such the unity of human interest and of
human life which Socialism would evolve out of
th(3 clashing antagonisms, the anarchical individ-
ualism, religious and irreligious, exhibited in the
rotting world of to-day — and what current religion
can offer a higher ideal or a nobler incentive than
this essentially human one ? " *

The attempts which have been made to identify
Religion and Socialism are not without interest.
They show us how social theorists the most hostile
to current Religion are constrained to acknowledge
that something of a kindred nature and power is

* "The Keligion of Socialism,'' pp. 52-3.

SOCIALISM AND RELIGION 433

indispensable to the higher life of man and to the
progress and prosperity of communities ; that a posi-
tive faith which may not inappropriately be termed
religious is an essential condition of healthy develop-
ment. They testify also to an eagerness in their
authors to believe that a golden age, a time of bliss,
is near — one in which all antagonisms will be recon-

o

ciled, and all the wants of the human spirit satisfied,
which is itself of pathetic interest, springing as it
does from sheer hunger of soul. There is nothing
in their principles or in their arguments to justify
their optimism. Their wish is sole father to their
thought. Faith is seen still struggling to rise in
them, although they have cast away all its supports.

Criticism of the attempts referred to is not neces-
sary. While professing to preserve Religion, they in
reality suppress it. They would "abolish current
antagonisms " by sacrificing the spirit to the flesh
and the "other world " to this world; by denying
God and deifying humanity. The identification of
Socialism and Religion at which they arrive, assumes
the identity of Religion and Atheism. They neither
solve antinomies of thought nor reconcile antago-
nisms of life; they neither remove intellectual
difficulties nor serve practical ends. Those who
have regarded them as great philosophical achieve-
in* M its have been deceived by equivocal terms and
boastful pretensions.

3. Another view as to the relation of Socialism to
Religion is that it is essentially one of harmony-
Religion and Socialism implying, supporting, and
supplementing each other.

2 K

434 SOCIALISM

This view prevails among those who accept Religion
in its proper acceptation, and who at the same time
believe, or fancy they believe, in genuine Socialism.
It is prevalent, therefore, among so-called Christian
Socialists,whether actually Socialists or merely pseudo-
Socialists. The great majority of so-called Christian
Socialists are, in my opinion, not really Socialists.
They are simply good Christian men anxious that
society should be imbued with the spirit and ruled
by the principles of Christ, and that Christ's Church
and its members should faithfully discharge their
duties to society. As all good and Christian men
must do, they wish to see all men happier than
they are, oppression of the weak by the strong and
of the poor by the rich prevented, hatred and strife
between classes ended, a better distribution and
better use of wealth attained, the ties of human
brotherhood universally felt, and righteousness
established in all the relations of life. And, therefore,
they are not unwilling to be called Christian Social-
ists. But real Socialists they are not. They do not
believe that all property should be either collective
or common. They acknowledge the right of the
individual to rule his own life, and not to be used
or abused as the mere instrument of Society. They
differ decidedly from real Socialists as regards the
signification of liberty, equality, and justice.

Those who first bore the name of Christian Social-
ists in England were Christians of a type as healthy,
beautiful, and noble as God's grace working on
English natures has produced. Maurice, Kingsley,
Ludlow, Neale, and Hughes deserve to be lovingly

SOCIALISM AND RELIGION 435

and reverently remembered by many generations.
The movement which they promoted was one in
every respect admirable. And the name which they
gave to it had at least the merit of expressing
•clearly why they so named it. This was because they
held that Christianity and Socialism were in their
-very natures closely and amicably connected. It
was because they believed that all social disease and
•disorganisation were caused by disobedience to the
divine laws ; that Christianity was as pre-eminently
the power of God unto social as unto personal salva-
tion ; and that by Socialism ought properly to be
meant the Christian view or doctrine of the life of
society — just Christianity considered in its applica-
tion to the purifying and perfecting of that life.
Nothing less than Christianity, they felt, could over-
•come and expel the evils of the reigning industrial
system, and bring about even such an economic
nisation of any commonwealth as must be
effected if God's kingdom is ever to be established
in it ; and equally they felt that so long as Christian-
ity was unduly confined to churchly or ecclesiastical
spheres of action, and did not go forth courageously
to conquer the entire world to God, to imbue with
the spirit, and subject to the law of Christ, trade and
•commerce and the whole of ordinary life — so long,
in other words, as Christianity was separated from
what they understood and wished others to under-
stand by Socialism — it must be untrue to itself,
unworthy of its origin, feeble and despised. Hence
and thus it was that they conjoined Christianity and
Socialism, and regarded " Christian Socialism " as

436 SOCIALISM

the embodiment of "a new idea"' which had entered
into the world in the nineteenth century, and was
as distinctive of it as that which gave rise to
Protestantism had been of the sixteenth century.
In the sixteenth century Christianity required to
take the form of Protestantism ; in the nineteenth
century it ought to manifest itself as Socialism. *

To the so-called " Christian Socialism " of Maurice
and Kingsley in itself we are far from objecting;
but we cannot admit that " Christian Socialism "
was a proper name for it, and hence cannot see in
the existence of the movement which was thus
designated any reason for thinking Christianity and
Socialism to be naturally and harmoniously allied.
Canon Vaughan has said : " The ' Christian Social-
ism' (as it was styled) with which the honoured
names of Maurice and Kingsley were identified forty
years ago, and the much more recent movement of
the Catholic and Protestant Churches of Germany
in a similar direction — these are enough of them-
selves to prove that Socialism, rightly understood,
has no necessary connection with religion and un-
belief, "t But where is the proof ? The "Christian
Socialism " of Maurice and Kingsley supplies none
unless it was not merely so styled, but truly so
styled, really Socialism, Socialism rightly understood.
And that is what it certainly was not. Maurice and
Kingsley did not teach a single principle or doctrine
peculiar to Socialism. The portion of the teaching

* J. M. Ludlow in the introductory paper to the " Christian Socialist."
t "Questions of the Day," pp. 251-2.

SOCIALISM AND RELIGION 437

of the French Socialists which they inculcated with
such intense conviction and great effectiveness was
the purely Christian, not the distinctly Socialistic
portion. In condemning selfishness, in inveighing
against the abuses of competition, in urging recourse
to co-operative association, and in preaching justice,
love, and brotherhood, they followed a good example
which these Socialists had set them, without com-
mitting themselves to the acceptance of any speci-
fically socialistic tenet. When they maintained that
social reorganisation must be preceded by individual
reformation ; that trust in State aid or legislation was
a superstition ; that self-help was the prime requisite
for the amelioration of the condition of the work-
ing classes ; that co-operation should be voluntary
and accompanied by appropriate education ; that so
far from private property being robbery, it was a
divine stewardship ; and that men could never be
joined in true brotherhood by mere plans to give
them self-interest in common, but must first feel
that they had one common Father : they struck at
the very roots of Socialism.

The combination of Socialism with Religion even
in the form of Christianity is certainly not im-
possible. It has actually taken place. There are
unquestionably so-called "Christian Socialists" who
are at once sincere Christians and genuine Socialists.
Those who profess themselves to be Christian Social-
are apt to be led by the motives which induced
tin 'in to do so, and even by their very profession
itself, far beyond such so-called "Christian Social-
ism " as that of Maurice and Kingsley. Some of the

438 SOCIALISM

Christian Socialists at present in England display
none of the jealousy of State interference with indi-
vidual rights, or of the respect for the institution of
private property, shown by those whose successors
they claim to be. Witness the Rev. Mr. Headlam.
There can be no doubt that he has managed to-
combine in his mind and doctrine Christianity
and Socialism. This, however, is no proof that
they are naturally connected. The mind of man
can make the most unnatural and irrational com-
binations. The actual conjunction of belief in
thorough -going Socialism with faith in Christianity
is, consequently, no proof that they are naturally
connected, or rationally and harmoniously related.
Mr. Headlam believes in a Socialism which aims at
robbery on a gigantic scale, and in a Religion which
forbids all dishonesty. What does that prove ?
That Socialism and Christianity are closely akin ?
No ! Only that Mr. Headlam, like all other men,
may regard incompatible things as consistent.

In Germany both the so-called " Catholic
Socialists " and the so-called " Protestant " or
"Evangelical Christian Socialists" made from the
first excessive concessions to Socialism. Such repre-
sentatives of the former as Bishop von Ketteler,
Canons Moufang and Haffner, and Abbot Hitze, and
such representatives of the latter as Dr. Stocker
and Todt were at one in inviting the State to
intervene for the protection and aid of the working
classes to an extent which could hardly fail to intro-
duce a very real Socialism. The Protestant and
Catholic Socialists of Germany have been charged

SOCIALISM AND RELIGION 439

with seeking to outbid each other ; they have
obviously been influenced by the desire to counter-
act the prevalent revolutionary and anti-religious
Socialism. They agree in encouraging the State to
extend and increase its already exorbitant power
and activity. The leading Catholic Socialists of
Austria (Baron von Vogelsang, Count von Kufstein,
Fathers Weiss and Costa-Rossetti), demand from
the State such an organisation of industry and such
regulation of the relations of capital and labour as
would leave little room for individual liberty or
enterprise. Certain French Catholic writers have
recently been advocating the same policy.

These movements show that both Catholic and
Protestant Christians may lapse into socialistic
aberrations, but not that they can do so without
declension from Catholic and Protestant doctrine.

As to Catholic doctrine, that has been set forth in
its relation to the labour and social question with
an authority which no Catholic will dispute, and an
ability and thoughtfulness which all must acknow-
ledge, by the present Pontiff, Leo XIII. , in a great
historical document, the Encyclical : " Rerum
Novarum." There Socialism as a solution of the
social question is tested by the standard of Catholic
doctrine, and judged accordingly. The judgment
pronounced on it is one which leaves no room for a
Catholic becoming, without the most manifest in-
consistency, a Socialist in the proper sense of the
term. It is an express condemnation of the
absorption of the individual or the family by the
State, of the communisation of property, and of the

440 SOCIALISM

equalisation of conditions, which are the distinctive
characteristics of Socialism ; an express condemna-
tion of Socialism in itself as uncatholic and un-
christian. In his Encyclical the Pope recognises no
such distinction as that of a true and a false
Socialism, but treats as false all that is truly
Socialism.**

The Protestant view regarding the labour and
social question is almost identical with that so
skilfully presented by the Pope as Catholic, and
can only cease to be so by ceasing to be Christian.
Catholics and Protestants hold as Christians a
common deposit of truth absolutely essential to
the welfare of society and of the labouring classes ;
and they can neither consistently nor wisely sur-
render a coin of it for one which has come from the
mint of Socialism.

Christianity and Socialism, then, are not so
related as those who are styled Christian Socialists

* Objections may, I think, be legitimately taken to the affirmation in
the Encyclical of the right of the labourer to a minimum wage. Its chief
defect, perhaps, is want of explicitness. Does it mean that the employer
of labour is bound to pay to those whom he employs wages which although
not more than necessary to their reasonable and frugal comfort, are yet
more than he can pay without producing at a loss ? I do not suppose that
the Pope intended to affirm this ; but he has been so understood, and in
consequence claimed or blamed as a Socialist. For the allegation that he
has sanctioned the theory that wages ought to be determined by wants I
can perceive no grounds.

It may here be added that the social question as related to Christianity
on the one hand and to Socialism on the other, has been judiciously and
ably treated by some of the Catholic clergy, and especially by some of the
Jesuit fathers — e.g., V. Cathrein, A. Lehmkuhl, Th. Meyer, &c. See Die
Sociale Frage, beleuchtet durch "die Stimmen aus Maria- Laach." The
widely-known work of Dr. Ratzinger, " Die Volkswirthschaft in ihren
sittlichen Grundlagen," 1881, is eloquent and interesting, but not infre-
quently unguarded and extreme.

SOCIALISM AND RELIGION 441

imagine. What is called Christian Socialism will
always be found to be either unchristian in so far as
it is socialistic, or unsocialistic in so far as it is truly
and fully Christian.

4. The relation of Socialism and Religion has
likewise been represented as naturally one of
antagonism.

This is the view most prevalent even among
Socialists themselves. It is the view generally, and
indeed almost exclusively, accepted by Social
Democrats. The doctrine of Social Democracy is
based on a materialistic conception of the world.
Its advocates assail belief in God and immortality
as not only in itself superstition but as a chief
obstacle to the reception of their teaching and the
triumph of their cause.

This view is regarded, of course, by religious
Socialists as a serious error. They deplore it as a
misfortune that Socialism should have been con-
joined with a philosophical hypothesis which
inevitably brings it into conflict with religion.
They deny that there is any necessary or logical
connection between the economic and the atheistic
teaching of the Social Democrats ; and affirm that
a true Socialist ought in consistency to be a religious
or even Christian man.

Nor in so judging are they wholly mistaken.
Socialism in every form, that of Social Democracy
included, contains principles which can only be fully
developed in an atmosphere of Religion. Its best
features in all its forms are of Christian derivation
and can only attain perfection as traits of Christian

442 SOCIALISM

character. Socialism is not essentially or necessarily
atheistic. It is not the compulsion of mere logic
which has constrained Social Democrats to commit
themselves to the advocacy of Materialism. Historical
and practical considerations, the social considerations
under which their scheme of Collectivism originated
and took shape and the services which Materialism
seemed adapted to render in propagating it, were
doubtless those which had most influence in leading
them to do so.

Nevertheless the union of Socialism with
Materialism must be acknowledged to be a very
natural one. Were it not so it would not be the
common fact it is. Had Socialists not had some
strong reasons for resting their economic proposals
on materialistic presuppositions they would not have
done this, as they could not fail to be aware that
they must thereby evoke the opposition of the whole
Christian world. They must have deemed the creed
of Materialism so especially favourable to the success
of their Socialism as to justify the risks and dis-
advantages to their cause obviously inseparable from
allying it to an atheistical philosophv.

Were they mistaken in thinking thus ? I believe
that they were not. But for the prevalence of
materialistic views and tendencies Socialism would
assuredly not have spread as it has done. It
is only when the truth of the materialistic
theory is assumed that the socialistic conception of
earthly welfare, or social happiness, as being the
chief end of human life, is likely to appear to
be reasonable. If there be no other life for men

SOCIALISM AND RELIGION 443

than that which they live in the flesh, then, but
only then, is it natural to conclude that their sole
concern should be to get while on earth all the
happiness which they can. A philosophy which
maintains the existence of God, the supremacy of a
Divine moral law, the reality of an unending life,
plainly cannot forward the designs of those who aim
at the entire subjection of the individual to society
so consistently or effectively as one which affirms
that there is nothing supramaterial, nothing higher
than man himself, no life beyond the grave, no
absolute good. The adherents of Social Democracy
have not erred in thinking that Eeligion with its
hopes and fears, Theology with its doctrines of the
invisible and eternal, and Spiritual Philosophy with
its theses based on speculative and moral reason, are
serious obstacles to the realisation of their plans.
That they will come to dissociate their Socialism
from Atheism and Materialism is, in my opinion,
extremely improbable. For, although they would
thereby disarm the hostility of many who are at
present necessarily their opponents, they would
also immensely decrease the number of those who
would care for, or could believe in, their Socialism.
It is only on those who are without religious faith
that socialistic schemes exert a strong attractive
and motive force. The most completely socialistic
schemes are those which are freest from the contact
and constraint of religion.*

* The following extract from a paper of the Right Rev. Abbot Snow,
O.S.B., may partly confirm and partly supplement the preceding observa-
tions, and also be of interest as showing the relation of Socialism to Religion

444 SOCIALISM

We have come, then, to the following conclusions
as to the relation of Socialism to Religion. It is
not a merely casual relation, a merely possible or
accidental connection. Socialism, in seeking a satis-
factory organisation of society, aims at what can
only be accomplished with the aid of Religion, and
when full justice is done to it. If it misconceive
the nature of Religion, take up a false attitude to-

as viewed by a thoughtful Catholic writer : " To a Catholic his faith and his
religion are paramount; for them he will sacrifice goods and life if necessary,
placing his eternal welfare above temporal prosperity. Until he ascertains
the position of his faith and religion in the new society proposed by
Socialism, a Catholic will instinctively be suspicious of the absence of
religion in the advocacy of social schemes, and anticipate danger to his
faith. So that whether Socialists are loudly hostile to religion, or whether
they passively suppose that religion and belief in God will pass away, or
whether they simply ignore religion, a Catholic can scarcely associate with
them in their schemes without having his faith undermined to a greater or
less extent. The danger may be the better understood by explaining the
tendency of Socialism to ally itself with theism and religion. These points
may be briefly noticed. In order to reconstruct society on a socialistic
basis the accumulation of power and wealth and land, now in the hands of
a comparative few, must be sequestered and secured for the common good.
Precautions must also be taken to prevent the recurrence of the irregularity.
The condition of the masses must be raised, poverty and want must
disappear, labour must be regulated, the general welfare must be adjusted
so as to secure happiness and content to all. To attain this involves
certain theories or principles to justify the revolution. The present notions
of rights, duties, and justice require modification. The end and object
being the general good of all men and to secure equal rights and position
to all, the leading idea in socialistic theories is mankind taken collectively,
the human race in general, or, as they call it, the solidarity of humanity.
Whatever tends to the good of mankind generally, is good and right ; what-
ever tends to the advantage of the individual at the expense of the com.
munity, is evil and wrong. Each one is bound to labour for the community
and not for his own aggrandisement, and his goodness or badness depends
on the fulfilment of that duty. The highest aim of all good men should be
to increase the temporal prosperity and happiness of all collectively. Thus
the whole range of thought and eifort is limited to material prosperity in
this life. In this state of things it is evident that religion and the next

SOCIALISM AND RELIGION 445

wards it, or fail to assign due importance to it as a
social force, it must necessarily be a defective and
false theory of society.

