I'!
CONTEMPORARY SOCIALISM
CONTEMPORARY SOCIALISM
BY
JOHN RAE, M.A.
SECOND EDITION, REVISED AND ENLARGED
CHARLES SCRIBNER'S SONS
1891
ffX
PREFACE.
IN the present edition the original work has not only been
carefully revised, but very considerably enlarged. The
chapters on " The Progress and Present Position of Socialism. "
and "Russian Nihilism" contain a few sentences retained
from the first edition, but otherwise they are entirely new
the former necessarily so on account of the nature of its
subject, and the latter on account of the importance of the
fresh materials that have been recently given to the world.
A new chapter has been added on " Anarchism," and another,
of considerable extent, on " State Socialism." No apology is
required for the length of the latter, for though State socialism
is only a growth of yesterday, it has already spread every-
where, and if it is not superseding socialism proper, it is cer-
tainly eclipsing it in practical importance, and to some extent
even modifying it in character. Revolutionary socialism, grow-
ing more opportunist of late years, seems losing much of its old
phrenzy, and getting domesticated into a shifty State socialism,
fighting a parliamentary battle for minor, though still probably
mischievous, changes within the lines of existing society,
instead of the old war a Voutrance against existing society in
whatever shape or form. Anyhow the socialistic controversy
in the immediate future will evidently be fought along the
vi Preface.
lines of State socialism. It is there the hostile parties meet,
and it is well therefore to get, if we can, some more exact
knowledge of the ground. Some of the other chapters in the
work have been altered here and there for the purpose of bring-
ing their matter, where necessary, down to date, or embodying
fresh illustrative evidence, or occasionally of making the ex-
position itself more lucid and effective ; but it is unnecessary
to specify these alterations in detail.
April, 1891.
CONTENTS.
CHAPTEK I.
INTRODUCTORY.
Revival of Socialism, 1 Extinction of Old Tj-pes, 2 Main Surviving
Type, Social Democracy, 3 Its Two Varieties, Socialist and Anarchist,
4 Its Relations to Political Democracy, 4 Definition of Socialism,
5 Cairnes on Mill's Profession of Socialism, 6 Ruling Characteristic
common to Old and New Socialism, 9 State Socialism, 11 Conserva-
tive Socialism, 13 The Minimum of Socialism, 14 First Rise of
Social Democracy, 15 Rousseau, 16 Baboeuf, 17 Connection of
Socialism "with Democracy, 18 The Danger to Free Institutions,
24 Necessity and Probability of Wider Diffusion of Property, 25.
CHAPTER II.
THE PROGRESS AND PRESENT POSITION OF SOCIALISM.
National Conditions Favourable to Socialism. 30 Germany, 30 Progress
of Socialist Vote, 33 Action of Socialist Party in Reichstag, 34 Party
Programme, 38 Halle Congress of 1891, 40 France, 45 Anarchists,
47 Socialist Revolutionary Party, 48 Possibilists, 50 Blanquists,
53 The Socialist Group in the Chamber, 53 Austria, 54 Italy, 57
Spain, 60 Portugal, 65 Norway and Sweden, 66 Denmark, 67
Belgium, 70 Holland, 72 Switzerland, 73 United States, 77 Bos-
ton Anarchists, 77 Mr. Henry George, 78 Mr. Bellamy's Nationalism,
79 Anarchists, 80 Socialistic Labour Party, 81 Knights of Labor,
82 England, 83 Social Democrats, 84 Anarchists, 86 Christian
Socialists, 87 Fabians, 88 Lnnd Nationalization, 89 Scotland, 90
Australia, 90.
CHAPTER in.
FERDINAND LASSALLE.
German Socialists before Lassalle, 93 Favourable Conditions for Socialist
Agitation in Germany, 94 Character of Lassalle, 96 The Hatzfeldt
viii Contents.
Case, 99 Theft of the Cassette, 100 Trial for Sedition, 101 Literary
Activity, 102 Letter to Leipzig Working Men, 103 Foundation of
General Working Men's Association, 105 Lassalle's Agitation, 105
His Death, 106 Funeral, 108 Political Views, 109 Idea and Posi-
tion of the Working Class, 109 Functions of the State, 111 Econo-
mic Doctrines, 113 Anarchic Socialism of the present Industrial
Regime, 117 Ricardo's "Iron Law" of Wages, 119 A National, not
an International Socialist, 124 Internationally not Peculiar to
Socialist Parties, 126 Reason of Socialist Condemnation of Patriot-
ism, 127.
CHAPTER IV.
KARL MARX.
Reception of his Work on Capital, 128 The Young Hegelians, 130
Feuerbach's Humanism, 131 " Young Germany," 136 Weitling and
Albrecht, 137 Early Socialistic Leanings of Marx, 139 Marx in
Paris, 141 in Brussels, 142 The Communist League, 142 Com-
munist Manifesto of 1847, 144 New Rhenish Gazette, 146 Marx
in London, 147 The International, its Rise and Fall, 149 Tendency
to Division in Revolutionary Parties, 152 "Das Capital," 155
Historical Rise of Capitalism, 156 Origin of Surplus Value, 157
Theory of Value, 160 Price, 163 Criticism of his Theory of Value,
165 Wages, 166 Normal Day of Labour, 168 Machinery, 170
Piecework, 172 Relative Over-population, 174.
CHAPTER V.
THE FEDERALISM OF CARL MARLO.
Rodbertus, 179 Professor Winkelblech (Mario), 180 His Awakening to
Social Misery, 180 Application to Economic Study for Solution, 181
View of Social Problem, 182 Heathen Idea of Right (Monopolism)
to be replaced by Christian Idea of Right (Panpolism), 183 Liberal-
ism and Communism both Utopias, 184 Federalism alone realizes
Christian Idea of Right, 188 Natural Right of all to Property, 189
Right to Labour and to Fruits of Labour, 191 Necessity of Con-
trolling Increase of Population, 192 Of Suppressing Unproductive
Acquisition, 193 Collectivization of Land and Productive Capital
193.
CHAPTER VI.
THE SOCIALISTS OF THE CHAIR.
The Name, 195 Held's Vindication of it, 196 Objections to it, 197
Founders of the Historical School, 200 Their Departure from Man-
Contents. ix
Chester Party, 202 Eisenach Congress, 202 The Historical Method,
204 The Historical School a Realist School, 205 An Ethical School,
209 Their Theory of the State, 211 The Social Question, 212 Von
Scheel, 215 Brentano, 215.
CHAPTER VII.
THE CHRISTIAN SOCIALISTS.
Socialism and Christianity, 218 Views of St. Simon and Cabet, 218
Irreligious Character of Contemporary Socialism, 219 The Christian
Socialists of England in 1850, 220 Those of Germany now, 223 The
Catholic Group, 223 Ketteler, 224 Moufang, 230 Protestant Group,
233 Stocker, Todt, 234 Christian Social Working Men's Party, 239
The Social Monarchical Union, 241 The Evangelical Social Con-
gress of 1890, 241 Is there a Specific Christian Social Politics? 242
Christian Socialism in Austria, 242 In France, 243 International
Catholic Social Congress of 1890 at Liege, 243 The Pope's Encyclical,
245.
CHAPTER VIII.
ANARCHISM.
Recent Activity of Anarchists, 247 Individualist Anarchists and Com-
munist Anarchists, 248 Latter are Ultra-Socialist, 249 Ultra-Demo-
cratic, 250 Proudhon's Anarchic Government, 250 Xo Representa-
tive Institutions, 251 Prince Krapotkin's Plan for Housing the Poor,
252 The Russian Mir the Anarchist Model of Government, 252
Anarchism Atheistic, 254 Ultra-revolutionary, 255 Propaganda of
Deed, 256 Disunity and Weakness of Anarchism, 257.
CHAPTER IX.
RUSSIAN' NIHILISM.
Haxthausen's Opinion of Russia's Safety from Socialism, 259 Successive
Phases of Nihilism, 260 Origin of Nihilism, 261 Influence of the
Rural Commune on Revolutionary Thought, 262 Decabrist Conspir-
acy of 1825, 263 Extreme Opinions at Russian Universities in Reign
of Nicholas, 264 Ascension of Alexander II., 264 Alexander Herzen,
265 Turgenieff and the word Nihilist, 266 Koscheleff and Fircks's
Accounts of Nihilism, 267 Causes of it, 268 Nihilist Sunday Schools,
Tchernycheffsky, 269 Effect of Emancipation of Serfs, 270 Ruined
Landlords, 270 Jews, 271 Heretics, 272 Bakunin, 273 Herzen's
Recantation of Revolutionism, 273 Bakunin in London, 274 His
" Amorphism," 274 His Picture of the Good Revolutionist, 275
Netchai'eff founds Branches of the International in Russia, 276 The
first Attempt on the Czar, 276 Reversion to Arbitrary and Despotic
Contents.
Government, 276 Bakunin and Lavroff at Zurich "Going into
the People," 279 Secret Societies, 280 Nihilist Arrests and Trials,
2S1 Terrorism, 282 Assassination of Czar, 283 Present Socialist
Parties, 283 The Black Division Party, 283 Alarming Growth of a
Proletariat in Russia, 284 Impoverishment of Peasantry, 286 Break
up of Communistic System, 288 Dissolution of House Communities,
289 The Black Division, 292 The Labour Emancipation League,
295.
CHAPTER X.
SOCIALISM AND THE SOCIAL QUESTION.
A Social Question recognised by Contemporary Economists, 297 Mr.
Cairnes on the Situation, 297 Socialist Indictment of Existing
Regime, 299 1st, the " Iron Law of Wages," 300 Alleged Deterio-
ration of Wage- Labourers' Position Unfounded, 801 Their Standard
of Living Better, 302 Their Individual Share in the National Wealth
more, 304 The " Iron Law " Misunderstood by Socialists, 305 The
" Iron Law " Itself Unsound, 307 The Rate of Wages really Depends
on the per capita Prodtiction, 307 Prospects of Increasing per
capita Production, 312 Piecework, 314 Shorter Day of Labour,
318 2nd, Alleged Multiplication of Vicissitudes, 323 Effects, of
Machinery, 323 Temporary Redundancies, 324 Serious Redun-
dancies Lessening, 324 Value of Good System of Commercial Statis-
tics, 325 3rd, Alleged Expropriation of the Value of the Labourer's
Work, 327 How Value is Constituted, 327 Justice of Interest, 329
Social Importance of Work of Capitalist Employer, 330 Public
Value of Private Property, 333 Value of Freedom, 334 Laissez-
faire, 336 Necessity for Opportunities of Investment, 338 Co-
operative Production, 338 Advantage of Interlacing of Classes, 340
Reason of exceptionally good House Accommodation among Work-
ing Classes of Sheffield, 341.
CHAPTER XI.
STATE SOCIALISM.
1. State Socialism and English Economics.
M. Leon Say on State Socialism, 345 State Property and State Industries
in Germany, 345 Mr. Goschen and others on Change in English
Opinion regarding State Intervention, 346 - Their Views Exaggerated
and undiscriminating, 347 Little done in England in Nationalizing
Industries, 348 Much done in enlargingPopular Rights, 349 English
Thinkers never Believers in Laissez-faire, 351 Except Mr. H. Spen-
cer, 352 Adam Smith's "Simple and Obvious System of Natural
Liberty," 353 His Theory of Social Politics, 356 Ricardo's Views,
359 McCulloch's, 360 On the Manufacturing System, 362 On
Contents. xi
Crises, 363 On Irish Pauper Labour, 364 On Factorj- Legislation,
366 On Housing the Poor, 366 On the Poor Law, 368 The So-
called Manchester School. 372 The English Theory of Social Politics,
373.
2. The Nature and Principle of State Socialism.
Different Definitions of Socialism. 374 Origin and Meaning of State
Socialism, 379 The Social Monarchists, 380 Rodbertus, 380 His
Theory of Social Politics, 381 M. de Laveleye and Establishment of
Equality of Conditions, 384 Alleged Disinheritance of the People
from the Primitive Economic Eights, 385 Mr. Chamberlain's Doc-
trine of " Eansom," 386 Professor A. Wagner's State Socialism, 387.
3. State Socialism and Social Reform.
Cobden's Praise of the Prussian Government for its Social "Work.
393 Property, a Requisite of Progress, not of Freedom, 394 Limits
of Legitimate Intervention, 395 Short Definition of State Socialism,
899 Error of Plea for State Socialism as Extinguisher of Chance,
399 As Saving the Waste from Competition, 400 Wastefulness of
Socialism, 401 As shown in Samoa, 401 In England under Old Poor
Law. 402 In Brook Farm, 402 Idleness the Destroyer of the Ameri-
can Owenite and Fourierist Communities, 403 Idleness the Great
Difficulty in the Shaker and Rappist Communities, 405 " Old Slug,"
406 Contentment with Squalid Conditions, 407 Special Liability to
Mismanagement, 408.
4. State Socialism and State Management.
Natural Qualities and Defects of State as Industrial Manager, 409
Post Office, 410 Dockyards, 410 Forestry, 412 Mint and other
Forms of Attesting, 412 Monopolies, 413 Municipal Management
of Gas and Water Supply, 413 Land Nationalization, 414 State
Railways, 415 State Insurance in Xew Zealand, 417 Results of
Joint-Stock Management and Private Management in Massachusetts,
417.
5. State Socialism and Popular Right.
Why Impracticable Legislation is Socialistic, 418 Rule of Interven-
tion for Realizing Rights, 419 Right to Existence, 421 Right to
Superannuation, 421 Right to Labour, 423 Problem of the Un-
employed, 425 Free Education, Libraries. Parks, 427 Where Stop ?
427 Legal Fixing of Prices, as in Fares and Rates, 428 Of Fair Rent,
429 Of Fair Wages, 430 Compulsory Arbitration, 430 Legal
Minimum Wages, 431 Sweating System and Starvation Wages,
432 International Compulsory Eight Hours Day, 434.
xii Contents.
CHAPTER XII.
THE AGRARIAN SOCIALISM OF HENRY GEORGE.
Mr. George Predicts that his Book would find Apostles, 441 Fulfilment
of the Prediction, 441 Sisyphism, 442 Loses His Religious Belief
through Perception of Poverty, 443 Recovers it again, 445 1st, His
Problem, 445 Its unverified Assumption, 445 Evidence of Facts
against it, 448 Average Scale of Living has Risen, 449 Proportion
of Paupers, unable to obtain it, has Declined, 449 Special Decline of
Able-bodied Pauperism, 450 Increase of Length of Life, 452 Mr.
George Changes his Problem from one of Quantity to one of Propor-
tion, 453 Rent really no larger Proportion of National Wealth or
even of Agricultural Produce than before, 454 "Wages no Smaller
Proportion, 456 Indications of Increasing Distribution of Wealth,
457 2nd, Mr. George's Explanation, 461 Alleged Tendency of
Wages to a Minimum that gives but a Bare Living, 462 The Wages
Fund and Population Theories, 464 Mr. George's New Population
Theory, 465 His New Wages Fund Theory, 468 His Explanation
of the Distribution of Wealth without taking Profits into Account,
474 Views on Rent, 476 on Interest, 483 Wages, 484 Margin of
Cultivation, 484 Absurdities of his Explanation, 485 3rd, Mr.
George's Remedy, 487 Land Nationalization Movement in England,
488 Futility of Mr George's Remedy, 489 Confiscation, 490 Differ-
ence of Mr. George's Proposal from Mr. Mill's, 491 Agricultural
Land as truly the Fruit of Labour as other Commodities, 492 Real
Distinction between Land and other Property, 494 Social Claim on
all Property, 495 Is Private Property the best Guarantee for the
most Productive use of Land ? 496 Land Nationalization no Assis-
tance to the Reforms that are Needed, 498.
CHAPTER I.
INTRODUCTORY.
IT was a common topic of congratulation at the Exhibition of
1862 that the political atmosphere of Europe was then entirely
free from the revolutionary alarms which overclouded the first
Exhibition in 1851 ; but in that very year the old clouds
began to gather once more at different quarters of the horizon.
It was in 1862 that Lassalle delivered to a club of working
men in Berlin his address on " The Present Epoch of the
World, and the Idea of the "Working Class," which was pub-
lished shortly afterwards under the title of " The "Working
Man's Programme," and which has been called by his friends
" The "Wittenberg Theses " of the new socialist movement ;
and it was at the Exhibition itself that those relations were
established between the delegates of English and French trade
societies which issued eventually in the organization of the
International. The double train thus laid has put in motion a
propaganda of social revolution more vigorous, widespread, and
dangerous than any which has preceded it.
But though the reappearance of socialism was not imme-
diately looked for at the time, it could cause no serious surprise
to any one who considered how nearly the socialist theory is
allied with some of the ruling ideas of modern times, and how
many points of attraction it presents at once to the impatient
philanthropy of enthusiasts, to the passions of the multitude,
and to the narrow but insistent logic of the numerous class of
minds that make little account of the complexity of life.
Socialism will probably never keep long away during the
present transitional period of society, and there is therefore less
interest in the mere fact of its reappearance than in marking
the particular form in which, after a prolonged retirement, it
2 Contemporary Socialism.
has actually returned ; for this may perhaps be reasonably
taken to be its most vital and enduring type, and consequently
that with which we shall mainly have to reckon in the future.
Now the present movement is, before all, political and
revolutionary. The philanthropic and experimental forms
of socialism, which played a conspicuous role before 1818,
perished then in the wreck of the Revolution, and have never
risen to life again. The old schools have dispersed. Their
doctrines, their works, their very hopes have gone. The
theories of man's entire dependence on circumstances, of the
rehabilitation of the flesh, of the passional attraction, once in
everybody's mouth, have sunk into oblivion. The communi-
ties of Owenites, St. Simonians, Fourierists, Icarians, which
multiplied for a time on both sides of the Atlantic, are extinct.
The socialists of the present day have discarded all belief in
the possibility of effecting any social regeneration except by
means of political authority, and the first object of their en-
deavours is therefore the conquest of the powers of the State.
There are some exceptions, but these are very unimportant.
The communistic societies of the United States, for instance,
are mostly organizations of eccentric religious sects which have
no part or influence in the life of the century. The Colinsian
Collectivists, followers of the Belgian socialist Colins, are a
mere handful ; and the Familistere of Guise in France a
remarkable institution, founded since 1848 by an old disciple
of Fourier, though not on Fourier's plan stands quite alone,
and has no imitators. Non-political socialism may accordingly
be said to have practically disappeared.
Not only so, but out of the several sorts and varieties of
political socialism, only one has revived in any strength, and
that is the extremest and most revolutionary. It is the demo-
cratic communism of the Young Hegelians, and it scouts the
very suggestion of State-help, and will content itself with
nothing' short of State-transformation. Schemes such as were
popular and noisy thirty years ago schemes, involving indeed
organic changes, but organic changes of only a partial char-
acter have gone to their rest. Louis Blanc, for example,
was then a name of some power; but, remarkably enough,
though Louis Blanc was but the other year buried with great
Introdzictory. 3
honour, his Organization of Labour seems to be as completely
forgotten as the Circulus of Leroux. M. G. de Molinari writes
an interesting account of the debates that took place in the
working men's clubs of Paris in the year 1868-9 the first
year they were granted liberty of meeting after the establish-
ment of the Second Empire and he states that while Fourier
and Cabet were still quoted by old disciples, though without
any idea of their systems being of practical moment, Louis
Blanc's name was not even mentioned. Proudhon's gospel of
a State bank of mutual credit for furnishing labourers with
capital, by issuing inconvertible notes without money and
without price, has still a sprinkling of faithful believers, who
call themselves Mutualists ; but they are extremely few, and,
as a rule, the socialists of France at the present day, like
those of Germany, put their faith in iron rather than paper.
What the}- want is a democracy of labour, to use one of their
own phrases that is, a State in which power and property
shall be based on labour ; wliere citizenship shall depend on a
labour qualification, instead of a qualification of birth or of
property ; where there shall be no citizen who enjoys without
labouring, and no citizen who labours without enjoying ;
where every one who is able to work shall have employment,,
and every one who has wrought shall retain the whole pro-
duce of his labour ; and where accordingly, as the indispens-
able prerequisite of the whole scheme, the land of the country
and all other instruments of production shall be made the joint
property of the community, and the conduct of all industrial
operations be placed under the direct administration of the
State. Furthermore, all this is contended for as a matter of
simple right and justice to the labouring classes, on the ground
that the wealth of the nation belongs to the hands that made
it ; it is contended for as an obligation of the State, bepause
the State is held to be merely the organized will of the<people,
and the people is the labouring class ; and it is contended for
as an object of immediate accomplishment if possible, by
ordinary constitutional means ; but, if not, by revolution.
This is the form in which socialism has reappeared, and it
may be described in three words as Revolutionary Socialist
Democracv. The movement is divided into two main branches
4 Contemporary Socialism.
socialism proper, or collectivism, as it is sometimes called,
and anarchism. There are anarchists who are not socialists,
but hold strongly by an individualist constitution of property.
They are very few, however, and the great mass of the party
known by that name in our day, including the Russian Nihilists,
are as ardent believers in the economic socialism of Karl Marx
as the Social Democrats of Germany themselves. They diverge
from the latter on a question of future government ; but
the differences between the two are only such as the same
movement might be expected to exhibit in passing through
different media, personal or national. Modern democrats have
been long divided into Centralists and Federalists the one
party seeking to give to the democratic republic they contem-
plate a strongly centralized form of government, and the other
preferring to leave the local communes comparatively inde-
p2ndent and sovereign, and free, if they choose, to unite them-
selves in convenient federations. The federal republic has
always been the favourite ideal of the Democrats of Spain and
of the Communards of Paris, and there is generally a tendency
among Federalists, in their impatience of all central authority,
to drop the element of federation out of their ideal altogether,
and to advocate the form of opinion known as " anarchy "
that is, the abolition of all superior government. It was very
natural that this ancient feud among the democrats should
appear in the ranks of socialist democracy, and it was equally
natural that the Russian Radicals, hating the autocracy of
their country and idealizing its rural communes, should
become the chief adherents of the federalist and even the
anarchic tradition.
This is the only point of principle that separates anarchism
from socialism. In other respects anarchism may be said to
be but an extremer phase of socialism. It indulges in more
violent methods, and in a more omnivorous spirit of destruc-
tion. Its fury takes a wider sweep ; it attacks all current
beliefs and all existing institutions ; it puts its hopes in univer-
sal chaos. I shall endeavour in a future chapter to explain,
from peculiarities of the national character and culture, why
this gospel of chaos should find so much acceptance in Russia ;
but it, is no exclusively Russian product. It was preached
Introductory. 5
with singular coolness, as will be subsequently shown, by
some of the young Hegelians of Germany before 1848, and it
obtains among the more volatile members of most socialist
organizations still. Attacks on religion, patriotism, the family,
are very usual accessories of their practical agitations every-
where. As institutions and beliefs are seen to lend strength
to each other, teeth set on edge against one are easily brought
to gnash at all. A sharp check from the public authority
generally brings out to the front this extremer element in
German socialism. After the repressive legislation of 1878
the German socialists struck the restriction of proceeding " by
legal methods " out of their programme, and the wilder spirits
among them would be content with nothing short of a policy
of general destruction, and, being expelled from the party,
started an organization of their own on thoroughly anarchist
lines.
Under these influences, the word socialism has come to
contract a new meaning, and is now generally defined in a
way that would exclude the very theories it was originally
invented to denote. Its political element its demand on the
public power in behalf of the labouring class is taken to be
the pith and essence of the system. Mr. Cairnes, for example,
says that the circumstance which distinguishes socialism from
all other modes of social speculation is its invocation of the
powers of the State, and he finds fault with Mr. Mill for de-
scribing himself in his " Autobiography " as a socialist, merely
because his ideal of ultimate improvement had more in common
with the ideal of socialistic reformers than with the views of
those who in contradistinction would be called orthodox. The
passage from the " Autobiography" runs as follows: "While
we repudiated with the greatest energy that tyranny of society
over the individual which most socialistic systems are supposed
to involve, we yet looked forward to a time when society will
no longer be divided into the idle and the industrious ; when
the rule that they who do not work shall not eat will be applied,
not to paupers only, but impartially to all ; when the division
of the produce of labour, instead of depending, as in so great a
degree it now does, on the accident of birth, will be made by
concert on an acknowledged principle of justice ; and when it
6 Contemporary Socialism.
will no longer either be, or be thought to be, impossible for
human beings to exert themselves strenuously in procuring
benefits which are not to be exclusively their own, but to be
shared with the society they belong to." (" Autobiography," pp.
231-232). On this passage Mr. Cairnes observes : " If to look
forward to such a state of things as an ideal to be striven for
is socialism, I at once acknowledge myself a socialist ; but it
seems to me that the idea which ' socialism ' conveys to most
minds is not that of any particular form of society to be realized
at a future time when the character of human beings and the
conditions of human life are widely different from what they
now are, but rather certain modes of action, more especially
the employment of the powers of the State for the instant
accomplishment of ideal schemes, which is the invariable
attribute of all projects generally regarded as socialistic. So
entirely is this the case that it is common to hear any proposal
which is thought to involve an undue extension of the powers
of the State branded as socialistic, whatever be the object it
may seek to accomplish. After all, the question is one of
nomenclature merely ; but people are so greatly governed by
words that I cannot but regret that a philosophy of social life
with which I so deeply sympathize should be prejudiced by
verbal associations fitted, as it seems to me, only to mislead."
( u Leading Principles of Political Economy," p. 316.)
Mr. Cairnes's objection is just ; for a reformer's position ought
to be determined, not by the distant ideal he may think best,
if the conditions were ripe for its realization, but by the policy
which he counts to be of present importance under the con-
ditions that exist. He may cherish, as many orthodox
economists do, the socialist hope. He may look for a time
when comfort and civilization shall be more universally and
securely diffused; when heads and hands in the world of
labour shall work together in amity; when competition and
exclusive private property and self-interest shall be swallowed
up in love and common labour. But he knows that the trans-
formation must be gradual, and that the material conditions of
it must never be pushed on in advance of the intellectual and
moral. And this cuts him off by a whole diameter from those
who are now known as socialists. In every question of the day
Introductory. 7
he will be found in an opposite camp from them. For he
makes the ideal what it is and ought to be the goal of his
action ; they make it their starting-point, and the peculiarity
of the case is that with their view of the situation they cannot
make it anything else. For to their mind the struggle they
are engaged in is not a struggle for amelioration, but for plain
and elementary right. It is not a quest ion of providing greater
happiness for the greatest number ; it is a question of doing
them bare justice, of giving them their own, of protecting
them against a disguised but very real expropriation. They
declare that, under the present industrial arrangements, the
labouring classes are in effect robbed of most of the value of
the work of their hands, and of course the suppression of
systematic robbery is an immediate obligation of the present.
Justice is a basis to start from now, if possible, and not a
dream to await hereafter. First let the labouring man have
his rights, they cry, and then, and then only, shall you have
the way clear for any further parley about his future. It is
true that he is not the victim of individual rapacity so much
as of the system, and that he cannot get his rights till the
system is completely changed ; but the system, they argue,
can never be completely changed except by the power of the
State, and why then not change it at once ? Now, it is
obvious how, to people who take this view of the matter, there
should seem no other alternative but an instant reconstruction
of industrial society at the hands of the State. For if it is
justice that has to be done, then it appears only natural to
conclude that it falls upon the State, as the organ of justice, to
do it, and that it cannot do it too soon. The demand for the
immediate accomplishment of their scheme by public authority
is thus no accidental accessory of it merely, but is really in-
separable from the ideas on which the scheme is founded. It
is, in fact, so much, if I may use the word, the note of socialism
wherever socialism makes itself heard in the world now, that
it can only produce confusion to give the name of socialist to
persons who hold this note in abhorrence, and virtually desire
no more than the gradual triumph of co-operation.
It may be answered that the latter, like the former, aim not
at a mere reform of the present industrial system, but at an
8 Contemporaiy Socialism.
essential change in its fundamental principles at an eventual
suppression of exclusive property and unrestricted competition
and that it is therefore only proper to classify them with
those who seek the like important end, however they may
differ from the latter as to the means and seasons of action.
This might be right, perhaps, if our only consideration were
to furnish a philosophical classification of opinions ; but we
have to deal with a living and agitating party whose name
and work are much canvassed, and there is at any rate great
practical inconvenience in extending the current designation
of that party so as to include persons who object strongly to
its whole immediate work.