The forms both of Socialism and of Religion,
however, are many, and so we cannot affirm in a
general way much more than that what is true in
the one cannot be brought into agreement with what
is false in the other.

world would create a difficulty. It is difficult to fit God and His worship
into such a scheme. Religion presents a future life more noble and lasting
than the present, having its own rewards and punishments awarded to
conduct in this life, and not dependent merely on the service of humanity
but on the service of God. Any act is good or bad according as it pleases
God, and not simply as it tends to the general good of men collectively.
Again, religion aims primarily at individual sanctification for happiness in
the next life, and only secondarily for the material prosperity of all in this.
Now, religion and the worship of God is a standing fact, and the Socialist
in dealing with it, seeing that it is opposed fundamentally to his aspirations
for humanity, either denies and seeks to abolish it or he strives to make
religion consist in the service of humanity, and both alternatives necessarily
tend to atheism, and hence the alliance. Furthermore, Socialism wages
war against all class distinctions, and especially against the governing
class. In the socialistic state the government must be by the people for
the people. No power or pre-eminence can be held that is not entirely
under the control of the people. Hereditary rank, class privileges,

idividual rights, will disappear. All authority and power must be derived
from the people, be exercised in their name, and be terminable at their
will. In such a state what place is there for ecclesiastical authority?
Religion supposes an authority derived from God to regulate a system for
the worship of God. The Catholic Church has a hierarchy of officials —
pope, bishops, and clergy — with authority to command the obedience of
the people independent of the State. These officials cannot rule at the

nil of the State, nor can their authority be derived from it. Hence
irdotalisrn becomes one of the bugbears of Socialism. Unable to
ige their ideal State to include an independent ecclesiastical authority,
nal 1st s are led to abolish religion in order to get rid of its ministers,
are of the governing class, and let them disappear with the rest.

:hus the process of general levelling and the abolition of independent

thority leads to the negation of religion and formal worship of God, and

ces Socialism tend to atheism." — Tlt> Catholic 77>/«>, Auirust 10, 1894,

446 SOCIALISM

The relation between them is not one of identity.
They are two, and distinct. Each is only itself.
Those who would identify them try to do so by
sacrificing one of them to the other. The Socialists
who profess to do so while retaining the name of
Religion reject the reality which it denotes. Their
view is essentially the same as that of the Socialists
who maintain that Socialism is inherently and
necessarily antagonistic to Religion.

Nor is the relation between Socialism and Religion
essentially one of harmony. Those who imagine
that it is are for the most part not really Socialists,
but mean by Socialism merely sociability, philan-
thropy, co-operation, and the like, and by Christian
Socialism " Social Christianity," " Christian social
ethics," or Christianity applied to the improvement
and guidance of the life and conduct of society. The
genuine Socialists among them are hazy or mistaken
in their notions of the nature of Christianity.

The view that Socialism and Religion are naturally
antagonistic is substantially correct. The antagonism,
indeed, is not direct or inevitable. There is not an
immediate or logically necessary connection between
Socialism and Atheism or Materialism. A Socialist
may be a religious man, or even a zealous Catholic
or Protestant. But a connection which is not direct
and necessary may be indirect and natural. And
such is the case here. Were it otherwise the actual
relations between Socialism and Religion would not
be what they are. The almost universal hostility
of Socialism to Religion is not explicable by merely
historical causes, although the influence of these

SOCIALISM AND RELIGION 447

need not be denied. It also implies that the ideal
of human life which Religion brings with it is
irreconcilable with that which Socialism presents.
In holding that Socialism and Religion have
principles and tendencies which naturally bring
them into conflict we are at one with the vast
majority of Socialists themselves.

We need not treat further of the relation of
Socialism to Religion in general. It is of much
more importance to consider how Socialism and
Christianity bear on each other. For the vast
majority both of Socialists and of Anti-Socialists
Religion means practically Christianity. It is only
in that form that they know it or feel any interest
in it. Christianity is the only Religion which con-
fronts Socialism as a formidable rival and foe. It is
the only Religion which Socialists feel it necessary
steadily and zealously to combat.

All modern Socialism has grown up within
Christendom, and is the product of causes which
have operated there. With comparatively few
exceptions its adherents may be reckoned among
"the lapsed masses" of Christendom. The same
Influences which have diminished the membership
of the Christian Church have filled the ranks of
Socialism. The causes which are now strengthening
Socialism at the expense of Christianity are, for the
most part, those which had previously produced
large bodies of Atheists, Secularists, and Political
Radicals and Revolutionists.

These causes are numerous and of various kinds :

448 SOCIALISM

speculative and historical, scientific,, moral, politi-
cal, ecclesiastical, and industrial. I shall make no
attempt to treat of them here ; to do so even in
the most summary manner would require a special
chapter. The Church, however, may well seriously
inquire what they are, and how she should act with
regard to them. Had she better adjusted her con-
duct in relation to them ; had she more truly dis-
criminated between the good and the evil, the
essential and the accidental, in them ; had she read
with clearer insight the signs of the times and
listened more readily and reverently to the words
of God in the events of history ; had she been more
filled with the spirit and more obedient to the pre-
cepts of her Founder and Lord ; fuller of life, of
light, and of love ; and more faithful and earnest
in the discharge of her social mission : she would
not have had to lament that so many had left her
and gone over to the enemy. The first and chief
work which the Church of Christ has to accomplish
in dealing with Socialists is to bring them back to
the Christian fold from which they have wandered
away beyond the sound of her voice. Her main
difficulty with them, perhaps, is to get them to
listen to her. They are at her doors, yet to all
practical intents are more inaccessible to her than
the Chinese or Hindus.

Catholic writers have often attempted to throw
the blame of this state of matters on Protestantism,
arguing that the revolt in the sixteenth century
against authority in the Church, weakened it also
in the world, and has continued to exercise on

SOCIALISM AND RELIGION 449

society a dissolving and corrupting power, of which
Socialism is the natural outcome.* This is surely an
insufficient explanation. Protestantism was not an
assault on authority, but essentially an appeal to
authority, true and divine authority, that authority
a recognition of which is the only and the adequate
defence against both the despotic and the revolu-
tionary tendencies of Socialism. Besides, Socialism
springs even more from the abuse of authority than
from illegitimate resistance to it. Catholicism
tends more to Socialism and less to Individualism
than Protestantism. Socialism preceded as well as
accompanied the Reformation. In countries where
Protestantism took firm root, Socialism has been
late in appearing, and now that it has appeared in
them it is very far from confined to them. Italy,
Spain, France, Belgium, and Austria are not Protes-
tant countries, and yet a very virulent sort of
Socialism is at work in them.

The Reformation, I admit, was not an unmixed
good. Protestantism has shown, and is everywhere
showing, tendencies to disruption and dissolution
which bode ill for the success of its endeavours
to leaven .society with the Gospel, even in the
countries where it is most dominant. So long as it
is content to remain broken up as at present into
competing and conflicting denominations, it cannot
possibly discharge effectively the duties to society,
and especially to the poorer classes of society,

* For a full statement of the argument referred to see the treatise of
M. Auguste Nicolas, " Du Protestantisme et de toutes les heresies dans leur
xapport avec le Socialisme." Bruxelles. 1852.

2 F

450 SOCIALISM

which are incumbent on the Christian Church.
The unity of spirit arid of organisation which cha-
racterises the Catholic Church ought to be of
immense advantage to her in the work of bringing
Christianity to bear on the amelioration of social
life. But she has defects which more than counter-
act these advantages, and which make her certainly
not less responsible than the Protestant Church for
the rise and spread of Socialism. Neither Church
should attempt to exonerate herself by throwing
blame on the other. Each should rather seek to
find wherein she has been herself at fault, and how
she may best amend herself. They should be will-
ing to co-operate as far as they can in measures
which tend to the safety and welfare of society.
It is alike the duty and the interest of both to
endeavour to remove the evils to which Socialism
mainly owes its strength. It is foolish for either
to pretend that she alone has the right to combat
or the power to conquer these evils.

Some of the socialistic enthusiasts in the earlier
half of this century represented Socialism as the
very Gospel which Christ had promulgated. In
their view Christ had been merely a social reformer ;
and Christianity, as taught by Him, had consisted
exclusively of a few simple practical truths, de-
signed and adapted to be the seeds of a fruitful
harvest of social welfare throughout the future of
the human race ; while all in it, as it has come
down to us, which refers to the direct personal
relationship of the soul to its God, to sin and
redemption, to a divine life and an eternal world,

SOCIALISM AN D RELIGION 451

had not entered into the thought of Christ, but
had been added by popular superstition and priestly
invention, and ought to be swept away.

This is not a view which will bear examination.
It has no historical basis. There is not a particle
of evidence for the existence of the socialistic
Christ. The Christ of history was the Christ who
taught that God was to be regarded before man ;
that the soul was more than the body ; that eternal
and spiritual wants were more urgent than temporal
and social ones. He came to set men right towards
God, and said comparatively little about their rela-
tions to Caesar and society, being aware that the
man whose heart is right towards God will be right
also towards every creature and ordinance of God.
He died on the cross as the author of an eternal
sal vation, and not as the promulgator of a political
I >anacea. The truths which He taught with reference
to man's direct; personal relationship to God, those
so rashly pronounced to be the products of craft and
credulity, have an infinite value, independent of any
bearing which they may have on the life that now
i^. At the same time, it is especially in these truths
that even the moral and social power of the Gospel
is concentrated, — its power to quicken and leaven,
to pervade and transform, to bless and beautify
rv phase of human nature here below.

Christianity is not dependent on any form of

social polity or organisation. This is one marked

ure of distinction between it and the economy

which preceded it. That economy comprehended a

political constitution for the Jewish nation as well

452 SOCIALISM

as a Religion. The inseparable interweaving of the
sacred with the civil, if indeed we can speak of the
civil in such a case, constituted the Theocracy.
The Gospel has come free from all the restrictions
which made the Mosaic dispensation fit only for a
single people at a particular stage of civilisation,
and acted upon by special influences. It was meant
to sanctify man's life in every form that life can
assume ; to pervade law and government through
all their changes and stages with its own spirit ; to
make all the kingdoms of this world provinces of
the kingdom of Christ ; and in order to effect this it
has necessarily not been committed to any one
political system, any one type of social organisa-
tion. In order to influence for good every kind of
polity, it is indissolubly bound to none. It stands
above them all, unfettered and independent, in order
that it may be able to aid and strengthen them all,
and free to reprove and correct them all.

Christianity is no more inseparably bound to the
existing order of society than it was to that of
Imperial Home or Feudal Europe. The existing
order of society is perceptibly changing under our
own eyes, and will undoubtedly give place to one
very different. Christianity can accommodate itself
to manifold and immense changes. It can accom-
modate itself to any merely economic and political
changes, and has no reason or call to attack any
economic or political system simply as economic or
political. So far as Socialism confines itself to pro-
posals of an exclusively economic and political char-
acter, Christianity has no direct concern with it. A

SOCIALISM AND RELIGION 453

Christian may, of course, criticise and disapprove of
them ; but it cannot be on Christian grounds ; it must
be merely on economic and political grounds. Whether
land is to be owned by few or many, by every one or
only by the State ; whether industry is to be entirely
under the direction of Government, or conducted by
co-operative associations, or left to private enter-
prise ; whether labour is to be remunerated by wages
or out of profits ; whether wealth is to be equally or
unequally distributed, are not in themselves questions
of moment to the Christian life, or indeed questions
to which Christianity has any answer to give.

Socialism and Christianity, however, are by no
means entirely unrelated. Nor is their relationship
terely antagonism. Socialism is of its very nature,
indeed, erroneous and of evil tendency, seeing that
one-sidedness and exaggeration are precisely what
is distinctive of it ; and it does not contain any
truth or any good principle which is exclusively its
own. But it is not, therefore, to be thought of as
without any truth or good in it ; or as to be utterly
condemned and opposed. There is much in it which
is not distinctive of it or exclusively characteristic
of it. It is to a large extent an exaggeration or
misapplication of principles which are true and good,
which Christ has taught and sanctioned, which the
Gospel rests 011 and must stand or fall by ; and
Christians will betray Christ and the Gospel if they
desert these principles, or depreciate them, or allow
them to be evil spoken of, or act as if they were
ashamed of them, because Socialism has so far recog-
nised and adopted them.

454 SOCIALISM

Let us take note of some of the features of
Socialism which cannot fail to receive the approval
of every intelligent Christian.

i . In all its forms it is the manifestation of desire
to know the laws of social life, the conditions of
social welfare. Even the most fantastic of its
systems testify on the part of those who originated
them and of those who accepted them to the opera-
tion of a belief that the social world is, like the
physical world, a world of law and order ; a world
to be studied in the spirit and by the methods of
science ; a world which science will eventually con-
quer and possess. This grand conviction is of
comparatively recent origin, and, indeed, has only
come to be universally entertained in the present
century. Socialistic theories were among the early
expressions of its prevalence, and it has to a con-
siderable extent propagated itself by means of them.
They may be regarded as preludes to a true Sociology
or Social Science. The Social Science not of the
present only, but of the future also, must be ascribed
in some measure to Socialism, either as consequence
or counteraction. And so far as this has been the
case the Christian must see good in it. Christianity
has the greatest interest in God's laws being brought
to light in every region of His dominions. It is even
more, perhaps, to be desired on its behalf that the
laws by which God governs humanity should be
known than that those by which He rules the
physical creation should be known. So far as
socialistic theories are the results of honest efforts
to throw light on the constitution and order of the

SOCIALISM AND RELIGION 455

social world, Christianity, which is of the light and
favours every effort to increase light, will not refuse
to welcome them.

2. Socialism has assailed the competency of the
older Political Economy to guide and govern society.
Political Economy was gradually raised by the labours
of a series of eminent men, of whom Adam Smith is
the most famed, from a rudimentary and confused
condition to the rank of a science rich in important
truths as to labour, capital, wages, rents, prices,
interest, population, &c. These men were keenly
alive to the enormous evils which had resulted from
the guardianship exercised by the State over industry
and commerce, from the privileges granted to guilds,
and corporations, and classes, from legal restrictions
on activity and enterprise ; and they deemed it the
prime duty of the State to cease from interference,
to remove old restrictions, and to leave individuals
alone so long as they do not defraud or injure
>thers. They maintained that Governments should
let labour and capital develop themselves freely
within the limits of morality, in the confidence that,
as a general rule, each man knows best how to
manage his own affairs, and that if individuals be
left to seek, as they please, without violence or
injustice, their own advantage the self interest of
jh will tend, on the whole, to the common good,
liey did not pretend that economic truths were
lone necessary to the welfare of mankind, or that
^litical Economy was the only social science, or
:h;it laisacz-frtiri' was a rule without exceptions,
nfortunately, however, many who professed to

456 SOCIALISM

apply their teaching to practice acted as if that had
been the sum of it. They talked and behaved as
if the heaping up of wealth were the one thing
needful for society, and as if it were a crime to put
almost any restraint on the process. Under the
plea of industrial freedom they claimed social license,
rights of oppression, fraud, and falsehood. For
the nefarious deeds to which their ruthless greed
prompted them they sought exculpation from the
reproaches of their consciences in the plea that the
pursuit of self-advantage could not fail to promote
the benefit of the community.

Socialists have striven in vain to refute the leading
doctrines of Political Economists, and to prove that
compulsory regulation of labour should be substituted
for free contract. They have signally failed in their
attacks on Political Economy as expounded by its
scientific cultivators. But they have not been with-
out success in discrediting the views and conduct of
those who appealed to it with a view to justify evil
practices in the maintenance of which they were
interested. They have been able to show that there
is no warrant for believing in the sufficiency of the
operation of merely economic laws to produce social
welfare, in universal selfishness tending to universal
prosperity, in competition producing only good.
Thus far they have had truth and historical ex-
perience on their side. And thus far their teaching
has been in conformity with Christianity, which
tells us that man shall not live by bread alone, but
by every word that cometh from the mouth of God ;
which leads us to see that no one class of nature's

SOCIALISM AND RELIGION 457

laws is sufficient for man's guidance, and that even
all nature's laws are very insufficient, where human
virtue and divine grace are wanting; that selfish-
ness, unresisted and uncorrected, must lead not to
national prosperity, but to national ruin ; and that
all the wisdom which rulers can exercise and all the
charity which Christians can display, will be fully
required to control its action and to counteract its
effects.

3. Socialism has helped to emphasise and diffuse
the truth that the entire economic life of society
should be conformed to justice. If we ask its
adherents what they mean by justice, we will
generally find that it is what other men would
consider injustice. But they have had at least the
merit of insisting on the supremacy due to considera-
tions of justice in the regulation of the collective life
of society as well as of the personal life of the
individual. They must be credited also with the
further and closely related merit of having search-
ing] y diagnosed the moral diseases of society as at
present constituted, of having persistently dwelt on
and boldly denounced its sins and shortcomings, and
of having thereby contributed to rouse, widen, and
deepen in the public mind a consciousness that all
is far from being wholly well in contemporary
Christendom, and that our so-called Christian
K upland, for example, is still chargeable in many
ivspects with the violation of justice and the non-
fullilment of duty. But so far as they have done
tu id are doing this they have so far done and are
what the Hebrew prophets laboured to do in

458 SOCIALISM

Ancient Israel, and must be regarded as unintention-
ally co-operating in the performance of a duty which
is imperative on the members, and especially on the
spokesmen, of the Christian Church.

4. Socialism is to a considerable extent an ex-
pression of the idea of fraternity, an embodiment
of belief in the brotherhood of man. It proclaims
the principle of human solidarity : that men are
members one of another, and that the aim of each
of them should be to seek not merely their own
good, but also the good of others, and of the whole
to which they belong. It owes largely its existence,
and almost all that is best in it, to the spirit of
sympathy with those who are in poor circumstances
and humble situations ; to solicitude for the welfare
of the great mass of the people. It insists most
emphatically on the claims of labour, and on the
urgency of striving to ameliorate the condition of
the class the most numerous and indigent. But
there is thus far nothing in Socialism which is not
derived from Christianity. The purest and most
perfect love to man, the love to man which is con-
joined with and vivified by love to God, was fully
revealed by Jesus Christ. The law of His kingdom
is the royal law of love. Men cannot be true

y

Christians unless they feel and act towards each
other as the children of the one Heavenly Father,
loving even their enemies, seeking to do good to all
whom it is in their power to benefit, and showing
themselves in all human relationships not merely
faithful and just, but also self-denying, merciful,
and charitable. Christianity has sanctified povert)

SOCIALISM AND RELIGION 459

and dignified toil as no other system or agency has
done. Anti-Christian societies have as yet done so
exceedingly little in comparison with the Church to
console and help the poor, that they can make no
reasonable claim to be more in sympathy with them
or more anxious for their welfare.

S . The lively sense of the evils arising from com-
petition and the strong desire to substitute for it
co-operation generally evinced by Socialists are, it
may be added, entirely in harmony with the spirit
of Christianity. Socialists err, indeed, when they
represent competition as in itself unchristian ; and
when they propose to suppress it by compulsory
collective association they recommend a slavery
inconsistent with the freedom and responsibility
implied in Christian liberty. To do away with com-
petition in the various departments of industrial,
commercial, and professional life would be to inflict
on society a serious injury ; and it only can be done
away with by universal compulsion, an entire sub-
jection of individual wills to social authority, wholly
at variance with a Christian conception of the nature,
dignity, and duty of man. Yet Socialists have often
ample reason for representing competition as anarchi-
cal and excessive, as hatefully selfish and productive
of the most grievous wrongs ; and they are irrefutable
so long as they are content merely to maintain the
desirability of reducing it to order, keeping it within
moral limits, and restraining and counteracting the
evils of it. Co-operation, moreover, even of a free
or non-socialistic kind, although incapable of suppress-
ing competition, may thus organise it, modify its

460 SOCIALISM

character for the better, and lessen its abuses. And
so far as it does this, Christian men cannot fail to
welcome it as a practical manifestation of the love
and brotherhood which their Religion demands ; as a
confirmation through action of faith in the truth that
Christian society as well as the Christian Church
ought to be a body which God has so " tempered
together that there should be no schism in the body,
but that the members should have the same care one
for another, and whether one member suffereth, all
the members suffer with it, or whether one member
is honoured, all the members rejoice with it."

I have now indicated some respects in which
Christianity and Socialism must be regarded as in
the main agreed, and must proceed to refer to some
respects in which they may be regarded as on the
whole opposed. The reference will be of the briefest
kind, as most of the points have already been more
or less under consideration in other relations.

First, then, Socialism is antagonistic to Christian-
ity in so far as it rests on, or allies itself with,
Atheism or Materialism. It does so to a very large
extent. The only formidably powerful species of
Socialism is that which claims to be scientific on the
assumption that modern science has proved the
truth of the materialistic view of the universe and
of history, and shown Christian and all other reli-
gious conceptions and beliefs to be delusions. Mani-
festly, however, to the extent that Socialism thus
identifies itself with an anti-religious Materialism,
it comes into conflict with Christianity ; and the
struggle between them must be one of life and death.

SOCIALISM AND RELIGION 461

Christianity assumes the truth of faith in God, the
Father Almighty, Creator and Ruler of heaven and
earth, infinite in. power, wisdom, righteousness, and
love ; and although it does not despise matter, or
depreciate any of its beauties, excellences, or uses,
it certainly treats it as merely the work and mani-
festation of God, and as meant to be instrumental
and subordinate to the requirements of spiritual and
immortal beings.

Secondly, Socialism is antagonistic to Christianity,
inasmuch as it assumes that man's chief end is
merely a happy social life on earth. The assumption
is a natural one in a system which regards matter
as primary in existence, and human nature as essen-
tially physical and animal. This almost all Socialism
does. Even when it does not expressly deny the
fundamental convictions on which Christianity rests
it ignores them. It leaves out of account God and
Divine Law, sees in morality simply a means to gene-
ral happiness, and recognises no properly spiritual
and eternal life. It conceives of the whole duty
of mankind as consisting in the pursuit and produc-
tion of social enjoyment. Hence its ideal of the
highest good, and consequently of human conduct,
is essentially different from the Christian ideal.
And thus it necessarily comes directly into conflict
with Christianity.

Socialism owes much of its success to the very
poorness of its ideal. Because superficial and un-
spiritual that ideal is all the more apt to captivate
those in whom thought is in its infancy, and the
spirit asleep. It is just the ideal of the common

462 SOCIALISM

worldly man boldly put forth with the pretentious
claim to be the ripe product of modern wisdom.
To be as rich as one's neighbours ; to have few hours
of work and abundance of leisure and amusement ;
to have always plenty to eat and to drink ; to have
every sense, appetite, and affection gratified ; to
have no call or need to cultivate poverty of spirit,
meekness, penitence, patience under affliction, equa-
nimity under oppression, or to suffer from the hunger
and thirst after righteousness which no acquisition
of rights will ever fill, has always been the ideal of
many men, but never, perhaps, of so many as in the
present day. And what else than this is the ideal
of "a good time coming," of which Bebel and Stern,
Bax and Bellamy, and so many other socialist
writers have prophesied, and which so many so-
called Christian Socialists even ignorantly identify
with the coming of the kingdom of God on earth
foretold by Christ ? It is so little else that there is
no wonder that those who are already wholly out of
sympathy with the Christian ideal should gladly
accept an ideal which is virtually just their own
clearly and confidently expressed. The Gospel of
Socialism has, it must be admitted, one great advan-
tage over the Gospel of Christ. It needs no inner
ear to hear it, no spiritual vision to discern it, no
preparation of heart to receive it ; were it wholly
realised mere bodily sense and the most carnal mind
could not only apprehend but comprehend it.

At the same time there is a considerable amount
of truth in it. It exhibits the summum bonum as
not merely individual but social ; inculcates, although

SOCIALISM AND RELIGION 463

with questionable consistency, unselfishness and self-
sacrifice ; and assigns great importance to what is
undoubtedly most desirable — a general betterment
of the earthly lot of men.

Thirdly, Socialism comes into conflict with Christ-
ianity inasmuch as it attaches more importance to
the condition of men than to their character, whereas
( Jhristianity lays the chief stress on character.
Socialists are not at fault in maintaining that
material conditions have a great influence on intel-
lectual and moral development, and that there is
a correspondence between the political, literary, and
religious history of humanity and its economic
history. Those who deny this reject a truth of
great scientific and practical importance, and one
which has been amply established by Economists of
the Historical School, by Positivists, and by Social-
ists. The Christian has no interest to serve by
disputing it ; on the contrary, it is his manifest
interest to accept it to the full, and to recognise as
obstacles to the realisation of Christianity not merely
purely spiritual evils, but also such things as bad
drainage, unwholesome food, inadequate ventilation,
uncleanly and intemperate habits ; and, in short,
all that tends to degrade and destroy the bodies,
and through these the souls of men. Human life is
a unity in which body and mind, the economic and
tlif spiritual, the secular and the religious, are in-
separable, and of which the whole is related to each
part or phase, and each part or phase to the whole.

Where the Socialist errs is in conceiving of what
is a relation of complex interdependence as one of

464 SOCIALISM

simple dependence ; is in taking account only
of the action of material and economic factors OA
social development on intellectual and spiritual
conditions, and ignoring the action of its intellectual
and spiritual factors on material and economic con-
ditions. The whole historical philosophy on which
Social Democracy rests is vitiated by this one-
sidedness and superficiality of treatment. It is a
philosophy which explains history by one class of
causes, the physical and industrial, and which
assigns no properly causal value to intellectual
faculties, to moral energies, to scientific and ethical
ideas, and to religious convictions. But so to
account for history is flagrantly to contradict history,
which clearly testifies that its economic, intellectual,
and spiritual development are, as Rossi says,
" although not unrelated yet not necessarily con-
joined or uniformly connected/' Their relationship
is due to the fact that all history, economic, intel-
lectual, and spiritual, is essentially the work of man
himself, a being at once economic, intellectual, and
spiritual. It is in the main not what any conditions
or factors external to man make it, but what mon
make it ; and its character depends in the main on
the character of the men who make it.

Where Socialism fails in its explanation of
history is just where it also comes into conflict
with Christianity. It overlooks or depreciates the
importance of the inward and spiritual, while
Christianity fully acknowledges it. " The king-
dom of God," which was so largely the burden of
Christ's preaching, and which the Christian believes

SOCIALISM AND RELIGION 465

that history is evolving, is a life which develops
from within. " The kingdom of God is within
you." The healing of society, according to the
( 'liristian view, must come from God, commence
at the centre in the hearts of men, and work out-
wards. It is only through improvement of the
lives of individuals that there can be a real and
radical improvement of the constitution of society.
Without personal renovation there can be no effec-
tive social reformation.

Fourthly, Socialism is antagonistic to Christianity
in so far as it does injustice to the rights of individ-
uality. There is no Socialism, properly so called,
where the freedom to which individuals are entitled
is not unduly sacrificed to the will of society. A
Socialism like that of Social Democracy, which
would refuse to men the right to possess private
property or capital, which would give them no
choice as to what work they are to do, or as to the
remuneration which they are to receive for their
work, would manifestly destroy individual liberty.
To pretend, as its advocates do, that it would
establish and enlarge liberty is as absurd as to
assert that things equal to the same thing are
unequal to each other, or any immediate self-
contradiction whatsoever. What such Socialism
directly demands is slavery in the strictest and
fullest sense of the term.

From all such slavery Christianity is meant to
free men, yet without rendering them lawless or
allowing them to disown any of their social obliga-
tions. By causing them to realise their direct

2 c

466 SOCIALISM

personal responsibility to God for all their actions,
and their infinite indebtedness to Christ, it makes
it impossible for them to accept any merely human
will, law, or authority as the absolute rule of their
lives. The Christian is a man with whom "it is a
very small thing that he should be judged of any
man's judgment," seeing that "He that judgeth
him is the Lord " ; who feels that " each one of us
shall give account of himself to God " ; who acknow-
ledges " but one Master, even Christ." Dependence
on God implies and requires independence towards
men. The service of Christ is true liberty. " If
the Son, therefore, shall make you free, ye shall be
free indeed." The liberty with which Christ makes
His people free, spiritual liberty, is as inherently
irreconcilable with the slavery which Collectivism
would introduce as with the slavery in the classical
world and the serfdom in the mediaeval world which
it has destroyed. All the religious reformations
and political revolutions through which human free-
dom has been gained and human rights secured
have been but the natural sequences and continua-
tions of the vast spiritual change in human life
effected by Christ, immeasurably the greatest
Reformer and Revolutionist who has ever appeared
on earth. What Socialism unconsciously aims at
as regards freedom, as regards the rights of indi-
viduality, is the reversal of His work in history ;
is the accomplishment of a vast anti-reformation or
counter-revolution. Is it likely that an attempt
reactionary will succeed? Is it desirable that it
should ?

SOCIALISM AND RELIGION 467

I might proceed to mention other respects in
which genuine Socialism and genuine Christianity
are more or less opposed. But it seems unneces-
sary to do so, especially as some of the most impor-
tant of these respects have been virtually indicated
in the preceding chapter, seeing that wherever
Socialism contradicts moral truth it also contra-
venes Christian faith. And at several points
Socialism is, as we have seen, at variance with true
morality. At all such points it is also at variance
with Christianity.

For Christianity is ethically all-comprehensive, as
a religion which would "give to all men life, and
that always more abundantly," must be in order to
attain its end. It seeks the fulfilment and honour
of the whole moral law. It appropriates and
transmutes into its own substance all true morality,
but adds thereto nothing which is morally false or
perverse. Its Ethics is perfect both in spirit and
principles, although it has often been most imper-
fectly understood and applied, even by thoroughly
sincere Christians, and although from its very per-
fection it can never be perfectly either apprehended
or realised by beings so imperfect as men.

In the Ethics of Socialism there are no elements
of transcendency, infinity, spirituality ; all is
commonplace, definite, and easy of comprehension.
Its inspiration must, therefore, be exhaustible, its
I M. \V«T of raising man "above himself" compara-
tivrly small; its successes indecisive and tem-
porary. But it is further, as has been previously
indicated, in many respects plainly false and of evil

468 SOCIALISM

tendency. Christianity is free from all its faults.
More than eighteen hundred years ago it was born
into a world in which they were universally pre-
valent. From the first it avoided and condemned
them. So far as the contents of socialistic Ethics
are exclusively its own and contrary to the precepts
or spirit of Christian Ethics, they are not new
discoveries or virtues, but old pagan delusions and
vices which have sprung up where Christianity has
ceased to exert its due influence.

There is nothing ethically valuable in Socialism
which is not also contained in Christianity. All its
moral truths are Christian truths. It is only
praiseworthy when it insists on the significance and
application of principles and precepts which have
always been inculcated by Christianity. In other
words, Christian Ethics is sufficient if Christians
understand it aright and follow its guidance faith-
fully. As regards moral doctrine there is need
of Socialism only when and where Christians are
unintelligent or unfaithful. All that is morally good
in Socialism, all that is elevating and generous in
its aspirations, can find satisfaction in Christianity,
and will even only find it there. Were it not
so it might admit of doubt whether in so far as they
come into conflict Christianity or Socialism will
triumph. As it is so there can be no room for
doubt on the subject. In virtue of all that is
excellent in itself, Socialism must reconcile itself
with Christianity, which has all that excellence, and
more. Will it persist in assailing it merely on the
strength of what is evil in itself? It may; but

SOCIALISM AND RELIGION 469

when a war comes to be reduced to one between
good and evil, truth and error, only the veriest
pessimist can entertain any doubt as to which cause
will conquer and which will suffer defeat.

Christianity and Socialism are very differently
related to Economics and Ethics. Christianity has
spoken with authority on all moral principles : it has
propounded no economic views. Socialism rests on,
and centres in, economic hypotheses and proposals.
Hence Christianity cannot come into direct conflict
with Socialism in the sphere of Economics as it may
in that of Ethics. It is concerned with the econo-
mic doctrines of Socialism only in so far as they
bear an ethical character and involve ethical con-
sequences. Unfortunately Socialism has put forth
economic proposals tainted with injustice and likely
to lead to social ruin. As to these doctrines it is
only necessary to say that genuine Christianity
stands wholly uncommitted to any of them. It can-
not with the slightest plausibility be maintained to
have taught the wrongfulness of private property
or to have recommended the abolition of differences
of wealth. It supplies no warrant for representing
individual capital as essentially hostile to labour or
for exhibiting the payment of labour by wages in
an odious light. It suggests no wild or fraudulent
views regarding currency or credit. It encourages
no one to confiscate the goods of his neighbour
under cover of promoting his good. It is in its
whole spirit opposed to the delusion that riches
are in themselves an end, or an honour, or a
blessing. It is not fairly chargeable with any

470 SOCIALISM

socialistic aberration. It is wholly free from asso-
ciation with either economic or moral falsehood.
This is a mighty advantage for Christianity even
regarded merely as a social power. For society can
only prosper permanently through conforming to
truth. No error will in the end fail to injure it.

But of all truth, none is so capable of benefiting
society as the truth in which Christianity itself
consists. Were all men but sincerely convinced of
the Fatherhood of God, of the love of Christ, of the
helpfulness of the Holy Spirit, of the sacredness of
the obligations of human brotherhood, of the un-
speakable importance of the dispositions and virtues
which the Gospel demands for the present as well as
for the future life, society would soon be wondrously
and gloriously transformed. As regards social as
well as individual regeneration and salvation, Christ
is " the Way, the Truth, and the Life."

IT.

THE Christian spirit is divine, but not disembodied.
It has had appointed for it a body through which it
has to operate on society somewhat as the indivi-
dual soul does on the world through its corporeal
organism. The Church is the body of Christ ; in
Him it is one and indivisible, alive and powerful ;
by Him it is quickened, enlightened, inspired and
ruled. It comprehends all those in whose life is His
life, and who are the obedient organs of His will ;
all those who, however otherwise different and
divided, are of " one heart and one soul " through

SOCIALISM AND RELIGION 471

] laving " the same mind which was in Christ." It
exists to manifest the spirit, to apply the wisdom,
and to continue the work of Christ, in order that
the name of the Father may be universally hallowed,
His kingdom fully established, and His will perfectly
done even here on earth ; and this it can only do
through self-denial, self-sacrifice, and continually
doing good, or, in a word, only in so far as it lives
and works as Christ did.