The inconvenience has doubled since Mill's time, because
socialism has now become a much more definite programme of
a much more definite party. Even in the old romantic schools
the ruling characteristic of socialism was always its effort to
realize some wrong view of distributive justice. It was more
than merely an impracticable plan for the extinction of poverty,
or the more equable diffusion of wealth, or the correction of
excessive inequalities, although that seems to be so prevailing
an impression that persons who have what they conceive more
feasible proposals to offer for these purposes put them forward
under the name of Practicable Socialism But so far as these
purposes go, they are common to almost all schools of social
reformers, even the most individualist. If socialism meant
only feeling earnestly about those inequalities, or desiring
earnestly their redress, or even strongly resenting their incon-
sistency with an ideal of justice, then Mr. Herbert Spencer is
as much a socialist as either Marx or Lassalle. " The fates of
the great majority," says he, " have ever been, and doubtless
still are, so sad that it is painful to think of them. Unques-
tionably the existing type of social organization is one which
none who care for their kind can contemplate with satisfaction ;
and unquestionably men's activities accompanying this type
are far from being admirable. The strong divisions of rank and
the immense inequalities of means are at variance with that
ideal of human relations on which the sympathetic imagina-
tion likes to dwell; and the average conduct, under the pressure
and excitement of social life as at present carried on. is in
Introductory. 9
sundry respects repulsive." ("A Plea for Liberty," p. 4.)
Socialists are far from being the only persons whose sense of
justice is offended by much in the existing regime, and many
very moderate politicians have held that the policy of the law
should always favour the diffusion of wealth rather than its
concentration ; that it should always favour the active business
interest rather than the idle interest; that it should always
favour the weaker and more unprotected interest rather than
the more powerful and the more contumelious. The socialism
comes in not with the condemnation of the existing order of
things, but with the policy recommended for its correction.
There is no socialism in recognising the plain fact that the gifts
of fortune, whether riches or talents, are not distributed in the
world according to merit. There is no socialism in declaring
that the rich, by reason of their riches, have responsibilities
towards the poor ; or that the poor, by reason of their poverty,
have claims upon the rich. Nor is there any socialism in
holding that the State has responsibilities towards the poor,
and that the law ought, when necessary, to assert the reason-
able claims of poverty, or enforce the reasonable duties and
obligations of wealth. All that merely says that justice and
humanity ought to govern in economic affairs, as they ought
to govern in all other affairs of life ; and this is an axiomatic
position which nobody in the world denies. Only, axiomatic
though it is, it seems to dawn on many minds like a revelation
late in life, and they feel they are no longer as other men,
and that they must henceforth call themselves socialists. This
awakening to the injustice or inhumanity of things is not
socialism, though socialism may often proceed out of it. So-
cialism is always some scheme for the removal of one injustice
by the infliction of a greater some scheme which, by mis-
taking the rights and wrongs of the actual situation, or the
natural operation of its own provisions, or any other cause,
would leave things more inequitable and more offensive to a
sound sense of justice than it found them. The rich idler, for
example, is always a great offence to the socialist, because,
according to the socialist sense of justice, no man ought to be
rich without working for his riches ; and many other people will
possibly agree with the socialist in that. But then the socialist
io Contemporary Socialism.
proposes to abolish the rich idler by a scheme which would
breed the poor idler in overwhelming abundance, and for the
sake of equalizing poverty and wealth, would really equalize
indolence and industry at once a more fatal and a more offen-
sive form of injustice than that which it was designed to redress.
Socialists find fault with the present order of things because
the many workers support the few idlers ; but most of the old
socialist communities of France and America failed because
of the opposite and greater injustice, that the few workers
found themselves supporting the many idlers, and the con-
sequence was a more harrowing sense of unfairness and a
more universal impoverishment than prevailed under the old
system. The rich idler who merely lives on what he has
inherited may not belong to an ideal state of society ; but the
poor idler, who shirks and dawdles and malingers, because an
indulgent community relieves him of the necessity of harder
exertion, is equally unideal, and he is much more hurtful in
the reality.
But the socialists, in their mistaken ideas of justice, do not
stop at the rich idler. The rich idler is, in their view, a robber;
but the rich worker is a greater robber still. It is characteristic
of socialist thought to hold the accumulations of the rich to
be in some sort of way unjustly acquired by spoiling the poor.
The poor are always represented as the disinherited; their pro-
perty is declared to have been taken from them perforce by
bad laws and bad economic arrangements and delivered with-
out lien into the hands of the capitalists. This view lived and
moved in the old socialism, but it has been worked into a
reasoned and professedly scientific argument as a basis and
justification for the new. The old socialism usually exclaimed
against the justice of interest, rent, property, and all forms of
labourless income ; but the new socialism pretends to prove
the charge by economic principles. It alleges that all these
forms of income are so many different forms of plundering the
working classes, who are the real producers of wealth, and it
sets up a claim on behalf of those classes to the whole value of
the things they produce without any deductions for rent,
interest, or profit the right, as they call it, of the labourer to
the whole produce of his labour. Now this is a verv distinct
Introductory. 1 1
and definite claim pf right and justice, and the whole final
object of the socialist organizations of the present day is to get
it realized, and realized at once, as claims of right and justice
ought, and must, by the powers of the State. I shall have
better opportunities at a later part of this work of proving how
absolutely unfounded and unjust is this claim; but I mention it
here merely to show that the essence of modern socialism is
more and more unmistakably revealing itself as an effort to
realize some false ideal of social or distributive justice. This is
the deepest and most ruling feature of socialism, and it really
necessitated the advance of the movement from the philan-
thropic to the political stage. The Owenites were content with
the idea of a voluntary equality of wealth ; but that is now
dismissed as the mere children's dream, for popular rights
are things to be enforced by law, and questions of justice are
for the State. The political character of the movement has
only brought forward into stronger relief the distorted ideal of
justice which gave it being ; and it has therefore become much
more confusing than it formerly was for one to call himself a
socialist merely because he dreams of better things to come,
or because he would like to extinguish poverty, or to diffuse
property, or to extend the principle of progressive taxation, or
promote co-operation or profit-sharing, or any other just or
useful measures of practical social reform. That is shown
very well by a simple little tidemark. In the old days it was
still possible, though it never was a happy choice, for Maurice
and the promoters of the new co-operation movement to assume
the designation of Christian Socialists ; but although Schultze-
Delitzsch was working on the same lines with even greater
eclat at the time when the present socialistic movement began
in Germany, he was left so far behind that he was thought
the great anti- socialist, and the people to whom it was
now considered appropriate to transfer the name of socialists
were a set of university professors and others who advo-
cated a more extended use of the powers of the State for the
solution of the social question and the satisfaction of working-
class claims.
The Socialists of the Chair and the Christian Socialists
of Germany contemplate nothing beyond correctives and pal-
12 Contemporary Socialism.
liatives of existing evils; but then they ask the State to
administer them. They ask the State to inspect factories,
or to legalize trades unions, or to organize working-class in-
surance, or to fix fair wages. Their requests may be wise or
foolish, but none of them, nor all of them together, would
either subvert or transform the existing industrial system ;
and those who propound them are called socialists merely
because they make it part of the State's business to deal with
social questions, or perhaps more particularly because they
make it the State's business to deal with social questions in
the interest of the working class. This idea of socialism
seems largely to govern the current employment of the term.
We often hear any fresh extension of the functions of the
State condemned as socialistic even when the extension is not
supposed to be made in the interests of the working class, or
to be conducive to them. The purchase of the telegraphs
was socialistic ; the proposal to purchase the railways is social-
istic ; a national system of education is socialistic ; and an
ecclesiastical establishment, if it were now brought forward as
a new suggestion, would be pronounced socialistic too. Since,
in a socialistic community, all power is assigned to the
State, any measure which now increases the power of the
State gets easily represented as an approach to socialism,
especially in the want and it is one of our chief wants at
present of a rational and discriminating theory of the proper
limits and sphere of public authority.
But in the prevailing use of the word, there is generally the
idea that the intervention of authority to which it is applied
is undertaken to promote the well-being of the less fortunate
classes of society. Since socialism seeks to construct what
may be called a working class State, where the material wel-
fare of each shall be the great object of the organization of all,
it is common to represent as socialistic any proposal that asks
the State to do something for the material well-being of the
working class, and to describe any group of such proposals, or
any theory that favours them, by the name of socialism. The
so-called State-socialism of Prince Bismarck, for example, is
only, as he has himself declared, a following-out of the tradi-
tions of the House of Hohenzollern, the princes of that dynasty
Introductory. 1 3
having always counted it one of their first duties as rulers
to exercise a special protection and solicitude over the poorer
classes of their subjects. The old ideas of feudal protection
and paternal government have charms fo'r many minds that
deplore the democratic spirit of modern society. In Germany
they have been maintained by the feudal classes, the court,
and the clergy ; their presence in the general intellectual
atmosphere there has probably facilitated the diffusion of
socialistic views ; and they have certainly led to the curious
phenomenon of a Conservative socialism, in which the most
obstinately Conservative interests in the country go to meet
the Social Democrats half way, and promise to do everything
to get them better wages if they will but come to church
again and pray for the Kaiser. The days of feudal protection
and paternal government are gone ; as idealized by Carlyle,
they perhaps never existed ; at any rate, in an age of equality
they are no longer possible, but their modern counterparts are
precisely the ideas of social protection and fraternal govern-
ment which find their home among socialists. On the strength
of this analogy, Prince Bismarck and the German Emperor are
sometimes spoken of as socialists, because they believe, like
the latter, that the State should exercise a general or even a
particular providence over the industrial classes. But socialism
is more than such a belief. It is not only a theory of the
State's action, but a theory of the State's action founded on
a theory of the labourer's right. It is at bottom, as I have
said, a mistaken demand for social justice. It tells us that
an enlargement of social justice was made when it was
declared that every man shall be free or, in other words,
that every man shall possess completely his own powers of
labour ; and it claims that a new enlargement of social
justice shall be made now, to declare that every man shall
possess the whole produce of his labour. Now those who
are known as Conservative Socialists, in patronizing the
working people, do not dream of countenancing any such
claim, or even of admitting in the least that there is any-
thing positively unjust in the present industrial system. None
of them would go further than to say that the economic
position of the labourer is insufficient to satisfy his legitimate
14 Contemporary Socialism.
aspirations in a civilized community; few of them would
go so far. It is therefore highly confusing to class them
among socialists.
M. Limousin, again, speaks of a " minimum of socialism."
He would call no man a socialist who does not hold this mini-
mum, and he would call every man a socialist who does hold it.
And the minimum of socialism, in his opinion, is this, that
the State owes a special duty of protection to labourers because
they are poor, and that this duty consists in securing to them
a more equitable part in the product of general labour. The
latter clause migh.t have been better expressed in less general
terms, but that may pass. The definition recognises at any
rate that the paternal or the fraternal theory of government
does not of itself constitute socialism, and that this must be
combined with the demand for a new distribution of wealth,
on supposed grounds of justice or equity, before we have even
the minimum of socialism. But it would have been more
correct if it had recognised that the demand for a better
distribution must be made not merely on supposed, but on
erroneous grounds of justice or equity. If the proposed dis-
tribution is really just and equitable, nothing can surely be
more proper than to ask the State to do its best to realize it
and any practicable intervention for that purpose is only a
matter of the ordinary expansion of the law. "What is law,
what is right, but a protection of the weak? and all legal
reform is a transition from a less equitable to a more equitable
system of arrangements. The equitable requirements of the
poor are the natural concern of the State on the narrowest
theory of its functions, and M. Limousin's definition would
really include all rational social reformers under the name of
socialist.
If we are in this way to stretch the word socialism first to
the one side, till it takes in J. S. Mill and Maurice and the
co-operators, who repudiate authority and State help, and
then on the other side, till it takes in Prince Bismarck, and
our own aristocratic Conservative Young England Party, and
all social reformers who want the State to do its ordinary
duty of supplying the working classes with better securities
for the essentials of all humane living, how can there be any
Introductory, 1 5
rational and intelligible use of the word at all ? Mill holds
a more or less socialistic idea of what a just society would
be ; Bismarck holds a more or less socialistic view of the
functions of the State ; but neither of these ideas separately
make up the minimum of socialism ; and it would therefore
be misleading to call either of them by that name, while to
call both by it would be hopeless confusion, since the one
politician holds exactly what the other rejects, and no more.
But, after all, it is of less importance to define socialism in the
abstract than to describe the actual concrete socialism that
has organization and life, especially as the name is only trans-
ferred in common speech to all these varying shades of opinion,
because they are thought to resemble that concrete socialism
in one feature or another.
Having now ascertained the general nature of the con-
temporary socialistic movement, we shall be in a better position
to judge of its bearings and importance. "We have seen that
the only form of socialism which has come to life again since
1848 is the political and revolutionary phase of Social Demo-
cracy. Now, this was also the original form in which socialism
first appeared in modern Europe at the time of the earlier
Revolution of 1789. The tradition it represents is conse-
quently one of apparently vigorous vitality. It has kept its
place in European opinion for a hundred years, it seems to
have grown with the growth of the democratic spirit, and it
has in our own day broken out simultaneously in most of the
countries of the Continent, and in some of them with remark-
able energy. A movement like this, which seems to have
taken a continuous and extensive hold of the popular mind,
and which moreover has a consciousness of right, a passion for
social justice, however mistaken, at the heart of it, cannot be
treated lightly as a political force ; but at the same time its
consequence is apt to be greatly overrated both by the hopes
of sanguine adherents and by the apprehensions of opponents.
Socialists are incessantly telling us that their system is the
last word of the Revolution, that the current which broke
loose over Europe in 1789 is setting, as it could not help setting,
in their direction, and that it can only find its final level of
1 6 Contemporary Socialism.
repose in a democratic communism. Conservative Cassandras
tell us the same thing, for the Extreme Right takes the same
view as the Extreme Left does of the logical tendency of
measures. They feel things about them moving everywhere
towards equality, they feel themselves helpless to resist the
movement, and they are sure they shall waken one morning
in a social revolution. Stahl, for example, thought democracy
necessarily conducted to socialism, and that wherever demo-
cracy entered, socialism was already at the door. A few words
will therefore be still necessary towards explaining, first, the
historical origin of modern socialism ; second, the relations of
socialism to democracy, and, finally, the extent and character
of the spread of the present movement.
Respecting the first of these three points, modern socialism
was generated out of the notions about property and the State
which appeared towards the close of last century in the course
of the speculations then in vogue on the origin and objects of
civil society, and which were proclaimed about the same time
by many different writers by Brissot, by Mably, by Morelly,
and above all by Rousseau. Their great idea was to restore
what they called the state of nature, when primitive equality
still reigned, and the earth belonged to none, and the fruits
to all. They taught that there was no foundation for property
but need. He who needed a thing had a right to it, and he
who had more than he needed was a thief. Rousseau said
every man had naturally a right to whatever he needed ; and
Brissot, anticipating the famous words of Proudhon, declared
that in a state of nature " exclusive property was theft." It
was so in a state of nature, but it was so also in a state of
society, for society was built on a social contract, " the clauses
of which reduce themselves to one, viz., the total transfer of
each associate, with all his rights, to the community." The
individual is thus nothing ; the State is all in all. Property is
only so much of the national estate conditionally conceded to
the individual. He has the right to use it, because the State
permits him, while the State permits him, and how the State
permits him. So with every other right ; he is to think, speak,
train his children, or even beget them, as the State directs and
allows, in the interest of tho common gocd.
Introductory. 1 7
These ideas circulated in a diffuse state till 1793. They
formed as yet neither system nor party. But when Joseph
Baboeuf, discarding his Christian name of Joseph (because, as
he said, he had no wish for Joseph's virtues, and so saw no
good in having him for his patron saint), and taking instead
the ominous name of Caius Gracchus, organized the conspiracy
of the Egaux in that year, then modern socialism began, and
it began in the form in which it still survives. Baboeuf's
ambition was to found what he called a true democratic
republic, and by a true democratic republic he meant one in
which all inequalities, whether of right or of fact, should be
abolished, and every citizen should have enough and none too
much. It was vain, he held, to dream of making an end of
privilege or oppression until all property came into the hands
of the Government, and was statedly distributed by the
Government to the citizens on a principle of scrupulous
equality. Misled by the name Caius Gracchus, people thought
he wanted an agrarian law and equal division. But he told
them an agrarian law was folly, and equal division would not
last a twelvemonth, if the participants got the property to
themselves. What he wanted, he said, was something much
more sublime it was community of goods. Equality could
only be made enduring through the abolition of private
property. The State must be sole proprietor and sole em-
ployer, and dispense to every man his work according to his
particular skill, and his subsistence in honourable sufficiency
according to his wants. An individual who monopolized any-
thing over and above such a sufficiency committed a social
theft. Appropriation was to be strictly limited to and by
personal need.
Baboeuf saw no difficulty in working the scheme ; was it
not practised every day in the army, with 1,200,000 men? If
it were said, the soil of France is too small to sustain its
population in the standard of sufficiency contemplated, then
so much the worse for the superfluous population ; let the
greater landlords first, and then as many sansculottes as were
redundant, be put out of the way for their country's good. He
actually ascribed this intention to Robespierre, and spoke of
the Terror as if it were an excellent anticipation of Malthusi-
c
1 8 Contemporary Socialism.
anisra. Did any one say that, without inequalities, progress
would cease and arts and civilization decay, Baboeuf was
equally prepared to take the consequences. " Perish the arts,"
said a manifesto discovered with him at his apprehension, " but
let us have real equality." " All evils," he said in his news-
paper, " are on their trial. Let them all be confounded. Let
everything return to chaos, and from chaos let there rise a
new and regenerated world."
We have here just the revolutionary socialist democracy
that is still rampant over Europe. Socialists now, indeed,
generally make light of the difficulty of over-population which
Baboeuf solved so glibly with the guillotine, and they contend
that their system would humanize civilization instead of
destroying it. They follow, too, a different tradition from
Baboeuf regarding the right of property. While he built that
right on need, they build it on labour. He said the man who
has more than he needs is a thief ; they say the man who has
more than he wrought for is a thief. He would have the State
to give every man an honourable sufficiency right off, accord-
ing to his need ; they ask the State to give every man accord-
ing to his work, or, if unfit for work, according to his need,
and they hold that this rule would afford every one an honour-
able sufficiency. But these differences are only refinements
on Baboeuf's plan, and its main features remain equality of
conditions, nationalization of property, democratic tyranny, a
uniform medium fatal to progress, an omnipresent mandarin
control crushing out of the people that energy of character
which W. von Humboldt said was the first and only virtue
of man, because it was the root of all other excellence and
advancement. In short, socialists now seek, like Baboeuf, to
establish a democratic republic a societj- built on the equal
manhood of every citizen and, like Baboeuf, they think a
true democratic republic is necessarily a socialistic one.
This brings me to the next point I mentioned, the interest-
ing problem of the true relations of socialism to democracy.
Is socialism, as Stahl and others represent, an inevitable
corollary of democracy ? If so, our interest in it is very real
and very immediate. For democracy is already here, and is &t
Introductory. 1 9
present engaged in every country of Europe in the very work
of reorganizing the social system into harmony with demo-
cratic requirements. Its hammer may make little sound in
some places, but the work proceeds none the less effectually
for the silence, and it will proceed, slowly or more rapidly,
until all the institutions of the country have been renovated
by the democratic spirit. "Will the social system, which will
result from the process, be socialism ? " The gradual develop-
ment of the principle of equality," says De Tocqueville, " is a
providential fact. It has all the characteristics of such a fact.
It is universal ; it is durable ; it constantly eludes all human
interference ; and all events, as well as all men, contribute to
its progress. "Would it be wise to imagine that a social move-
ment, the causes of which lie so far back, can be checked by
the efforts of one generation ? Can it be believed that the
democracy which has overthrown the feudal system and
vanquished kings will retreat before tradesmen and capitalists?
"Will it stop now that it has grown so strong, and its adver-
saries so weak? " If, then, the natural tendency of democracy
is to socialism, to socialism we must eventually go.
But the natural tendency of democracy is not to socialism.
A single plain but remarkable fact suffices to establish that.
Democracy has been in full bloom in America for more than
a century, and there are no traces of socialism -there except
among some German immigrants of yesterday ; for, of course,
the communism of the eccentric religious sects of America
proceeds from religious ideals, and has no bearing one way
or other on the social tendency of democracy. The labouring
class is politically everything in that country everything, at
least, that electoral power can make them in an elective re-
public ; and they have never shown any desire to use their
political power to become socially everything or to interfere
with the freedom of property. Had this been in any way the
necessary effect of democratic institutions, it must have by
this time made its appearance in the United States. De
Tocqueville, indeed, maintains that so far from there being
any natural solidarity between democracy and socialism, they
are absolutely contrary the one to the other. " Democracy,"
he said in a speech in the Republican Parliament of France
2O Contemporary Socialism.
in 1849, " extends the sphere of individual independence ;
socialism contracts it. Democracy gives every individual man
his utmost possible value ; socialism makes every man an agent.
an instrument, a cipher. Democracy and socialism coincide
only in the single word equality, but observe the difference :
democracy desires equality in liberty; socialism seeks equality
in compulsion and servitude."
That is so far substantially true, but it cannot be received
altogether without qualification. "We have had experience in
modern times of two different forms of democracy, which may
be called the American and the Continental. In America
equality came as it were by nature, without strife and without
so much as observation ; the colonists started equal. But
freedom was only won by sacrifice ; the first pilgrims bought
it by exile ; the founders of the Republic bought it a second
time by blood. Liberty therefore was their treasure, their
ark, their passion ; and having been long trained in habits of
self-government, they acquired in the daily exercise of their
liberty that strong sense of its practical value, and that subtle
instinct of its just limits, which always constitute its surest
bulwarks. "With them the State was nothing more than an
association for mutual protection an association, like any
other, having its own definite work to do and no more, and
receiving from its members the precise powers needed for that
work and no more ; and they looked with a jealousy, warm
from their history and life, on any extension of the State's
functions or powers beyond those primary requirements of
public safety or utility which they laid upon it. In the United
States property is widely diffused ; liberty has been long
enjoyed by the people as a fact, as well as loved by them as
an ideal ; the central authority has ever been held in com-
parative check ; and individual rights are so general a posses-
sion that any encroachment upon them in the name of the
majority would always tread on interests numerous and strong
enough to raise an effectual resistance. Democracy has in
America, accordingly, a soil most favourable to its health}-
growth ; the history, the training, and the circumstances of
the people all concur to support liberty.
But on the Continent democracy sprang from very different
Introductory. 2 1
antecedents, and possesses a very different character. Equality
was introduced into France by convulsion, and lias engrossed
an undue share of her attention since. Freedom, on the other
hand, has been really less desired than power. The Revolution,
found the affairs of that country administered by a strong
centralized organization, with its hand everywhere and on
everything, and the Revolution left them so. Revolution has
succeeded revolution ; dynasties and constitutions have come
and gone ; almost every part of the political and social sj^stem
has suffered change ; the form of government has been re-
public, empire, monarchy, empire and republic again ; but
the authority of government, its sphere, its attributes, have
remained throughout the same. Each party in succession has
seized the power of the State, but none has sought to curb its
range. On the contrary, their temptation lay the other way ;
they have been always so bent on using the authority and
mechanism of government to impair or suppress the influence
of their adversaries, whom they regarded as at the same time
the adversaries of the State, that they could only wish that
authority to be larger and that mechanism more perfect than
they already were. Even the more popular parties are content
to accept the existing over-government as the normal state
of affairs, and always strive to gain the control of it rather
than to restrain its action. And so it has come about that,
while they sought liberty for themselves, they were afraid
to grant it to their opponents, for fear their opponents should
be able to get the authority of this too powerful administration
into their hands and serve them in the same way. The
struggle for freedom has thus been corrupted into a struggle
for power. That is the secret of the pathetic story of modern
France. That is why, with all her marvellous efforts for
liberty, she has never fully possessed it, and that is why she
seems condemned to instability.
A growing minority of the democratic party in France is
indeed opposed to this unfortunate over-government, but the
democratic party in general has always countenanced it,
perhaps more than any other party, because to their minds
government represents the will of the people, and the people
cannot be supposed to have any reason to restrain its own
22 Contemporary Socialism.
will. Besides, they are still dominated by the doctrines of
Rousseau and the other revolutionary writers who looked with
the utmost contempt on the American idea of the State being
a kind of joint-stock association organized for a circumscribed
purpose and with limited powers, and who held the State, on
the contrary, to be the organ of society in all its interests,
desires, and needs, and to be invested with all the powers and
rights of all the individuals that compose it. Under the social
contract, by which they conceived the State to be constituted,
individuals gave up all their rights and possessions to the
community, and got them back immediately afterwards as
mere State concessions, which there could be no injustice in
withdrawing again next day for the greater good of the com-
munity. Instead of enjoying equal freedom as men, the great
object was to make them enjoy equal completeness as citizens.
From historical conditions like these there has sprung up
on the Continent in Germany as well as France a quite
different type of democracy from the American, and this type
of democracy, while it may not be the best, the truest, or the
healthiest type of it, has a tendency only too natural towards
socialism. It contains in its very build and temperament
organic conditions that predispose it to socialism as to its
peculiarly besetting disease. It evinced this tendency very
early in the history of the Revolution. As Ledru-Rollin re-
minded De Tocqueville, in replying to his speech, the right to
labour on the part of the strong and the right to assistance
on the part of the weak were already acknowledged by the
Convention of 1793. Claims like these constitute the very
A B C of socialism, and they have always moved with more
or less energy in the democratic tradition of the Continent.
Democracy, guided by the spirit of freedom, will resist
socialism ; but authoritative democracy, such as finds favour
abroad, leans strongly towards it. A democratic despotism
is obviously more dangerous to property than any other,
inasmuch as the despot is, in this case, more insatiable, and
his rapacity is so easily hid and even sanctified under the
general considerations of humanity that always mingle with
it.
It is therefore manifest, that the question whether political
Introductory. 23
democracy must end in social, is one that cannot be answered
out of hand by deduction from the idea. The development
will differ in different countries, for it depends on historical
conditions, of which the most important is that I have now
touched on, whether the national character and circumstances
are calculated to guide that development into the form of
democratic liberty, or into the form of democratic tyranny. A
second condition is scarcely less important, viz., whether the
laws and economic situation of the country have conduced
to a dispersion or to a concentration of property. For even
in the freest democracy individual property can only be per-
manently sustained by diffusion, and, if existing conditions
have ^solated it into the hands of the few, the many will lie
under a constant, and, in emergencies, an irresistible tempta-
tion to take freedom in their hand and force the distribution
of property by law, or nationalize it entirely by a socialistic
reconstruction. It used to be a maxim in former days that
power must be distributed in some proportion to property, but
with the advent of democracy the maxim must be converted,
and the rule of health will now be found in having property
distributed in some proportion to power. That is the natural
price of stability under a democratic regime. A penniless
omnipotence is an insupportable presence. When supreme
power is vested in a majority of the people, property cannot
sit securely till it becomes so general a possession that a
majority of the people has a stake in its defence, and this
point will not be reached until at least a large minority of
them are actually owners, and the rest enjoy a reasonable
prospect of becoming so by the exercise of care and diligence
in their ordinary avocations.
The belief of Marx and modern socialists, that the large
system of production, with its centralized capital and its ag-
gregation of workpeople in large centres, must, by necessary
historical evolution, end in the socialist State, is, as Professor A.
Menger has pointed out, not justified by history. The lati-
fundia and slavery of the decline of the Roman empire were
not succeeded by any system of common property, but by the
institutions of mediaeval law which made the rights of private
property more absolute and exclusive. And in our own time
24 Contemporary Socialism.
the tendency to concentration of property in the hands of a few
great capitalists is being corrected by the newer tendency to
joint stock management, i.e., to the union and multiplication
of small capitalists ; and this is of course a tendency back
from, and not on towards, the social revolution Marx con-
ceived to be imminent. But though the modern concentra-
tion of wealth may not for the moment be increasing, and if
it were, may not on that account necessarily spell socialism,
it certainly spells social peril; and the future, therefore,
stands before us with a solemn choice : either property must
contrive to get widely diffused peacefully, or it will be diffused
by acts of popular confiscation, or perhaps be nationalized
altogether ; and the fate of free institutions hangs up(^i the
dilemma. For in a democratic community the peril is always
near. De Tocqueville may be right in saying that such
communities, if left to themselves, naturally love liberty;
but there are other things they love more, and this pro-
found political philosopher has himself pointed out with what
exceptional vigour they nourish two powerful passions, either
of which, if it got the mastery, would prove fatal to free-
dom. One is the love of equality. " I think," says he, " that
democratic communities have a natural taste for freedom ; left
to themselves they will seek to cherish it, and view every pri-
vation of it with regret. But for equality their passion is
ardent, insatiable, insistent, invincible ; they call for equality
in freedom, and if they cannot obtain that, they still call for
equality in slavery. They will endure poverty, servitude,
pauperism, but they will not endure aristocracy." The other
is the unreined love of material gratification. By this De
Tocqueville does not mean sensual corruption of manners, for
he believes that sensuality will be more moderate in a demo-
cracy than in other forms of society. He means the passion
for material comfort above all other things, which he describes
as the peculiar passion of the middle classes ; the complete
absorption in the pursuit of material well-being and the means
of material well-being, to the disparagement and disregard of
every ideal consideration and interest, as if the chief end and
whole dignity of man lay in gaining a conventional standard
of comfort. "When a passion like this spreads from the classes
Introductory. 2 5
whose vanity it feeds to the classes whose envy it excites,
social revolution is at the gates, and this is one of De Tocque-
ville's gravest apprehensions in contemplating the advance of
democracy. For he says that the passion for material well-
being has no check in a democratic community except religion,
and if religion were to decline and the pursuit of comfort
undoubtedly impairs it then liberty would perish. " For my
part," he declares, " I doubt whether man can ever support at
once complete religious independence and entire public free-
dom ; and I am inclined to think that if faith be wanting in
him he must serve, and if he be free he must believe." It is
impossible, therefore, in an age when the democratic spirit has
grown so strong and victorious, to avoid taking some reason-
able concern for the future of liberty, more especially as at the
same time the sphere and power of government are being
everywhere continually extended, the devotion to material
well-being, and what is called material civilization, is ever
increasing, and religious faith, particularly among the edu-
cated and the working classes, is on the decline.