The Church is not identical or coextensive with
the kingdom of God. It lies within the sphere of
the kingdom which it has been specially instituted
to establish and extend. The sphere of this kingdom
naturally embraces all human thought and life, every
form of human existence and every kind of human
activity, and not merely what is distinctly religious or
ecclesiastical. It is rightfully inclusive of philosophy,
science, art, literature, politics, industry, commerce,
and all social intercourse. The kingdom of God can
only have fully come when entire humanity is filled
with the spirit, and obedient to the law, of Christ.
And the Church, the whole body of believers, the vast
host of Christian men and women in the world, has
assigned to it the task of humbly and faithfully
labouring to bring about the full coming of the
kingdom of God.

The relation of the Church, in this its primary
and chief acceptation, to what are called social
8 is very obvious ; but it is not on that account
to be inattentively regarded. It is just the Church
in this sense of the term which it is of supreme im-
portance should be got to interest herself adequately

472 SOCIALISM

and aright in these questions — the Church as consist-
ing of not the clergy only, but of all who desire to
live and work in the spirit of Christ. The power of
the clergy to act beneficially on society, however
unitedly and strenuously it may be exerted, cannot
but be slight indeed compared with the power which
the Church might exert. I believe that there is no
social power in the world equal to that which the
Church possesses ; and that no social evil or anti-
social force could long resist that power were it
wisely and fully put forth. The Church can only
do her duty towards society through all Christian
men and women doing their duty towards it.

The social mission of the Church can only be
accomplished by the Church as a whole — by the
Church in its most comprehensive, and at the same
time most distinctly Christian, acceptation. Nothing
can be more incumbent on the clergy than to bear
this constantly in mind, and continually to stir
up the laity, who are just as apt to forget
it, to a due sense of what their Church mem-
bership implies, or, in other words, what partici-
pation in the life and work of Christ implies, so
that when the Church in its holy warfare against
the evils in society moves into action it may always
be with the consciousness that its every member is
expected to do his duty.

It is chiefly by acting on and through the Church,
and by exciting the Church to faithfulness in the
fulfilment of its social mission, that the clergy can
promote the good of society. The Church has a
social mission. It is one which is included in its

SOCIALISM AND RELIGION 473

general mission as the Church of Christ ; one which
it cannot neglect without unfaithfulness to Christ ;
one which it can only discharge by following the
example, teaching the doctrine, and acting in the
spirit of Christ. The mission of the Church is
essentially the complement and continuation of that
of Christ. It is to heal and sanctify both individuals
and society ; not only to present every man perfect
in Christ Jesus, but to transform humanity itself
into a wholly new creature in Christ Jesus.

That the Church has such a mission is so plainly
taught in the New Testament that it has been
always more or less acknowledged both by profession
and practice. The Church has in every generation
felt in some measure the necessity of dealing with
questions which were the social questions of that
generation ; in every age it has so far sought to
adapt both its teaching and its action to the ten-
dencies and wants of society in that age.

One often hears it said at the present time that the
Church has hitherto dwelt too much on individual
aspects of the Christian faith, and comparatively
disregarded public life ; that the claims of personal
religion have been too exclusively insisted on and
the claims of social religion too much forgotten.
And certainly a considerable amount of evidence
might easily be adduced in support of the state-
ment. Yet it is very doubtful if it be really true
as a general proposition. I believe that if we look
jbloeely at the history of the Church from its
foundation to the present time we shall rather con-
clude thiit she has on the whole erred more in the

474 SOCIALISM

contrary direction ; and that she would have done
more good both to individuals and to society if she
had thrown itself with less absorbing ardour into
the questions of the day. The questions which have
most violently agitated the Church in the past have
for the most part been, or at least seemed at the
time to be, questions vitally affecting the welfare or
even the very existence of society.

The mission of the Church in relation to social
questions is at present special only in so far as the
social questions themselves are special. They are so
obviously and to a large extent. Wherein ? There
can be little hesitation as to the answer. It is that
they are now to an extent unknown in any other
age labour questions ; that they centre in and are
dependent on what may be called in a general way
the labour question far more than they have ever
done before in the whole history of the world. This
labour question itself, it is true, is only a form of a
question as old as history, the question of the un-
equal distribution of material goods among men, but
it is a new and extraordinarily developed form of it,
and it is influencing the life of the present genera-
tion far more widely, subtly, and powerfully than it
influenced the life of other generations in other
forms. How the question has come to be what it is,
and to have acquired such significance as it has,
only the history of industry and of the industrial
classes during the last hundred years can adequatel)
explain, and I cannot, of course, enter here upon
so vast a subject as that. I shall, therefore, simply
venture to express the opinion that for the clergy-

SOCIALISM AND RELIGION 475

men of this country just now a study of the indus-
trial history of Britain during the last hundred
years will be found at least as instructive and
useful as the study of any hundred years of its
ecclesiastical history, and more so than the study
of any hundred years of its history of which wars,
or civil commotions, or political struggles were the
most representative features.

That the labour question should be the chief
question of the day is not to be regretted. What it
means is not, as some would have us believe, that
manual labourers were never so defrauded and
oppressed as at present, but that they were never
before so free, possessed of their rights to the same
extent, so fully conscious of the value of the services
which they render to society, so confident of their
power to obtain what is due to them, so full of hope,
aspiration, and ambition. And all this is well.
Every improvement which has taken place in the
condition of the labouring classes should be matter
for rejoicing. It is not only their right but their

dutv to seek still further to better their lot. Everv

./

stt-j) which they take of such a kind as will really
raise them to a higher level and happier state de-
serves only commendation and encouragement.

But it does not follow that there are no elements
of evil in the present situation, or, in other words,
in the circumstances and in the conditions of life
which now give to the labour question its absorbing
interest. On the contrary, it is obviously a situation
full of tendencies towards division and strife, and
towards disorders and revolution ; one in which

47^ SOCIALISM

many unreasonable claims are advanced, in which
much of the vaulting ambition which overleaps itself
and falls on the other side is prevalent, and in which
dangerous passions are widely diffused. It is a situa-
tion in which charlatans and fanatics, vain and violent
and selfish men, misleaders, naturally find no diffi-
culty in obtaining believers and followers ; and in
which " double-minded men, unstable in all their
ways," are greatly multiplied, and very like indeed
to "waves of the sea driven with the wind and
tossed."

When a stream of social tendency flows strongly
in any direction the Church is just as likely to go
too far with it as not far enough. It is told of
Leighton that when minister of Newbattle he was
publicly reprimanded at a meeting of Synod for not
" preaching up the times," and that, on asking who
did so, and being answered, " All the brethren," he
rejoined, " Then if all of you preach up the times,
you may surely allow one poor brother to preach
up Christ and eternity." Whether the story itself
be true or not, it conveys a great truth. Preaching
up Christ and eternity is needed in all times. No
teaching which does not will much profit any time.

The sort of preaching to the times in which
Leighton could not join passed away in Scotland
and was succeeded by a very different style of
preaching, which he would have disliked still more,
inasmuch as it was still more occupied with time
and still less with Christ and eternity. It aimed
chiefly at being judicious and practical, at promoting
refinement and enlightenment, good sense, good con-

SOCIALISM AND RELIGION 477

duct, personal happiness, and social contentment ;
and, doubtless, it was not altogether unprofitable,
but as certainly it failed on the whole even more
than the excess from which it was a reaction.

It is perfectly possible still to err in the same way.
It is even not unlikely, owing to the interest now so
widely and keenly felt in social questions, that many
of our clergymen may take to discoursing on them
to an extent which will do far more harm than good.
They may deem the discussion of such themes as
Socialism, Landlordism, Law Reform, the Duration
of the Labour Day, a Living Wage, the Wages
System, and the like, the preaching which our times
require. They may deal in their pulpit ministrations
with such social and economic questions much in the
same way as the rationalist preachers of Germany in
the latter part of the eighteenth century dealt with
moral and even agricultural questions. I trust,
however, that they will receive more wisdom,
and be guided to handle the Divine Word more
faithfully.

The clergyman who feels a call to propound his
views on social and industrial problems should find,
as he easily may, an opportunity of doing so simply
as a citizen, claiming and using the freedom to which
every citizen is entitled ; he ought not, in my opinion,
to do it as a minister of the Divine Word, and an
accredited representative of the Church. The Gospel
does not contain solutions of these problems. Those
who pretend that it does make claims on its behalf
which can only tend to discredit it. It reveals,
however, principles and spiritual motive forces

478 SOCIALISM

which are essential to social welfare and to the right
solution of social problems. And the preaching of
the Gospel which will have the most powerful and
beneficent influence on society will be that which
brings these principles most clearly into the view
of society and these forces most fully into action on
it ; the preaching which so exhibits the Gospel
that it will shine full-orbed on all social relation-
ships, and radiate from its own entire divine nature
the light and heat, the vigour and fruitfulness,
which the social world needs.

The preacher who lacks faith in such preaching,
and whose ambition is not satisfied by it, shows an
inadequate appreciation of the Gospel and of his own
office ; and when he betakes himself to the direct
discussion of social problems, and thus thrusts him-
self into competition with the professional politician,
the economic specialist, the newspaper editor, and
others, whose experience and knowledge in relation
to them are likely to be greater than his, he displays
much unwisdom. He comes down from a position
of advantage on which he is strong, and from which
he can, without competing with any man, co-operate
with all classes of men who are working towards the
true amelioration of society, and takes his stand on
lower and less solid ground, where all around him
is contention, and where he is very apt to be weaker
and less useful than other men. There must on the
whole be loss in that. The power of the pulpit for
good to society will certainly not be increased but
decreased by ministers of the Gospel forsaking their
own special work of preaching the Gospel for that of

SOCIALISM AND RELIGION 479

mere lectures on social themes, or of social agitators,
or of politicians, or of journalists, of all of whom
tin-re is no scarcity in this country at the present
time, and who are discussing social questions during
six days of every week throughout the year as
actively as there is any necessity for.

I do not say that the preacher may not treat of
social questions at all. I fully admit that he may
have good reason to refer to them occasionally, or
even frequently, and very plainly. What I hold is
that he ought always in doing so to keep the great
facts and truths of the Gospel bearing on them
clearly in his own view and before the view of his
hearers ; that he should never follow applications
so far that the Christian principles which underlie
them are in danger of being lost sight of; and never
forget that it is only in so far as things and ques-
tions can be looked at in relation to Christ, and
through the medium of the light which shines from
Christ, that he as a Christian preacher has any
special call or right to deal with them.

Maurice and Kingsley set, I think, in this respect
an admirable example. While perfectly faithful
and fearless in rebuking the evils and indicating the
requirements of their time, they anxiously sought to
do so from the Christian standpoint ; and even, we may
say, from the very centre and heart of the Gospel.
It sremed to them that the deepest and most dis-
tinctive truths of Christianity were so wonderfully
adapted to the constitution of the human spirit and
to the wants of human society that if properly pre-
sented they could not fail to receive from the evidence

480 SOCIALISM

of that adaptness afforded by their effects a most
powerful confirmation. They were convinced that
faith in the Tri-unity of God, or in the Incarnation,
could certify itself to be true by its power to redeem
humanity and sanctify life. They believed that
all history was meant to be made a magnificent
and conclusive apologetic of Christianity.

While the Christian minister ought to exercise
prudence and self-restraint in the respect indicated,
there is no phase or question of social life, or, indeed,
of human life, on which he may not be warranted
or even called to speak words of exhortation, com-
mendation, or rebuke ; none as to which it can
reasonably be said that it lies wholly beyond the
sphere within which he as the preacher of Gospel
truth may rightly intervene. The. principles of the
Gospel are designed to pervade, embrace, and direct
the whole life of man, and the minister of the
Gospel is bound to endeavour to apply its principles
to the whole of that life. If he would be loyal to
Christ he must refuse to conform to any human
authority or human prejudice which would assign a
merely external conventional limit to the fulfilment
of his duty, or to the freedom of his office ; which
would say to him, for example, " This is business,
or this is politics, and therefore it is not within your
province." To all such dictation his reply should
be : " My province is as wide as my Master's, and
includes all things in so far as they are either moral
or the reverse, either Christian or unchristian."
He should recognise no arbitrary outward restraint.
What he must not cast aside are simply the reason-

SOCIALISM AND RELIGION 481

able and external restraints of the Christian spirit
itself — those of Christian wisdom, justice, and love.
Reverencing these, he will learn when to speak and
when to be silent, how far to go and when to
stop.

The Church ought to aim at fulfilling her social
mission wholly in the spirit of her Lord and from
a sincere, unselfish sense of duty to Him. She
should acknowledge allegiance to Him alone ;
beware of every unholy alliance with the powers
of the world ; flatter no class of men ; and allow
no class of men to patronise her, or to use her
for their own purposes. She should impartially and
disinterestedly seek the good of all men, and deliver
to all her God-given message with boldness and
honesty, \vith simplicity and earnestness, with com-
] mission and love.

Her duty in this respect, while very plain, is
certainly far from easy. She has few, if any, entirely
disinterested friends. All political parties aim more
or less at making political capital out of either
supporting or assailing her. Rich and poor,
capitalists and labourers alike, so far as they
have class interests, wish her to promote their
own, and so far as they have prejudices will resent
her disturbing them. She cannot too strongly
i valise that her strength is in the name of the Lord
alone; and that truly to benefit any class of 'men,
rich or poor, she must not be the Church of that
<>i «>f any class alone, but the Church of the Living
tjrod, with whom there is no respect of persons, and
seeks the highest good of all men. It is

2 H

482 SOCIALISM

especially desirable that the clergy should be fully
imbued with this consciousness as they are especially
called to win all men to the cause of Christ and to a
comprehensive practical recognition of the obliga-
tions of duty. Obviously while they cannot succeed
in this work without zeal, they cannot in many
cases even attempt it without doing mischief if their
zeal is of a partisan character. As regards labour
difficulties especially, whether they are to do good
or harm by even referring to them must depend
chiefly on whether or not they do so with fairness,
with full knowledge, and an obvious desire for the
true good of all concerned.

A considerable number of working men are
alienated from the Church because they deem
that her influence has been exerted on the side of
the wealthier classes. They look upon her as an ally
of capitalism ; and they justify on this ground their
neglect of religion. And it must be admitted that
the Church has often shown a deference to rank and
wealth altogether at variance with Christian prin-
ciple. The worship of Mammon is too common in
the house of God. The competitive and mercantile
spirit of the age has entered to a deplorable extent
into our ecclesiastical denominations. There are far
too many congregations in our large cities drawn
almost entirely from the capitalist class.

The Church should endeavour to remove such
causes of disaffection. It is foolish of those who
desire her welfare to try to increase or universalise
competition and mercantilism within her borders
instead of labouring to diminish and counteract

SOCIALISM AND RELIGION 483

tin -in. The ministers of the Church should do their
utmost to bring rich and poor together on the
footing of Christian equality and brotherhood, and
so to act towards them that no man can justly sus-
pect that he is less esteemed than another merely
because he is poorer. It is no part, however, of
their duty to working men to spare any unworthy
feeling or to confirm them in any error which they
may entertain. It is no part of their duty to take
the side even of working men in any merely class
struggle ; in any struggle where they have not also
clearly on their side reason, justice, and religion. It
is, on the contrary, their duty to rise above all party
prejudices, passions, and interests ; and to speak to
all parties the truth in love. They have to endeavour
to bring home to workmen an adequate sense of the
sacredness of the duties of labour ; a conviction that
the relations between employers and employed are
moral on both sides ; and a consciousness of their
indebtedness to society as well as of the indebted-
of society to them. Our age is democratic. The
ordinary run of politicians are sure, therefore, to
tiattrr those whom they call the people. If clergy-
men do so also, enormous mischief will be done to
the commonwealth and great injustice to divine
truth.

It does not in any way follow from the foregoing
n 111,11 ks that the labouring and poorer classes of the
community are to be regarded as having no special
claims on the sympathy and help of the Church and
of the clergy. They have such claims. Poverty
and all the hardships and disadvantages of their lot

484 SOCIALISM

of themselves constitute claims which the Church
and its ministers ought fully and practically to
acknowledge. They ought to manifest towards the
poor the same spirit of compassion and love which
was conspicuous in Christ. They ought to favour
all efforts wisely directed to relieve suffering, to
diminish misery, and to make the lives of the
struggling masses of mankind more hopeful, brighter,
happier. They ought always to have the courage to
protest against any social injustice or political ini-
quity perpetrated by the strong on the weak. The
clergy are never more clearly in their proper places
as citizens than when they are showing their interest
in, and lending their aid to, measures which tend to
elevate and improve the condition of working men.
They ought never to be among those who thought-
lessly or selfishly tell us that "we have heard quite
enough of the working man." Those who say so can
surely have imbibed little of the spirit of Christ, or
must know little of the hard and bitter lot of vast
numbers of working men and working women.

There is, perhaps, less hostility to the Church
among the rich than among the poor, but the
friendship of the rich to the Church may be far
from commendable in itself or complimentary to her.
It is much to be feared that among the wealthier
and more educated classes there are not a few who
deem themselves so very superior to their fellow-
mortals as to feel that they can themselves quite
well dispense with the teaching and ordinances of
the Church, but who believe that it is highly de-
sirable for the sake of social order, for the protection

SOCIALISM AND RELIGION 485

of property, and for the comfort of those who are
\\vll provided with the means of enjoyment that
her teaching should be accepted and its ordinances
reverenced by what they call " the lower orders."

There can be no portion of mankind more desti-
tute of religion, farther away from the kingdom of
God, or in a more lapsed, more helpless, or more
hopeless condition, than those who thus value the
Church chiefly as a fellow- worker with the police
force, and religion chiefly as a safeguard to their
own self or class interests. The wildest Socialist
who has enthusiasm for an unselfish ideal and is
willing to sacrifice his own happiness or life for
its realisation has in him far more that is akin to
the spirit of Christ than such a patroniser of
'Christ's Gospel, such a friend of Christ's Church.
But that does not release the Church from duty
towards such a man. He too has a soul to be

ed, and is all the more to be pitied because it
is us yet so utterly lost. Such a Dives is a far
fitter object of compassion than any Lazarus.

Those who are rich in the world's goods must
be taught that only those who are poor in spirit can
belong to the kingdom of heaven. They need to
ivulise the responsibilities, the duties, the tempta-
tions, and the dangers of wealth. They require
to feel that they are not "their own," and that* all
tin it they possess is but a loan entrusted to them by
their Muster for the benefit of His great household.
It is essential both to their spiritual welfare and to
their social usefulness that they should have im-
pressed on them the conviction that it is a question

486 SOCIALISM

of life or death for them to decide whether they will
serve God or Mammon. " No man can serve two
masters : for either he will hate the one, and love
the other ; or else he will hold to the one, and
despise the other. Ye cannot serve God and Mam-
mon." These are among the truths of which the
Church has to remind the rich man. They are of a
kind hard enough for him to learn without being
made harder by uncharitable abuse of the rich
simply as such. If he learn them, the richer he is
the better will it be for society.

There can be no doubt that the Church should do
more than she is at present doing for the solution of
social and labour problems, in the sense that she
ought to do her duty better, present the Gospel
with greater fulness and power, push on her home-
mission work with increased zeal, give her sympathy
and co-operation more heartily to all measures
clearly tending to the economic and moral advance-
ment of the community, strive more earnestly to
diffuse among all classes the spirit of Christian love
and brotherhood, of righteousness and peace, and
exemplify in herself more perfectly the beauty of
that spirit. As I have already indicated, however,
it is not the office of the Church to furnish definite
solutions of these problems. Hence her official
representatives should be very cautious both as to
the extent and as to the temper in which they
intervene in disputes regarding them.

Especially is such caution necessary in regard to
those deplorable conflicts between labour and capital
which are so prominent a feature in the present age.

SOCIALISM AND RELIGION 487

Of course, if the clergy see any reasonable likeli-
hood of being able to aid in bringing about a
compromise between employers and employed which
will either preserve or restore peace, either prevent
or bring to a close a " strike," they would be neither
good citizens nor consistent ministers of the Gospel
of peace if they did not gladly embrace the oppor-
tunity. But as a general rule they should be very
chary of intervention, and particularly when once
fighting has begun. They have no authority
inherent in their office for laying down the law to
either of the contending parties. It is often very
difficult, or even impossible, for them, as for all
other outsiders, to get at a sufficiently full and
accurate knowledge of the facts in dispute. They
run great risk of raising false hopes by their inter-
vention, and thus of prolonging strife and misery,
and in the end deepening the disappointment of
those who are defeated.

Neutrality, then, will be in most cases the only
course open to them in the circumstances referred
to. But it should be a neutrality which springs not
from want of interest or sympathy but from Chris-
tian prudence and benevolence. And that it does
so should be made manifest by the ministers 'of
the Church both in their teaching and in their
intercourse with their parishioners. They should
make it their aim to get rich and poor, employers
and employed, to meet together as much as possible
on equal and friendly terms, as becometh brethren
in Christ. They should do their best to get both
classes to realise that while they have each their

488 SOCIALISM

rights they have also each their duties ; that money
given and received is not the only tie between
them ; that they are connected by moral bonds, by
spiritual relations ; that employers should show all
due esteem and a humane, generous, and Christian
spirit towards those who are in their service, and
the employed all due consideration for the interest
of their masters, and all due fidelity in the work
which they have undertaken to do.

Then, the ministers of the Church might, I
believe, make their intercourse with the working
men under their pastoral care more interesting,
instructive, and useful than it could otherwise be,
were they themselves to make a careful study of
the social and labour questions debated around
them, and to master the leading principles of eco-
nomic science as expounded by such truly scientific
specialists as Sidgwick, Marshall, and Shield Nichol-
son. So prepared, they might even at times, in
parishes where fit audiences could be found, spread a
good deal of beneficial light and help to dispel some
mischievous errors by week-day evening lectures
on social or economic themes — lectures which might
even easily be of an expository, not a controversial
or polemic character.

The clergy might also, perhaps, exert a useful
influence in the way of encouraging workmen to
help themselves. Self-help is the most effectual of
all. The working classes have now a power which,
if rightly directed and fully utilised, might do an
immense amount of good. The most striking exhi-
bition of that power is to be witnessed in their

SOCIALISM AND RELIGION 489

enormous trades unions and world-wide confedera-
tions. At present, however, it is power largely
wasted, because applied too exclusively to organisa-
tion for war, and too often expended in war which
only leads to disaster because it is war against
natural law, war which ignores the difference between
tin* possible and the impossible. Were it to a
greater extent applied to organisation not merely
for the increase of wages but for the general better-
men t of the condition of workmen, it would be far
less wasteful and far more fruitful. It would not be
so often expended in war, but it would be much
stronger for all just and necessary war. Were the
unions and confederations created by it more
educative, and more truly democratic in the sense of
more really self-governing and less dependent on
the advice and guidance of a few leaders ; were
tlit-v in closer and more amicable relations with the
associations and alliances of their employers ; and
were they more occupied in seeking the general
economic, intellectual, and moral improvement of
their members, they would be highly beneficent
agencies. Although there are certainly few signs
just no\v of their purposing to move on these lines,
we should not despair that good counsel, reflection,
and the teaching of experience will in time bring
tin-in to perceive that such are the only safe
ones.

No absolute distinction can be drawn between
political and social questions. Political questions
are social questions, and the measure of their im-

490 SOCIALISM

portance is the extent to which they affect the
condition and character of society.

The man who fancies that the Church ought to
have nothing to do with politics, cannot have thought
much on the subject. The Church has to do with
the Bible, and the Bible is a very political book.
The history recorded in Samuel, Kings, and
Chronicles may be called " sacred history," but it is
in the main as much political history as that nar-
rated by Herodotus, Tacitus, or Froude. The
prophets preached politics so very largely that no
man can expound what they uttered and apply it
without preaching politics also. To lecture through
the Epistle of James without trenching on the
sphere of politics one would require to be not merely
adroit but dishonest. It is true that Christ's king-
dom " is not of this world," but also true that
Christ is " prince of the kings of the earth," and
consequently that all political rulers and political
assemblies are as much bound to obey His will as
ecclesiastical leaders and ecclesiastical councils.
Political morality is conformity in certain relations
to the divine law which the Church has been
instituted to make known and to get honoured in
all relations. The Church has, therefore, very much
to do with politics. She has to do with it in so far
as politics may be moral or immoral, Christian or
anti-Christian ; in so far as there is national duty or
national sin, national piety or national impiety.

The Church, however, has not to do with politics
in the same way in which the State has. It is not
her province to deal with political measures in them-

SOCIALISM AND RELIGION 491

selves. The clergy must not thrust themselves into
the business of politicians. They are only entitled
to watch how the activity of the politician is related
to the law of Christ, to inculcate the " righteousness
that exalts a people," and to denounce " the sin
which is the reproach of nations." But that they
are bound to do; and they may render great service to
society by faithfully doing it. There would be less
political immorality were political sins more certain
of being rebuked. If, when murder was stalking
through the south and west of Ireland, the clergy of
Britain had generally proclaimed as pointedly the
obligatoriness of the commandment " Thou shalt not
kill " as one of them, Professor Wace, did, politicians
of all kinds would soon have had their eyes opened
to see that they could not hope to make capital out
of crime, and Britain would not have been bur-
dened with nearly so heavy a load of blood-guiltiness.
It is a great misfortune for a people when it has no
prophets of the old Hebrew stamp to arouse its
conscience by confronting it with the divine law.

The Church is bound to do her utmost to make
the State moral and Christian. This requires her
to maintain her own independence ; to take no part
in questions of merely party politics ; to keep free
if possible from the very suspicion of political parti-
sanship; and to confine her efforts, when acting
within the political sphere, to endeavouring to
get the law of her Lord honoured and obeyed in
national and public life. She must be subject or
bound to no party, but rise above all parties, in order
that she may be able to instruct, correct, and rebuke

492 SOCIALISM

them all with disinterestedness and effectiveness.
When she fully realises this necessity, and acts
accordingly, her political influence, far from being-
lessened, will be greatly increased. It is only when
she throws off all political bondage, keeps herself
free from the contamination of what is base and
corrupt in political life, and stands forth as instituted
and commissioned by God to declare His saving
truth and righteous will to all men without respect
of persons, that she can with the necessary authority
and weight condemn all sacrifice of truth to expe-
diency ; of morality to success ; and of the welfare of
a nation, or the advancement of Christianity, or the
good of mankind, to the advantage of a party, or the
triumph of a sect, or the mean ends of individuals or
classes. Only then will she fully exert the immense
power with which she has been entrusted for the
healing of the nations, for the regeneration and re-
novation of society. And then, too, the world will
be forced to recognise its indebtedness to her ; to
acknowledge that she has received manifold gifts for
men which are indispensable to the welfare of society ;
that she can render to the State far greater advan-
tages than the State can confer upon her ; that she
can bring to bear upon the hostile parties in a com-
munity a moderating, elevating, and harmonising
influence peculiar to herself; that she can touch
deeper springs of feeling and of conviction than any
merely secular power can reach, and thereby do
more to purify public life ; and, in a word, that her
mission is so wonderfully adapted to meet human
wants that it must indeed be divine.

SOCIALISM AND RELIGION 493

SUPPLEMENTARY NOTE.— THE CHURCH'S CALL TO
STUDY SOCIAL QUESTIONS.

The following remarks of the author on this subject have already
appeared in print. They are reprinted here because of their close
connection with the concluding portion of the chapter.

" The call of the Church to study social questions is not a new
one, except so far in form. In substance it is as old as the
Church itself. The teaching of Christ and of the Apostles was
the setting forth of a Gospel intimately related to the society in
which it appeared, and vitally affecting the whole future of the
society which was to be. The Church may find in the study of
the New Testament the same sort of guidance for its social activity
as an individual minister may find in it for the right performance
of his pulpit or pastoral duty.

" Just as in the New Testament there are the all-comprehensive
and inexhaustibly fruitful germs of a perfect doctrine of the
ministry of the Word, and of the pastoral care, so are there of a
perfect doctrine of the social mission of the Church. Indeed, the
Sermon on the Mount alone contains far more of light fitted to
dispel social darkness, and far more of the saving virtue which
society needs, than any individual mind can ever fully apprehend,
01- tluin the Church universal has yet apprehended.

" If the call of which I have to speak were not thus old as well
as new ; if it were not a call inherent in the very nature of the
Gospel, and implied in the very end of the existence of a Cliuivh
on earth ; if it summoned the ministers of the Word away from
the work which Christ had assigned to them ; if it required them
to discard their divinely-inspired text-book, it could hardly be a
true one, and ministers might well doubt if it could be incumbent
on them to listen to it. But it is no such call. For, although it
be one which summons us to reflect on what is required of us in
the circumstances of the present hour — one which is repeated to
u> 1'V God's providence daily in events happening around us and
jut ->Miig themselves on our attention — it is also one which comes
down to us through the ages from Him who lived and suffered and
died in Palestine centuries ago, in order that, as God was in Him.
and lie in God, all men might be one in Him.

494 SOCIALISM

" The call is so distinct that the Church has never been entirely
deaf to it. Originating as it did in the love of Christ to mankind,
it necessarily brought with it into the world a new ideal of social
duty ; and it has never ceased to endeavour, more or less faithfully,
to relieve the misery and to redress the wrongs under which it
found society suffering. In the early Christian centuries, in the
time of the fall of the Roman Empire and the formation of the
mediaeval world, in the so-called "ages of faith," and the epoch of
the foundation of modern States, and in all periods since, the
Church has had a social mission varying with the characteristics
and wants of each time, and may fairly claim to have largely
contributed to the solutions which the social problems of the times
received. And a zeal guided by prudence, a wise activity in the
social sphere, has never done the Church anything but good.
When the Church has kept itself to itself, when it has shut itself
up in its own theological schools, divided itself into sects mainly
interested in opposing one another, and confined its work within
congregational and parochial limits ; in a word, when it has
cultivated an exclusive and narrow spirit, then it has been pro-
portionately unfaithful, disputatious, and barren ; its theology has
been lifeless and unprogressive, its ministry of the Word sapless
and ineffective, and the types of piety arid of character which it
has produced have been poor and unattractive. In the measure in
which the Church is a power for good on earth will it prove a
power which draws men to heaven.

" The call of the Church to study social questions has its chief
ground or reason in this, that the influence of the Church, if brought
rightly and fully to bear on society, must be incalculably beneficial
to it. There is no power in the world which can do so much for
society as the Church, if pure, united and zealous, if animated with
the mind of Christ, and endowed with the graces of the spirit.

" The State can, of course, do for society what the Church cannot
do, and has no right even to try to do ; but it cannot do for society
more than, or even as much as, the Church may do, and should
do. The power of the State, just because the more external and
superficial, may seem the greater, but is really the lesser. Spiritual
force is mightier than material force. Rule over the affections of
the heart is far more decisive and wide-reaching than rule over the
actions of the body.

SOCIALISM AND RELIGION 495

"The Church, if it does not destroy its own influence by un-
reaaonablenees, selfishness, contentiousness, departure from the
truth as it is in ( 'hrist, and conformity to the world, will naturally,
ami in the long run inevitably, rule society and rule the State;
and that for the simple reason that it ought to rule them — ought
to bring them into subjection to those principles of religion and
of morality on which their life and welfare are dependent.

" Of course, if the Church be untrue to itself, unfaithful to its
Lord, it will do harm in society just in proportion to the good
which it might and ought to do. The corruption of the best is the
worst.

" In the truths which it was instituted to inculcate, the Church
has inexhaustible resources for the benefiting of society, which
ought to be wisely and devotedly used.

•• \Vas it not instituted, for example, to spread through society
the conviction that the supreme ruler of society is God over all ;
that the Prince of the kings of the earth is the Lord Christ Jesus ;
that the perfect law of God as revealed in Christ ought to underlie
all the laws which monarchs and parliaments make ; and that
whatever law contradicts His law is one to be got rid of as soon
as possible, and brought into consistency with His eternal sta-
tut.

" Well, what other real security has society for its freedom
than just that conviction ? What other sure defence against the
tyranny of kings or parliaments, of majorities or mobs? I know
of none. The only way for a people to be free is to have a firm
faith in God's sovereignty, in Christ's headship, over the nations;
a linn t'aith that in all things it is right to obey God rather than
man ; that the true and supreme law of a people cannot be the
will of a man, or of a body of men, or of the majority of men, or
of tho.M- who happen for the time to have physical force on their
sidf, hut only the will of God, the law at once of righteousness
and of liberty.

"The God in Whom the Christian Church believes, moreover,
is not only God over all, but God the Father of all ; God Who loves
all with an equal and impartial love, and Whose love, in seeking
the love of all men and the good of all men, seeks also that they
should love one another and promote each other's good. The
Fatherhood of God and the brotherhood of men are truths which

496 SOCIALISM

the Church is bound to endeavour fully to impress on the mind
and heart of society ; and obviously the welfare of society depends
on the success with which this is effected.

" Further, the Church has been instituted to commend to the
consciences of mankind the claims of a moral law, comprehensive
and perfect so far as its principles are concerned ; a law which
does justice to the rights and requirements both of the individual
and of society, and therefore is free from the faults alike of indi-
vidualism and of socialism ; one which lays the foundations of a
rightly constituted family life and of just and beneficent govern-
ment ; and which overlooks not even the least of those virtues on
which the economic welfare of a community and of its members
so much depends. And to give life and force to the injunctions
of this law, so that they may be no mere verbal precepts, but full
of divine fire and efficacy, they are connected with the greatest
and most impressive facts, — the mercies of God, the work and
example of Christ, and the aid and indwelling of the Holy Spirit.