This is exactly the rock ahead of the modern State, of which
we have been long warned by keen eyes aloft, and which seems
now to stand out plainly enough to ordinary observers on the
deck. Free institutions run continual risk of shipwreck when
power is the possession of the many, but property from what-
ever cause the enjoyment of the few. With the advance of
democracy a diffusion of wealth becomes almost a necessity of
State. And the difficulty only begins when the necessity is
perceived. For the State cannot accomplish any lasting or
effective change in" the matter without impairing or imperilling
the freedom which its intervention is meant to protect with-
out, in short, becoming socialist, for fear of socialism; and
when it has done its best, it finds that the solution is still sub-
ject to moral and economic conditions which it has no power
to control. In trade and manufactures which occupy such
vast and increasing proportions of the population of modern
countries, the range of the State's beneficial or even possible
action is very little ; and in these branches the natural con-
ditions at present strongly favour concentration or aggregation
of capital. The small masters have simply been worsted in
26 Contemporary Socialism.
ordinary competition with the large producers, and so long as
the large system of production continues the cheapest system
of production, no other result can be expected. The social
problem, therefore, so far as these branches are concerned, is to
discover some form of co-operative arrangement which shall
reconcile the large system of production with the interests of
the labouring class, unless, indeed what is far from impossible
the large system of production is itself to be superseded in
the further advance of industrial development. The economic
superiority of that system depends greatly on the circum-
stance that the power now in use water or steam necessi-
tates the concentration of machinery at one spot. Mr. Babbage
predicted fifty years ago that if a new power were to be dis-
covered that could be generated in a central place in quantities
sufficient for the requirements of a whole community, and
then distributed, as gas is, wherever it was wanted, the age of
domestic manufactures would return. Every little community
might then find it cheaper, by saving carriage, and availing
itself of cheaper local labour, to manufacture for itself many
of the articles now made for it at the large mills ; and the
small factory or workshop, so suitable, among other advantages,
for co-operative enterprise, would multiply everywhere. Now,
have we such a power in electricity ? If so, not the least im-
portant effect of the new agent will be its influence on the
diffusion of wealth, and its aid towards the solution of the
social problem of the nineteenth century.
With land and agriculture the situation is somewhat differ-
ent. The distribution of landed property has always depended
largely on legal conditions; and since these conditions have
in this country at least wrought for two centuries in favour
of the aggregation of estates, their relaxation may reasonably
be expected to operate to some extent in the contrary direc-
tion. Too much must not be built on this expectation, how-
ever, for the natural conditions are at present, at least, as partial
to the large property as the legal. The abolition of entail and
primogeniture, by emancipating the living proprietor from the
preposterous tyranny of the dead, and by bringing to the
burdened the privilege of sale, must necessarily throw greater
quantities of land into the market than reach it now, but the
Introductory. 2 7
redistribution of that land will as necessarily conform to the
existing social and economic circumstances of the country ;
and England will never cease to be characterized by the large
property, so long as its social system lends exceptional consider-
ation to the possession of land, and its commercial system is
continually creating an exceptional number of large fortunes.
The market for the large estate is among the wealthy, who
buy land as an instrument of enjoyment, of power, of social
ambition; and what with the wealth made at home and the
wealth made in the colonies, the number of this class is ever
on the increase ; the natural market for the small estate, on
the other hand, is among the farming class, to whom land is
a commercial investment, and the farmers of England, unlike
those of other countries, unlike those of our own country in
former days, are as a rule positively indisposed to purchase
land, finding it more profitable to rent it. This aversion, how-
ever, is much more influential with large farmers than with
small ones. It is commonly argued as if a small farmer who
has saved money will be certain to employ it in taking a more
extensive holding, but that is not so. On the contrary, he more
usually leaves it in the bank ; in some parts of Scotland many
small farmers have deposits of from 500 to 1000 lying there
at interest ; they studiously conceal the fact, lest their landlords
should hear of it, and raise their rent, and they submit to much
inconvenience rather than withdraw any portion of it, once it
is deposited. Their ruling object is security and not aggran-
disement, and consequently if land were in the market in lots
to suit them, they would be almost certain to become pur-
chasers of land. In forecasting the possibility of the rise of a
peasant proprietary in this country, it is often forgotten that,
whether land is a profitable investment for the farmer or not,
the class of farmers from whom such a proprietary would be
generated is less anxious for a profitable investment than for a
safe one, and that to many of them, as of other classes, inde-
pendence will always possess much more than a commercial
value.
But, however this may be, land is distributed by holdings as
well as by estates, and in connection with our present subject
the distribution by holdings is perhaps the more important
28 Contemporary Socialism.
thing of the two. " The magic of property " is no exclusive
prerogative of the soil ; ownership in stock will carry the same
political effects as ownership in anything else ; and a satisfac-
tory system of tenant right may yield all the social and eco-
nomic advantages of a peasant proprietary. In fact, tenant
right, so far as it goes, is proprietorship, and it has before now
developed into proprietorship even in name. The old lamented
yeomanry of England were, the great majority of them, copy-
holders, and a copyholder was simply a tenant-at-will whose
tenant right was consolidated by custom into a perpetual
and hereditary property; and if the soil of England will
ever again become distributed among as numerous a body of
owners as held it in former ages, it will most likely occur
through a similar process of consolidation of tenant right. But
as it is and though this is a truism, it is often overlooked in
discussions on the subject the tenants are owners as well as
the landlords ; their interests enlist them on the side of sta-
bility ; they have a stake in the defence of property ; and even
though the prevailing tendency to the accumulation of estates
continues unchecked, its peril to the State may be mitigated
by the preservation and multiplication of small and comfort-
able holdings, which shall nourish a substantial and indepen-
dent peasantry, and supply a hope and ambition to the rural
labourers. This is so far well. We know that it is an axiom
with Continental socialists that a revolution has no chance
of success, however well supported it may be by the artisans
of the towns, if the peasantry are contented and take no part
in it ; and the most serious feature in more than one of the
great countries of Europe at this moment is the miserable
condition into which their agricultural labourers have been
suffered to fall, and their practical exclusion from all oppor-
tunities of raising themselves out of it. The stability of
Europe may be said to rest on the number of its comfortable
peasantry ; the dam of the Revolution is the small farm. This
is not less true of England than of the Continent, for although
the agricultural population is vastly outnumbered by the
industrial in this country, that consideration really increases
rather than diminishes the political value of sustaining and
multiplying a contented tenantry.
Introductory. 29
Now England is the classical country of the large farm as
well as of the large estate. Its holdings have always been
larger than those of other nations ; they were so when half of
them were owned by their occupiers, they are so still when
they are rented from great landlords. The large farms have
grown larger ; a holding of 200 acres was counted a very large
farm in the time of the Commonwealth ; it would be considered
a very moderate one in most English counties now. But yet
the small farm has not gone the way of the small estate. The
effects of consolidation have been balanced to such a degree by
a simultaneous extension of the area of cultivation that the
number of holdings in England is probably more considerable
than it ever was before. If we may trust Gregory King's
estimate, there were, 200 years ago, 310,000 occupiers of hold-
ings in England, 160,000 owners, and 150,000 tenants ; in
1880 there were, exclusive of allotments, which are now
numerous, 295,313 holdings of 50 acres and under, and 414,804
holdings altogether. Moreover, the future of the small farm is
much more hopeful than the future of the small estate or the
small factory. All admit the small holding to be preferable to
the large for dairy farming and market gardening ; and dairy
farms and market gardens are two classes of holdings that
must continue to multiply with the growth of the great towns.
But even with respect to corn crops, it is now coming to be
well understood that the existing conditions of high farming
would be better satisfied by a smaller size of holding than has
been in most favour with agricultural reformers hitherto ; be-
cause then, and then only, can the farmer be expected to
bestow upon every rood of his ground that generous expendi-
ture of capital, and that sedulous and minute care which are
now necessary to make his business profitable. Without en-
tering on the disputed question of the comparative productive-
ness of large and small farms, it ought to be remembered, in
the first place, that the economic advantage of the large
farm the reason why the large farmer has been able to offer
a higher rent than the smaller is not so much because he
produces more, as because he can afford to produce less ; and,
in the next place, that the small farmer has heretofore wrought,
not only with worse appliances than the large which perhaps
30 Contemporary Socialism.
he must always do but also with less knowledge of the theory
of his art, and worse conditions of tenure in both of which
respects we may look for improvement in the immediate
future. Even as it is, we find small farmers equalling the
highest production of the country. In the evidence before the
Duke of Richmond's Commission, there is a case of a farmer
of three acres producing 45 bushels per acre, or about twice
the average of the season in those bad years that impoverished
the larger farmers. The same body of evidence seems to prove
that the small farmer has more staying power a better capa-
city of weathering an agricultural crisis than the large ; for
he has much less frequently petitioned for a reduction of rent
an advantage which landlords may be expected not to over-
look. He enjoys, too, a monopoly of the superior efficiency of
interested labour, and as the personal efficiency of the labourer
his skill, his knowledge, his watchfulness, his care are be-
coming not less, but more important with the growth of
scientific farming, whether in corn raising or cattle rearing,
the small farm system will probably continue to hold, if not to
enlarge, its place in modern agriculture ; and if it is able to do
so, it will constitute one of the best buttresses against the social
revolution.
It remains to mark the spread of socialism in the various
countries of Europe and America, and to describe its present
position ; but this I shall reserve for next chapter.
CHAPTER II.
THE PROGRESS AND PRESENT POSITION OF SOCIALISM.
SOCIALISM being now revolutionary social democracy, we
should expect to find it most widely and most acutely developed
in those countries where, 1st, the social condition of the lower
classes is most precarious, or, in other words, where property
and comfort are ill distributed ; 2nd, where political democracy
is already a matter of popular agitation ; and, 3rd, where pre-
vious revolutions have left behind them an unquiet and
revolutionary spirit a " valetudinary habit," as Burke calls
it, "of making the extreme medicine of the State its daily
bread." That is very much what we do find. All these
conditions are present in Germany the country in which
socialism has made the most remarkable and rapid advance.
Dr. Engel, head of the Statistical Bureau of Prussia, states
that in 1875 six million persons, representing, with their
families, more than half the population of that State, had an
income less than 21 a year each ; and only 140,000 persons
had incomes above 150. The number of landed proprietors
is indeed comparatively large. In 1861 there were more than
two millions of them out of a population of 23,000,000 ; and in
a country where half the people are engaged in agriculture
this would, at first sight, seem to offer some assurance of
general comfort. But then the estates of most of them are
much too small to keep them in regular employment or to
furnish them with adequate maintenance. More than a
million hold estates of less than three acres each, and aver-
aging little over an acre, and the soil is poor. The consequence
is that the small proprietor is almost always over head and
ears in debt. His property can hardly be called his own, and
he pays to the usurer a much larger sum annually as interest
than he could rent the same land for in the open market.
32 Contemporary Socialism.
More than half of these small estates lie in the Rhine pro-
vinces alone, and the distressed condition of the peasantry
there has been lately brought again before the attention
of the legislature. But while thus in the west the agricultural
population suffers seriously from the excessive subdivision of
landed property, they are straitened in the eastern and
northern provinces by their exclusion from it. Prince
Bismarck, speaking of the spread of socialism in a purely
agricultural district like Lauenburg, which had excited sur-
prise, said that this would not seem remarkable to any one
who reflected that, from the land legislation in that part of
the country, the labourers could never hope to acquire the
smallest spot of ground as their own possession, and were kept
in a state of dependence on the gentry and the peasant pro-
prietors. Half the land of Prussia is held by 31,000 persons ;
and emigration, which used to come chiefly from the eastern
provinces, where subdivision had produced a large class of
indigent proprietors, proceeds now predominantly from the
quarters where large estates abound. The diminution of
emigration from the Rhine provinces is indeed one cause of
the increase of distress among the peasant proprietary ; but
why emigration has ceased, when there seems more motive for
it, is not so clear. As yet, however, socialism has taken com-
paratively slight hold of the rural population of Germany,
because they are too scattered in most parts to combine ; but
there exists in that country, as in others, a general conviction
that the condition of the agricultural labourers is really a
graver social question than the condition of the other in-
dustrial classes, and must be faced in most countries before
long. Socialism has naturally made most way among the
factory operatives of Germany, who enjoy greatest facilities
for combination and mutual fermentation, and who besides,
while better off in respect to wages than various other sections
of workpeople, are yet the most improvident and discontented
class in the community. Then, in considering the circum-
stances of the labouring classes in Germany, it must be re-
membered that, through customs and indirect taxation of
different kinds, they pay a larger share of the public burdens
than they do in some countries, and that the obligation of
The Progress and Present Position of Socialism. 3 3
military service is felt to be so great a hardship that more than
a third of the extensive emigration which now takes place
every year from the German Empire is prompted by a desire
to escape it. Before the establishment of the Empire, only
about a tenth part of the emigrants left the country without
an official permit ; but the proportion has been rising every
year since then, and sometimes comes to nearly a half.
Under these circumstances neither the strength nor the pro-
gress of the Social Democratic party in that country affords
occasion for surprise. At the last general election, in February,
1890, this party polled more votes than any other single party
in the Empire, and returned to the Imperial Diet a body of
representatives strong enough, by skilful alliances, to exercise
an effective influence on the course of affairs. The advance of
the party may be seen in the increase of the socialist vote at
the successive elections since the creation of the Empire.
In 1S71 it was 101.927.
1874 351,670.
1877
1878
1881
1884
493,447.
437,438.
311,961.
549,000.
1887 774,123.
1890 1,427,000.
The effect of the coercive laws of 1878, as shown by these
figures, is very noteworthy. In consequence of the successive
attempts made in that year on the life of the Emperor William
by two socialists, Hoedel and Nobiling, Prince Bismarck de-
termined to stamp out the whole agitation with which the two
criminals were connected by obtaining from the Diet excep-
tional and temporary powers of repression. The first effect of
these measures was, as was natural, to disorganize the socialist
party for the time. Hundreds of its leaders were expelled from
the country; hundreds were thrown into prison or placed under
police restriction ; its clubs and newspapers were suppressed ;
it was not allowed to hold meetings, to make speeches, or to
circulate literature of any kind. In the course of the twelve
years during which this exceptional legislation has sub-
sisted, it was stated at the recent Socialist Congress at Halle,
34 . Contemporary Socialism.
tliat 155 socialist journals and 1200 books or pamphlets had
been prohibited ; 900 members of the party had been banished
without trial ; 1500 had been apprehended and 300 punished
for contraventions of the Anti-Socialist Laws. These measures
paralyzed the old organization sufficiently to reduce the So-
cialist vote at the next election in 1881 by thirty per cent. ;
but the party presently recovered its ground. It adapted
itself to the new conditions, and established a secret propaganda
which was manifestly quite as effective for its purposes as the
old, and charged with more danger to the State. Its vote in-
creased immensely at each successive election thereafter ; and
now, as Eodbertus prophesied, the social question has really
proved " the Russian campaign of Bismarck's fame," for his
policy of repression has ended in tripling the strength of the
party it was designed to crush, and placing it in possession of
one-fifth of the whole voting power of the nation. It was
high time, therefore, to abandon so ineffectual a policy, and
the socialist coercive laws expired on the 30th September,
1890, and the socialists inaugurated a new epoch of open and
constitutional agitation by a general congress at Halle in the
beginning of October.
The strength of the party in Parliament has never cor-
responded with its strength at the polls. In 1871 it returned
only 1 member to the Diet ; in 1874, 9 ; in 1877, 12 ; in 1878,
9 ; in 1881, 12 ; in 1884, 24 ; in 1887, 11 ; and in 1890, with an
electoral vote which, under a system of proportional representa-
tion, would have secured for it 80 members, it has carried only
37. The party has no leaders now, in Parliament or out of it,
of the intellectual rank of Lassalle or Marx ; but it is very
efficiently led. Its two chiefs, Liebknecht and Bebel, are well
skilled both in debate and in management, and have for many
years maintained their authority in a party peculiarly subject
to jealousy and intrigue, and have consolidated its organization
under very adverse conditions. Liebknecht, who is a journalist
of most respectable talents, character, and acquirements, is
now the veteran of the movement, having been out in the '48
and passed twelve years of political exile in London in constant
intercourse with Karl Marx. Bebel, a turner in Leipzig, is a
much younger man, and, indeed, is one of Liebknecht's con-
The Progress and Present Position of Socialism. 35
verts, for he opposed the movement when it was first started in
Leipzig by Lassalle ; but he has fought so long and so stout a
battle for his cause that he too seems now one of its veterans.
The other parliamentary leaders of the party are for the most
part still under thirty. Von Volmar, a military officer who
has left the service for agitation and journalism, seems to be
the older leaders' chief lieutenant; and Frohme, a young
litterateur of repute, may be mentioned because he heads a
tendency to more moderate policy.
Owing to the paucity of its representatives, the party has
hitherto made little attempt to initiate legislation. No bill can
be introduced into the GTerrnan Diet unless it is backed by fifteen
members ; and, except in the Parliament of 1834-7, the Socialist
party never had fifteen members until last February. The
work of its parliamentary representatives, therefore, has con-
sisted mainly of criticism and opposition, and seizing every
suitable occasion for the ventilation of their g?neral ideas ; but
after the election of 1884, when they returned to the Diet
twenty-four strong, they introduced first a bill for the prohibi-
tion of Sunday labour, which was stoutly opposed by Prince
Bismarck, and defeated ; and second, a Labourer's Protection
Bill, proposing to create an elaborate organization for securing
the general wellbeing of the working class. It was to create,,
first, a new Labour Department of State ; second, a series of
"Workmen's Chambers, one for every district of 200,000 or
400,000 inhabitants, with the necessary number of local auxi-
liaries ; third, Local Courts of Conciliation for the settlement of
differences between labourers and employers, from whose deci-
sion there should be an appeal to the "Workmen's Chamber of
the District. Both the Court of Conciliation and the "Work-
men's Chamber were to be composed of an equal number of
employers and employed. The connection between the Work-
men's Chambers of the District and the Minister of Labour
would be through District Councils of Labour, the members of
which were to be chosen by the minister out of a list pre-
sented by the "Workmen's Chamber of the District, and con-
taining twice the number of names required to fill the places.
It was to be the duty of these Councils of Labour to send
a report every year to the Labour Department in Berlin on
36 Contemporary Socialism.
the condition of labour in their respective districts after an
annual inspection of all the factories, workshops, and industrial
establishments of any kind located there. The Workmen's
Chambers were to have a wide role, and were the keystone of
the system. Besides being the courts of final appeal in labour
disputes, they were to bring to the knowledge of the compe-
tent authorities the existence of any disorders or grievances
that occurred in industrial life ; to give advice on the best laws
and regulations for industry ; to undertake inquiries into all
matters affecting the conditions of labour, treaties of commerce,
taxes, rates of wages, technical education, housing, prices of
subsistence, etc.
In introducing the bill, its promoters said a chief object of the
whole organization was to obtain for working men higher wages
for a shorter day's work, and they proposed the immediate re-
duction of the day of labour to eight hours for miners and ten
hours for all other trades, together with some further limitations
on the work of women and children, the abolition of prison work
at ordinary trades, and of Sunday work, and the requirement
of the payment of wages weekly, and their payment in money.
The bill was referred to a committee of the House, and re-
jected, after that committee brought up an unfavourable report
in February, 1886, and nothing further has boen done in the
matter since ; but the Minister of the Interior was so much
struck with the unexpectedly moderate and practical character
of its proposals that he said if these proposals expressed the
whole mind of the members who proposed them, then those
members might as well sit on the right side of the House as on
the left. The effect of the bill, as far as it was workable, would
merely be to give the working class a real and systematic, but
not unequal, voice in settling the conditions of their own labour ;
and its rejection is to some extent an example of the way the
socialist agitation impedes the cause of labour by creating in the
public mind an unnecessary distrust even of reasonable reforms.
There are some questions of general policy on which the
socialist deputies take up a position of their own. They
always oppose the military budget, because, like socialists
everywhere, they are opposed to a.11 war and armaments.
Wars are merely quarrels of rulers, for peoples would make for
Tke Progress and Present Position of Socialism. 3 7
peace, and armaments only drain the people's pockets in order
to perpetuate the people's oppression. Then they are opposed
to national debts, because national debts enable rulers to carry
on war. The}' are opposed to the new colonization policy of
the Empire, because in their opinion it is a policy of aggran-
disement and conquest undertaken under hypocritical pre-
tences. They are opposed to protective duties, because they
dislike indirect taxation, as bearing always unjustly on the
labouring class. They are strong supporters of popular educa-
tion, but they opposed the new insurance laws because they
feared these laws would place people too much under the power
of the Government, for their jealousy of the Government that
exists corrects their general partiality for Government control,
and tends to keep them back even from some of the minor
excesses of State-socialism.
The moderate and apparently temporizing policy of the
deputies is a constant source of dissatisfaction to the wilder
and more inexperienced members of the party, who complain,
as they did at the recent Halle Congress, that trjdng to improve
the present system of things is not the best way of subverting
it, and who will either have socialism cum revolution, or they
will have nothing at all. But the older heads merely smile,
and tell them the hour for socialism and revolution is not yet,
that no man knows when it shall be, and that in the meantime
it would be mere folly for socialists to refuse the real comforts
they can get because they think they have ideally a right to
a great deal more. " Why," said Bebel, when he was charged
at Halle with countenancing armaments in violation of socialist
principles by voting for a better uniform to the soldiers,
" why, there are numbers of Social Democrats in the Reserve,
and was I to let them die through inadequate clothing merely
because I object to armaments as a general principle ? "
They of course think of this policy of accommodation as
only a temporary necessity, till they become strong enough to
be thoroughgoing ; but there is perhaps better reason to believe
it to be an abiding and growing necessity of their position,
for they are finding themselves more and more obliged, if they
are to become stronger at all, or even to keep the strength
they have, to bid for the support of aggrieved classes by work-
3^ Contemporary Socialism.
ing for the immediate removal of their grievances, and thus
to keep on reducing day by day as it rises the volume of that
social discontent which is to turn the wheel of revolution. It
is not unlikely that the socialist party, now that it is sufficiently
powerful to do something in the legislature, but not sufficiently
powerful to think of final social transformation, will occupy
themselves much more completely with those miscellaneous
social reforms in the immediate future ; that they will thereby
become every day better acquainted with the real conditions
on which social improvement depends; that they will find
more and more satisfying employment in the exercise of their
power of securing palpable, practical benefits, than in agitating
uncertain theoretical schemes ; and, in short, that they will
settle permanently into what they are for the present to some
extent temporarily, a moderate labour party, working for the
real remedy of real grievances by the means best adapted,
under real conditions, national or political, for effecting the
purpose.
The programme of the party, which was adopted at the
Gotha Congress of 1875, after the union of the Marxist socialists
and the Lassalleans, and has remained unaltered ever since,
has always consisted of a deferred part and an actual. It con-
tains, in fact, three programmes the programme for to-day,
the programme for to-morrow, and the programme for the day
after to-morrow. The last is of course the socialist State of
the future, at present beyond our horizon altogether. Before it
appears there is to be a more or less prolonged period in which
individual management of industry is to be gradually super-
seded by co-operative societies founded on State credit; but
this intermediate state was only made an article of the pro-
gramme to conciliate the Lassalleans, and one hears less of
productive associations to-day from the German socialists than
from the French. The Germans would apparently prefer to
go from private property to public property direct rather than
go viA corporate property ; but in any case their programme
leaves the creation of productive societies to a future period,
and their task for the present is to secure for working men
factory and sanitary legislation, constitutional liberties, and
an easier and more equitable system of taxation.
The Progress and Present Position of Socialism. 39
The programme is as follows :
"I. Labour is tlie source of all wealth and civilization, and
since productive labour as a whole is made possible only in
and through society, the entire produce of labour belongs to
society, that is, it belongs by an equal right to all its mem-
bers, each according to his reasonable needs, upon condition
of a universal obligation to labour.
"In existing society the instruments of labour are the
monopoly of the capitalist class ; the dependence of the labour-
ing class which results therefrom is the cause of misery and
servitude in all forms.
" The emancipation of labour requires the conversion of the
instruments of labour into the common property of society,
and the management of labour by association, and the appli-
cation of the product with a view to the general good and an
equitable distribution.
" The emancipation of labour must be the work of the labour-
ing class, in relation to which all other classes are only a
reactionary mass.
" II. Starting from these principles, the Socialistic Labour
Party of Germany seeks by all lawful means to establish a
free State and a socialistic society, to break asunder the iron
law of wages by the abolition of the system of wage-labour,
the suppression of every form of exploitation, and the correction
of all political and social inequality.
" The Socialistic Labour Party of Germany, although at first
working within national limits, is sensible of the international
character of the labour movement, and resolved to fulfil all
the duties thereby laid on working men, in order to realize the
brotherhood of all men.
" The Socialistic Labour Party of Germany demands, in
order to pave the way for the solution of the social question,
the establishment by State help of socialistic productive
associations under the democratic control of the workpeople.
Productive associations for industry and agriculture should be
created to such an extent that the socialistic organization of
all labour may arise out of them.
" The Socialistic Labour Party of Germany demands, as the
basis of the State, (1) Universal, equal, and direct suffrage,
4-O Contemporary Socialism.
together with secret and obligatory voting, for all citizens over
twenty years of age, in all elections in State and commune.
The election day must be a Sunday or holiday. (2) Direct
legislation by the people. Decision on peace or war by the
people. (3) Universal liability to military service. Militia
instead of standing army. (4) Abolition of all exceptional
laws, especially laws interfering with liberty of the press, of
association, and of meeting ; in general, all laws restricting
free expression of opinion, free thought, and free inquiry. (5)
Administration of justice by the people. Gratuitous justice.
(6) Universal, compulsory, gratuitous, and equal education of
the people by the State. Religion to be declared a private
affair,
" The Socialistic Labour Party of Germany demands within
the conditions of existing society (1) The utmost possible ex-
tension of political rights and liberties in the sense of the
above demands. (2) The replacement of all existing taxes,
and especially of indirect taxes, which peculiarly burden the
people, by a single progressive income tax for State and com-
mune. (3) Unrestricted right of combination. (4) A normal
working day corresponding to the needs of society, Prohibition
of Sunday labour. (5) Prohibition of the labour of children,
and of all labour for women that is injurious to health and
morality. (6) Laws for protection of the life and health of
workmen. Sanitary control of workmen's dwellings. Inspec-
tion of mines, factories, workshops, and home industry by
officers chosen by working men. An effective employers'
liability act. (7) Regulation of prison labour. (8) Entire
freedom of management for all funds for the assistance and
support of working men."
A committee was appointed at the recent Halle Congress to
revise this programme and report to the Congress of 1891 ; but
as the revision is merely intended to place the programme in
greater conformity with the needs of the time, and keep it
as it were up to date, only minor modifications may be expected,
and those probably in the direction of a more practical and
effectual dealing with existing grievances. Five years ago
the party thought a ten hours' day corresponded with the needs
of the time ; they now ask for an eight hours' one. Instead of
The Progress and Present Position of Socialism. 41
the prohibition of Sunday labour, they now prefer to demand,
as a more workable equivalent, a period of thirty-six hours'
continuous and uninterrupted rest every week, irrespective of
any particular day; and they have sometimes taken up new
working-class questions not especially mentioned in their pro-
gramme, or included directly under any of its heads, like the
abolition of payment of wages in kind. The whole spirit of
the late Congress leads us to look for the contemplated modi-
fications in this direction of meeting more effectually im-
mediate working-class wants.
Many eyes were upon that Congress ; for it was the first
the German socialists had held since they had recovered their
freedom and proved their strength. They were now clearly
stronger than any socialist party the world had yet seen, and
much stronger than most revolutionary parties who have made
successful revolution. Would then the word now be revolu-
tion ? people asked. It was not : the word was caution. The
first effect of the victory in February had been otherwise, and
in June, Herr Bebel was still calling, Steady. " The majority
of his party colleagues," he said at a public meeting in Berlin
on the 20th of that month, " had been intoxicated by the result
of the elections of February 20th, and believed they could do
what they liked with the middle class, as it was already on the
point of going under." But before October steadier counsels
prevailed, and the spirit of the Congress was moderation itself.