" Does the Church commend this law in all its breadth, and by
all the motives which enforce it, as wisely, earnestly, and effect-
ively as it might ? I fear not altogether ; and yet there is great
need that it should ; for, if not, there is no other body, no other
society, that will. Take even those humble yet most essential
virtues to which I have just referred under the name of economic
— those personal qualities which make a man's labour more valu-
able both to himself and others than it would otherwise be, and
which further ensure that whatever his wages may be they will
not be foolishly or unworthily spent. Are they not apt to be
overlooked in our teaching, although they were certainly not over-
looked in that of the Apostles? Yet who will do them justice if
ministers of the Gospel do not ? Will it be socialist orators like
those in Hyde Park or Glasgow Green, or gentlemen in quest of
workmen's votes to help them into Parliament, or otherwise to
raise them to prominence and power ? I trow not ; they will will-
ingly leave that task to the clergy ; and I think the clergy had
better do it, and as lovingly, yet as faithfully, as they can. Politi-
cal economists, indeed, may show, and have abundantly shown,
the economic importance of the virtues referred to both as regards
individuals and societies ; but that, although all that political
economists can relevantly do, is not enough • while Christian

SOCIALISM AND RELIGION 497

ministers can bring to the enforcement even of these virtues far
higher and more effective considerations.

" I hasten to add that the Church of Christ has been set up to
show forth to mankind a kingdom of God which is both in
heaven and on earth. Among multitudes of Socialists there is a
quite special hatred against faith in a heavenly kingdom. It is
the opium, they say, by which the peoples have been cast into
sleep, and prevented from asserting and taking possession of their
rights. Exclaims one of them — ' When a heaven hereafter is
recognised as a big lie, men will attempt to establish heaven here.'
Thousands of them have uttered the same thought in other words.
Oh, strange and sad delusion ! If a heaven hereafter be a big lie,
what reason can we have to expect that there will ever be a
heaven here ? A merely earthly paradise can only be a fool's
paradise. Earth is all covered with darkness when not seen in
the light of a heaven above it. The preachers of past days, per-
haps, erred by laying almost exclusive stress on the kingdom of
God in heaven. The preachers of the present day may err by
laying too exclusive stress on the coming of the kingdom of God
on earth, and so leading some to believe that the secularist
Socialists may be right, and that there may be no other heaven
than one which men can make for themselves here.

" The great and continuous call of the Church to study social
questions arises from her having been entrusted with such powers
to act on society, to regenerate and reform, to quicken and elevate
society, as I have now indicated. The right application of them
ntial to the welfare of society ; but such application of them
supposes the most patient and careful and prayerful study, the
most intimate and living acquaintance with the Gospel on the one
hand, and the most thorough insight into the requirements of
society on the other, and, in a high degree, the knowledge and the
prudence which inform a man when and what to speak, how to
say just enough and to refrain from adding what will weaken or
wholly destroy its effect. Bishop Westcott's «* Social Aspects of
Christianity,'' and Dr. Donald Macleod's " Christ and Society/'
are greatly more valuable than they would have been if their
authors had shown a less exquisite sense of knowing always where
to stop ; and such a sense, only attainable in due measure by
assiduous tlmughtfulness, is probably even more necessary in

498 SOCIALISM

addressing congregations composed of the poor and labouring
classes than those which meet in Westminster Abbey or the
Park Church.

" While there has always been a call on the Church to study
social questions, there is likewise, however, a special call on the
Church of the present day to do so. For, indubitably, all over
Christendom there is a vast amount of social rest and unrest.
The conflict between labour and capital is one of chronic war, of
violent and passionate struggles, which too often produce wide-
spread waste and misery. And closely connected with it is a vast
irreligious and revolutionary movement, which sees in Christianity
its bitterest foe, and aims at destroying it along with social order
and private property. This irreligious and revolutionary move-
ment is to a considerable extent the effect of the conflict between
labour and capital, but it is to an even greater extent its cause.

" The matter standing thus, there is a most urgent call on the
Church to study how to bring all the powers of the Gospel to bear
against whatever is wrong in society, and on the stimulation and
strengthening of all that is good in it. Thoughtfulness need not
lessen or counteract zeal ; it should accompany, enlighten, and
assist zeal. If there be an urgent and strong call that the
Church in present circumstances should endeavour to act, with all
the power with which God has endowed her, for the purification
and salvation of society, there must be a correspondingly urgent
and strong call for her to study how she may most fully and
effectively do so." *

* Scottish Church Society Conferences. First Series. Pp. 65-72. Edin-
burgh, 1894.

INDEX

ABSOLUTISM, the State, of antiquity,

not Socialism, 32
"Abstraction," individualist and

socialist, 279
Abuse of power, Collectivism a great

temptation to. 241

<jmic Socialists, 353
Adam Smith, 357
Aims of man, 273
America, 342, 343

American Socialism, historians of, 35
Anarchism, literature of, 39; and

Communism, 86
Anarchism. Democratic, 305
Aquinas, Thomas, 375
Aristocracy, the truth in the idea of,

307

Annies of industry, Carlyle on, 229
A-xiciations, political, 322
Austria, Catholic Socialists in, 439
Author, his definition and use of word

"Socialism," 17, 21, 28

I'. AIIKV, Dr., his definition of Social-
i.Mn, 24

UiiNtiat, 357

K. iielfort, on the teaching of
Christ, 96 ; on position of the work-
in- Classes, 263 ; 284, 287, 352, 401,
403, 431, 462

references to, 283, 352, 462 ;
his definition of Socialism, 24; his
• I >ic Fran,'' 139

I'.i l^ium, 288

Bellamy, 462

Hellom' Maurice, 294

Benevolence, Cumberland inculcates
a theory of, 64

fhe, a very political book, 490
. Louis, on'the duties of Govern-
ment, 34 ; on standard of wages,
125 ; 405, 414

Ulanchard. ,F. T., on the ri^ht to )
labour, 415

Blanqui's motto, Xi Dien ni mattre,
330

Bohmert, Victor, 295

Bonar, Dr., 327

Bosanquet, his definition of Socialism,
26 ; on Economical Socialism, 333

" Bourgeois Family," the, 283

Bourgeoisie, 387 ; bourgeoisie and
pevple, 384

Bradlaugh's definition of Socialism at
St. James's Hall, 16

Britain, working men in, and Social-
ism, 44 ; dangers of Socialism in,
45 ; provoking causes of Socialism
in, 46 ; no warrant for a pessimistic
view of coming events in, 46 ;
Socialistic periodicals in, 49 et
seq. ; 288 ; possible ruin of, by
other great military and naval
Powers, or by its own people, 325 ;
Democracy of, should not be in-
different to Britain's naval and
military supremacy, 310

Brotherhood, Socialism morally
strongest in its recognition of , 381 ;
yet violates it, 386

Buckle referred to (in Encyclopaedia
Britannica by Dr. Flint), 72

Buying out proprietors of land, 222

C^ESARISM, 336, 342

Campanella, 283

Capital and intelligence entitled to
remuneration, 112; Marx on, 141,
144, 148, 153, 154, 155, 164, 170,
198, 199, 372; and Interest, 173;
Mr. Lecky on, 174 ; what is it ? 156 ;
and labour dependent on each
other, 158 ; and Collectivism, 176 ;
and labour reciprocally essential,
177: as an "historic category,"
185 ; and circulation, 186; "vari-
able," and "constant," 187; robs
labour— fallacy of the idea, 164 ;

500

INDEX

Adam Smith, Kicardo, and Proud-
lion mentioned in connection with,
164 ; Schaffle on, 166 ; mediaeval
superstition about, 173 ; collec-
tivisation of, scope and aim of the
scheme, 231 ; its impracticability,
232; and its folly, 239, 241 ; pro-
blem of maintenance of, affected
by Collectivism, 246

Capitalist, a, must be the friend of
labour, and those who seek the good
of labour should desire increase of
capital, 158 ; the mere, a despicable
being, 179; claims of the, to re-
muneration, incontestible, 171 seq. ;
method of exploitation, 190 ; work-
men's grounds of complaint against,
1 79 ; system of an industrial reserve
army, 198

Carlyle on State management of the
land, 228 ; and armies of industry,
229

Catchwords of parties. 289

Catholic doctrine and Socialism, 439

Catholic Socialists in Germany, 438

Cathrein, 360

Cave of Furies (ancient Athens), 394

Chalmers, Dr. , his purpose in writing
" Political Economy," 280 ; 353

Chamberlain, Mr. on political reform,
42

Champion, H. H., 295

Character, importance of education
in forming, 280

Charity, 410 ; and history of Christ-
endom, 390 ; legal and official, 392

Chicago martyrs, 35

Children, transfer of to the care of the
State, 286

Christ, the teaching of, neither indi-
vidualistic nor socialist, 96 ; and
brotherly love, &c., 388, 307, 394 ;
immeasurably the greatest reformer
and revolutionist who has ever ap-
peared on earth, 466

Christian Socialists, 434

Christianity not bound to existing
order of society, 452 ; Socialism
antagonistic to, 460 ; meant to free
men from such slavery as Socialism
imposes, 465

Church, the mediaeval, and social
authority, 96

Church, the, 288, 289, 470 et seq. •
and Socialism, 289, 290 ; should aim
at fulfilling her social mission
wholly in the spirit of her Lord,
481 ; her duty plain, 481 ; must not

be the Church of any class alone,
481 ; should endeavour to remove
causes of disaffection, 482 ; Dives
and Lazarus, 485 ; should do more
for solution of social and labour
problems, 486 ; should point out
duties as well as rights to the
classes, 488 ; cannot draw any
absolute distinction between social
and political questions, 489; has
not to do with politics in the same
way as the State has, 490 ; Prof.
Wace, 491 ; call of, to study social
questions (supplementary note), 493
et scq.

Claims of proprietors of land, 22 1
Clergy, the, 476 et seq. ; Leighton
(quoted), and "preaching up the
times," 476
Colins, an advocate of Collectivism,

87

Collectivisation of capital, scope and
aim of the scheme, 231 ; its imprac-
ticability, 232 ; to be realised only
by revolution — folly of such an
attempt, 234 ; J. S. Mill on, 235 ;
Archbishop Whateley on, 238 ;
means national slavery, 239 ; a
species of slavery, 241

Collectivism, Schaffle on, 61 ; the
only formidable kind of Socialism,

63 ; and Individualism contrasted.

64 et seq. ; Karl Marx founder of.
86 ; described, 87 ; and capital,
176 ; Professor J. S. Nicholson
on the proposals of, 233 ; a great
temptation to abuse of power, 241 ;
would cause a longer labour day,
244 ; would almost entirely deprive
us of benefits of foreign trade, 246 ;
the problem of maintenance of capi-
tal, 246 ; incapable of a stable and
solid realisation, 245 ; democratic,
Schaffle's objections to, 250 ; not to
be attained by evolution, but by re-
volution, 269 ; tendency of, 272 ;
and religion, 277 ; no religious
difficulties under its regime, 277 ;
358, 360, 375, 389

Collectivist principles, history of, 87

Combinations, workmen's, 295

Commune, Parisian, 395

Communes, splitting up of Europe
into, advocated by fervent Demo-
crats, 304

Communism, 55 ; relationship to
Socialism, 55 ; frequency, 55 ; re-
ligious, 56 ; in Italy and Spain, 59 ;

INDEX

in Europe, 60 ; democratic, im-
practicable, 6 1 ; Noyes on, 81 ;
Wagner on, 83 ; Socialism and, 84 ;
creed of, 85 ; literature of, and
Anarchism, 86 ; 389

Communist party, manifesto of, by
Marx and Engels, 88

Communistic experiments applied to
industrial problem, 57 ; frequency
of, in United States, conditions of
success, 57 et seq. ; societies, pros-
perity of a material kind, 84

Competition, duty of the State in
ud to, 119; in relation to pau-
perism, 120 ; industrial, is Chris-
tian, as shown by Bishop Butler,
122

Conite, Fourier, and Saint-Simon,
men of exceptional constructive
power, though unsuccessful, 202 ;
reasons of their non-success, 203

Comte on historical hypothesis of
Marx, 1 38 : and social organisa-
tion, 274 ; on the family, 282 ; 430

Condorcet on equality of wealth, 201

Considerant, Victor, 414, 430

Co-('peration, relation of to Socialism,
294

a, L., 348

Costa-Rossetti, 439

Cournot, 339

Crown, the Britis-h, has been gradu-
ally stripped of the power by which
it can check or control Parliament,

312
Cumberland inculcates benevolence,

66

DAVIDSON. . I. MORRISON, <>n nationali-
sation of land, 227 ; 353, 359, 360,

36l» 362

D' Eckstein and other Frenchmen use
the word Industrialism preferably
to Socialism, 13

Decrements, undeserved, 218

Definition of Socialism, no true and
precise, possible, 18

Democracies, State intervention in,
79 ; ancient and modern demo-
cracies compared, 300, 301 ; in many
s have ended in despotisms,
338; Froude quoted, 338; author's
opinion as to duration of demo-
cracy, 338 ; the late M. Cournot
cited, 339 ; De Tocqueville's famous
work on " Democracy in America,"
the author's words in reference
thereto quoted, 339 (t » /.

Democracy, what is it ? 299 ; etymo-
logy of word, 299 ; only an ideal,
300 ; manhood and womanhood
suffrage a sine qud non of, 301 ;
representative system restrictive of,
302, 303 ; the truth distinctive of,
not the whole truth of government,
307 ; may tend to be, but is not
bound to be, republican, 309;
human qualities demanded for its
success, 322, 3?3 ; party spirit its
direst foe, 321 ; prosperity of
secured only by toil and thought,
326 ; and Caesarism of Greece and
Rome, and the fate of modern
Europe, 336

De Tocqueville, 339, 340

Dietzgen, 431

Discontent inherent in human nature,
263

Doniol, M., contribution to the history
of the imaginary distinction be-
tween bourgeoisie and peuple, 384

Dove, P. E., on nationalisation of land
and rent value of soil, 204

Dugald Stewart, 353

ECONOMIC laws limit State action, 73
Economics, various views of, dis-
cussed, 345 et seq. ; relation to
ethics, 348; Ruskin quoted, 351;
alleged by Socialists to be un-
favourable to morality, because, as
generally taught, it assumes, they
say, that human nature is essen-
tially selfish, 353 ; Thos. Davidson
quoted, 354; argument disposed of,

357

lucation, importance of, in forming

character, 280

Ego, 378, 379

Eisenach programme (Social Demo-
cratic), 89

Enfantin, 416

Engels, one of the authors of the
manifesto of the Communist party,
88; quoted, 137, 139; social orga-
ni.-ation, 276

English Socialism, periodicals, and
Socialists, contemporary leaders of,
43 ; Land Restoration League, un-
wisdom of, 227

Equality, Condorcet on growth of,
201 ; the distinctive and favourite
principle of Democracy, 315; very
often the desire for, is identical
with envy, 316; only one strictly-
right sort of, 316; political, 316,

Ecu!

502

INDEX

317; in property, 317; religious,

317
Erfurt Social Democratic programme,

9i

Estates, Third and Fourth, 383
Ethical Individualism, 96
Ethics, relation to economics, 348 ;

true, in conflict with ordinary

ethics of Socialism, 369 ; domestic,

38o
Exclusion, arbitrary, of any class

from political activity is a wrong,

317

FABIAN Society, 43

Fabians and State intervention, 77 ;
and the theory of value, 183

Fallacies as to relation of capital and
labour, 159 seq.

Family, importance of, 281 ; 380

Farmers', tenant, scheme under na-
tionalisation of land, 225

Ferguson, Adam, 357

Feuerbach, 431

Fichte, J. G., quoted, 405

Flint, Dr., his views on Socialism and
social organisation criticised, 260

Foreign policy of Socialism, 396

Foreign trade, problem of, 230

Fortunes, the greatest, made by
speculation, 181

Fourier, one of the founders of French
Socialism, 34, 430

Fourierist societies, 86

" Fourth Estate," so-called by Social-
ists, 383; solution of the social
question, according to Socialists,
only to be obtained by its triumph,
383 ; really no Fourth Estate at
present, 384

France, not now the country most
threatened by Socialism, 34 ; pro-
gress of Socialism in, 54 ; 288, 341 ;
in 1830-1835, 341 ; Guizot Ministry
(1840-1848), 342 ; Csesarism, ac-
claimed, 342 ; and the Third Estate,
383 et seq.