Although the Congress did not agree to the motion to restore
to the party programme the phrase " by lawful means," which
had been deleted from the opening paragraph of the second part
of it by the Wyden Congress of 1880, in consequence of the
Anti-Socialist Laws no longer giving them any choice except
recourse to unlawful means, the general and decided feeling of
the Congress certainly was that only lawful means could now
answer their purposes. The controversy was repeatedly raised
by an extreme section of the party from Berlin, who com-
plained that the work of their parliamentary representatives
had hitherto entirely ignored the real aims of social demo-
cracy, and that a return should now be made to its socialism
and its revolution. But the voice of the meeting was invariably
against this Berlin movement. There was a time, said M.
42 Contemporary Socialism.
Fleischman and his speech was applauded when it was
counted the right thing in the party to make revolutionary
speeches, and point to the coming day of account when mankind
were to be emancipated at one blow ; but that was not a road
they could make any progress by. And as for boycotting,
which had been spoken of, he declared he was all for boycotting;
but it was the boycotting of the military in such a way as to
give them no occasion for the use of their weapons. Lieb-
knecht, the chief leader of the party, followed, and was quite as
emphatic in the same line. People spoke of revolution, he said ;
but they should remember that roast pigeons don't fly into one's
mouth by themselves. It was easy enough to make bitter
speeches, and any fool and donkey could throw bombs ; but
the misadventures of the anarchists showed plainly enough
that nothing could be done in that way. The socialists had
now 20 per cent, of the population ; but what could 20 per
cent, do against 80 per cent, by the use of force ? No, it was
not force ; it was reason they must use if they would succeed.
"What, then, he asked, was the Social Democracy to do ? They
must avoid divisions among themselves, and go out and convert
the still indifferent masses. The electoral suffrage was their
best weapon of agitation, and their surest means of increasing
the party. Prince Bismarck had been represented in a popu-
lar book as practising peasant-fishery and elector-fishery.
"Peasant-fishery and elector-fishery "said Liebknecht, amid
much applause, " that is the word for the Social Democrats to-
day."
Another suggestion of the extreme section was that the
party should now assail the Church and religion, as socialist
and revolutionary parties have so generally done ; but this
bit of their old traditional policy received scant regard from
the Halle Congress. A strong feeling was expressed that the
party had damaged itself in the past by its assaults on the
Church, and that its present policy ought, in self-preserva-
tion, to be one of religious neutrality and toleration. " In-
stead," said Liebknecht, " of squandering our strength in
a struggle with the Church and sacerdotalism, let us go to
the root of the matter. We desire to overthrow the State of
the classes. When we have done that, the Church and sacer-
TJie Progress and Present Position of Socialism. 43
dotalism will fall with it, and in this respect we are much more
radical and much more definite in purpose than our opponents,
for we like neither the priests nor the anti-priests." The old
revolutionary policy of stirring up hatred against all existing
institutions is thus relegated from the present to the distant
future, after the present class-State is overthrown and the
working-class or socialist State established in its place.
"Well, then," suggested another old-world socialist, "let us, at
any rate, issue a pamphlet describing the glories of this social-
ist State, and get the people prepared to flock into it " ; but this
suggestion was also frowned down. " For," said Liebknecht,
" who could say what the Zukunft Stoat the socialist State
of the future is to be ? Who could foresee so much as the
development of the existing German State for a single year ? "
In other words I think I am not misinterpreting their mean-
ing the State of the future is the concern of the future ;
the business of a living party is within the needs and within
the lines of the living present.
What, then, is to be the business of this formidable Social
Democratic party ? Peasant-catching is the word. The elec-
tions showed that while the party was very strong in the large
towns, it was very weak in the rural districts, and among
special populations like the Poles and Alsatians; and although
previous revolutionists thought everything was gained if the
large towns were gained, the Social Democrats generally
admit that the social revolution is impossible without the
adherence of the peasantry. The peasants, therefore, must
be won over to the party. Once in the party, they may learn
socialism and revolution, but they must first be brought in,
and for that purpose there must be started a special peasants'
cry a cry, that is, for the redress of some immediate grievance
of that class ; and one suggestion made at the Congress
was, that the cry for the peasantry should be the abolition
of the German Gesinde (farm-servant) system. In the same
spirit the Congress recommended the parliamentary party to
take up the question of seamen's rights, and agitate for better
regulations for securing the wellbeing of that class. The
advance towards practicality is even more evident in their
determination upon strikes. Hitherto, for the most part,
44 Contemporary Socialism.
socialists have either looked on strikes with lofty disdain as poor
attempts to get a pett}' rise in wages instead of abolishing the
present wages system altogether, or they have thrown them-
selves into strikes for the mere purpose of fomenting labour
troubles, and breaking perchance the power of the large capital-
ist class; and this latter view was not unrepresented at the Halle
Congress. The resolution of the Congress, however, declared
(1st) that strikes and boycotting were often useful means of
improving the social position of the labouring class ; but (2nd)
that they were to be resorted to even for that purpose with
great circumspection. " Whereas, however, strikes and boy-
cotting are double-edged weapons which, when used in unsuit-
able places and at an inopportune moment, are calculated to
do more harm than good to the interests of the working class,
this Congress recommends German working men carefully to
weigh the circumstances under which they purpose to make
use of those weapons." The revolutionary ideal seems thus
to be retreating perhaps insensibly in the socialistic mind
into an eschatological decoration, into a kind of future Advent
which is to come and to be believed in ; but the practical con-
cerns of the present must be more and more treated in their
own practical way.
Since the Congress, the party has issued a manifesto to the
peasantry, in which, after promising a new and happy day that
is coming for them, which is to restore to them the beautiful
earth and the poetry of life, they declare against the patri-
archal system, and the increase of brandy distilling ; and then,
confessing that few socialists know anything about agricul-
tural questions, invite information and discussion for the en-
lightenment of the party. Here again they forget that they
have a theory which is as applicable to agriculture as to manu-
factures, and they want to make practical investigations with
a view to practical solutions.
Of course the movement will always generate revolutionary
elements as occasions arise, and these sometimes of the wildest
character. Most and Hasselman, and their following, who were
expelled at the Congress of "Wyden in 1880, were anarchists of
a violent type, and Mosts and Hasselmans may arise again.
But at present anarchism hardly exists in Germany, and the
The Progress and Present Position of Socialism. 45
Social Democratic party is peacefully trying to make people as
comfortable as possible till the fulness of time arrives.
It may be added that the present income of the party, as
stated at the last Congress, is 19,525, and that since Febru-
ary, 1890, they have established nineteen daily newspapers
and forty weekly, with a total circulation of '254.000.
The socialist movement in other countries may be disposed
of much more briefly, for in no other country has it worn any-
thing like the same importance, except in Russia, and of the
Russian agitation I shall treat more fully in a subsequent
chapter 011 " Russian Nihilism." I may observe here, however,
that the Russian agitation has not been without its influence
on the nations of Western Europe. It was Bakunin who first
kindled the socialist movements of Spain, Italy, Belgium,
and Holland, and the anarchist fermentations of the last six
years have been due in no inconsiderable measure to the new
leaven of Russian ideas introduced by men like Prince Kra-
potkin and the two hundred other Russian refugees that are
scattered abroad in the free countries of Europe.
In France there is much animated socialist agitation, but
no solid and coherent socialist party such as exists in Ger-
many. The movement is disunited and fragmentary, and
confined almost entirely to the large towns, where many cir-
cumstances conspire to favour its growth. The French work-
ing class are born to revolutionary traditions. The better
portion of them, moreover, though they long since gave up
all belief in the old native forms of socialism, never ceased to
be imbued with socialist ideas and aspirations ; and M. de
Molinari said in 1869, from his experience of French working
men's clubs, that out of every ten French working men who had
any interest beyond eating and drinking, nine were Socialists.
Then there is in France a larger proportion of the working
class than in most countries, who are kept in constant poverty
and discontent and commotion by their own improvident
habits. A pamphlet called "Le Sublime," which attracted
considerable attention some years ago, stated that only forty
per cent, of the working men of Paris were out of debt ; and Mr.
lEalet reported to the English Foreign Office that they were, as
a body, so dissipated that none of them had grandchildren or
46 Contemporary Socialism.
grandfathers. But, on the other hand, France enjoys a solid
security against, the successful advance of socialism in her peasant
proprietors. Half the French population belong to that class,
and their industry, thrift, and comfort have long been held up
to our admiration by economists. According to M. de Lavergne,
they are not so well fed, so well clad, or so well lodged as the
farm labourers of England ; but, living in a different climate,
they have fewer wants, and are undoubtedly more contented.
Among people like these, passing their days in frugal comfort
and fruitful industry, and looking with quiet hope and confi-
dence to the future, socialism finds, of course, no open door.
On the contrary, every man of them feels he has something to
lose and nothing to gain by social revolution ; the fear of social-
ism is, indeed, one of the chief influences guiding their political
action ; and as they are as numerous as all the other classes in
the community put together, their worldly contentment is a
bulwark of enormous value to the existing order of things. The
impression of their substantial independence is so marked that
even the Frenchmen who were members of the International
Working Men's Association would not assent to the abolition of
a peasant proprietary, but always insisted, contrary to the prin-
ciples of the Association, on the continued maintenance of that
system as a necessary counterpoise to the power of the Govern-
ment.
The present socialist groups and sects of France are all
believers in the so-called scientific socialism of Marx and
Lassalle, and the most important of them work for a pro-
gramme substantially identical with that of Gotha. Marx's
ideas were introduced among the French by the International,
and they were adopted by a section of the Revolutionary
Committee of the Paris Commune, 1871 ; but after the sup-
pression of the Commune, they made so little stir for some
years that Thiers declared, in his last manifesto as President of
the Republic, that socialism, which was then busy in Germany,
was absolutely dead in France. Its recrudescence was chiefly
due to the activity of the Communards. Some of them had
escaped to London, where they got into closer communion with
Marx and his friends ; and in 1874, thirty-four of these refugees,
all military or administrative officers of the Commune, and
The Progress and Present Position of Socialism. 47
most of them not professed socialists before, issued a manifesto
pronouncing entirely for socialism, and describing the Com-
mune as "the militant form of the social revolution" ; but it was
not till after the amnesty of the Communards, and their return
from New Caledonia and elsewhere in 1880, that the first
sensible ripple of socialist agitation was felt in France since
the downfall of the second Republic. Numbers of socialist
journals began to appear, and a general congress of working
men, held at Havre in 18SO, adopted a programme modelled on
the lines of that of the German Social Democrats, and made
preparations for an active propaganda and organization.
The adoption of the socialistic programme, however, rent the
Congress in three, and the two opposite wings, the Co-opera-
tioiiists and the Anarchists, withdrew and established separate
organizations of their own. The co-operationists, believing
that the amelioration of the working class would only come
by the gradual execution of practicable and suitable measures,
and that these could only be successfully carried by means of
skilful alliances with existing political parties, declared the
Havre programme to be a programme for the year 2000, and
that the true policy of the working class now was a policy of
possibilities. This last word is said to supply the origin of the
term Possibilist, which has now come to be applied not to this
co-operationist party, but to one of the two divisions into
which the third or centre party of the Havre Congress the
socialists shortly afterwards split up.
The co-operationists formed themselves into a body known as
the Republican Socialist Alliance, which, as the name indicates,
aims at social reforms under the existing republican form of
State. They have held several congresses, their member-
ship includes many well-known and even eminent Radical
politicians M. Clemenceau, for example and they were
supported by leading Radical journals, like Le Justice and
L'Intransigeant ; but their activity and their numbers have both
dwindled awaj r , probably because their work was done
sufficiently well already by other political or working-class
organizations.
The anarchists set up not a single organization, but a
number of little independent clubs, which agree with one
48 Contemporary Socialism.
another mainly in their dislike of all constituted authority.
They want to have all things in common, somehow or other ;
but for master or superior of any sort they will have none,
be it king or committee. Their ideas find ready favour in
France, because they are near allied with the theory of the
Revolutionary Commune cherished among the Communards ;
and although there is no means of calculating their numbers
exactly, they are bslieved to be pretty strong at least, in the
South of France. At the time of the Lyons Anarchist trial,
at which Prince Krapotkin was convicted, they claimed them-
selves to have 8,000 adherents in Lyons alone. In 1886 the
authorities knew of twenty little anarchist clubs in Paris,
which had between them, however, only a membership of 1,500 ;
and of these a considerable proportion were foreign immigrants,
especially Austrians and Russians, with a few Spaniards. Some
of these clubs are mainly convivial, with a dash of treason for
pungency ; but others have an almost devouring passion for
" deeds," and are ever concerting some new method of waging
their strange guerilla against " princes, proprietors, and par-
sons." When a new method is discovered, a new club is
sometimes formed to carry it out. For instance, the Anti-
proprietaires, which is said to be one of the best organized of
the anarchist clubs, bind their members (1) to pay no house-
rent, rent, of course, being theft, and theft being really
restitution ; and (2) if the landlord at length resorts to law
against any of them for this default, to come to their brother's
help and remove his furniture to safer quarters before the
moment of execution. The group La Panthere, to which
Louise Michel belongs, and which has 500 members, and the
group Experimental Chemie, as their names indicate, prefer
less jocular methods. The best known of the anarchists are
old Communards like Louise Michel herself and Elisee Reclus,
the geographer.
The third section of the Havre Congress contained the
majority of the 119 delegates, and they formed themselves
into the Socialist Revolutionary Party of France, with the
programme already mentioned, which was carried on the
motion of M. Jules Guesde.
This programme sets out with the declaration that all
The Progress and Present Position of Socialism. 49
instruments of production must be transferred to the possession
of the community, and that this can only result from an act of
revolution on the part of the working class organized as an
independent political party, and then it goes on to say that one
of the best means of promoting this end at present was to take
part in the elections with the following platform :
A. Political.
1. Abolition of all laws restricting freedom of the press,
of association, or of meeting, and particularly the law against
the International Working Men's Association. Abolition of
" work-books."
2. Abolition of the budget of public worship, and seculari-
zation of ecclesiastical property.
3. Abolition of national debt.
4. Universal military service on the part of the people.
5. Communal independence in police and local affairs.
B. Economic.
1. One day of rest in the week under legal regulation.
Limitation of working day to eight hours for adults. Pro-
hibition of the labour of children under fourteen, and limit-
ation of work hours to six for young persons between fourteen
and sixteen.
2. Legal fixing of minimum wages every year in accordance
with the price of provisions.
3. Equality of wages of male and female labour.
4. Scientific and technical training for all children, as well
as their support at the expense of society as represented by
the State and the Communes.
6. Support of the aged and infirm by society.
6. Prohibition of all interference on the part of employers
with the management of the relief and sustentation funds of
the working classes, to whom the sole control of these funds
should be left.
7. Employers' liability guaranteed by deposit by employers
proportioned to number of workmen.
8. Participation of the workmen in drawing up factory
regulations. Abolition of employer's claim to punish the
50 Contemporary Socialism.
labourer by fines and stoppages (according to resolution of the
Commune of 27th April, 1871).
9. Revision of all agreements by which public property has
baen alienated (banks, railways, mines, etc.). The management
of all State factories to be committed to the workmen em-
ployed in them.
10. Abolition of all indirect taxes, and change of all direct
ones into a progressive income tax on all incomes above 3,000
francs.
11. Abolition of the right of inheritance, except in the line
of direct descent, and of the latter in the case of fortunes above
20,000 francs.
At the congress of the party held at St. Etienne two years after
this programme was adopted, M. Brousse, a medical practi-
tioner in Paris, and a member of the Town Council, who had
already shown signs of disputing the leadership of M. Guesde,
carried by a vote of thirty-six to twenty-seven a motion
for introducing some modifications, and the minority seceded
and set up a separate organization. In spite of repeated efforts
at reconciliation, the two sections of the French socialists
have never united again or been able even to work together
temporarily at an election. Besides personal jealousies,
there are most important differences of tendency keeping them
apart. The Guesdists accept the policy of Karl Marx as
well as his economic doctrine : the universal revolution, and
the centralized socialist State, as well as the theory of surplus
value and the right to the full product of labour. The
Broussists, on the other hand, believe in decentralization.
and would prefer municipalizing industries to nationalizing
them. They are for giving the commune control of its own
police, its own soldiers, its own civil administration, its own
judiciary ; and they think the regime of collective property can
be best brought in and best carried on by local bodies. They
would have the towns take over their own gas, light, and water
supply, their omnibus and tramway traffic ; but they would
have them take over also many of the common industries
which never tend towards monopoly or even call for any
special control. They would municipalize, for example, the
bakehouses and the mealshops and the granaries, apparently
The Progress and Present Position of Socialism. 51
as supplying the necessaries of life, and they would have
various other branches of industry undertaken by the towns to
a certain limited extent, in order to provide suitable work for
the unemployed. Then in 1887 they added a fresh plank
to their platform, and asked for the establishment by munici-
palities, on public money or credit, of productive associations to
be owned not, like the other undertakings, by the munici-
pality, but by the working men employed in them. This is
a reappearance of the old policy of Lassalle, with the differ-
ence that the productive associations are to be founded on
municipal and not on State credit ; and the reappearance is not
surprising in Prance, because co-operative production has, on
the whole, been more successful in that country than in any
other. Then another of their demands is, that all public
contracts should be subjected to such conditions as to wages
and hours of labour as the workmen's syndicates approve ; and
in Paris they have already succeeded in obtaining this con-
cession from the Town Council so far as municipal contracts
are concerned. These workmen's syndicates are trade unions,
which aim only at bettering the position of their members
without theoretical prepossessions, but are quite as bold in
their demands on the public powers as the socialists, and
apparently more successful. In 1885 their claims included, not
only an eight hours' day and a normal rate of fair wages, but
the fixing of all salaries under 500 francs, a credit to themselves
of 500,000,000 francs, and the gratuitous use of empty houses
by their members ; and in 1886 they obtained from the Town
Council of Paris a furnished room, with free lighting and firing,
and a subvention of 20,000 francs, for the establishment of a
Labour Bureau, to be a centre for all working-class delibera-
tions and intelligence, and a registry for the unemploj^ed.
The socialism of the Broussists is thus practically a muni-
cipal socialism : municipal industries, municipal credit for
working men's productive associations, municipal concessions to
trade unions ; but all this seems to the Guesdists to be mere
tinkering, to be no better than the possibilities of the Repub-
lican Socialist Alliance, and they have for that reason given
their rivals the name of Possibilists, which for distinction's
sake they still commonly bear. Neither section had any
52 Contemporary Socialism.
representative in the Chamber of Deputies till 1889, when the
Broussists succeeded in returning M. Jofirin ; but the Broussists
have nine in the Town Council of Paris. The Guesdists
have more men of culture among them; Guesde himself and
Lafargue, Karl Marx's son-in-law, are both men of ability
and public position ; but they have a smaller following,
and what they have is on the decline. Their sympathy with
the principles of German Socialism, their alliance with the
German Socialist party is against them, for the French working
men have a very honest hatred of the Germans, both from
recollections of the war and from the pressure of German
industrial competition ; and the feeling seems to be returned
by the Germans, for it appeared even among the socialists at
the recent congress at Halle, international and non-patriotic
as socialists often claim to be. One of the personal accusa-
tions that disturbed the sittings of that congress was, that the
leaders of the party had been discovered in secret conference
with the delegates of the French socialists, MM. Guesde and
Ferroul, who had been sent to greet their German comrades.
The Possibilists have no very eminent members, the most
leading persons among them being Brousse himself and MM.
Allemane and Jofirin. But they are not inconsiderable in num-
ber, and they are growing. They have 400 Circles of Social
Studies all over the country, organized into six regions, each
with its regular regional congress, and all working under a
national executive committee and a general national congress,
meeting once a year. The future of French socialism seems
to be with the Possibilists rather than the Guesdists ; and the
future of the Possibilists, like the future of the German socialists,
seems to lie in the direction of releasing their limbs from the
dead clothes of socialist theory, in order to take freer and more
practical action for the positive wellbeing of the working class.
At the recent congress of the Possibilists at Chatellerault in
October, 1890, the chief questions discussed were the reform
the system of poor relief and the eight hours' day. They
want an international eight hours' day, but they would be
willing to allow other four hours' overtime, to be paid for by
double wages.
In 1835 the two divisions of socialists combined for elec-
The Progress and Present Position of Socialism. 5 3
tioneering purposes with one another and with a third revolu-
tionary body called the Blanquists, and they actually formed
together an organization known as the Revolutionary Union ;
but the three parties quarrelled again before the election, and
the union was dissolved. The Blanquists are disciples of the
veteran conspirator Blanqui, and include some well-known
men, such as General Eudes, and MM. Vaillant and Roche.
They are revolutionists pure and simple, and in some respects
stand near the anarchists ; only, being old birds, they move
about more cautiously, and indeed are sometimes for that
reason and because they act as intermediaries between other
revolutionaries called the " diplomatists of lawlessness."
"With all their love for revolution, however, they have more than
the usual democratic aversion to war, and their chief work at
present is in connection with the league they have founded
against permanent armies.
Although revolutionary socialism is so ill represented in the
French Legislature, there is a special parliamentary party,
known as the Socialist Group, which was founded by nine-
teen deputies in 1887, and returned thirty candidates to the
Chamber at the election of 1889. They are for communal
autonomy ; for the transformation of industrial monopolies into
public services, to be directed by the respective companies
under the control of the public ad ministration ; and for the
progressive nationalization of property, so as to make the
individual employment of it accessible to free labourers ; and
they have no lack of other planks in their platform : inter-
national federation and arbitration ; abolition of. standing
armies ; abolition of capital punishment ; universal suffrage ;
minority representation ; sexual equality ; free education,
primary, secondary, and technical ; suppression of the budget
of public worship ; separation of Church and State ; absolute
liberty to think, speak, write, meet, associate, and contract ;
abolition of indirect taxes and customs, and introduction of
a progressive income tax, and a progressive succession duty ;
public creches; establishment of superannuation, sick and
accident insurance at public expense. Among the deputies
who signed the programme in 1887 were the two Boulangists,
MM. Laisant and Laur, and MM. Clovis Hughes, Basley,
54 Contemporary Socialism.
Bower, etc. The idea of the party seems to be what M.
Laisant recommends in his " L'Anarchie Bourgeoise," pub-
lished in the same year 1887, a Republican Socialist party,
which, accepting the good works of socialism, without caring
for its political or economic theory, shall do its best to abolish
misery by any means open to it under the existing repub-
lican form of government. Republican socialism corresponds
therefore to what is called State socialism in Germany the
abolition of poverty by means of the power of the present State ;
and the question between socialists and other reformers is
narrowing in France, as elsewhere, into a question of the justice
and the suitability of the individual measures proposed.
There is also a body of Christian Socialists in France,
of whom, however, I shall have more to say in a subsequent
chapter on the Christian Socialists.
Socialism crossed very early from Prussia into Austria and
took quick root among the German-speaking population, but
has never to this day made much way among any of the
other nationalities in the Empire. The Magyars are, on the
whole, fairly comfortable and contented in their worldly cir-
cumstances, and they have a strong national aversion to any-
thing German, even a German utopia ; so that they lent no ear
to the socialist agitation till 1880, when a socialist congress
of 119 delegates was held at Buda Pest and founded the
Hungarian Labour Party. The agitation, however, has not
assumed any important dimensions. The Poles of Austria,
like the Poles of Russia and the Poles of Prussia, have all
along been a source of much disappointment to socialist
leaders, who expected they would leap into the arms of any
revolutionary scheme, but find them too pre-occupied with
their own nationalist cause to care for any other. The same
observation applies to the Czechs. They are Czechs and
Federalists first, and a social system under which they would
cease to be Czechs and Federalists, and become mere atoms
under a powerful centralized government, led possibly by
Germans, is naturally not much to their fancy. But in the
German-speaking part of the monarchy socialism has found
a ready and general welcome, and has latterly grown most
popular in the anarchist form. This development is due to
The Progress and Present Position of Socialism. 55
various causes. The federalist ideas prevalent in the country
would be a bridge to the general principles of anarchism,
while the coercive laws in force since 1870 would naturally
provoke a recourse to revolutionary methods and an impatience
with the sober and Fabian policy of the Austrian Social Demo-
crats. The Social Democrats of Austria were advised from
the first by Von Schweitzer and Liebknecht, the leaders of
German socialism at the time, to adopt this temporizing
policy, as being on the whole the best for the party in the
circumstances existing in their country. They were advised
to give a general support at the elections to the Liberal party,
because nothing could be done for socialism in Austria till the
priestly and feudal ascendancy was abolished, and that could
only be done by strengthening the hands of the Liberals.
They have continued to observe this moderate course. Unlike
their German comrades, they looked with favourable eyes on
the labour legislation introduced by Government for improving
the condition of the working classes ; and though they have
suffered from coercive legislation much longer and sometimes
quite as severely, they have never struck the qualification " by
legal means" out of their principles, but, on the contrary, have
declared, when they were permitted to hold a meeting as for
example at Briinn in 1884 that they adhered entirely and
exclusively to peaceful methods, and repudiated the deeds of
the anarchists. But then they are apparently not prospering
in number, while the anarchists are. For one thing they have
never had good leaders, and though they sometimes invite
Liebknecht or one of the German socialist leaders to come
and rouse them, Government has always refused liberty for
such addresses to be delivered in Austria. The anarchists, on
the other hand, had an energetic and eloquent leader in Peukert,
a house-painter, who is now a chief personage in anarchist
circles in London, and from here no doubt still carries on
relations with his old friends ; and their propaganda seems to
be spreading, if we judge from the political trials, and from the
fresh measures of repression directed against it in 188-4, when
Vienna was put under siege, and again in the latter part of
1838. They have nine or ten newspapers, and the socialists six
or seven. Neither faction has any representative in Parliament.
56 Contemporary Socialism.
Both parties direct their chief attention to the peasantry,
especially where any germ of an agrarian movement happens
already to prevail. The Galician agitation against great
landlords in 1886 was fomented by anarchist emissaries, and
we occasionally hear of anarchist operations among the people
of Northern Bohemia or Styria as well as in Upper Austria,
where rural discontent has long been more or less acute.
Austria is mainly an agricultural country ; but greater part of
the land is held in very large estates by the clergy and
nobility, and the evils of the old feudal regime are only now
being gradually removed. There are, it is true, as many as
1,700,000 peasant proprietors in the Cisleithanian half of the
Empire alone; but then their properties are seriously en-
cumbered by the debt of their redemption from feudal servi-
tudes and by the severity of the public taxation. The land
tax amounts to 26 per cent, of the proprietor's income, and the
indirect taxes on articles of consumption are numerous and
burdensome. But three-fourths of the rural population are
merely farm servants or day labourers, and are worse off even
than the same class elsewhere. The social question in Austria
is largely agrarian, but the spontaneous movements of the
Austrian peasantry seem rather unlikely to run in harness with
social democracy. Unions of free peasants for example have
sprung up of recent years in various provinces. Their great aim
is to procure a reduction in the taxes paid by the peasantry ;
but then they add to their programme the principle of State-
help to labour, the abolition of all feudal privileges and all
rights of birth, gratuitous education, and cessation of the
policy of contracting national debt, and they speak vaguely
about instituting a peasant State, and requiring every minister
and responsible official to serve an apprenticeship to peasant
labour as a qualification for office, in order that he may under-
stand the necessities and capacities of the peasantry. This
idea of the peasant State is analogous to the idea of the labour
State of the Social Democrats ; but of course this is agree-
ment which is really conflict. It is like the harmony between
Sforza and Charles VIII. : " I and my cousin Charles are
wonderfully at one ; we both seek the same thing Milan."
The class interest of the landed peasant is contrary to the
The Progress and Present Position of Socialism, 5 7
class interest of the working man, and would be invaded by
social democracy. The peasantry are simply fighting for
their own hand, and as their votes are courted by both
political parties they will probably be able to secure some
mitigation of their grievances. Distress is certainly serious
among them when, as happened a few years ago, in a parish
of 135 houses as many as 35 executions were made in one day
for failure to pay taxes, and in another of 250 houses as many
as 72 ; but on the whole there seems to be little of that hope-
less indigence which appears among the peasant proprietary
in countries where the practice of unrestricted or compulsory
subdivision of holdings exists, or has recently existed, to any
considerable extent.
There is an influential Catholic Socialist movement in Austria,
led by the clergy and nobility, and dealing in an earnest
spirit with the social question as it appears in that country.
Socialism was introduced into Italy in 1868 by Bakunin,
who, in spite of the opposition of Mazzini, gained wide accept-
ance for his ideas wherever he went, and founded many
branches of the International in the country, which survived
the extinction of the parent society, and continued to bear its
name. They were, like Bakunin himself, anarchist in their
social and political views, and were marked by an especial
violence in their attacks on Church and State and family.