Fraternity, belief in the truth of by
Socialism, 381 ; thought of, and
charity, 387

"DieFrau" (Bebel), 139

Freedom, industrial, democratic, 201

Free love, 283, 287

French Academy's definition of So-
cialism, 15 ; Anarchist journals, 54 ;
Socialism, founders of, 34 ; Social-
ists, 35

Froude quoted, 338

Functions of the State, 69

Furies, Cave of (ancient Athens), 395

GAMBETTA, famous declaration of,

274

Garibaldi, 397
Gamier, 357
George, Henry, on mutual relations of

capital and labour — his hypothesis

examined, 162 seq. ; nationalisation

of land, 204 ; 400, 401
German Socialism, progress of, 43 ;

literature of, 42, 52
Giffen on property in land, 219
Gilman, N. P., 295
Gioberti, 397
God, recognition of sovereignty of,

308 ; love to be given to, 367
God, Fatherhood of, 470
Godwin, Wm., 416
Goschen, Mr., on self-help, 77
Gospel, the principles of the, designed

to pervade, embrace, and direct

the whole of the life of man, 480
Gotha Social Democratic programme,

90
Government, Louis Blanc on the

duties of a, 34 ; primary function of,

to coerce and suppress crime, 37
Graham, " Socialism Newand Old," 28
Greece and Eome ruined through

failure to solve the "social que;-.-

tion," 32

Grievances of labour, 178
Gronluncl, 352
Guild of St. Matthew, 52
Gunton's refutation of Marx, 192
Guyot, Yves, 394

HAFFNEK, Canon, 438

Hall, Chas., 416

Happiness and wealth, Hobbes,

Spencer, Morris, and Belfort Bax

on, 262, 263

Harrison, Mr. Frederic, on the ques-
tion of producers and products, 115
Headlam, Kev. Stewart D. , 52 ; 438
Hedonism, 372
Hegel on historical hypothesis of

Marx, 138

Held's definition of Socialism, 24
Helvetius, a representative of ethical

individualism, 96
Historical evolution, ideas of Owen,

Saint-Simon, Fourier, Condorcet

and Comte on, 267
Historical hypothesis of Marx and

Comte, Hegel on, 138 ; school, 463

INDEX

5°3

History, failure of Socialism in its
explanation of, 464 ; sacred and
other, 490

Hitchcock quoted, 406

Hitze, Abbot, 438

Hobbes inculcates a theory of selfish-
I, 64, 96 ; a representative of
ethical individualism, 96

Holyoake en term Socialism, 12

House of Commons, 310, 311, 337

House of Lords, might be greatly
improved by direct reform, 312 ;
should be mended, not ended, 312

Hubert, V. P., 295

Hughes, 434

Hugo, 397

Human liberties, certain fundamental,
limit State action, 73

Human nature, plasticity of, exagge-
rated by Socialists, 352

Hume, 357

Hutcheson, Fras. , 353

Hyndman - Bradlaugh debate in St.
James's Hall, 15

Hyndman's definition of Socialism, 15

1 CAKI AX societies— Cabet, 60

Incomes, earned and unearned, wis-
dom of State in not attempting to
;rate, 219

Increments, unearned, 215

I ^dividual initiative, Professor Pulszky
on, 78 ; ownership not unjust, 210 ;
i'.n, intluenceof, on society, 271

Indiudualism, date of the term, 13;
not to be identified with sociology,
19 ; an exress as well as Socialism,
64 ; compared with Socialism, 95 ;
ethical, \isible in egoistic hedonism,
96 ; a System of Politics (Donis-
thorpe), 98; and Socialism (in Les
ie Ja Science Economique),

99

Individualist assumptions, 65 ; reli-
gious teaching, 96

Individuum, 378

Industrial reserve army, capitalist
-\>tem of an, 199 ; freedom, demo-
'•ratic, 201

[ndnstrialiam, 13

Industry and property, Socialism
aims primarily at a re-organisation
of, 101 ; divfeion of the profits ot,
117; armies of, Carlyle on, 229;
Socialism and the organisation of,

275

labour (compulsory), 293
:v.-t, Lecky on, 175

International feeling, diffusion of,
3935 Workmen's Association, fun-
damental pact of the, by .M .

Ireland, Socialism in, 54

Italy, 288

JANET'S definition of Socialism, 27

Jesus, quoted, 307, 388, 394

Jingoism, 394

John the Baptist, metanoia of, 379

Joly on Socialism, 86

Jones, B., 295

Justice and Socialism, 398 ; Bax

quoted, 401
Justice (Spencer), 210

KAUFMAN'S definition of Socialism,

23 ; Utopias, 34
Ketteler, Bishop von, 438
Kingdom of God, 464; Heaven,

Socialift delusion as to how it may

be established on earth, 351, 378
Kingsley, 434, 479
Kirkup on the origin of the word

Socialism, 12 ; his History of

Socialism, 28
Kosiuth, 397
Kufstein, Count von, 439

LABOUB, the history of, 103; the
burning question of the day, 104 ;
the danger of misrepresentation
regarding, producing discontent
and bitterness, 106 ; a fallacy that
it is the sole source of wealtn, 107, -
in, 112; dependent on Nature
for wealth, 108 ; Marx's erroneous
theory of its exploitation, 109 ;-
Adam Smith and Ricardo fell ii.to
same error, no; labourers repre-
sent capital, and cannot work with-
out it, in ; does not give value
to commodities, 113; not being
the sole source of wealth, the
whole Socialist doctrine regarding
it is wrong, 114; Bastiatand Marx,
their views on the point, 1 14 ; some-
times asks more than capital can
give, 118; and capital, .Marx «.n,
149; griex ances of , 178; power as
soie source of value, Marx's argu-
ments ci iTicised and examined, 189
seq. ; day, Collectivism would ini-
tiate a longer, 244 ; ihe right to,
408 et stq., different from rights of
labour, 409 et seq., Turgot quoted ;
Proudhon quoted, 412; current price
of, 412,- Switzerland, 414; rights

5°4

INDEX

of, 415 et seq.; responsibility of
providing, 410, 411

Labour-insurance, burden of, should
be shared by employers and em-
ployed, 293 ; legislation in other
countries, 294

Labour question, the, relation of the
Church to, 474

Lafargue, 283

Laisser-faire, Adam Smith's formula-
tion of the doctrine of, 71

Land, nationalisation of the, 202, 220 ;
all rights of proprietorship in,
limited, 205; value of, 217; pro-
perty in, Giffen on, 219; State
management of the, 228 ; national-
ised, howit might be dealt with, 223;
present proprietors of, reasonable
claims of, 221 ; property in, justice
of, discussed, 205, 210, 220; Social-
ists maintain, should be free, 419

Lassalle on law of wages, 128

Laveleye, his definition of Socialism,
27 ;" Socialism of To-day," 28 ; on
primitive property, 30 ; on direct
government by the referendum, 314

Law and liberty, 69

Laws of society, 375 ; Thomas Aqui-
nas quoted, 375

Lec-ky on interest, i?5

Leighton, 476

Lengthening the labour day, 196

Leo (Pope) XIII. on the family, 285,

439

Leroux, Pierre, author of " Humani-
tarianism," one of the reputed
authors of the word Socialism, u,
13 ; his definition of Socialism, 17 ;

44°

Leroy-Beaulieu's definition of Social-
ism, 16

" Uetat c'est moi," Louis XIV., 334
Liberty, Spencer's formula of, 68 ; and

law, 69
Liberty, 374

Liebknecht and social organisation, 276
Limits of State action, 71
Lincoln, Abraham, 400
Literature of Socialism : —

Adam Smith und der Eigennutz

(Zeyss), 72
American Communities, &c.

(Hind), 86

Associations Co-operatives en
France et A. 1'Eti anger (Hu-
bert), 295

Assurance centre la Maladie
(Bellom), 294

Literature (continued)—

Bismarck and State Socialism

(W. H. Dawson), 42
Catholic Times (Right Rev. Abbot

Snow in the), 443
Christ and Society (Dr. Donald

Macleod), 497

Christian Ethics (Martensen), 96
Christian Socialist (J. M. Ludlow

in the introductory paper to

the), 436
Church's Call to Study Social

Questions (Author), 493
Code de la Nature (Abbe

Morelly), 359
Compte Rendu des Seances et

Travaux de 1'Acad. d. Sciences

Morales et Politiques, 384
Conditions of Labour in Ger-
many (Drage), 43
Contemporary Socialism (Rae),

28,97

Co-operation v. Socialism (Cham-
pion and Jones), 295
Co-operative Commonwealth, 425
Cours d'Economie Politique

(Rossi), 349
Das Recht auf Existenz (Platter),

408
Das Recht auf den vollen Ar-

beitsertrag in geschichtlicher

Darstellucg (Prof. Menger), 416
De la Propriete (Proudhon), 212
Democracy in America (De Toc-

queville) 339

Democratic (Laveleye), 314
Der Moderne Socialismus in den

Vereinigten Staatui von Ame-

rika (Von Walt er ha u sen), 35
Die Erlosung der darbeuden

Menschheit (Stamm), 431
Die Frau (Bebel), 24
Die Naturwissenschaft und die

social-demokratische Theorie

(Ziegler), 139
Die Religion der Socialdemo-

kratie (Dietzgen), 431
Die Religion der Zukunft (Feuer-

bach), 431
"Die Religion der Zukunft " and

" Thesen iiber den Sc cialismus "

(Stern), 431
Die Volkswirthschaft in ihren

sittlichen Grundlagen (Dr.

Ratzinger), 440

DieStaatromane(Keinwiichter),33
Distribution of Profits (Atkin-
son), 171

INDEX

505

Lit. ratun-

Du Protestantisme et de Toutes

les Heresies dans leur rapport

avec le Socialisme (Auguste

Nicoios), 449
Economic basis of Socialism, in

Political Science Quarterly

(George Gunton), 104
Emancipationskampf des Vierten

Standes (Meyer), 28
Encyclopaedia (Herzog-Schaffs'),

85

Encyclopedic Nouvelle, art.
"Bourgeoisie " (Jean Reynaud),

384
h--ays and Addresses (Bosan-

quet), 334

sur la Repartition des

Richesses (P. Leroy-Beaulieu),

171

Ethica (Laurie), 375, 379
Ethics of Free Thought (Karl

Pearson), 334, 371
Ethics of Socialism (Bax), 403
Free Review, article "Right to

Labour " (Blanchard), 415
German Socialism and Ferdinand

Las.salle (W. H. Dawson), 42
Geschichte des Antiken Kom-

munismus und Sozialismus

(Pohlmann), 33

:ichtsphilosophie Hegel's

und der Hegelianer bis auf

.Marx ut d Hartmann (Barth),

138
(i« \\innbetheiligung (Bohmert),

295
Hind, "American Communities,"

86
Hi-toiredeDix Ans (Louis Blanc),

384
Histoire de la Revolution Fran-

• (Louis Blanc), 384
Ihstoiredu Socialisme (Malon), 28
Historical Philosophy in France

and French Belgium and

Switzerland (Author), 35. 343
History of American Socialism

(Nojes), 35, 8 1
History of Co-operation (Holy-

oake), 12, 295
History of Socialism (Kirkup),

12, 28

Humanitarianism (Leroux). n
Ideal Commonwealths (Morley's

Universal Library), 33
Impossibility of Social Demo-
cracy (Sehiiffle), 250, 288, 428

Literature (continued)—

Inquiry into Socialism( Kirkup),2o

Introduction to Political Eco-
nomy (Cossa), 348

Introduction to Social Philosophy
(Mackenzie), 97

Introductory Lectures on Poli-
tical Economy (Whateley), 138

Journal des Economistes (Le-
roux), 13

Kritische Beitriige zur Erkennt-
niss unserer socialen Zustande
und Theorien (Platter), 408

Labour Movement in America
(Ely and Aveling), 35

La Pretendue Antinomic de
Bourgeoisie et de Peuple dans
nos Institutions Politiques (M.
Doniol), 384

La Tyrannic Socialiste (Guyot),

394

Le Collectivisme (Leroy-Beau-
lieu), 255

Le Droit au travail 4 1'Assemble*
Nationale, &c., 416

Le Droit au Travail et le Droit
de Propriete, 413

Le Mouvement Socialiste
(Wyzewa), 27

Liberty (Mill), 66

Les Origines du Socialisme Con-
temporain (Janet), 27

Littre's Dictionary, 13

Man cersus the State (Spencer),

67
Modern Socialists (Reybaud in

Revue dea Deux Monde*), 13
Moral Aspects of the Economic

Question, 356

New Moral World (Owen), 12
Oceana, 338
On the Duties of Man (Joseph

Mazzini), 424

Philosophy of Law (Stirling), 97
Philosophy and Political Ko>-

nomy (Dr. Bonar), 327
Political Economy (Mill), 1 1, 20 ;

(Roscher), 32
Political Economy (Dr. Chalmers),

280
Positivist Review — Frederic

Harrison, Dr. Bridges, Prof.

Beesly, 52

Primitive Property (Laveleye), 30
Principles of Economics (Prof.

Marshall), 380
Principles of Political Economy,

&c., (Ricardo), no

506

INDEX

Literature (continued) —

Profit-sharing between Employer

and Employe (Gilman), 295
Progress of the Working Classes

(Giffen), 171

Progress : organ of the Salem Lite-
rary Society, Leeds, 260
Questions of the Day, 436
Quintessence of Socialism

(Schaffle), 62, 254
Religion of Socialism (Bax), 396,

432

Right to Labour (see Free Review}
Schonberg's Handbuch der poli-

tische Oekonomie (H. von

Scheel in), 26
Scuole Economiche della Ger-

mania (Cusumano) 42
Social Aspects cf Christianity

(Westcott), 282, 398, 497
Socialism (Westcott), 26
Socialism, &c. (Moms and Bax),

285
Socialism and Christianity

(Barry), 24

Socialism ; its Causes and Reme-
dies, 391

Socialism (Hitchcock), 395, 407
Socialism New and Old (Graham),

28
Socialism of To-day (Laveleye),

27,28

Socialisme Integral (Malon), 408
Socialisme d'Etat (Leon Say), 42
Socialisme Chretien (Joly), 86
Sozialismus, Sozialdemokratie

und Sozialpolitik (Held), 24
Subjects of the Day (Holy oake), 24
System der Socialpolitik (Julius

Wolff), 263
Tableau historique des progres de

PEsprit Human (Condorcet),

20 1
Tableau historique des Instituts

(Ortolan), 210

The impossibility of Social Demo-
cracy (Schaffle), 134
Theoiy of Moral Sentiments

(Buckle), 72
Unseen Foundations of Society,

344

Unto this Last (Ruskin), 351
Upon the Love of Our Neighbour

(Bishop Butler), 368
Ursprung der Familie, des Pri-

vateigenthums, und des Staals

(Engels), 139
Utopias (Kaufman), 33

Literature (continued) —

Wages Question, The (Walker),

161
Wealth of Nations (Adam Smith),

72

Werke (Fichte), 405
Littre's definition of Socialism, 15, 23
Louis XIV., "L'elat c'est moi," 334;

XVI., 409

Lubbock on primitive Socialism, 29
Ludlow, 434 ; cited, 436

McLEKNAN on primitive Socialism, 29

Mackenzie, J. S., on Socialism as an
individualistic theory, 97

Macleod, Dr. Donald, "Christ and
Society," 497

Majority, the will of a, no more
binding on reason or conscience
than that of a minority, 315 ; will
of, 425 ; cultus of the, 426

Malon, Histoire du Socialisme, 28

Malthus, 357. 415 ; would have dis-
owned Malthusian League, 415

Mamiani, 397

Mammon, worship of, too common in
the house of God, 482

Man, aims of, 273 ; relation to wealth,
347 ; held by Socialists to be the
creature of circumstances, 352 ; irre-
sponsibility assumed by Socialists,
352 ; history of, has been mainly not
the product of matter, but the work
cf man, 352; occupies in the world
three distinct positions, 368 ; is a
rational and responsible agent, 369 ;
rights of, 385, 425; the dutits of,
Mazzini on, 424

Mandeville, a representative of Ethical
Individualism, 96

Mariiage, Morris and Bax on, 284;
Snaffle, 288

Marx, Karl, his definition of Socialism,
24 ; his efforts to make Socialism
scientific, 40 ; his political errors,
75 ; the founder of Collectivism, or
Communism, 86-88 ; error of his
theory of the exploitation of labour,
109; on standard of wages, 126;
teaching mainly drawn from English
economists, especially Ricardo, 136;
bibliography of his historical hypo-
thesis, 138 ; theory of value exa-
mined, 139 ; on relation of labour
to capital, 149 ; his deductions from
the doctrine of surplus- value, 153 ;
theories as to capital and value, 183 ;
teaching, error of, and its cause,

ENDEX

507

194 ; his inferences examined, 196 ;
on surplus population, 198 ; ex-
pressed his conviction that Britain
would be the first to adopt his
system, 336, 416, 417

Materialism, union of Socialism with,
452 e/ -<f>/.