They published a great number of journals of various sorts,
and kept up an incessant and very successful propaganda ; but
no heed was paid them by the authorities till 1878, when an
attempt on the life of the king led to a thorough examination
being instituted into the whole agitation. The dimensions
and ramifications of the movement were found to be so much
more extensive than any one in power had anticipated, that
it was determined to set a close watch thereafter on all
its operations, and its meetings and congresses were then
from time to time proclaimed. But after the passing of the
Franchise Act of 1882, a new socialist movement came into
being which looked to constitutional methods alone. The
franchise was not reduced very low : it only gave a vote to
one person in every fourteen, while in England one in six
has a vote ; but the reduction was accompanied with scrutin
58 Contemporary Socialism.
de liste and the ballot, and it was felt that something could
now be done. Accordingly a new Socialist Labour Party was
formed on the usual Marxist lines, under the leadership of a
very capable man, an orator and a good organizer, Andrea
Costa, who was formerly an anarchist. This party obtained
60,000 votes at the first subsequent election, and returned two
candidates to the Legislature, one of them being Costa. In
1883 it formed a working alliance with the Italian Democratic
Society an active working-class body of which Costa was a
leading member ; and in 1884 it entered into an incorporating
union with another working-class body, the Lombardy Labour
Federation, which had a large number of local branches.
With their help it had become, in 1886, an organization of 133
branches, and Government resolved to suppress it. Most of
the branches in the north of Italy were dissolved, and their
funds, flags, and libraries confiscated. But the party is still
active over the country. They returned three members at the
late election in November, 1890. The growth of this party
was even more displeasing to the anarchists than to the
Government, and in 1882 they called back Maletesta, one of
their old leaders, from abroad, to conduct a regular campaign
over the whole kingdom against Costa, and to denounce every
man for a traitor to the socialist cause who should take any
manner of part in parliamentary elections, or show the smallest
sign of reconciliation to the existing order of things. His
campaign ended in his arrest in May, 1883, and the condem-
nation of himself and 53 comrades to several years' imprison-
ment for inciting to disturbance of the public peace. Besides
their contentions with the Socialist Labour Party, the Italian
anarchists are much given to contending among themselves,
and split up, even beyond other parties of the kind, upon
trifles of doctrine or procedure. But however divided they
may be, socialists and anarchists in Italy are all united in
opposing the new social legislation of the Government.
When the Employers' Liability Bill was introduced, Costa
declared that legislation of that kind was utterly useless so
long as the people were denied electoral rights, because till
the franchise was reduced far enough to give the people a
real voice in public affairs, there could be no security for
The Progress and Present Position of Socialism. 59
the loyal and faithful execution of the provisions of such an
act.
The Italian socialists andanarchists have always had a lively
brood of journals, which, however, are generally shorter lived
than even socialist organs elsewhere ; but when one dies for
want of funds to-day, another comes out in its place to-morrow.
This remarkable fertility in journals seems to be due to the
large literary proletariat that exists in Italy the unemployed
educated class who could live by their pen if they only had a
paper to use it in. Through their presence among the socialists
new journals are pushed forward without sufficient funds to
carry them on, and as the people are too poor to subscribe to
them, and the party too poor to subsidize them, they soon come
to a natural termination.
The, development of socialism in Italy is no matter of sur-
prise. Though there is no great industry in the country, the
whole population seems a proletariat. There is a distressed
nobility, a distressed peasantry, a distressed working class, a
distressed body of university men. Mr. Gallenga says that for
six months of the year Italy is a national workshop ; everybody
is out of employment, and has to get work from the State ;
and he states as the reason for this, that the employing class
wants enterprise and ability, and are apt to look to the Govern-
ment for any profitable undertakings. The Government, how-
ever, are no better financiers than the rest, and the state of the
public finances is one of the chief evils of the country. Taxa-
tion is very heavy, and yet property and life are not secure.
" The peasants," says M. de Laveleye, " are reduced to extreme
misery by rent and taxation, both alike excessive. Wages are
completely inadequate. Agricultural labourers live huddled in
boiirgades, and obtain only intermittent employment. There
is thus a rural proletariat more wretched than the industrial.
Excluded from property by latifundia, it becomes the enemy
of a social order that crushes it." The situation is scarcely
better in parts of the country which are free from latifundia.
In Sicily most of the agricultural population live on farms
owned by themselves ; but then these farms are too small to
support them adequately, and their occupiers scorn the idea of
working for hire. There are as many nobles in Sicily as in
60 Contemporary Socialism.
England, and Mr. Dawes (from whose report on Sicily to the
Foreign Office in 1872 I draw these particulars states) that 25
per cent, of the lower orders are what he terms drones idlers
who are maintained by their wives and children. In Italy
there is little working-class opinion distinct from the agri-
cultural. There are few factories, and the artisans who work
in towns have the habit of living in their native villages near
by, and going and coming every day to their work. Two-
thirds of the persons engaged in manufactures do so, or at
least go to their rural homes from Saturday till Monday.
Their habits and ways of thinking are those of agriculturists,
and the social question of Italy is substantially the agricultural
labourers' question. The students at the universities, too, are
everywhere leavened with socialism. The advanced men
among them seem to have ceased to cry for a republic, and to
place their hope now in socialism. They have no desire to
overturn a king who is as patriotic as the best president, and
they count the form of government of minor importance as
compared with the reconstitutioii of property. Bakunin
thought Italy the most revolutionary country of Europe except
Spain, because of its exceptionally numerous body of enthusi-
astic young men without career or prospects ; and certainly
revolutionary elements abound in the peninsula, but, as M. de
Laveleye shrewdly remarks, a revolution is perhaps next to
impossible for want of a revolutionary metropolis. " The
malaria," he says, " which makes Rome uninhabitable for part
of the year will long preserve her from the danger of becoming
the seat of a new commune."
In Spain, as in Italy, socialism made its first appearance in
1868 through the agency of the International, and found an
immediate and warm response among the people. In 1873 the
International had an extensive Spanish organization with
300,000 members and 674 branches planted over the whole
length and breadth of the country, from industrial centres
like Barcelona to remote rural districts like the island of
Majorca. M. de Laveleye was present at several sittings of
these socialist clubs when he visited Spain in 1869, and he
says : " They were usually held in churches erected for wor-
ship. From the pulpit the orators attacked all that had pre-
The Progress and Present Position of Socialism. 6 1
viouslj* been exalted there Grod, religion, the priests, the rich.
The speeches were white hot, but the audience remained calm.
Many women were seated on the ground, working, nursing
their babes, and listening attentively as to a sermon. It was
the very image of '93." He adds that their journals wrote with
unparalleled violence, especially against religion and the Church.
On the division of the International in 1872 the Spanish
members sided with Bakunin, supporting the anarchist view of
the government of the future. This was natural for Spaniards,
among whom their own central government had been long
thoroughly detested, and their own communal organization
regarded with general satisfaction. The Spanish people, even
the humblest of them, are imbued beyond others with those
sentiments of personal dignity and mutual equality which are
at the bottom of democratic aspirations ; and in their local
communes, where every inhabitant who can read and write has
a voice in public council, they have for ages been accustomed
to manage their own affairs with harmony and advantage.
The revolutionary tradition of Spain has accordingly always
favoured communal autonomy, and the Federal rather than the
Central Republic. Castelar declares the Federal Republic to
be the most perfect form of State, though he thinks it for the
present impracticable ; and the revolution of 1873, in which the
International played an active part, was excited for the purpose
of establishing it. The Federal Republicans are not all socialists.
Many of them are for making the agricultural labourers peasant
proprietors, and even for dividing the communal property
among them ; but in a country like Spain, where communal
property exists already to a large extent, the idea of making
all other property communal property lies ever at hand as a
ready resource of reformers. Nor, again, are all Spanish
socialists federalists. There is a Social Democratic Labour
party in Spain which broke off from the anarchists in 1882,
and published a programme more on Marxist lines, demanding
(1) the acquisition of political power ; (2) the transformation
of all private and corporate into the common property of the
nation ; and (3) the reorganization of society on the basis of
industrial associations. This body is not very numerous, but
at one of its recent congresses it had delegates from 152
62 Contemporary Socialism.
different branches, and it has for the last four years had a
party organ, El Socialista, in Madrid.
The bulk of Spanish socialism still belongs, however, to the
anarchist wing. Little has been heard of the anarchists in
Spain since the revolution of 1873 and the fall of the Inter-
national. They have usually been blamed for the attempts on
the life of the king in 1878, but they have certainly never
resorted to those promiscuous outrages which have formed so
much of the recent policy of the anarchists of other countries ;
and except for participation in a few demonstrations of the
unemployed, they have maintained a surprisingly quiet and
unobtrusive existence. In 1881 they reconstituted themselves
as the Spanish Federation of the International Working Men's
Association, which is said by the author of " Socialismus und
Anarchismus, 1883-86," apparently on their own authority, to
have 70,000 members in all Spain, who are distributed in 800
branches, and hold regular district and national congresses,
but always under cover of secrecy. They have two journals
in Madrid, and others in the larger towns elsewhere. They
are sorely divided into parties and schools on very petty points,
and fierce strife rages between the tweedledums and tweedle-
dees. One party has broken away altogether and established
a society of its own, under the name of the Autonomists. The
anarchists are in close alliance with an agrarian organization
called the Rural Labourers' Union, which has agitated since
1879 for the abolition of latifundia in Andalusia, but they always
disclaim all connection with the more notorious Andalusian
society, the Black Hand, which committed so many outrages
in 1881 and 1882, and is often identified with the anarchists.
The Black Hand is a separate organization from the anarchists,
and has, it is said, 40,000 members, mostly peasants, in Anda-
lusia and the neighbouring provinces ; but their principles are
undoubtedly socialistic. Their views are confined to the
subject of land ; but they declare that land, like all other
property, has been made by labour, that it therefore cannot in
right belong to the idle and rich class who at present own it,
and that any means may be legitimately employed to deprive
this class of usurpers of their possessions the sword, fire,
slander, perjury.
The Progress and Present Position of Socialism. 63
In Spain, unlike most other countries, the artisans of the
towns show less inclination to socialistic views than the rural
labourers. They have an active and even powerful labour
movement of their own, carried on through an extensive
organization of trade unions which has risen up rapidly
within the last few years, especially in Catalonia, and they
put their whole trust in combination, co-operation, and peace-
ful agitation for gradual reform under the present order of
things, and will have nothing to say to socialism or anarchism ;
so much so, that they manifested the greatest reluctance to
join in the eight hour demonstrations of May-day, 1890, be-
cause they did not wish to be confounded or in any way
identified with the more extreme faction who were getting
those demonstrations up ; and they actually held a rival demon-
stration of their own on Sunday, the 4th of May, " in favour,"
as they stated in the public announcement of it, " of State
socialism and of State legislation, both domestic and inter-
national, to improve the general condition of the working
classes without any revolutionary or sudden change that could
alarm the Sovereign and the governing classes."
Spain made a beginning in factory legislation in 1873, when
an act was passed restricting the labour of children and young
people; but the act remained dead-letter till 1884, when the
renewal of agitation on the social question by the various
parties led the cabinet to issue an order to have this law carried
into effect, and a little later in the same year to appoint a
royal commission to institute a thorough inquiry into the
whole circumstances of the labouring classes, and the conditions
of their improvement. This commission, which received
nothing but abuse from the anarchists, who said the labour
problem must be settled from below and not from above,
was welcomed very heartily by the trade unionists, and with
favour rather than otherwise even by the Social Democrats ;
but it has as yet had little or no result, and men who know
the country express their opinion very freely that it will never
lead to anything but an act or two that will remain dead-letter
like their predecessors. The suffrage is high, only one person
in seventeen having a vote ; and working-class legislation will
continue lukewarm till the working class acquires more real
64 Contemporary Socialism.
political power. A leading Spanish statesman said lately :
" The day for social questions has not yet come in Spain, and
we can afford to look on and see other countries make experi-
ments which may be of use some day when our politicians and
thinkers can find time to devote attention to these twentieth
century problems."
There seems much truth in the view that socialism, spite of
the alarm its spread caused to the Spanish Government in 1872,
is really a disease of a more advanced stage of industrial
development than yet exists in Spain, and therefore unlikely
to grow immediately into anything very formidable there.
The country has few large industrial centres. Two-thirds of
the people are still engaged in agriculture ; and though it is
among the agricultural classes socialism has broken out, the
outbreak has been local, and confined to provinces where the
conditions of agricultural labour are decidedly bad. But these
conditions vary much from province to province. In the
southern provinces the cereal plains and also the lower pastur-
ages are generally possessed by large proprietors, who work
them by farmers on the metayer principle, with the help of
bands of migratory labourers in harvest time ; but in the moun-
tainous parts of these provinces the estates belong for the
most part to the communes. They are usually large, and as
every member of the commune has an undivided right of using
them, he is able to obtain from them the main part of his
living without rent. Many of the inhabitants of such districts
engage in the carrying trade, to which they conjoin a little
cattle-dealing as opportunities offer ; and as they are sober and
industrious, they are usually comparatively well off. In the
northern provinces the situation is in some respects better.
Land is much subdivided, and though the condition of the
labouring class is not as a rule unembarrassed, that result is
due more to their own improvidence and indolence than to
anything else. A man of frugal and industrious habits can
always rise without much difficulty from the position of day
labourer to that of metayer tenant, and from tenancy to pro-
prietorship, and some of the small proprietors are able to amass
a considerable competency. Besides, even the improvident are
saved from the worst by the communal organization. They
The Progress and Present Position of Socialism. 65
have always a right of pasturage on the commons, and a right
to wood for fire, house and furniture, and they get their chil-
dren's education and medical attendance in sickness gratui-
tously on condition of giving six daj r s' labour at the roads of the
commune. The most active and saving part of the population,
north and south, is the class of migratory workmen, who stay at
home only during seed-time and harvest, and go for the rest of
the year to work in Castile, Andalusia, or Portugal, as masons
or carpenters, or waiters, and always come back with a store of
money. Sometimes they remain abroad for a year or two, and
sometimes they go to Cuba or Mexico for twenty years, and
return to settle on a property of their own in their native
village. This class forms the personnel of the small property in
Spain, and they give by their presence a healthy stimulus to
the neighbourhoods they reside in. The small property is in
Spain, as elsewhere, too often turned from a blessing to a curse
by its subdivision, on the death of the proprietor, among the
members of his family, who in Spain are usually numerous,
though it is interesting to learn that in some of the Pyrenean
valleys it has been preserved for five hundred years by the
habit of integral transmission to the eldest child son or
daughter coupled with the habit of voluntary celibacy on the
part of many of the other children. The economic situation
of Spain, then, is not free from defects ; but there always exists
a wide margin of hope in a country where, as Frere said, " God
Almighty has so much of the land in His own holding," and
its economic situation would not of itself be likely to pre-
cipitate social revolution.
From Spain, socialism passed into Portugal; but from
the first it has worked very quietly there. Its adherents
formed themselves into an association in 1872, and held con-
gresses, published newspapers, started candidates, and actively
promoted their views in every legitimate way. Their pro-
gramme was anarchism, like that of their Spanish allies ;
but, unlike anarchists elsewhere, they repudiated all resort
to violence, for, as M. de Laveleye says, they are naturally
"less violent than the Spaniards, the economic situation of
the country is better, and liberty being very great, prevents the
explosion of popular fury, which is worse when exasperated by
66 Contemporary Socialism.
repression." Portugal is au agricultural country in a good
climate, where the people have few wants, and find it easy to
satisfy them fairly well. In the absence of any manner of
acute discontent, socialism could never have been much
better than an abstract speculation; and Portuguese
socialism, if we may trust the complaints made by the party
elsewhere, seems now to have lost even the savour it had.
In March, 1888, one of the socialist newspapers of London
reported that the Portuguese working men's movement had,
in the course of the preceding ten years, given up the straight-
forward socialist character it once had; that its leaders had
entered into compromises with other political parties, and
threw themselves too much into experiments in co-operation ;
that the party press was very lukewarm in its socialism, and
inclined more to mere Radicalism ; and that one or two attempts
that had been made to start more extreme journals had
completely failed ; but it announced with satisfaction, that at
last, in January, 1888, a frankly anarchist paper was published
at Oporto A Revoluzao Social. About the same time the
editor of a journal which had made some host.ile remarks on
anarchism was shot, and anarchists were blamed and arrested
for the deed. There was a Socialist Congress at Lisbon in
1882, composed of twelve delegates representing eight societies,
all in Lisbon or Oporto.
While the socialist cause has been thus rather retreating in
the south of Europe, it has been making some advances in the
north. Of the three Scandinavian countries, Denmark alone
gave any early response to the socialist agitation ; but there
are now socialist organizations in Sweden and Norway, and
the movement in Denmark has assumed considerable dimen-
sions. Attempts were made to introduce socialism into
Norway as far back as 1873 by Danish emissaries, and the
International also founded a small society of thirty-seven
members in Christiania ; but the society seems to have died,
and nothing more was heard of socialism there till the com-
motion in favour of a Republic in 1883. A Social Democratic
Club was then established in Christiania, and a Social
Democratic Congress was held at Arendal in 1887 ; but even
yet Norwegian social democracy is of so mild a character thac
The Progress and Present Position of Socialism. 67
it would be counted conservatism by Social Democrats else-
where, for this Congress issued a programme for a new labour
party without a word of socialism in it, and merely asking for
a normal working day, for factory legislation and reform of
taxation. In Sweden there is more appearance of agitation,
because there is one very active agitator in the country, Palm,
a tailor, who keeps socialism en evidence by making stump
speeches, or getting up street processions with the usual red
flags, and sometimes such was the easy indifference of the
Government to his work at first with a military band in full
uniform at the head of them. The Swedish socialists had
four newspapers in 1SSS, but three of them were confiscated
by the Government in December of that year, and their editors
arrested for offences against religion and the throne. In May,
1890, they held their first Congress at Stockholm, when dele-
gates appeared from twenty-nine unions ; but the movement
is very unimportant 'in Sweden and Norway, and the chief
conditions of success seem wanting to it in those countries.
There is no class of labourers there without property; no
town residuum, and no rural cottagers. There being few great
manufacturers in the kingdom, only fifteen per cent, of
the people altogether live in towns. The rest are spread
sparsely over the rural districts on farms belonging to them-
selves, and in the absence of roads are obliged to make at
home many of the ordinary articles of consumption. What
with the produce of their small properties and their own
general handiness, they are unusually independent and com-
fortable. M. de Laveleye considers them the happiest people
in Europe.
The circumstances of Denmark are different. The operatives
of the town are badly off. Mr. Strachey tells us in his report
to the Foreign Office in 1870 that every fourth inhabitant of
Copenhagen was in receipt of parochial relief in 1867, and he
says that while the Danish operatives are sober and well
educated, they fail in industry and thrift. " No fact in my
report," he states, "is more certain than that the Dane has
yet to learn the meaning of the word work; of entireness
and thoroughness he has seldom any adequate notion. This
is why the Swedish artisan can so often take the bread from
68 Contemporary Socialism.
his mouth." In the rural districts, too, the economic situa-
tion, though in some respects highly favourable, is attended by
a shadow. The land is, indeed; -widely diffused. There are in
all 280,000 families in the rural districts of Denmark, and
of these 170,000 occupy independent freeholds, 30,000 farm
hired land, and only 26,000 are agricultural labourers pure and
simple. Seven-eighths of the whole country is held by peasant
proprietors, and as a rule no class in Europe has improved
more during the last half century than the Danish peasant or
Bonde. Mr. Strachey says : " The Danish landlord was till
recent times the scourge of the peasantry. Under his paternal
care the Danish Bonde was a mere hewer of wood and drawer
of water ; his lot was no better than that of the most miserable
ryot of Bengal. The Bonde is now the freest, the most politi-
cally wise, the best educated of European yeomen." But
there is another side to the picture. In Denmark, as in other
places where the small property abounds-, the property is often
too small for the proprietor's necessities, and there thus arises
a kind of proprietor-proletariat, unwilling to part with their
land and unable to extract a living out of it. This class, along
with the rural labourers who have no property, constitute a
sort of fourth estate in the country, and there as elsewhere their
condition is preparing a serious social question for the future.
Then, among the influences favourable to the acceptance of
socialism in Denmark, must be counted the fact that one of
the two great political parties of the country is democratic.
Curiously enough that party consists of the peasantry, and the
Conservatives of Denmark are the commercial classes of the
towns, with the artisans in their wake, their Conservatism,
however, being substantially identical with the Liberalism of
the same classes in other countries. This democratic party
seeks to make everything in the State conduce to the interests
of the peasantry, and keeps alive in the country the idea that
the State exists by the will of the people, and for their good
alone.
The International was introduced into this exclusively
Protestant country by two militant Roman Catholics Pio, a
retired military officer, who came to Denmark as religious
tutor to a baroness who had joined the Church of Rome, and
The Progress and Present Position of Socialism. 69
Geleff, who wrote for an Ultramontane journal. They pursued
their new mission with great zeal and success. They opened
branches of the association in most of the towns, started a
party newspaper, held open-air meetings, were sent to im-
prisonment for sedition in 1873, and on their release in 1877
absconded to America with the whole of the party funds,
and disputed bitterly there over the spoil. While they were
in prison, the International was suppressed in Denmark ; but
the members merely reconstituted the organization under the
name of the Socialist Labour Party, and the place of leader
was taken for a time by an authoress, Jacquette Lilyenkrantz,
for, as in other countries, women are in Denmark among the most
active propagandists of socialism. They kept up communica-
tions with the socialist leaders in Germany, and the meeting
of the German Socialist Congress at Copenhagen in 1883 gave
the movement a new impetus. They were able to return two
deputies, Holm and Horclun, to the Volkething in 1884, and
they took part, 80,000 strong, in the Copenhagen procession
of 1886, in commemoration of the fundamental law of the
State. Their chief party organ, the Social Demokraten, has
a circulation of 26,000 daily, one of the largest newspaper
circulations in Denmark; and there are other four socialist
journals in the kingdom.
They belong to the moderate wing of social democracy, being
opposed to revolution and terrorism, and placing their confi-
dence in constitutional agitation. Their programme is sub-
stantially that of Gotha the right of the labourers to the full
product of labour, State management of all industry, free
education, universal suffrage, normal working day, abolition
of class inequalities, single chamber in legislature, free justice,
no standing army, State provision for sick and aged, religions
to be a private affair. They turn their propaganda with most
hope to the land proletariat ; and a recent writer, P. Schmidt,
in an interesting paper in the Arbeiterfreund for 1889, says
they are succeeding in their mission, and that socialism is
spreading more and more every day among the rural labourers.
At their last Congress, held at Copenhagen, in June, 1890, and
attended by seventy-one delegates from fifty-four different
branches, their attention was chiefly occupied with questions
70 Contemporary Socialism.
about the land ; provision of more land for the people by com-
pulsory acquisition of ecclesiastical property and uncultivated
ground ; State advances of capital to agricultural labourers ;
agricultural schools ; better housing for farm servants, etc. In
1887 they held a socialist exhibition in Copenhagen an inter-
national exhibition of socialist pamphlets, newspapers, books,
magazines, and pictures; and in 1890 they returned two
members to the Landthing the first time they secured repre-
sentatives in the Upper Chamber.
Belgium has many of the conditions of soil most favourable
for socialism a dense population, large towns, an advanced
productive system, and an industrial class at once very nu-
merous, very ill paid, and very open, through their education,
to new social ideas. For a time, accordingly, socialism spread
remarkably in that country. The International had eight
federations of branches in 1869, with 60,000 members and
several newspapers. In the dispute between Marx and Bakunin,
the Belgian Internationalists seem to have sided as a body with
Bakunin ; but they presently fell out among themselves, and, in
spite of many repeated efforts at reconciliation, they have never
since succeeded in composing their differences. The German
socialist leaders tried to reorganize them in 1879 at a special
Congress at Brussels, under the name of the Socialist Labour
Party of Belgium, and with the Gotha programme ; but they
were rent again in 1881 by a division which had then entered
into German socialism itself. The majority of the party adhered
to Liebknecht and Bebel ; but an active minority, composed
chiefly of "Walloons, followed the anarchist views of Most and
Hasselman, withdrew from the party, and founded another called
the Revolutionary Union. The anarchists have one journal
Ni DieUj Ni Maitre violent, as the name indicates, but obscure
and unimportant ; but they believe most in the less intellectual
propaganda of deed, and make themselves conspicuous from
time to time by dynamite explosions and street fights with
the police or the military, or their own socialist rivals. The
Belgian socialists, on the other hand, look more to constitutional
and parliamentary action, and usually work with the Liberals at
the elections ; but the Belgian voting qualification is high, and
they have never succeeded in returning a candidate of their
The Progress and Present Position of Socialism. 7 1
own. In 1887 their candidate for Brussels got 1,000 votes,
while his successful rival had 3,000. They took an active part
in the Republican agitation which was raised by the School
Law in 1881. They have capable leaders, and they publish
two journals, which, however, for want of funds, appear only at
distant and uncertain intervals. They have lately begun to
hold many open-air meetings, which the authorities had long
forbidden, and thay held an International Socialist Exhibition
at Ghent in 1837 like that held in the same year at Copen-
hagen.
On the whole socialism, after twenty years' work, is making
no way in Belgium, notwithstanding the favourable character
of the soil, because the labour movement is choosing other
directions and forms of organization. Trade unions and co-opera-
tive societies have been multiplying much during these
twenty years, and in 1885 a strong Balgiau Labour Party
was formed, with 120 branches and 100,000 members, which
aims at promoting the practical wellbeing of the working class
by remedial legislation by in some cases vicious State-social-
istic legislation, it may be but has no word of the right to
the full product of labour, of the nationalization of all industry,
or of the social revolution. One of the items of the programme
is worded " collective property " ; but whether it contemplates
the universal State-property of collectivism or the corporate
property of co-operation does not appear. The other items are
universal suffrage, direct legislation by the people (presumably
the referendum), free undenominational education, abolition of
standing army, abolition of budget of worship, normal work
day, normal wages, regulation of work of women and children,
factory inspection, employers' liability, workmen's chambers,
courts of conciliation, repeal of taxes on means of subsistence,
increased income tax, international labour legislation. M. de
Laveleye attributes the ill success of socialism in Belgium,
and no doubt rightly, to the influence of discussion and free
institutions. Government has left it to stand or fall on its own
merits before public opinion. The socialists enjoy full
liberty of the platform and press ; they can hold meetings
and congresses and form clubs in any town they please, and
the result is that though the movement, like all new move-
72 Contemporary Socialism.
ments, made a certain impression and advance for a time at
first, it got checked under the influence of discussion and the
application of solid practical judgment. Then, though the
Belgian Legislature has not yet done what it can and ought for
ameliorating the condition of the labourers, philanthropy has
been very active and useful in a number of ways in that king-
dom. The Catholic Church has always intervened to keep up
a high ideal of employers' responsibility the old ideal of a
patriarchal care ; and there is a strong organization in Belgium
of Catholic "Working Men's Clubs, which were formed into one
body in 1867, which were united with the Catholic Working
Men's Clubs of Germany in 1869, and with those of France
in 1870, and which now constitute with these the Interna-
tional Catholic "Working Men's Association.
It ought perhaps to be mentioned that there is an old but
small party of Land Nationalizers in Belgium, the Colinsiaii
Socialists, whose principles have been warmly endorsed by
Mr. Raskin as "forming the most complete system of social and
political reform yet put forward." They want the State to own
all the soil, and let it out by auction ; but they are opposed
to nationalizing any of the other instruments of production.
In Holland, wealth is very unequally divided, wages are low,
and taxation, being largely indirect, falls heavily on the
working class ; but the people are phlegmatic, domestic,
religious, and contrive on small means to maintain a general
appearance of comfort and decency. Above all, they enjoy
free institutions ; and, under freedom, socialism has run the same
course in Holland as p. Belgium. The International made
rapid advances in 1869, founded branches in all the towns,
and carried on, after the Paris Commune, so active and success-
ful an agitation that the bourgeoisie took alarm, and Government
imposed some restrictions on the disaffected press. But a
general rise in wages happened about the time, a strong co-
operative movement was promoted under the lead of the ortho-
dox divines, a lively polemic against socialism broke out among
the working men themselves, and all interest in the social revo-
lution seemed to have died away, when, in 1878, it was revived
again by D. Niewenhuis, a retired Protestant minister, a man
of capacity and zeal, who has been unwearied in his advocacy
The Progress and Present Position of Socialism. 73
of the cause ever since. He started in that year a journal,
Recht Voor Allen, which is still, I believe, the only socialist
organ in Holland, and appears now three times a week ; and
he founded the Social Democratic Union in 1884, which
is strongest in the Hague and Amsterdam, but has branches
in most of the other towns, and a membership by no means
inconsiderable, though much below the old numbers of
the Dutch International. After being imprisoned in 1837 for
political reasons, Niewenhuis was returned to the Legis-
lature in 1888 the first socialist who has sat there. The
Dutch Socialists, to increase their numbers, enrol a class of
" secret " members, timid spirits who will only come to them
" by night, for fear of the Jews." There is also a handful of
anarchists in Holland, who have a newspaper in Amsterdam,
and are said to live harmoniously with the socialists, and, accord-
ing to the reports of the American consuls, nobody in the
country thinks any "harm of either.
Switzerland has swarmed for a century with conspirators
of all hues and nations ; but the Swiss thanks again to free
institutions have been steel against revolution. The " Young
G-ermanys " and " Young Italys " whom she sheltered in the
past sought only, it is true, to win for their own countries the
political freedom which Switzerland already enjoyed ; but the
socialist and anarchist refugees of the last twenty years have
had social principles to preach which were as new and as good
for the Swiss as for their own countrymen ; and, speaking as
they did the languages of the Confederation, they have never
ceased making active efforts for the conversion of the Swiss.
The old Jurassian Federation of the International, still con-
tinues to exist in French-speaking Switzerland, and to bear
witness for the extremest kind of anarchist communism no
force or authority whatever, and a collective consumption of
products as well as a collective production ; but this body is not
increasing, and though Guesde, the French socialist, made a
lecturing tour through that division of Switzerland in 1885, he
had quite as little success for his branch of the revolutionary
cause. There are numbers of Social Democratic Clubs in the
German-speaking cantons, but they consist mainly of German
refugees, and contain few native Swiss members. After the
74 Contemporary Socialism.
Anti-Socialist Laws of 1879, the German socialists settled largely
in Switzerland. They transferred to Zurich their part}* organ,
the Social Democrat, and along with it, to use their own phrase,
the entire Olympus of the party, the body of writers and
managers who moved the shuttle of its operations. These
propagandists naturally did not neglect the country of their
adoption, but used every opportunity to forward their agitation
by addresses and even by extended missionary journeys, and a
separate Swiss Social Democratic party was actually founded,
with a separate organ, the Arbeiterstimme ; but it collapsed in
1884 from internal dissensions. No attempt was made to revive
it till 1888, when the action of the Federal Council in May
against the foreign socialists resident in the Confederation led
to the organization of a Swiss socialist party in October. The
Federal Government had already, in 1884 and 1885, taken
measures against the political refugees, especially the an-
archists, who were thought to have abused the hospitality they
received by planning and preparing in Switzerland the series of
crimes which shocked all Europe in 1884, and even by trying to
explode the Federal Palace at Berne itself. The Government
instituted an inquiry, and finding the country absolutely
riddled with anarchist clubs, determined to keep the eye of
the police on them, and in the meantime expelled thirty or
forty of their leading members from Switzerland altogether.
These were almost without exception either Austrians or
Germans, and included Neve, now a leading anarchist in
London. The Russian anarchists were apparently not thought
so dangerous, their great occupation being to invent new ways
and means of smuggling newspapers into Russia ; but they
disliked the police supervision to which they were subjected,
and very generally quitted Switzerland of their own accord
for London or Paris. The anarchist organ, the Revolte, was
removed at the same time to Paris, but its place in Geneva
was taken by a new paper L'Egalitaire. In 1883 the police
were ordered to report all socialist meetings held in the country,
and all arrivals or departures of " foreigners whose means of
subsistence was unknown, and whose presence might, for
other reasons, become dangerous to the safety of the country";
and as this further turn of the screw was believed to be made
The Progress and Present Position of Socialism. 75
on the instigation of Germany, it provoked considerable oppo-
sition, one result of which was the formation of the new
Swiss socialist party.
This party, however, is not an affair of any magnitude, and
does not appear very likely to become so; for the working men of
Switzerland have the public power in their own hands alreadj 7 ,
and they have their own organizations besides to look after
their interests ; and while they are by no means averse to the
use of the powers of the State, they are disposed to move with
inquiry and caution, and to see every step of their way before
running into speculative schemes of foreign origin. Their
political position satisfies them, because they know they are
too strong for Government to neglect their wishes, because
some labour laws have already been passed for their protection,
and because the authorities always show themselves ready
to entertain any new proposals for the same object, as, for
example, they did in May, 1890, by summoning an Inter-
national Congress at Berne to discuss the length of the work-
ing day and other conditions of labour.
Their economic position, moreover, is also comparatively
satisfactory for various reasons, among which Mr. Bonar, in his
report to the 'Foreign Office in 1870, gives a chief place to
the general working of democratic institutions and the preva-
lence of benevolent and charitable associations. "In enumerat-
ing," he says, "the favourable circumstances in which the Swiss
working man is placed, prominence must be given to the im-
mense extension of the principle of democracy, which, whatever,
may be its defects and dangers from a political point of view
when pushed to extremes, serves in Switzerland in its econo-
mical effects to advance the cause of the operative by removing
the barriers dividing class from class, and to establish among
all grades the bonds of mutual sympathy and goodwill, further
strengthened by a widely-spread network of associations or-
ganized with the object of securing the common interests and
welfare of the people." Masters and workmen are socially
more equal than in most European countries ; they sit side by
side at the board of the Communal Council, they belong to the
same choral societies, they refresh themselves at the same
cafes. In most cantons, too, operatives are either owners of, or
76 Contemporary Socialism.
hold from the communes, small pieces of land which they cul-
tivate in their leisure hours, and which thus serve them when
work gets slack or fails altogether. The favourable rural eco-
nomy of the country is well known ; its peasant proprietors
rival those of France. The Swiss societies of beneficence are
remarkable, and almost suggest the hope that the voluntary
socialism of a more enlarged and widely organized system of
charity may be found to furnish a substantial solution of the
social question. Every canton of Switzerland has its society of
public utility, whose aims take an extensive range ; it gives
the start to projects of improvement of every description,
infant schools, schools of design, savings banks, schemes for
the poor, the sick, the dumb, singing classes, halls for Sunday
recreation, popular lectures, workmen's houses, protection of
animals, even industrial undertakings which promise to be
ultimately beneficial, though they may not pay at first. The
society of Basle has 900 members and a capital of 6,000, and
the Swiss Society of Public Utility is an organization for the
whole Republic, which holds an annual congress at Zurich,
and general meetings in the different cantons by turns. These
meetings pass off with every mark of enthusiasm, and gather
together men of all religious and political opinions in a common
concern for the progress and prosperity of the masses. One of
the institutions which these societies have largely promoted is
what they call a hall of industry, or a bazaar, where loans may
be received by workmen on the security of their wages, or of
goods they may deposit. A labourer who has made any article
which he cannot get immediately sold, may deposit it at one of
these bazaars, and obtain an advance equal to a fixed propor-
tion of its value, and if the article is sold at the bazaar, the
proceeds are accounted for to the depositor, less the sum
advanced and a small charge for expenses. These institutions,
Mr. Bonar says, have had excellent effects, though he admits
that the facilities of borrowing have led the working men in
some places into debt ; but they are at any rate a vast im-
provement on the pawnbroking system in vogue elsewhere.
The condition of Switzerland shows us clearly enough that
democracy under a regime of freedom lends no ear to socialism,
but sets its face in entirely different directions.
The Progress and Present Position of Socialism. 77
The United States of America have done more for experi-
mental socialism than any other country. Owenites, Fourier-
ists, Icarians have all established communities there, but these
communities have failed long ago, except one of the Icarian,
and the only other socialist experiments now existing in
America are seventy or eighty religious communities, Shakers
and Rappists, whose success has been due to their religious
discipline and their celibacy, and whose members amount to no
more than 5,000 souls all told. There is indeed a Russian Com-
mune in California, but it remains a solitary Russian Commune
still, the " new formula of civilization," as Russian reformers
used to call it, showing no sign of further adoption. Nor has
the new or political socialism found any better success in the
States. There are various indigenous forms of it such as
the agrarian socialism of Mr. Henry George, and the national-
ism of Mr. E. Bellamy but in point of following they are of
little importance, and the socialism of the American socialist
and revolutionary parties is a mere German import, with as yet
a purely German consumption. It has been pushed vigorously
in the American market for twenty years, but taken singularly
little hold of the American taste. There is one revolutionary
socialist body composed chiefly of English-speaking members,
the International Workmen's Association, which was founded
in 1881 in one of the western states ; but Mr. Ely says its
membership would be generously estimated at 15,000, and it
considers the great work of the present should be popular educa-
tion, so as to prepare the people for the revolution when it comes.
The Boston Anarchists, perhaps, ought not, strictly speaking,
to be included in any account of socialism, for, unlike most
contemporarj 7 ' anarchists, they are not socialist, but extremely
individualist ; but historically, it is worth noting, Boston Anar-
chism is the doctrine of a disenchanted socialist, Josiah
"Warren, who had lived with Robert Owen at New Harmony,
and came to the conclusion that that experiment failed because
the individual had been too much sunk in the community, and
no room was left for the play of individual interests, individual
rights, and individual responsibilities. From Owen's commu-
nism, Warren ran to the opposite extreme, and thought it im-
possible to individualize things too much. He would abolish
78 Contemporary Socialism.
the State, and have the work of police and defence done by
private enterprise, like any other service. He issued some
books, tried to carry out his views by practical experiment,
and, though they failed, he has still a small band of believing
disciples at Boston, who publish a newspaper called Liberty,
but have no organization and no importance.
Henry George and his followers, too, perhaps ought not in
strictness to be classified among socialists. He would certainly
repudiate such a classification himself, and the United Labour
Party, which he founded in 1836 to promote his views by poli-
tical action, expelled the socialists from membership in 1887.
His actual practical proposal is nothing more than a narrow
and illusory plan of taxation ; but he puts it forward so ex-
pressly as the keystone of a new social system, as the remedy
prescribed by economic science itself for the complete regene-
ration of society and the simultaneous removal of all existing
social evils, that he is not improperly placed among Utopian
socialists. Does he not promise us a new heaven and a new
earth ? And if he believes the State can call the new heaven
and the new earth into being by a mere turn in the incidence
of taxation, while most other contemporary socialists think the
State must first pull down all that now is and reconstruct the
whole on a new plan, is he. on account of this greater credulity
of his, to be considered a more, and not rather a less, sober and
rational speculator than they ? He wants to abolish landlord-
ism, while they want to abolish landlordism and all other
capitalism besides ; and his views may fairly be called partial
or agrarian socialism. The United Labour Party was founded
mainly to promote Mr. George's panacea of the single tax
on such land values as arise from the growth of society
apart from individual exertion ; but it includes other
articles in its programme the municipalization of the supply
of water, light, and heat ; the nationalization of all money,
note issue, post, telegraphs, railways, and savings banks ; re-
duction of the hours of labour, prohibition of child labour,
suppression of the competition of prison labour with honest
labour ; sanitary inspection of houses, factories, and mines ;
simplification of legal procedure ; secret ballot ; payment of
election expenses. The United Labour Party is not strong.
The Progress and Present Position of Socialism. 79
When Mr. George stood for the Maj-oralty of New York, he
had 68,000 votes to his opponent's 90,000 ; but he had on that
occasion the assistance of the Socialistic Labour Party, who are
said by Mr. Ely to number about 25,000 in New York, and
who certainly constituted a very considerable element in the
United Labour Party, for they were expelled at the Party
Convention only by a vote of 94 to 54. On the other hand, Mr.
Ely's estimate of the strength of the socialists is possibly too
high, for they ran a candidate for the Mayoralty of New York
themselves in 1888, a leading man of the party, one Jones, and
he only secured 2,000 votes. However that may be, the United
Labour Party was certainly much weakened by the loss of the
socialists, and they were disabled entirely in the following year
by a division on the question of Free Trade and the secession
of Father McGlynn and the Protectionist members.
Nationalism is the name of a new movement, the fruit of the
remarkable and very popular novel of Mr. Edward Bellamy,
" Looking Backward," which may be said to be the latest de-
scription of Utopia as it now stands with all the most modern
improvements. Mr. Bellamy would have all industry orga-
nized and conducted by the nation on the basis of a common
obligation of work and a general guarantee of livelihood, all
men to get exactly the same wages, and to do exactly the same
quantity of work, due allowance being made for differences in
severity, and the State to enlarge indefinitely its free public
provision of the means of common enjoyment and culture.
Mr. Bellamy's charming pictures of the new country naturally
engendered a general wish to be there, and many little societies
have been established to hasten the hour ; but as the movement
has not been more than a year in being, little account can yet
be given of its success. The Nationalists have quite recently
issued an organ, The New Nation, which announces its pro-
gramme to be (1) the nationalization of post, telegraphs, tele-
phone, railways and coal mines ; (2) municipalization of gas
and water supply, and the like ; and (3) the equalization of
educational opportunities as between rich and poor, and the
promotion of all reforms tending towards humaner, more fra-
ternal, and more equal conditions. Nationalism out of Utopia,
therefore, means merely a little State-socialism.
8o Contemporary Socialism.
The strongest socialist organizations in the United States
are the Socialistic Labour Party, corresponding to the
Social Democrats of Europe, and the International Working
People's Association, corresponding to the anarchists ; but
both are composed almost exclusively of Germans. There are
more Germans in the North American Republic than in any
State of Germany except Prussia ; and as many of them have
fled from their own country for political reasons to escape
the conscription, or to escape prosecution for sedition they
bear no goodwill to the old system of government, and harbour
revolutionary ideas almost from the nature of things. A so-
cialist propaganda began among them so far back as 1848,
when "Weitling, of whom more will be said presently, pub-
lished a socialist newspaper ; and a Socialist Gymnastic Union
was established in New York in 1850, which succeeded in
forming a kind of federal alliance, apparently for socialistic
purposes, with a number of other local German gymnastic
societies throughout the States ; but though these societies
still exist, they seem to have dropped their socialism. It
was taken up again, however, in 1869, by the International,
which transferred its General Council to New York in
1872, held congresses from time to time in the country,
and eventually, at the Newark Convention of 1877, adopted
the name of the Socialistic Labour Party, with a programme
formed after the Gotha lines. The numbers of the party
were strengthened in the years immediately following by the
arrival of German refugees, expelled from their own land by
the Socialist Laws ; but the new members brought with them
elements of dissension which speedily came to a head after
the arrival of the incendiary spirit, John Most, in 1882, and led,
in 1883, to the entire separation of the Anarchists from the
Social Democrats. The latter held a separate Congress at
Baltimore in the latter year, attended by 16 delegates, re-
presenting 23 branches and 10.000 members, and it reported
that altogether 38 branches adhered to them. The anarchists
held a Congress at Pittsburg, and formed themselves into the
International Working People's Association, with the follow-
ing principles :
" What we would achieve is therefore plainly and simply
The Progress and Present Position of Socialism. 8 1
" 1st. Destruction of the existing class rule by all means ;
i.e., by energetic, relentless, revolutionary, and international
action.
" 2nd. Establishment of a free society based upon co-opera-
tive organization of production.
" 3rd. Free exchange of equivalent products by and between
the productive organizations without commerce and profit-
mongery.
" 4th. Organization of education on a secular, scientific, and
equal basis for both sexes.
" 5th. Equal rights for all without distinction of sex or race.
" 6th. Regulation of all public affairs by free contracts
between the autonomous (independent) communes and associa-
tions resting on a federalistic basis." (Ely's " Labour Movement
in America," p. 231.)
They differ from the Socialistic Labour Party, as this pro-
gramme shows, in their exclusive devotion to revolution, and
their opposition to all central government.
The Socialistic Labour Party has several newspapers, the
principal being the Sozialist and the Xeu Yorker Volkszeitung
of New York, and the Tageblatt of Philadelphia ; and the
anarchists have more, the best known being Host's notorious
Freiheit. Mr. Ely mentions sixteen socialist newspapers and
ten sympathizing with socialism, and says that the majority
of these support the anarchist side. The anarchists, more-
over, have one journal in English the Alarm ; the Socialistic
Labour Party started one in 1883, but it died. With that ex-
ception the press of both parties is entirely German, and neither
party seems to have done almost anything in the way of an
English propaganda from the platform. Dr. and Mrs. Aveling
state that before they made their lecturing tour on the subject
through the States in 1886, the American public had never
heard socialism preached to them in their own tongue ; yet
books like Mr. Gronlund's " Co-operative Commonwealth,"
giving a very effective exposition of socialism, had already
appeared from the American press. Dr. and Mrs. Aveling say,
moreover, they met with more hostility to their mission from
the anarchists than from any other source in America. The
American people, while firmly stamping out the dynamite
G
82 Contemporary Socialism.
policy of the anarchists, have naturally nothing to say
against an academic propaganda of any system of doctrine.
The trend of the labour movement in America seems away
from socialism. That movement is in many respects more
powerful there than in any European country. There are some
five hundred labour newspapers in the United States, and an
immense 'number of trade organizations of all kinds. Political
power, moreover, both in the States and in the Union, is in
the hands of the working class ; and that class has now very
nearly the same grievances there as it has in Europe, and the
same aspirations after a better order of things. But their
tendencies are not nearer socialism, but further from it.
They simply cannot understand people who tell them the}*
have no power to work out their own salvation under the
system that is, and that nothing can be done, as Marx assures
them, until every capital in Europe is ready for a simultaneous
revolution with New York and Chicago. The trade unions
accordingly ignore socialism. The Knights of Labour ex-
pressly repudiate it, and in the course of a very long pro-
gramme they hardly make a demand which has a taint even
of State-socialism. This " Noble Order of the Knights of
Labour " is a general association of working men to promote the
cause of labour, partly by their own efforts and partly through
the Government. By their own efforts they are to promote
co-operation till, if possible, it supersedes the present wages
system entirely ; equality of wages for men and women for
equal work ; a general eight hours day through a general
strike ; and a system of arbitration in trade quarrels. From the
Union Legislature they want merely a few general reforms, none
bearing directly on the situation of labour, except the abolition
of foreign contract labour. The others are, reform of the
currency, nationalization of telegraphs and railways, and the
institution of banking facilities of various kinds in connection
with the Post Office. From the State Legislatures they ask
the reservation of public lands to actual settlers, the simpli-
fication of the administration of justice, factory legislation,
graduated income tax, and the following provisions for labour :
weekly payment of wages in money, mechanic's lien on the pro-
duct of his labour for his wages, compulsory arbitration in trade
The Progress and Present Position of Socialism. 8^5
o j \j
disputes, prohibition of labour of children under fifteen. In
1886 they were 702.884 strong, but they have declined sorely
since then. Their great weapon was to be an extension
of strikes and boycotting beyond what was possible to single
trades ; but it was found that this policy was double-edged,
and caused more hurt to some sections of the working class
than any good it could do to others ; and people lost faith
in the principle of such huge miscellaneous organizations.
Dr. Aveling contends that the Knights of Labour, in spite of
Mr. Powderly's disclaimer, are really, though it may be un-
consciously, socialists, because they want to supersede the
wages system, if they can, by establishing co-operative insti-
tutions without State aid ; and this, he holds, " is pure and
unadulterated socialism." Indeed ! then where is the man
who is not a pure and unadulterated socialist ? and what need
for any mission to the States to preach the socialist message
to the Americans for the first time in their own tongue ?
England was the country last reached by the present wave
of revolutionary socialism, although the system has been
largely conceived upon a study of English circumstances, and
is claimed to be peculiarly adapted to them. England is al-
ternately the hope and the despair of Continental socialists.
Every requisite of revolution is there, and yet the people will
not rise. The yeomanry are gone. The land has come into
the hands of a few. Industry is carried on by great centralized
capital. The large system of production has almost finished
its work. The mass of the people is a proletariat ; they are
thronged in large towns ; every tenth person is a pauper ; and
the great mansions of the rich cast an evil shadow into the
crowded dens of the wretched. " The English," says Eugene
Dupont, a leading member of the old International, " possess
all the materials necessary for the social revolution ; but they
lack the generalizing spirit and the revolutionary passion."
Any proletariat movement in which the English proletariat
takes no part, said Karl Marx, is " no better than a storm in a
glass of water " ; yet, though Marx himself resided in England
for most of his life, no organized attempt was made to gain
over the English proletariat to socialism till 1883 the year he
died. There was before that, indeed, a small English section in
84 Contemporary Socialism.
a foreign socialist club in Solio ; and, after the fall of the Paris
Commune, hopes were for a time entertained of starting a serious
socialist movement in our larger towns ; but these hopes proved
so delusive that Karl Marx said more than once to Mr. Hyndman,
as we are told by the latter, that he despaired " of any great move-
ment in England, unless in response to ome violent impetus
from without." But in 1883 a socialist movement seemed
to break out spontaneously in England, the air hummed for a
season with a multifarious social agitation, and we soon had
a fairly complete equipment of socialist organizations social
democratic, anarchist, dilettante which have ever since
kept up a busy movement with newspapers, lectures, debates
speeches, and demonstrations in the streets.
In 1883 the Democratic Federation, which had been estab-
lished two years before to promote measures of Radical
reform, including, among other things, the nationalization
of the land, adopted the socialistic principles of Karl Marx,
and changed its name to the Social Democratic Federation.
Its programme is long, and includes, besides the nationaliza-
tion of land and all means of production, direct legislation
by the people, direct election of all functionaries by adult
suffrage, gratuitous justice, gratuitous, compulsory, and equal
education, abolition of standing armies, Home Rule for Ire-
land, an eight hours day, State erection of workmen's
dwellings, to be let at bare cost, progressive income tax, pro-
portional representation, abolition of House of Lords, separa-
tion of Church and State, etc. Its principal founders were
Mr. William Morris, an artist, a great poet, and a manufacturer
exceptionally excellent in his arrangements with his work-
people; Mr. H. M. Hyndman, a journalist of standing and
ability ; Mr. J. Stuart Glennie, and Mr. Belfort Bax, both
authors of repute ; Dr. Aveling, a popular lecturer on science,
and son-in-law of Karl Marx ; Miss Helen Taylor, step-daughter
of John Stuart Mill ; and the Rev. Stewart Headlam. In
January, 1884, they started a weekly newspaper, Justice, and
a monthly magazine, To-Day, both of which still appear, and
began the active work of lecturing and founding branches.
But before the year was out, the old enemy of socialists, the
spirit of division, entered among them, and Mr. Morris, with
The Progress and Present Position of Socialism. 8 5
Dr. Aveling and Mr. Bax, seceded and set up an independent
organization called the Socialist League, with a separate
weekly organ, The Commonweal. The difference seems to
have arisen out of the common socialist trouble about the
propriety of mixing in current politics. The same disruptive
tendency has persisted in the two parts, and in the end of
1890, Mr. William Morris seceded from the Socialist League
with his local following at Hammersmith.
Neither of these revolutionary bodies has a complete organi-
zation like those of continental countries. They have never
held a Congress, either national or provincial. They consist
of a central committee in London, and detached local groups
in the provinces, and their membership is not accurately
known, but it is not extensive. It is in both cases declining,
and it has always been variable, young men joining for a year
or two, and then leaving. Their chief success has been
among the miners of the North of England, and they have
returned three members to the School Board of Newcastle.
There is one socialist member in Parliament, Mr. Cunningham
Graham, but he has not been returned on socialist principles
or by a socialist vote ; and hitherto the party has failed to
obtain any serious support at the elections. At the election
of 1885, Mr. John Burns, socialist candidate for Nottingham,
had only 598 votes out of a total poll of 11,064, and Mr.
J. "Williams, the socialist candidate for Hampstead, had only
27 out of a total of 4.722. Mr. Burns, however, has since
been returned to the London County Council, and will not
improbably succeed in being returned to Parliament at next
election. He is a working engineer, but is much the strongest
leader English socialism has produced, an orator of great
power, an excellent organizer, and the head and representative
of a new labour movement which is likely to play a con-
siderable part in the immediate future, and which is certainly
fermented with a good measure of socialistic leaven. The
New Unionism, as this movement is sometimes called, repre-
sents mainly the opinion of the new trade unions of
unskilled labour dockers and others which have sprung
into existence recently, and it was strong enough at the Trade
Union Congress in 1890 to carry the day against the old
86 Contemporary Socialism,
unionism of the skilled trades by a considerable majority in
favour of the compulsory and universal eight hours day. But,
as Mr. T. Burt, M.P., the miners' parliamentary representa-
tive, said in his speech to the Eighty Club two months after-
wards, the New Unionism is, after all, only the young and
inexperienced unionism, and must needs run now through the
same kind of errors which the older trade unions have gone
through before, but will, like the older unions, learn, by dis-
cussion and experiment, to keep within the lines of practicable
and beneficial action. However that may be, for the moment,
at any rate, the fortunes of English socialism seem to lie
with Mr. John Burns and his labour movement, and not with
the two socialist organizations which appear to have already
reached their height, and to be now on the decline.
A well-informed German writer lately warned us that anar-
chism had brought its headquarters to London, that it was
coming into relations with the English population through
its clubs and newspapers, and he ventured to prophesy that
we should certainly have soon an anarchist fire to extinguish
on our own hearth much more serious than Germany or Austria
has had to encounter. So far, however, there is little to
support such a prophecy. There are four small anarchist
clubs in London three of them German clubs, which live at
strife with one another, and the fourth a Russian or Polish
club, whose members have few or no dealings with the Ger-
mans. The German anarchists publish two weekly news-
papers in German, which it is their great business to smuggle
into the Fatherland, and the Russian or Polish anarchists
publish one in Yedish the German-Hebrew patois of the
Polish Jews which is printed for the entertainment of the
Polish tailors of the East End. Some of the principal anar-
chist leaders, it is true, live amongst us for example, Prince
Krapotkin and Victor Dave and under their influence a
group of English anarchists has grown up during the last
few years ; but this group has already, after the manner of
modern revolutionists, split on a point of doctrine into two
opposite camps, which, if we may judge from their respective
organs, The Anarchist and Freedom expend a considerable
share of their destructive energies upon one another. The
The Progress and Present Position of Socialism. 8 7
English anarchists have no permanent organization of any
kind, and the one group are for socialist anarchism, and the
other for individualist anarchism. On the whole the con-
version of the English by the anarchist refugees is not an
idea worthy of serious consideration ; a better and more likely
result would be that they would themselves, like Alexander
Herzen, the leading anarchist of the past generation, be con-
verted in England to more rational ideas of politics. Our
safety lies, however, not so much in the practical character
of our people, as in their habits of free and open discussion.
AVhat is called practicality is no safeguard against delusive ideas
outside one's own immediate field of activity, and there is
perhaps no country, except the still more practical country of
America, where more favour is shown than here to fanaticism
of any kind, if there seems to be heart in it. Besides, when we
hear it said, We have indeed an enormous proletariat, but they
are too practical to think of insurrection, we ought to reflect
that, to the miserable, the practical test of a scheme will not
be, Shall we be any the better for the change? but Shall
we be any the worse for it? But under free institutions
grievances always come to be ventilated ; ventilation leads to
more or less remedial measures, and discontent is removed
altogether, or, at any rate, appeased for the time ; and although
under free institutions ill-considered schemes which inflate that
discontent with delusive hopes may raise for a season a boom
of earnest discussion, the discussion eventually kills them.
So it seems to be with the fortunes of revolutionary socialism
in England to-day. It has been much discussed for six years,
but the height of the tide has been reached already, and the
movement is now apparently on the ebb.
Besides these manifestations of revolutionary socialism, we
have various societies representing an amateur and apprecia-
tive interest in socialism. There is the Christian Socialist
Society, a small body of less than 150 adherents, including
many clergymen and other members of the learned professions.
They must not be confounded with the Christian Socialists of
forty years ago, Maurice, Kingsley, and their allies, for the
survivors of this earlier movement, such as Judge Thomas
Hughes, Mr. Vansittart Neale, and Mr. J. M. Ludlow, do not
88 Contemporary Socialism.
belong to the present Christian Socialist Society, and would
repudiate its principles. They wanted to promote co-operation
without State interference, and they take a leading part in
the co-operative movement still ; but the Christian Socialist
Society of the present day is all for State interference, and
the articles of its organ, the Christian Socialist, strongly
support the doctrines of Karl Marx, and declare that " the
command, ' Thou shalt not steal,' if impartially applied, must
absolutely prohibit" the capitalist, as such, from deriving any
revenue whatever from the labourer's toil." But with all
their will to believe with the Marxists, the latter are not sure
of them, and the socialist organs, Justice and To-Day, twit them
one day for not being Christians, and the next for not being
socialists. They are not men of the same mark as the earlier
body of English Christian socialists, Canon Shuttleworth and
Mr. Stewart Headlam being the two best known of them.
The Guild of St. Matthew, which is composed to some extent
of the same personnel as the Christian Socialist Society, has
published a compendium of Christian socialism, and strives,
among other branches of its activity, to cultivate good rela-
tions between socialists and the Church
The Fabian Society, again, is a debating club of mixed
socialism. It contains socialists of all feathers revolutionary
socialists and philosophical socialists, Christian socialists and
un-Christian socialists who meet together under its auspices
and exchange their views, without having any recognised end
beyond the discussion. They intervened lately, however, in
the eight hours day controversy, and drafted a bill for a com-
pulsory measure on the subject which attracted some public
attention. Among the principal members are Mr. Sidney
"Webb, a well-known writer and lecturer on economic subjects,
Mr. G. Bernard Shaw, journalist, Mrs. Besant, and Mr. "W.