Maurice, Christian Socialist, 434 ; bis
treatment of social questions, 479

Mazzini, 397 ; on the duties of man,
424

Meager, Prof. Anton, 416

Meyer, Rudolph, Emancipationskampf
des Vierten Standes, 28

Mill, J. S., on the origin of word
Socialism, 12 ; his essay on Liberty,
66 ; his definition of Socialism, 20 :
on the principle of State interven-
tion, 66 ; on Collectivism through
revolution, 234; opinion of Parlia-
ment, 310

Minority, will of, 315

Misery, human, chiefly due to per-
sonal vices, 379

Mixed elements in Socialism, 9

Monarchies, absolute, 341

Monarchy, the truth in, 307

Moral and religious Socialism (Har-
rison), 115

Morality and Socialism, 344 et seq. ; j
morality not ignored by Socialism,

344

Morelly, Abb6, 359
Morris arid Bax on the marriage

>vstem, 284, 287
Morris, William, on the influence of

education, 281 ; on position of the

working classes, 263
Moufang, Canon, 438

NATIONALISATION of land discussed,
204, 210, 220; recommenced by
Henry George, A. R. Wallace,
Tat rick E. Dove, and others, 204; '
would answer no social question — |
would settle none, 223 ; and problem
of foreign trade, 129

Nationalised land, how it might be
• Irak with, 223

Nationality, 397

Neale. 4^4

New Church, the, of the future,

43°

New fellowship — Carpenter, Edward,
" Towards Democracy," "England's
Ideal," Adams, Maurice, quoted, 52,

" New .•Society.'' the. 285

Nicholson, Prof., on Adam Smith,
72 ; on the proposals of Collec-
tivism, 233

Xi hi i a at iD'tttre, Blanqni's motto,

33°

Nihilism (or Anarchism), not Social-
ism, description of, 36 ; relation to
Socialism, the ideal proposed, 37 ;
the fallacy of the theory, means
of realisation too revolting, 38; a
disease rather than an error, 39

Noyes on Communism, 81

OFFICIAL machinery limits State

action, 75
One-man rule, can only be nect

in evil times, 306
Operatives, destitution among, chiefly

confined to two grades, 297
Opinion, change of, in regard to

State intervention, 76
Organism, term applicable to the

State only metaphorically, 378 ;

Laurie quoted, 378
Ortolan on property, 210 ; on use and

abuse, 210

Over-driving in short hours, 196
Owen, Robert, as to origin of words

Socialist and Socialism, 12 ; refer-
ences to, 352, 372
Ownership, individual, not unjust,

210

PALESTINE, in the time of Christ, 388

Paley, a representative of ethical
individualism, 96

Parliament, British, 310; J. S. Mill's
opinion of, 310; degeneration of,
311 ; is there any remedy? 311 ;
payment of members would do
harm, 311; affirmed by Mr. Glad-
stone to be without limits to its
right of action, 313; grave and ir-
reconcilable differences bet ween the
two chambers should be decided
by the nation, 313 ; referendum, 314

Party spirit, 321 ; direst foe of Demo-
cracy, 321

Patriotism and Socialism, 395 ; B;ix
quoted, 396

Paul, St., 394

Pauperism and competition, 120

Pearson, Karl, quoted, 334

Peasant proprietors' scheme
ami ned, 224

Pecqueur, French Socialist, 87

Periodicals, English Socialist contem-
porary. 4;

508

INDEX

Phileas of Chalcedon, 33

Plato, "Republic," 97; referred to,
282, 283, 323

Pohlmann on primitive Socialism, 33

Political reform, Mr. Chamberlain's
programme of, 42

Political economy professes to ex-
hibit those economic laws which
must be observed, 75 ; Ricardian
creed of, erroneous, 75 ; Marx
and Lassalle, 75 ; and its teach-
ing, 75 ; system, British, pervaded
with dishonesty, 311 ; equality,
316

Poor, the, 382, 388 ; no blame to
those who stir them up by lawful
means to better their condition,
382

Poor Law, old English, Fawcett
quoted, 391

Pope, 367

Pope Lto XIII. on the family, 285

Positivism, 52

Poverty, abolition of, 388

Prairie value, 174

" Preaching up the times " by the
clergy, 476

Primitive Church, the, 86

Production and value, Marx' theories
as to, [83

Production and products, Mr. Frederic
Harrison on the question of, 115

Professional Socialists in Germany,
42

Profit-sharing by employes, 295

Profits of industry, division of, 117

Proletariat, the, 387

Property, Spencer, Proud hon and
Ortolan on, 208 seq; collective, and
individual, legitimacy and justice
of, respectively considered, 210 ;
personal, in land, discussed, 205,
210, 229; inequality as regards, 318 ;
State not eLtitltd to enforce equal
distribution of, 319; transference
of, 344

Proprietors of land, reasonable claims
of, 221 ; buying out, 222; peasant,
scheme examined, 224

Prosperity of communistic societies
almost exclusively of a material
kind, 84

Protestantism, 436

Proudhon, definition of Socialism, 23 ;
and French Socialism, 34 ; on the
nature of property, 184 ; definition
of property, 210 ; essay on Nature,
406 ; 416

Public opinion limits State action, 80
Pulszky, Prof., on individual initia-
tive, 78

QUINET, 397

RAE, "Contemporary Socialism," 28,

97

Reformer and revolutionist, Christ
immeasurably the greatest who has
ever appeared on earth, 466

Reichstag, number of socialist depu-
ties in the, 43

Religion, 317, 319, 320; and Socialism,
426

Religion, societies and, 84

Religious teaching, individualist, 96 ;
difficulties, none under regime of
Collectivism, 277

Rerum Novarum, Encyclical of Pope
Leo XIII., 439

Reybaud, Louis, one of the reputed
inventors of the word Socialism,

ii, 13

Reynaud, Jean, 384

Ricardian creed of political economy
erroneous, 75

Ricardo on law of wages, 128; with-
out him no Marx, 136

Rich and poor, 386

Right, abuse of, 207

Rights, claim of, socialistic, 404

Rights, no absolute, in anything,
206

Rights, 421 et ieq.

Rights of man, 385

Rodbertus, his indirect influence on
social democracy, 87

Rome, Greece and, ruined through
failure to solve the "social ques-
tion," 32

Roscher on primitive Socialism, 32

Rossi, 349, 464

Ruskin on the influence of educa-
tion, 281 ; references to, 359, 360,

363

Russia* 341

SAINT-SIMON, one of the founders of
French Socialism, 34; on standard
of wages, 125; 373,430

Salvian, 366

Saving, on workmen, 262

Savings Banks, 293

Say, 357

Schaffle on Collectivism, 61 ; on
Capital, 167 ; on the marriage tie,
288 ; his objections to democratic

IXDKX

5°9

Collectivism, 134, 250 ; *• Quintes-
sence of Socialism," 254
Scheel's, Von, definition of Socialism,

27
Science, art and literature, and

Socialism, 291
Scottish Church Society Conferences,

498
Self-help limits State action, 77 ;

Mr. Goschen on, 77
Selfishness, Hobbes inculcates a

theory of, 64, 96
Self-love in relation to wealth, 364,

365, 366 ; Butler on, 366 ; Pope on,

366
Sermon on the Mount, precepts of,

379

Shakers, societies — Ann Lee, 60
Slavery created by the collectivisa-
tion of capital, 241 ; which Socialism
would introduce, 286, 465, 466 ;
demanded by Socialism, 465 ; Chris-
tianity meant to free men from all
such, 465

Smith, Adam, and laisser-faire, 71 ;
Professor Nicholson on, 72 ; quoted,

353

Social Democratic Federation, 43 ;
programmes, 87 et seq; Democracy,
88; development, Engels on, 137;
Statics (Spencer), 209; practica-
bility of, 258 ; present prospects
of, discussed, 265 ; organisation,
Comte and, 274, 326 et seq. ; Dr.
Bonar quoted, 327 ; religion of,
330 ; a somewhat highly developed
form of Socialism, 373; S. S.
Laurie quoted, 374

Social Democrats, 353

Social questions, relation of the
Church to, 471

Socialism, proposes a renovation of
society, 10 ; discussion necessary
before acceptance of the proposi-
tion, ii ; origin and date of the
word, 12 ; currency of the term, 12,
13; author's definition and use of
the word, 17, 21, 28 ; a tendency
and movement towards an extreme,
18 ; contrasted with Individualism,
18 ; no true and precise definition
of, possible, 18; not to be identi-
fied with sociology, 19 ; is it an
essential or accidental phase of
development ? 22 ; and Individual-
ism the Scylla and Charybdis of
society, 23 ; to attain one's own
good is to strive for the good of

others, 23 ; history of, 28, 35 ;
primitive, two views of, 28 ; be-
yond recall, 31 ; primitive, McLen-
nan, Lubbock, and Roscher on, 29,
32 ; the State absolutism of an-
tiquity, not, 32 ; diffusion over the
Continent, 34 ; founders of modern,
34 ; France, the birthplace of, 34 ;
pre-revolution theories in France,
34 ; Saint-Simon and Fourier, 34 ;
in Spain and Italy, 35 ; in Switzer-
land, 35 ; advocates of, in United
States supplied by European coun-
tries, 35 ; in Belgium, 36 ; in Russia,
36; Anarchism or Nihilism, not
Socialism, 36 ; Germany, progress
of, in, 40 ; success of, in, exagge-
rated, 40 ; indebted to German
thinkers— Rodbertus, Winkelblech,
Marx, Lassalle, Schaffle, 40; Pro-
fessorial Socialists, 42 ; Britain, in,
43; Christian, of Maurice and Kings-
ley, &c., not socialistic, 43; British,
not unlike Nebuchadnezzar's " great
image," 49 ; Communism and Col-
lectivism, the two chief kinds of,
54 ; in Scotland, 54 ; and Commu-
nism, 84 ; in a sense, extremely
individualistic, 97 ; and Individual-
ism, antithesis of, fundamental in
politics, 98 ; Laurent, Professor
Carle, Mr. Wordsworth, Donis-
thorpe, and Mr. Maurice Block on
this aspect of the question, 98 ;
aims primarily and specially at a
thorough reorganisation of in-
dustry and property, 101 ; economics
of, the work chiefly confined to
consideration of, 102; what would
it substitute for competition? 123;
Collectivism rests on doctrines
propounded by Rodbertus and
Marx, 136; Utopian and Scientiiu
(Engels), 137; a theory as to the
organisation of society, 156; and
capital, 157 ; critical and construc-
tive, 202 ; its growth and outcome
(Morris and Belfort Bax), 203 ; and
social organisation, 256 seq.; and
social organisation, Dr. Flint '.x
views on, criticised, 260: and
the organisation of industn.
275 , and the family, 283 ; and
marriage, 286; in relation to the
Church, 290, to science, art, and
literature, 291, to employers, 292 ; to
co-operation, 294 : its various forms,
299 ; connection between, and De-

5'°

INDEX

mocracy, 299 ; the symptom of social
unrest, 328 ; dangerous to Demo-
cracy, 330 ; has no admiration of
the Parliamentary system, 332 ;
Economical (Mr. Bosanquet on), 333;
contemporary, 335 ; desires to serve
itself heir to the Absolutism of past
ages> 335 >' from it society is in
danger of a fearful despotism in the
near future, 335 ; morality of, 344
et seq. ; Duke of Argyll quoted, 344 ;
has not ignored morality, 344 ;
moral presupposition and tenden-
cies, 345 ; bearing of on moralit/,
345; denounces Political Economy
as non-moral or even immoral, 345
et seq.; ethics of, in direct conflict
with true ethics, 369 ; as a whole
rests on a non-religious conception
of the universe, 370 ; Karl Pearson
quoted, 370; reason why in con-
flict with morality, 377 ; its re-
lation to social morality, 380 ;
morally strongest in its recognition
of brotherhood, 381 ; condemns
war and the oppression of the poor
and feeble, 381 ; often contradicts
in practice the principle of brother-
hood, 382 383, 386 ; and religion,
427 et seq. ; Bosanquet quoted. 428 ;
economic and religious questions
in Socialism separable, 428 ; there
are religious Socialists, 428 ;
France, 430; Saint-Simon and
Enfantin, "New Christianity," 430;
opinions of Fourier, Considerant,
Cabet, Leroux, Comte, 430 ; in
Germany, Feuerbach, Dietzgen,
Stamm, Stern, 431 ; in England,
Bax (quoted), 431 ; Christian
Socialists, those who first bore the
name in England, 434 ; Rev. Abbot
Snow quoted, 443 ; in relation to
Catholic doctrine, 439 ; antago-
nistic to Christianity, 460, 463 ;
where it fails in its explanation
of history, 464 ; overlooks or
depreciates the importance of the
inward and spiritual, 464 ; pre-
tence of, that it would establish
and enlarge liberty absurd, 465 ;
demands slavery, 465 ; uncon-
sciously aims at a reversal of the
work of Christ in history, 466 ;
ethics of, devoid of transcen-
dency, infinity, and spirituality,
all is commonplace, 467 ; not ie-
lated to Christianity in the same

way in Economics as in Ethics'
469

Socialist delusion regarding man and
society, 352

Socialist demands and persecution,
8 1 ; Deputies in the Reichstag, 43 ;
reasoners leave out of account
society altogether in the matter of
production, 115; error regarding
standard of wages, 225; chief reason
of the, 373

Socialistic Utopias, 33 ; League, 4.3 ;
periodicals in Britain, 43 ; criticism
of society, how it has been directly
and indirectly useful, 257 ; solution
of the social problem — Engels and
Liebknecht, 276

Socialists, professional, in German}*,
42 ; English, contemporary leaders
of, 43 ; number of, 43 : manifesto
of, 92 ; German, literature of, 42,
54 ; more successful critics than
constructors, and the reason why,
203; striving to convert Democrats
to their faith, 335 ; some retain
their belief in God and religion
(Anglican High-Churchmen, Roman
Catholics), though such are com-
paratively few, 370 ; in relation to
the poor, 386 ; peace recommended
by, 394 ; French, 437

Societies and religion, 84

Society, influence of individual action
on, 271

Society, may sometimes exact sacri-
fices from its members, 375 ; Social-
ist delusion regarding, 352

Sociology, neither Socialism nor In-
dividualism to be identified with,

!?
Sociology, 454

Soil, rent value of, 204

Spain, 288

Speculation, the source of the
greatest fortunes, 181

Spencer, Herbert, on Socialists, 15;
on State intervention, 67 ; for-
mula of liberty, 68 ; his error re-
garding the duty of the State to-
wards the destitute, 121 ; on the
right to use and abuse, 209 ; his
argument for legitimacy of private
property criticised, 209, 298

Stamm, 431

State intervention, Mill on principle
of, 66 ; Spencer on, 67 ; in demo-
cracies, 79 ; functions of the, 69;
and the Fabians, 71 ; action limited

INDIA

by moral laws, 71 ; by certain
fundamental human liberties, 73 ; :
by official machinery, 75 ; interven-
tion, change of opinion in regard to,
76 ; by economic laws, 73 ; by self-
help, 77 ; by the stite of public
opinion, 80 ; functions divided into
necessary and facultative. 80 ; duty
of, to repress excesses of compe-
tition; and destitution. 121; wis-
dom of, in not interfering with
earned and unearned incomes, 219 ;
management of the land, Carlyle
on, 228

State, the, as an organism, 425 : Gron-
lund quoted, 425

Stern, 352,431, 462

Stewart, Dugald, 357

Stirner, Max, a representative of
(•thical individualism, 96

Stocker, 438

Suffrage, universal, 318. 351, 332 ;
manhood, 301 ; womanhood, 301

Supply and demand, the just stan-
dard of wages, 124

Surplus population, Marx on, 198;
value, deductions of Marx from
his doctrine of, 153
ters, 297

NT-farmers' scheme, under na-
tionalisation of laud, 225
Theocracy, 308

Theocratic idea, the, 314; democracy

the form of government which can

t afford to dispense with it,

3{4
Tnird Estate, the, 383 ; victory of, in

France and other countries, '384
Thomas Aquinas, 375
Thompson, Wm., 416
Todt, 438
Trade, foreign, Collectivism would

curtail benefits of, 246
Turgot, quoted, 409
Turkey, 341

r\i)i:si:i;vi:i) decrements, 218

Unearned increments, 215

United States of America, supreme
court of justice can veto the legis-
lature, 313

I'nivt -rsal brotherhood, 393

aid alui-c, Herbert Spencer on
the right to, 209; Prudhon and
Ortolan on, 209, 210

rtilitarianiMii, 371, 372

Utopias, Socialistic, 33

VALUE, Marx theory of, examined, 139

and production, Marx theories as

to, 183 ; of land, 217
Vaughan, Canon, on the Christian

Socialism of Maurice and Kingsley,

436

'• Vita del Diritto " (Carle), 98
Vogelsang, Baron von, 439
Votes, do not necessarily imply

equality, 318

WAGE, Professor, 491
Wages, supply and demand the just
standard of, 124; socialist error re-

§arding standard of, 125 ; Saint-
imon on standard of, 125 ; Blanc,
Louis, on, 125 ; Marx on, 126 ; law
of Ricardo and Lassalle on, 128 ;
as a badge of slavery, as it is
stated to be by Engels, Marx, Las-
salle, Hyndman, Morris, and George,
is a misrepresentation, 129

Wages-contract, alleged injustice of,
contrary to fact, 131

Wages-system, voluntary, contracts
with compulsory system of Collec-
tivism, Schiiffle quoted, 134 ; though
not perfect, may be defended, 135 ;
question, Prof. Francis A. Walker,
on, 161

Wallace, A.R., recommends national-
isation of land, 204

War, 395

Wealth, the result of labour and
capital intelligently combined, 112;
no one class alone produces, 116 ;
Condorcet on equality of, 201 ;
and happiness, Hobbes, Spencer,
Morris, and Belfort Bax on, 262 ;
345; man in relation to, 347;
Pelegrino Rossi quoted, 349, 350 ;
Ruskin's definition of, 351, 359 ;
Davidson on, 354, 364

Webb, Sidney, "Socialism in Eng-
land," 54

Weiss, Father, 439

Weitling, 400

Westcott, Bishop, his definition of So-
cialism, 25 ; on the family, 282 ;
"Social Aspects of Christianity,"

497
Whateley on collectivist organisation,

238
Will, mere, not righteous will, but

may be tyrannical or slavish, 315
Wolf's, Prof., of Zurich, criticism of

Marx, 191
Womanhood suffrage, 301

INDEX

Women and children, appropriation

of labour power of, 197
Women, 285 ; movement for securing

equal rights with men, 286
Woolsey (President), on Communism,

in Herzog-Schaff's Encyclopaedia,

85

Working men specially interested in
Socialism, 9 ; classes, Morris and

Belfort Bax on the position of the,

263
Workmen, payment of, 351; Ruskin

on, 351, Scotsman on, 351
Workmen saving on, 262
Workmen's combinations, 295
Workmen's grounds of complaint

against capitalists, 179
Wyzewa's definition of Socialism, 27

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