Clarke. They have published a volume of Fabian Essays,
which has had a large sale.
No account of English socialism would be complete that
made no mention of the writings of Mr. Ruskin, which have
probably done more than any other single influence to imbue
English minds with sentiments and principles of a socialistic
character. But they have produced nothing in the nature of
The Progress and Present Position of Socialism. 89
a school or party more than perhaps some detached local
group ; such, for example, as the Sheffield Socialists, a small
body formed under Ruskinian inspiration, and the leadership
of Mr. E. Carpenter.
The outburst of socialist agitation in England in 1883 and
1884 was immediately preceded by a revival of popular in-
terest in an old and favourite subject of English speculation, the
nationalization of the land. Mr. Henry George had published
his " Progress and Poverty " in 1881, and in the same year the
Democratic Federation was established in London with land
nationalization for one of its principles, and Mr. A. R. Wallace,
the eminent naturalist, founded the Land Nationalization
Society. In 1882, Mr. Wallace contributed still further to
awaken discussion of the question by publishing his work on
u Land Nationalization," and the discussion was spread every-
where in 1883 by the appearance of a sixpenny edition of Mr.
George's remarkable work. Land nationalization in the hands
of Mr. Wallace has little in common with any form of con-
temporary socialism. He does not contemplate any inter-
ference with the present system of agricultural production ;
that is still to be conducted by capitalists and hired labourers,
as it is now. He merely proposes to abolish what is called
landlordism by the compulsory conversion of the present
tenant farmers into a body of yeomanry or occupying owners,
and his scheme differs from the more ordinary proposals for the
creation of peasant proprietors merely in two points : 1st which
is a very good proposal that he would leave part of the price
of the property to be paid in the form of a permanent annual
quitrent to the State ; and 2nd which is a more doubtful pro-
posal that this part should represent, as nearly as it is possible
now to calculate it, the original value of the soil apart from im-
provements of any kind or, in other words, the unearned part
of the present value of the property and that it should be
subject to periodical revision, with a view to recovering from
the holder any further unearned increments of value that may
accrue to his holding from time to time. Mr. Wallace, like
Mr. George, has very Utopian expectations from his scheme ;
but he would honestly buy up the rights of the existing land-
lords, while Mr. George would merely confiscate them by excep-
go Contemporary Socialism.
tional taxation. This difference broke up the Land National-
ization Society in 1883, and the partisans of Mr. George's view
seceded and formed themselves into the English Land Restora-
tion League, which has established branches in most of the
larger towns, and has now probably a more numerous member-
ship than the original society. It is especially strong in
Scotland, and ran three candidates for Glasgow at the last
general election ; but the three only got 2,222 votes between
them, out of a total of 23,800 polled in the three divisions
they contested. The ideas of the League have a certain vogue
among the Highland crofters, where they blend very readily
with the universal peasant doctrines that the earth is the
Lord's, and that all other lords should be abolished.
In Scotland there are a good many branches of the two
regular socialist organizations. The Scottish Emancipation
League joined the Social Democratic Federation, and the
Scottish Land and Labour League joined the Socialist League ;
but it is remarkable that there is no socialism in Ireland,
except in a small branch of the Socialist League in Dublin,
called the Dublin Socialist Club, although it seems a miracle
for a country seething for centuries with political and econo-
mic discontent to escape such a visitation. Probably, as with
the Poles, the minds of the discontented are already too much
pre-occupied with other political and social solutions. The
land nationalization views of Mr. George are, of course, spread
widely through the influence of Mr. Michael Davitt in the
agrarian movement of Ireland.
But while the recent wave of socialism has passed over dis-
contented Ireland, and lef fc it, like Gideon's fleece, quite dry,
much more susceptibility has been shown by those parts of
the Empire where the lot of labour is, perhaps in all the world,
the happiest the Australian colonies. Here, too, the suscep-
tibility has been created to some extent by the land questions
of the country. Mr. George, in his recent lecturing tour
through these colonies, met with a warm welcome in almost
all the towns he visited, made many converts to his ideas, and
gave rise to a considerable agitation. In South Australia three
of his disciples were returned to the Legislature in 1887, and
their views are supported by several newspapers in Adelaide.
The Progress and Present Position of Socialism. 9 1
In a new colony the argument for keeping the land in the
hands of the State has in some respects more point and force than
in an old. Mr. George's disciples in Sydney publish a paper
called the Land Nationalize); and his views are advocated by
one of the most influential papers in the colony, the Bulletin of
Sydney. In New Zealand a bill has actually been brought in
for the purpose of nationalizing the land. But apart from Mr.
George altogether, there is a flourishing Australian Socialist
League in Sydney, established in 1887, and with a membership
of 7,000 in 1888. It has a journal called the Radical, and keeps
up a busy agitation with lectures and discussions. As a method
of temporary policy it promotes associations of labourers for the
purpose of undertaking Government and municipal contracts.
In Melbourne, again, people are more advanced. They have
no socialist organization, but they have an anarchist club,
established in 1886 for the purpose of aiding social reform on
the lines of liberty, equality, and fraternity. It circulates the
works of Proudhon, Tucker, the Boston anarchist, Bakunin,
and Mr. Auberon Herbert ; and it publishes a newspaper called
Honesty, which appeared at first once a month, and latterly once
in two months. The ideas of the party are not easy to ascertain
exactly from the pages of their journal. The State is, of course,
the enemy, and land monopoly is one of the State's worst crea-
tions ; but some of the writers advocate land nationalization,
while others propound a scheme of what they call " construc-
tive anarchy," under which every man is to own the land he
occupies. They have started a new form of co-operative store,
a kind of mutual production society, whose members bind
themselves to produce for one another, and exchange their
products for the bare cost of production; and they have started
a co-operative home, in which the members get better and
cheaper accommodation through their combination. Melbourne
anarchism, however, has no harm in it : it is a mere spark of
eccentric speculation. The working class of Melbourne is
probably the most powerful and the best organized working
class in the world. In their Trades Hall they, have had for
thirty years a workmen's chamber of their own creating like
what German socialists are vainly asking from the State, and
much more effective, because more independent. They have
92 Contemporary Socialism.
secured the eight hours day to fifty-two different trades with-
out receiving a finger's help from the law, and without losing
a shilling of wages. They have, moreover, the voting power in.
their own hands. In fact, they are, as nearly as any working
class can be, in the precise condition socialists require for
revolutionary action. They are entirely dependent on a
handful of capitalists for their employment, and they have the
whole power of the State substantially under their own control ;
so that they might, if they chose, march to the Parliament
House with a red flag, and instal the socialist State to-morrow.
But they do not choose. They propose no change in the present
industrial system, and make surprisingly few demands of any
sort upon the State. The world goes very well with them
as it is, and they will not risk the comforts they really enjoy
to try any sweeping and problematical solutions. While the
socialist movement, in the countries where it is most advanced
and powerful, seems settling into a practical labour movement,
the labour movement, in the countries where it is most
advanced and powerful, is steering furthest and clearest from
socialism.
CHAPTER III.
FERDINAND LASSALLE.
GERMAN socialism is it is hardly too much to say the creation
of Ferdinand Lassalle. Of course there were socialists in
Germany before Lassalle. There are socialists everywhere.
A certain rudimentary socialism is always in latent circulation
in what may be called the " natural heart " of society. The
secret clubs of China " the fraternal leagues of heaven and
earth " who argue that the world is iniquitously arranged,
that the rich are too rich, and the poor too poor, and that the
wealth of the great has all accrued from the sweat of the
masses, only give a formal expression to ideas that are probably
never far from any one of us who have to work hard and earn
little, and they merely formulate them less systematically than
Marx and his disciples do in their theories of the exploitation
of labour by capital. Socialism is thus so much in the common
air we all breathe, that there is force in the view that the
thing to account for is not so much the presence of socialism,
at any time, as its absence. Accordingly it had frequently
appeared in Germany under various forms before Lassalle.
Fichte to go no farther back had taught it from the stand-
point of the speculative philosopher and philanthropist.
Schleiermacher, it may be remembered, was brought up in a
religious community that practised it. Weitling, with some
allies, preached it in a pithless and hazy way as a gospel to the
poor, and, finding little encouragement, went to America, to
work it out experimentally there. The Young Hegelians made
it part of their philosophic creed. The Silesian weavers,
superseded by machinery, and perishing for want of work,
raised it as a wild inarticulate cry for bread, and dignified it
with the sanction of tears and blood. And Karl Marx and
Friedrich Engels, in 1848, summoned the proletariat of the
93
94 Contemporary Socialism.
whole world to make it the aim and instrument of a universal
revolution. But it was Lassalle who first really brought it
from the clouds and made it a living historical force in the
common politics of the day. The late eminent Professor
Lorenz von Stein, of Vienna, said, in 1842, in his acute and
thoughtful work on French Communism, that Germany, unlike
France, and particularly England, had nothing to fear from
socialism, because Germany had no proletariat to speak of.
Yet, in twenty years, we find Germany become suddenly the
theatre of the most important and formidable embodiment of
socialism that has anywhere appeared. Important and for-
midable, for two reasons : it founds its doctrines, as socialism
has never done before, on a thoroughly scientific investigation
of the facts, and criticism of the principles, of the present
industrial regime, and it seeks to carry them out by means of a
political organization, growing singularly in strength, and based
on the class interests of the great majority of the people.
There were, of course, predisposing conditions for this out-
burst. . A German proletariat had come into being since Stein
wrote, and though still much smaller, in the aggregate, than
the English, it was perhaps really at this time the more
plethoric and distressed of the two. For the condition of the
English working-classes had been greatly relieved by emigra-
tion, by factory legislation, by trades unions, whereas in some
of these directions nothing at all, and in others only the
faintest beginnings, had as yet been effected in Germany.
Then, the stir of big political movement and anticipation was
on men's minds. The future of the German nation, its unity,
its freedom, its development, were practical questions of the
hour. The nationality principle is essentially democratic, and
the aspirations for German unity carried with them in every
one of the States strong movements for the extension of
popular freedom and power. This long spasmodic battle for
liberty in Germany, which began with the century, and
remains still unsettled, this long series of revolts and con-
cessions and overridings, and hopes nattered and again
deferred, this long uncertain babble of Gross-Deutsch and
Klein- Deutsch, and Centralist and Federalist and Particularist,
of " Gotha ideas " and " new eras " and " blood and iron,"
Ferdinand Lassalle. 95
had prepared the public ear for bold political solutions, and
has entered from the first as an active and not unimportant
factor in the socialist agitation. Then, again, the general
political habits and training of the people must be taken into
account. Socialistic ideas would find a readier vogue in
Germany than in this country, because the people are less
rigidly practical, because they have been less used to the
sifting exercise of free discussion, and because they have
always seen the State doing a great deal for them which they
could do better for themselves, and are consequently apt to
visit the State with blame and claims for which it ought not
to be made responsible. Then the decline of religious belief in
German}*-, which the Church herself did much to produce when
she was rationalistic, without being able to undo it since she
has become orthodox, must certainly have impaired the
patience with which the poor endured the miseries of their lot,
when they still entertained the hope of exchanging it in a few
short years for a happier and an everlasting one hereafter.
All these circumstances undoubtedly favoured the success of
the socialistic agitation at the period it started ; but, when
everything is said, it is still doubtful whether German socialism
would ever have come into being but for Lassalle. Its fer-
menting principle has been less want than positive ideas.
This is shown by the fact that it was at first received among
the German working classes with an apathy that almost dis-
heartened Lassalle ; and that it is now zealously propagated by
them as a cause, as an evangel, even after they have emigrated
to America, where their circumstances are comparatively
comfortable. The ideas it contains Lassalle found for the
most part ready to his hand. The germs of them may be
discovered in the writings of Proudhon, in the projects of
Louis Blanc. Some of them he acknowledges he owes to
Bodbertus, others to Karl Marx, but it was in passing through
his mind they first acquired the stamp and ring that made
them current coin. Contentions about the priority of pub-
lishing this bit or that bit of an idea, especially if the idea be
false, need not concern us ; and indeed Lassalle makes no
claim to originality in the economical field. He was not so
much an inventive as a critical thinker, and a critical thinker
96 Contemporary Socialism.
of almost the first rank, with a dialectic power, and a
clear, vivid exposition that have seldom been excelled. Any
originality that is claimed for him lies in the region of
interpretation of previous thought, and that in the departments
of metaphyics and jurisprudence, not of economics.
The peculiarity of his mind was that it hungered with
almost equal intensity for profound study and for exciting
action, and that he had the gifts as well as the impulses for
both. As he said of Heraclitus the Dark, whom he spent some
of his best years in expounding, " there was storm in his
nature." Heine, who knew and loved him well as a young
man in Paris, and indeed found his society so delightful during
his last years of haggard suffering, that he said, " No one has
ever done so much for me, and when I receive letters from you,
courage rises in me, and I feel better," Heine characterizes
him very truly in a letter to Varnhagen von Ense. He says
he was struck with astonishment at the combination of
qualities Lassalle displayed the union of so much intellectual
power, deep learning, rich exposition on the one hand, with so
much energy of will and capacity for action on the other.
With all this admiration, however, he seems unable to regard
him without misgiving, for his audacious confidence, checked
by no thought of renunciation or tremor of modesty, amazed
him as much as his ability. In this respect he says Lassalle is
a genuine son of the modern time, to which Varnhagen and
himself had acted in a way as the midwives, but on which they
could only look like the hen that hatched duck's eggs and
shuddered to see how her brood took to the water and swam
about delighted. Heine here puts his finger on the secret of
his young friend's failure. Lassalle would have been a great
man if he had more of the ordinary restraining perceptions,
but he had neither fear nor awe, nor even in spite of his vein
of satire a wholesome sense of the ridiculous, in this last
respect resembling, if we believe Carlyle, all Jews. Chivalrous,
susceptible, with a genuine feeling for the poor man's case, and
a genuine enthusiasm for social reform, a warm friend, a
vindictive enemy, full of ambition both of the nobler and the
more vulgar type, beset with an importunate vanity and given
to primitive lusts ; generous qualities and churlish throve and
Ferdinand Lassalle. 97
strove in him side by side, and governed or misgoverned a will
to which, opposition was almost a native and necessary element,
and which yet or perhaps rather, therefore brooked no
check. " Ferdinand Lassalle, thinker and fighter," is the
simple epitaph Professor Boeckh put on his tomb. Thinking
and fighting were the craving of his nature ; thinking and
fighting were the warp and woof of his actual career, mingled
indeed with threads of more spurious fibre. The philosophical
thinker and the political agitator are parts rarely combined in
one person, but to these Lassalle added yet a third, which
seems to agree with neither. He was a fashionable dandy,
noted for his dress, for his dinners, and, it must be added, for
his addiction to pleasure a man apparently with little of that
solidarity in his own being which he sought to introduce into
society at large, and yet his public career possesses an un-
doubted unity. It is a mistake to represent him, as Mr. L.
Montefiore has done, as a savan who turned politician as if by
accident and against his will, for the stir of politics was as
essential to him as the absorption of study. It is a greater
mistake, though a more common one, to represent him as
having become a revolutionary agitator because no other
political career was open to him. He felt himself, it is said,
like a Caesar out of employ, disqualified for all legitimate
politics by his previous life, and he determined, if he could not
bend the gods, that he would move Acheron. But so early as
1848, when yet but a lad of twenty-three, he was tried for
sedition, and he then declared boldly in his defence that he was
a socialist democrat, and that he was " revolutionary on prin-
ciple." This he remained throughout. He laughs at those
who cannot hear the word revolution without a shudder.
" Revolution," he says, " means merely transformation, and is
accomplished when an entirely new principle is either with
force or without it put in the place of an existing state of
things. Reform, on the other hand, is when the principle of
the existing state of things is continued, and only developed
to more logical or just consequences. The means do not
signify. A reform may be carried out by bloodshed, and a
revolution in the profoundest tranquillity. The Peasants'
"War was an attempt to introduce reform by arms, the inven-
H
98 Contemporary Socialism.
tion of the spinning-jenny wrought a peaceful revolution."
In this sense he was " revolutionary on principle." His
thought was revolutionary, and it was the lessons he learnt as
a philosopher that he applied and pled for an agitator. His
thinking and his fighting belonged together like powder and
shot. His Hegelianism, which he adopted as a youth at
college, is from first to last the continuous source both of
impetus and direction over his public career. Young Germany
was Hegelian and revolutionary at the time he went to the
University (1842), and with the impressionable Lassalle, then
a youth of seventeen, Hegelianism became a passion. He
wrote articles on it in University magazines, preached it right
and left in the cafes and taverns, and resolved to make philo-
sophy his profession and establish himself as a privat Docent at
Berlin University. It was the first sovereign intellectual
influence he came under, and it ruled his spirit to the end.
In adopting it, his intellectual manhood may be said to have
opened with a revolution, for his family were strict Jews, and
he was brought up in their religion.
Lassalle was born in 1825 at Breslau, where his father was a
wholesale dealer. He was educated at the Universities of Bres-
lau and Berlin, and at the latter city saw, through the Mendels-
sohns, a good deal of the best literary society there, and made
the acquaintance, among others, of Alexander von Humboldt,
who used to call him a Wunderldnd. On finishing his curri-
culum, he went for a time to Paris, and formed there a close
friendship with H. Heine, who was an old acquaintance of his
family. He meant to qualify himself as privat Docent when he
returned, but was diverted from his purpose by the task of re-
dressing a woman's wrongs, into which he flew with the roman-
tic enterprise of a knight-errant, and which he carried, through
years of patient and zealous labour, to a successful issue. The
Countess Hatzfeldt had been married when a girl of sixteen to
a cousin of her own, one of the great nobles of Germany ; but
the marriage turned out most unhappily after a few years, and
she was obliged, on account of the maltreatment she suffered ,
to live apart from her husband. His persecution followed her
into her separation. He took child after child from her, and
was now seeking to take the last she had left, her youngest
Ferdinand Lassalle. 99
son. He allowed her very scanty and irregular support, while
he lavished his money on mistresses, and was, at this very
moment, settling on one of them an annuity of 1,000. This
state of things had continued for twenty years, and the Coun-
tess's own relations had, for family reasons, always declined to
take up her case. Lassalle, who had made her acquaintance in
Berlin, was profoundly touched by her story, and felt that she
was suffering an intolerable wrong, which society permitted
only because she was a woman, and her husband a lord.
Though not a lawyer, he resolved to undertake her case, and
after carrying the suit before thirty-six different courts, during
a period of eight years, he at length procured for her a divorce
in 1851, and a princely fortune in 1854, from which she re-
warded him with a considerable annuity for his exertions.
Lassalle's connection with this case not unnaturally gave rise
to sinister construction. It was supposed he must have been
in love with the Countess, and wanted to marry her, but this
was disproved by the event. Darker insinuations were made,
but had there been truth in them, it could not have escaped
the spies the Count sent to watch him, and the servants the
Count bribed to inform on him. Chivalry, vanity, and teme-
rity at the season of life when all three qualities are at their
height, account sufficiently for his whole conduct, and I see no
reason to doubt the explanation he himself gives of it. " Her
family," he states, " were silent, but it is said when men keep
silence the stones will speak. When every human right is
violated, when even the voice of blood is mute, and helpless
man is forsaken by his born protectors, there then rises
with right man's first and last relation man. You have
all read with emotion the monstrous history of the un-
happy Duchess of Praslin. Who is there among you that
would not have gone to the death to defend her ? Well, gentle-
men, I said to myself, here is Praslin ten times over. What is
the sharp death-agony of an hour compared with the pangs of
death protracted over twenty years ? What are the wounds a
knife inflicts compared with the slow murder dispensed with
refined cruelty throughout a being's whole existence ? What
are they compared with the immense woe of this woman, every
right of whose life has been trampled under foot, day after day,
ioo Contemporary Socialism.
for twenty years, and whom they have first tried to cover with
contempt, that they might then the more securely overwhelm
her with punishment ? . . . The difficulties, the sacrifices,
the dangers did not deter me. I determined to meet false
appearances with the truth, to meet rank with right, to meet
the power of money with the power of mind. But if I had
known what infamous calumnies I should have to encounter,
how people turned the purest motives into their contraries, and
what ready credence they gave to the most wretched lies
well, I hope my purpose would not have been changed, but it
would have cost me a severe and bitter struggle." There seems
almost something unmodern in the whole circumstances of this
case, both in the oppression the victim endured, and in the
manner of her rescue.
In the course of this suit occurred the robbery of Baroness
von Meyerdorff's cassette, on which so much has been said.
The Baroness was the person already mentioned on whom
Count Hatzfeldt bestowed the annuity of 1,000. The Coun-
tess, on hearing of this settlement, went straight to her hus-
band, accompanied by a clergyman, and insisted upon him
cancelling it, in justice to his youngest son, whom it would
have impoverished. The Count at first promised to do so, but
after her departure, refused, and the Baroness set out for Aix
to get her bond effectually secured. Lassalle suspected the
object of her journey, and said to the Countess, in the presence
of two young friends, Could we not obtain possession of this
bond ? No sooner said than done. The two young men started
for Cologne, and one of them stole the Baroness's cassette, con-
taining the veritable deed, in her hotel, and gave it to the
other. They and Lassalle were all three successively tried for
their part in this crime. Oppenheim, who actually stole the
cassette, was acquitted ; Mendelssohn, who only received it, was
sent to prison ; and Lassalle, who certainly suggested the deed,
was found guilty by the jury, but acquitted by the judges.
Moral complicity of some sort was clear, but it did not amount
to a legal crime. Our interest with the transaction is merely
to discover the light it reflects on the character of the man.
It was a rash, foolish, and lawless freak, but of course the
ordinary motives of the robber were absent. The theft of the
Ferdinand Lassalle. 101
cassette, however, was a transaction which his enemies never
suffered to be forgotten.
The theft of the cassette occurred in 1846 ; Lassalle was tried
for it in 1848, and was no sooner released than he fell into the
hands of justice on a much more serious charge. The dissolu-
tion of the first Prussian National Assembly in 1848, and the
gift of a Constitution by direct royal decree, had excited bitter
disappointment and opposition over the whole country. There
was a general agitation for combining to stop supplies by re-
fusing to pay taxes, in order thus " to meet force with force,"
and this agitation was particularly active in the Rhine pro-
vinces, where democratic views had found much favour. Las-
salle even planned an insurrection, and urged the citizens of
Dusseldorf to armed resistance ; but the Prussian Government
promptly intervened, placed the town under a state of siege,
and threw Lassalle into jail. He was tried in 1849 for treason,
and acquitted by the jury, but was immediately afterwards
brought before a correctional tribunal on the minor charge of
resisting officers of the police, and sent to prison for six months.
It was in his speech at the former of these trials that he de-
clared himself a partisan of the Socialist Democratic Republic,
and claimed for every citizen the right and duty of active re-
sistance to the State when necessary. He had nothing but
scorn to pour on the passive resistance policy of the Parliament.
" Passive resistance is a contradiction in itself. It is like Lich-
tenberg's knife, without blade, and without handle, or like the
fleece which one must wash without wetting. It is mere inward
ill-will without the outward deed. The Crown confiscates the
people's freedom ; and the Prussian National Assembly, for the
people's protection, declares ill-will ; it would be unintelligible
how the commonest logic should have allowed a legislative
assembly to cover itself with such incomparable ridicule if it
were not too intelligible." These are bold words. He felt
himself standing on a principle and representing a cause ; and
so he went into prison, he tells us, with as light a heart as he
would have gone to a ball ; and when he heard that his sister
had petitioned for his pardon, he wrote instantly and publicly
disclaimed her letter.
All these trials had brought Lassalle into considerable
IO2 Contemporary Socialism.
notoriety, not un mingled with a due recognition of his un-
doubted verve, eloquence, and brilliancy. One effect of them
was that he was forbidden to come to Berlin. This prohibition
was founded, of course, on his seditious work at Dusseldorf , but
is believed to have been instigated and kept up by the influ-
ence of the Hatzfeldt family. Lassalle felt it a sore privation,
for his ambitions and hopes all centred in Berlin. After various
ineffectual attempts to obtain permission, he arrived in the
capital one day in 1857 disguised as a waggoner, and through
the personal intercession of Alexander von Humboldt with the
king, was at length suffered to remain. His " Heraclitus " had
just appeared, and at once secured him a position in literary
circles. One of his first productions after his return to Berlin
was a pamphlet on " The Italian "War and the Mission of Prus-
sia ; a Voice from the Democracy," which shows that his poli-
tical prosecutions had not soured him against Prussia. His
argument is that freedom and democracy must in Germany, as
in Italy, be first preceded by unity, and that the only power
capable of giving unity to Germany was Prussia, as to Italy,
Piedmont. He had more of the political mind than most revolu-
tionaries and doctrinaires, and knew that the better might be
made the enemy of the good, and that ideals could only be
carried out gradually, and by temporary compromises. He was
monarchical for the present, therefore, no doubt because he
thought the monarchy to be for the time the best and shortest
road to the democratic republic. His friend Rodbertus said
there was an esoteric and an exoteric Lassalle. That may be
said of all politicians. Compromise is of the essence of their
work.
During the next few years Lassalle's literary activity was
considerable. Besides a tragedy of no merit ("Franz von
Sickingen," 1859) and various pamphlets or lectures on Fichte,
on Lessing, on the Constitution, on Might and Right, he
published in 1861 the most important work he has left us, his
" System of Acquired Rights," and in 1862 a satirical com-
mentary on Julian Schmidt's " History of German Literature,"
which excited much attention and amusement at the time.
His " System of Acquired Rights " already contains the germs
of his socialist views, and his pamphlet on the Constitution,
Ferdinand Lassalle. 103
which appeared when the " new era " ended and the era of
Bismarck began, is written to disparage the Constitutionalism
of modern Liberals. A paper constitution was a thing of no
consequence ; it was merely declarative, not creative ; the
thing of real account was the distribution of power as it
existed in actual fact. The king and army were powers, the
court and nobility were powers, the populace was a power.
Society was governed by the relative strength of these powers,
as it existed in reality and not by the paper constitution that
merely chronicled it. Right is regarded as merely declarative
of might. It is thus easy to see why he should have more
sympathy with the policy of Bismarck than with the Liberals ;
and later in the same year he expounded his own political
position very completely in a lecture he delivered to a "Working
Men's Society in Berlin, on " The Connection between the
Present Epoch of History and the Idea of the "Working Class."
This lecture, to which I shall again revert, was an epoch in
his own career. It led to a second Government prosecution,
and a second imprisonment for political reasons; and it and
the prosecution together led to his receiving an invitation to
address a General "Working Men's Congress at Leipzig, in
February, 1863, to which he responded by a letter, sketching
the political programme of the working class, which was
certainly the first step in the socialist movement.
Attention was already being engaged on the work of in-
dustrial amelioration. The Progressist party, then including
the present National Liberals, had, under the lead of Schultze-
Delitzsch, been promoting trades unions and co-operation in
an experimental way, and the working classes themselves
were beginning to think of taking more concerted action for
their own improvement. The Leipzig Congress was projected
by a circle of working men, who considered the Schultze-
Delitzsch schemes inadequate to meet the case. This was
exactly Lassalle's view. He begins his letter by telling the
working men that if all they wanted was to mitigate some of
the positive evils of their lot, then the Schultze-Delitzsch
unions, savings banks, and sick funds were quite sufficient,
and there was no need of thinking of anything more. But if
their aim was to elevate the normal condition of their class,
IO4 Contemporary Socialism.
then more drastic remedies were requisite ; and, in the first
instance, a political agitation was indispensable. The Leipzig
working men had discussed the question of their relation to
politics at a previous congress a few months before, and had
been divided between abstaining from politics altogether, and
supporting the Progressist party. Lassalle disapproved of
both these courses. They could never achieve the elevation
they desired till they got universal suffrage, and they would
never get universal suffrage by backing the Progressists who
were opposed to it. He then explains to them how their
normal condition is permanently depressed at present by the
essential laws of the existing economic regime, especially by
" the iron and cruel law of necessary wages." The only real
cure was co-operative production, the substitution of associated
labour for wage labour ; for it was only so the operation of
this tyrannical law of wages could be escaped. Now co-
operative production, to be of any effective extent, must be
introduced by State help and on State credit. The State gave
advances to start railways, to develop agriculture, to promote
manufactures, and nobody called it socialism to do so. Why,
then, should people cry socialism if the State did a similar
service to the great working class, who were, in fact, not a class,
but the State itself. 96 per cent, of the population were
ground down by " the iron law," and could not possibly lift
themselves above it by their own power. They must ask the
State to help them, for they were themselves the State, and the
help of the State was no more a superseding of their own self-
help than reaching a man a ladder superseded his own climb-
ing. State help was but self-help's means. Now these State
advances could not be expected till the working class acquired
political power by universal suffrage. Their first duty was
therefore to organize themselves and agitate for universal
suffrage ; for universal suffrage was a question of the stomach.
The reception his letter met with at first was most dis-
couraging. The newspapers with one consent condemned it,
except a Feudalist organ here and there who saw in it an
instrument for damaging the Liberals. "What seemed more
ominous was the opposition of the working men themselves.
The Leipzig Committee to whom it was addressed did indeed
Ferdinand Lassalle. 105
approve of it, and individual voices were raised in its favour
elsewhere, but in Berlin the working men's clubs rejected it
with decided warmth, and all over the country one working
men's club after another declared against it. Leipzig was
the only place in which his words seemed to find any echo,
and he went there two months later and addressed a meeting
at which only 7 out of 1,300 voted against him. "With this
encouragement he resolved to go forward, and founded, on the
23rd of Maj 7 , 1863, the General "Working Men's Association
for the promotion of universal suffrage by peaceful agitation,
after the model of the English Anti-Corn Law League. He
immediately threw himself with unsparing energy into the
development of this organization. He passed from place to
place, delivering speeches, establishing branches ; he started
newspapers, wrote pamphlets, and even larger works, published
tracts by Rodbertus, songs by Herwegh, romances by Yon
Schweitzer. But it was uphill work. South Germany was
evidently dead to his ideas, and even among those who followed
him in the North there were but few who really understood
his doctrines or concurred in his methods. Some were for
more " heroic " procedure, for raising fighting corps to free
Poland, to free Schleswig-Holstein, to free oppressed nation-
alities anywhere. Many were perfectly impracticable persons
who knew neither why exactly they had come together, nor
where exactly they would like to go. There were constant
quarrels and rivalries and jealousies among them, and he is
said to have shown remarkable tact and patience, and a genuine
governing faculty in dealing with them. Lassalle's hope was
to obtain a membership of 100,000 : with a smaller number
nothing could be done, but with 100,000 the movement would
be a power. In August, 1863, he had only enrolled 1,000 after
three months' energetic labour, which, he said, " would have
produced colossal results among a people like the French."
He was intensely disappointed, and asked, " When will this
foolish people cast aside their lethargy?" but meanwhile re-
pelled the suggestion of the secretary of the organization that
it should be at once dissolved. In August, 1864, another
year's strenuous work had raised their numbers only to
4,610, and Lassalle was completely disenchanted, and wrote
io6 Contemporary Socialism.
Countess Hatzfeldt from Switzerland, shortly before his death,
that he was continuing President of the Association much
against his will, for he was now tired of politics, which was
mere child's play if one had not power. He seems to have
been convinced that the movement was a failure, and would
never become a force in the State. Yet he was wrong ; his
words had really taken fire among the working classes, and
kindled a movement which, in its curious history, has shown
the remarkable power of spreading faster with the checks it
encounters. It seems to have profited, not merely from
political measures of repression, but even from the internal
dissensions and divisions of its own adherents, and some persons
tell us that it was first stimulated into decided vigour by the
fatal event which might have been expected to crush it the
sudden and tragical death of its chief.
In the end of July, 1864, Lassalle went to Switzerland
ostensibly for the Righi whey cure, but really to make the
acquaintance of Herr von Donnigsen, Bavarian Envoy at
Berne, whose daughter he had known in Berlin, and wished
to obtain in marriage. It is one of the fatalities that entangled
this man's life in strange contradictions, that exactly he, a
persona ingratissima to Court circles, their very arch-enemy,
as they believed, should have become bound by deep mutual
attachment with the daughter of exactly a German diplomatist,
the courtliest of the courtly", a Conservative seven times refined.
They certainly cherished for one another a sincere, and latterly
a passionate affection, and they seem to have been well fitted
for each other. Helena von Donnigsen was a bright, keen-
witted, eccentric, adventurous young woman of twenty-five,
and so like Lassalle, even in appearance, that when she was
acting a man's part, years afterwards (in 1874), in some amateur
performance in the theatre of Breslau, Lassalle's native town,
many of the audience said, here was Lassalle again as he was
when a boy. Learning from a common friend in Berlin that
Lassalle was at the Righi, she made a visit to some friends in
Berne, and soon after accompanied them on an excursion to
that " popular " mountain. She inquired for Lassalle at the
hotel, and he joined the party to the summit. She knew her
parents would be opposed to the match, but felt certain that
Ferdinand Lassalle. 107
her lover, with his gifts and charms, would be able to win
them over, and it was accordingly agreed that when she
returned to Geneva, Lassalle should go there too, and press his
suit in person. The parents, however, were inexorable, and
refused to see him ; and the young lady in despair fled from
her father's house to her lover's lodging, and urged him to
elope with her. Lassalle calmly led her back to her father's
roof, with a control which some writers think quite inexplicable
in him, but which was probably due to his still believing that
he would be able to talk the parents round if he got the
chance, and to his desire to try constitutional means before
resorting to revolutionary. Helena was locked in her room
for days alone with her excited brain and panting heart. For
days, father, mother, sister, brother, all came and laid before
her what ruin she was bringing 011 the family for a mere selfish
whim of her own. If she married a man so objectionable to
people in power, her father would be obliged to resign his
post, her brother could never look for one, and her sister, who
had just been engaged to a Count, would, of course, have to
give up her engagement. She was in despair, but ultimately
submitted passively to write to Lassalle, desiring him to con-
sider the matter ended, and submitted equally passively (for
she informs us herself) to accept the hand of Herr von Raco-
witza, a young "Wallachian Boyar, whom she had indeed been
previously engaged to, and sincerely liked and respected,
without in the eminent sense loving him. Lassalle had mean-
while wrought himself into a fury of excitement. Enraged
by her parents' opposition, enraged still more by their refusal
even to treat with him, enraged above all by his belief that
their daughter was being illegitimately constrained, he wrote
here, wrote there, tried to get the foreign minister at Munich
to interfere, to get Bishop Ketteler to use his influence, pro-
mised even to turn Catholic to please the Donnigsens, forget-
ting that they were Protestants. All in vain. At last two
of his friends waited by appointment on Herr von Donnigsen,
and heard from Helena's own lips that she was to be married
to the Boyar, and wished the subject no more mentioned.
She now tells us that she did this in sheer weariness of mind,
and with a confused hope that somehow or other the present
zoS Contemporary Socialism.
storm would blow past, and she might have her Lassalle after
all. Lassalle, however, was overcome with chagrin ; and
though he always held that a democrat should not fight duels,
and had got Robespierre's stick, which he usually carried, as
a present for having declined one, he now sent a challenge
both to the father and the bridegroom. The latter accepted.
The duel was fought. Lassalle was fatally wounded, and died
two days after, on the 31st August, 1864, at the age of 39.
Helena married Herr von E-acowitza shortly afterwards, but he
was already seized with consumption, and she says she found
great comfort, after the tumult and excitement of the Lassalle
episode, in nursing him during the few months he lived after
their marriage.
The body was sent back to Germany, after funeral orations
from revolutionists of all countries and colours, and the Coun-
tess Hatzfeldt had made arrangements for similar funeral
celebrations at every halting place along the route to Berlin,
where she meant it to be buried, but at Cologne it was inter-
cepted by the police on behalf of the Lassalle family, and
carried quietly to Breslau, where, after life's fitful fever, he
was laid silently with his fathers in the Jewish burying-
ground of his native place. Fate, however, had not even yet
done with him. It followed him beyond the tomb to throw
one more element of the bizarre into his strangely compounded
history. Lest the death of the leader should prove fatal to the
cause, the Committee of the General Working Men's Associa-
tion determined to turn it, if possible, into a source of strength,
as B. Becker, his successor in the president's chair, informs us,
" by carrying it into the domain of faith." Lassalle was not
dead, but only translated to a higher and surer leadership. A
Lassalle cultus was instituted, and Becker says that many a
German working man believed that he died for them, and that
he was yet to come again to save them, This singular
apotheosis, which is neither creditable to the honesty of the
leaders of the socialist movement, nor to the intelligence of its
rank and file, was kept up by periodical celebrations among
those of the German socialists who are generally known as the
orthodox Lassalleans, down, at least, to the time of the Anti-
Socialist Law of 1878.
Ferdinand Lassalle. 109
Lassalle's doctrines are mainly contained in his lecture on
" The Present Age and the Idea of the "Working Class," which
he delivered in 1862, and published in 1863, under the title of
the " Working Men's Programme," and in his " Herr Bastiat-
Schultze von Delitzsch, der Oekonomische Julian ; oder
Capital und Arbeit," Berlin, 1864.
In the " Working Men's Programme," the question of the
emancipation of the working class is approached and contem-
plated from the standpoint of the Hegelian philosophy of
history. There are, it declares, three successive stages of
evolution in modern history. First, the period before 1789,
the feudal period, when all public power was vested in, exer-
cised by, and emploj^ed for the benefit of, the landed class. It
was a period of privileges and exemptions, which were enjoyed
by the landed interests exclusively, and there prevailed a
strong social contempt for all labour and employment not
connected with the land. Second, the period 1789-1848, the
bourgeois period, in which personal estate received equal rights
and recognition with real, but in which political power was
still based on property qualifications, and legislation was
governed by the interests of the bourgeoisie. Third, the period
since 1848, the age of the working class, which is, however,
only yet struggling to the birth and to legal recognition. The
characteristic of this new period is, that it will for the first
time give labour its rights, and that it will be dominated by
the ideas, aspirations, and interests of the great labouring
class. Their time has already come, and the bourgeois age is
already past in fact, though it still lingers in law. It is
always so. The feudal period had in reality come to an end
before the Revolution. A revolution is always declarative and
never creative. It takes place first in the heart of society, and
is only sealed and ratified by the outbreak. " It is impossible
to make a revolution, it is possible only to give external legal
sanction and effect to a revolution already contained in the
actual circumstances of society. . . . To seek to make a
revolution is the folly of immature men who have no con-
sideration for the laws of history ; and for the same reason it
is immature and puerile to try to stem a revolution that has
already completed itself in the interior of society. If a revolu-
1 1 o Contemporary Socialism.
tion exists in fact, it cannot possibly be prevented from
ultimately existing in law." It is idle, too, to reproach those
who desire to effect this transition with being revolutionary.
They are merely midwives who assist in bringing to the birth a
future with which society is already pregnant. Now, it is this
midwife service that Lassalle believed the working class at
present required. He says of the fourth estate what Sieyes
said of the third. What is the fourth estate ? Nothing ?
What ought the fourth estate to be ? Everything. And it
ought to be so in law, because it is so already in fact. The
bourgeoisie, in overthrowing the privileges of the feudal class,
had almost immediately become a privileged class itself. At
so early a period of the revolution as the 3rd of September,
1791, a distinction was introduced between active and passive
citizens. The active citizen was the citizen who paid direct
taxes, and had therefore a right to vote ; the passive citizen
was he who paid no direct taxes, and had no right to vote.
The effect of this distinction was to exclude the whole labour-
ing classes from the franchise ; and under the July Monarchy,
while the real nation consisted of some thirty millions, the
legal nation (pays legaT), the people legally possessed of poli-
tical rights, amounted to no more than 200,000, whom the
Government found it only too easy to manage and corrupt.
The revolution of 1848 was simply a revolt against this
injustice. It was a revolt of the fourth estate against the
privileges of the third, as the first revolution was a revolt
of the third against the privileges of the other two. Nor
were the privileges which the bourgeoisie had contrived
to acquire confined to political rights alone ; they included
also fiscal exemptions. According to the latest statistical
returns, it appeared that five-sixths of the revenue of Prussia
came from indirect taxation, and indirect taxes were always
taken disproportionately out of the pockets of the working
class. A man might be twenty times richer than another, but
he did not therefore consume twenty times the amount of
bread, salt, or beer. Taxation ought to be in ratio of means,
and indirect taxation so much favoured by the bourgeoisie
was simply an expedient for saving the rich at the expense of
the poor.
Ferdinand Lassalle. in.
Now, the revolution of 1848 was a fight for the emancipation
of the working class from this unequal distribution of political
rights and burdens. The working class was really not a class
at all, but was the nation ; and the aim of the State should be
their amelioration. ""What is the State?" asks Lassalle.
" You are the State," he replies. " You are ninety-six per
cent, of the population. All political power ought to be of you,
and through you, and for you ; and your good and ameliora-
tion ought to be the aim of the State. It ought to be so, be-
cause your good is not a class interest, but is the national
interest." The fourth estate differs from the feudal interest,
and differs from the 'bourgeoisie, not merely in that it is not a
privileged class, but in that it cannot possibly become one. It
cannot degenerate, as the bourgeoisie had done, into a privi-
leged and exclusive caste ; because, consisting as it does of the
great body of the people, its class interest and the common
good are identical, or at least harmonious. " Your affair is the
affair of mankind ; your personal interest moves and beats with
the pulse of history, with the living principle of moral develop-
ment."
Such then is the idea of the working class, which is, or is
destined to be, the ruling principle of society in the present
era of the world. Its supremacy will have important con-
sequences, both ethical and political. Ethically, the working
class is less selfish than the classes above it, simply because
it has no exclusive privileges to maintain. The necessity of
maintaining privileges always develops an assertion of personal
interest in exact proportion to the amount of privilege to be
defended, and that is why the selfishness of a class constantly
exceeds the individual selfishness of the members that compose
it. Now under the happier regime of the idea of labour, there
would be no exclusive interests or privileges, and therefore less
selfishness. Adam would delve and Eve would spin, and, con-
sciously or unconsciously, each would work more for the whole,
and the whole would work more for each. Politically, too, the
change would be remarkable and beneficial. The working
class has a quite different idea of the State and its aim from
the bourgeoisie. The latter see no other use in the State but to
protect personal freedom and property. The State is a mere
112 Contemporary Socialism.
night-watchman, and, if there were no thieves and robbers,
would be a superfluity ; its occupation would be gone. Its
whole duty is exhausted when it guarantees to ever} 7 individual
the unimpeded exercise of his activity as far as consistent with
the like right of his neighbours. Even from its own point of
view this bourgeois theory of the State fails to effect its pur-
pose. Instead of securing equality of freedom, it only secures
equality of right to freedom. If all men were equal in fact,
this might answer well enough, but since they are not, the
result is simply to place the weak at the mercy of the
powerful. Now the working class have an entirely different
view of the State's mission from this. They say the protection
of an equality of right to freedom is an insufficient aim for the
State in a morally ordered community. It ought to be sup-
plemented by the securing of solidarity of interests and com-
munity and reciprocity of development. History all along is
an incessant struggle with Nature, a victory over misery,
ignorance, poverty, powerlessness i.e., over unfreedom,
thraldom, restrictions of all kinds. The perpetual conquest
over these restrictions is the development of freedom, is the
growth of culture. Now this is never effected by each man
for himself. It is the function of the State to do it. The
State is the union of individuals into a moral whole which
multiplies a millionfold the aggregate of the powers of each.
The end and function of the State is not merely to guard
freedom, but to develop it ; to put the individuals who com-
pose it in a position to attain and maintain such objects, such
levels of existence, such stages of culture, power, and freedom,
as they would have been incapable of reaching by their own
individual efforts alone. The State is the great agency for
guiding and training the human race to positive and progres-
sive development ; in other words, for bringing human destiny
(i.e., the culture of which man as man is susceptible) to real
shape and form in actual existence. Not freedom, but develop-
ment is now the keynote. The State must take a positive
part, proportioned to its immense capacity, in the great work
which, as he has said, constitutes history, and must forward
man's progressive conquest over misery, ignorance, poverty,
and restrictions of every sort. This is the purpose, the essence,
Ferdinand Lassalle. 113
the moral nature of the State, which she can never entirely
abrogate, without ceasing to be, and which she has indeed
always been obliged, by the very force of things, more or less
to fulfil, often without her conscious consent, and sometimes
in spite of the opposition of her leaders. In a word, the State
must, by the union of all, help each to his full development.
This was the earnest and noble idea of 1848. It is the idea of
the new age, the age of labour, and it cannot fail to have a
most important and beneficial bearing on the course of politics
and legislation whenever it is permitted to have free operation
in that sphere by means of universal and direct suffrage.
This exposition of Lassalle's teaching in his "Working Men's
Programme " already furnishes us with the transition to his
economic views. Every age of the world, he held, has its own
ruling idea, The idea of the working class is the ruling idea
of the new epoch we have now entered on, and that idea im-
plies that every man is entitled to a menschenwiirdiges Dasein,
to an existence worthy of his moral destiny, and that the State
is bound to make this a governing consideration in its legislative
and executive work. Man's destiny is to progressive civilization,
and a condition of society which makes progressive civilization
the exclusive property of the few, and practically debars the
vast mass of the people from participation in it, stands in the
present age self-condemned. It no longer corresponds to its
own idea. Society has long since declared no man shall be
enslaved ; society has more recently declared no man shall be
ignorant ; society now declares no man shall be without pro-
perty. He cannot be really free without property any more
than he can be really free without knowledge. He has been
released successively from a state of legal dependence and from
a state of intellectual dependence ; he must now be released
from a state of economic dependence. This is his final eman-
cipation, which is necessary to enable him to reap any fruits
from the other two, and it cannot take place without a complete
transformation of present industrial arrangements. It is a com-
mon mistake, he said, to think that socialists take their stand
on equality. They really take their stand on freedom. They
argue that the positive side of freedom is development, and if
every man has a right to freedom, then every man has a right
i
H4 Contemporary Socialism.
to the possibility of development. From this right, however,
they allege the existing industrial system absolutely excludes
the great majority. The freeman cannot realize his freedom,
the individual cannot realize his individuality, without a cer-
tain external economic basis of work and enjoyment, and the
best way to furnish him with this is to clothe him in various
ways with collective property.
Lassalle's argument, however, is still more specific than this.
In the beginning of his " Herr Bastiat-Schultze," he quotes a
passage from his previous work on " The System of Acquired
Rights," which he informs us he had intended to expand into
a systematic treatise on " The Principles of Scientific National
Economy." This intention he was actually preparing to fulfil
when the Leipzig invitation and letter diverted him at once
into practical agitation. He regrets that circumstances had
thus not permitted the practical agitation to be preceded by
the theoretical codex which should be the basis for it, but adds
that the substance of his theory is contained in this polemic
against Schultze-Delitzsch, though the form of its exposition
i? considerably modified by his plan of following the ideas of
Schultze's " Working Men's Catechism," and by his purpose
of answering Schultze's misplaced taunt of " half knowledge "
by trying to extinguish the economic pretensions of the
latter as completely as he had done the literary pretensions of
Julian Schmidt. " Every line I write," says Lassalle, with a
characteristic finality of self-confidence, " I write armed with
the whole culture of my century " ; and at any rate Schultze-
Delitzsch was far his inferior in economic as in other know-
ledge. In the passage to which I have referred, Lassalle says,
" The world is now face to face with a new social question, the
question whether, since there is no longer any property in the
immediate use of another man, there should still exist property
in his mediate exploitation i.e., whether the free realization
and development of one's power and labour should be the
exclusive private property of the owner of the instruments and
advances necessary for labour i.e., of capital ; and whether
the employer as such, and apart from the remuneration of his
own intellectual labour of management, should be permitted
to have property in the value of other people's labour i.e.,
Ferdinand Las sal le. 1 1 5
whether he ought to receive what is known as the premium
or profit of capital, consisting of the difference between the
selling price of the product and the sum of the wages and
salaries of all kinds of labour, manual and mental, that have
contributed to its production."
His standing-point here, again, as always, belongs to the
philosophy of history to the idea of historical evolution with
which his Hegelianism had early penetrated him. The course
of legal history has been one of gradual but steady contraction
of the sphere of private property in the interests of personal
freedom and development. The ancient system of slavery,
under which the labourer was the absolute and complete
property of his master, was followed by the feudal system of
servitudes, under which he was still only partially proprietor
of himself, but was bound by law to a particular lord by one
or more of a most manifold series of specific services. These
systems have been successively abolished. There is no longer
property in man or in the use of man. No man can now be
either inherited or sold in whole or in part. He is his own,
and his power of labour is his own. But he is still far from
being in full possession of himself or of his labour. He cannot
work without materials to work on and instruments to work
with, and for these the modern labourer is more dependent
than ever labourer was before on the private owners in whose
hands they have accumulated. And the consequence is that
under existing industrial arrangements the modern labourer
has no more individual property in his labour than the ancient
slave had. He is obliged to part with the whole value of his
labour, and content himself with bare subsistence in return.
It is in this sense that socialist writers maintain property to
be theft not that subjectively the proprietors are thieves, but
that objectively, under the exigencies of a system of competi-
tion, they cannot help offering workmen, and workmen cannot
help accepting, wages far under the true value of their labour.
Labour is the source of all wealth, for the value of anything
that which makes it wealth is, on the economists' own show-
ing, only another name for the amount of labour put into the
making of it ; and labour is the only ground on which modern
opponents of socialism Thiers and Bastiat, for example think
1 1 6 Contemporary Socialism.
the right of individual property can be established. Yet
on the methods of distribution of wealth that now exist, in-
dividual property is not founded on this its only justifiable
basis, and the aim of socialists is to emancipate the system of
distribution from the influence of certain unconscious forces
which, as they allege, at present disturb it, and to bring back
individual property for the first time to its natural and right-
ful foundation labour. Their aim is not to abolish private
property, but to purify it, by means of some systematic social
regulation which shall give each man a share more con-
formable with his personal merit and contribution. Even if
no question is raised about the past, it is plain that labour is
every day engaged in making more new property. Millions
of labouring men are, day after day, converting their own
brain, muscle, and sinew into useful commodities, into value,
into wealth. Now, the problem of the age, according to
Lassalle, is this, whether this unmade property of the future
should not become genuine labour property, and its value
remain greatly more than at present in the hands that
actually produced it.
This, he holds, can only be done by a fundamental recon-
struction of the present industrial system, and by new methods
of determining the remuneration of the labouring class. For
there is a profound contradiction in the present system. It
is unprecedentedly communistic in production, and unpre-
cedentedly individualistic in distribution. Now there ought to
be as real a joint participation in the product, as there is
already a joint participation in the work. Capital must be-
come the servant of labour instead of its master, profits must
disappear, industry must be conducted more on the mutual
instead of the proprietary principle, and the instruments of
production be taken out of private hands and turned into
collective or even, it may be, national propsrty. In the old
epoch, before 1789, industrial society was governed by the
principle of solidarity without freedom ; in the period since
1789, by freedom without solidarity, which has been even
worse ; in the epoch now opening, the principle must be
solidarity in freedom.
Partisans of the present system object to any social inter-
Ferdinand Lassalle. 1 1 7
ference with the distribution of wealth, but they forget how
much how entirely that distribution is even now effected
by social methods. The present arrangement of property,
says Lassalle, is, in fact, nothing but an anarchic and unjust
socialism. How do you define socialism ? he asks. Socialism
is a distribution of property by social channels. Now this is
the condition of things that exists to-day. There exists, under
the guise of individual production, a distribution of property
by means of purely objective movements of society. For there
is a certain natural solidarity in things as they are, only being
under no rational control, it operates as a wild natural force,
as a kind of fate destroying all rational freedom and all rational
responsibility in economic affairs. In a sense, there never
was more solidarity than there is now ; there never was so
much interdependence. Under the large system of production,
masses of workmen are simply so many component parts of a
single great machine driven by the judgment or recklessness
of an individual capitalist. With modern facilities of inter-
communication, too, the trade of the world is one and indivisible.
A deficient cotton harvest in America carries distress into
thousands of households in Iryons, in Elberfeld, in Manchester.
A discovery of gold in Australia raises all prices in Europe.
A simple telegram stating that rape prospects are good in
Holland instantly deprives the oil workers of Prussia of half
their wages. So far from there being any truth in the con-
tention of Schultze-Delitzsch, that the existing system is the
only sound one, because it is founded on the principle of
making every man responsible for his own doings, the very
opposite is the casa. The present system makes every man
responsible for what he does not do. In consequence of the
unprecedented interconnection of modern industry, the sum of
conditions needed to be known for its successful guidance have
so immensely increased that rational calculation is scarcely
possible, and men are enriched without any merit, and im-
poverished without any fault. According to Lassalle, in the
absence as yet of an adequate system of commercial statistics,
the number of known conditions is always much smaller than
the number of unknown, and the consequence is, that trade is
very much a game of chance. Everything in modern indus-
1 1 8 Contemporary Socialism.
trial economy is ruled by social connections, by favourable or
unfavourable situations and opportunities. Conjnnctur is its
great Orphic chain. Chance is its Providence Chance and
his sole and equally blind counsellor, Speculation. Every age
and condition of society, says Lassalle, tends to develop some
phenomenon that more particularly expresses its type and
spirit, and the purest type of capitalistic society is the
financial speculator. Capital, he maintains, is a historical and
not a logical category, and the capitalist is a modern product.
He is the development, not of the ancient Croesus or the
mediaeval lord, but of the usurer, who has taken their place,
but was in their lifetime hardly a respectable person. Croesus
was a very rich man, but he was not a capitalist, for he could
do anything with his wealth except capitalize it. The idea of
money making money and of capital being self-productive,
which Lassalle takes to be the governing idea of the present
order of things, was, he says, quite foreign to earlier periods.
Industry is now entirely under the control of capitalists specu-
lating for profit. No one now makes things first of all for his
own use as mythologizing economists relate and then ex-
changes what is over for the like redundant work of his
neighbours. Men make everything first of all, and last of all,
for other people's use, and they make it at the direction and
expense of a capitalist who is speculating for money, and, in
the absence of systematic statistics, is speculating in the dark.
Chance and social connections make him rich, chance and
social connections bring him to ruin. Capital is not the re-
sult of saving, it is the result of Conjunctur ; and so are the
vicissitudes and crises that have so immensely increased in
modern times. What you have now, therefore, says Lassalle,
is a system of socialism ; wealth is at present distributed by
social means, and by nothing else ; and all he contends for is,
as he says, to substitute a regulated and rational socialism for
this anarchic and natural socialism that now exists.
His charge against the present system, however, is more
than that it is anarchic ; he maintains it to be unjust organ-
ically and hopelessly unjust. The labourer's back is the green
table on which the whole game is played, and all losses are in
the end sustained by him. A slightly unfavourable turn of
Ferdinand Lassalle. 119
things sends him at once into want, while even a considerably
favourable one brings him no corresponding advantage, for,
according to all economists, wages are always the last thing
to rise with a reviving trade. The present system is, in fact,
incapable of doing the labourer justice, and would not suffer
employers to do so even if they wished. Injustice is bred in
its very bone and blood. In this contention Lassalle builds
his whole argument on premises drawn from the accepted
economic authorities. Socialist economics, he says, is nothing
but a battle against Kicardo, whom he describes as the last and
most representative development of bourgeois economics ; and
it fights the battle with Bicardo's own weapons, and on
Bicardo's own ground. There are two principles in particular
of which it makes much use Bicardo's law of value and
Bicardo's law of natural or necessary wages.
Bicardo's law of value is that the value of a commodity, or
the quantity of any other commodity for which it will exchange,
depends on the relative quantity of labour which is necessary
for its production, and not on the greater or less compensation
which is paid for that labour. Value is thus resolved into so
much labour, or what is the same thing, so much time con-
sumed in labour, mental and manual, upon the commodity.
This reduction of value to quantity of time is reckoned by
Lassalle the one great merit of Bicardo and the English
economists. Bicardo, however, strictly limited his law to
commodities that admitted of indefinite multiplication, the
value of other commodities being, he held, regulated by their
scarcity ; and he confined it to the normal value of the com-
modities only, the fluctuations of their market-price depending
on other considerations. But Lassalle seeks to make it cover
these cases also by means of a distinction he draws between
individual time of labour, and socially necessary time of
labour. According to this distinction, what constitutes the
value of a product is not the time actually taken or required
by the person who made it ; for he may have been indolent or
slow, or may not have used the means and appliances which
the age he lived in afforded him. What constitutes value is
the average time of labour socially necessary, the time required
by labour of average efficiency using the methods the age
I2O Contemporary Socialism.
supplies. If the commodity can be produced in an hour, an
hour's work will be its value, though you have taken ten to
produce it by slower methods. So far there is nothing very
remarkable, but Lassalle goes on to argue that you may waste
your time not merely by using methods that society has
superseded, but by producing commodities that society no
longer wants. You go on making shoe-buckles after they
have gone out of fashion, and you can get nothing for them.
They have no value. And why ? Because, while they indeed
represent labour, they do not represent socially necessary
labour. So again with over-production : you may produce a
greater amount of a commodity than society requires at the
time. The value of the commodity falls. Why? Because while
it has cost as much actual labour as before, it has not cost
so much socially necessary labour. In fact, the labour it has
taken has been socially unnecessary, for there was no demand
for the product. On the other hand and we are entitled to
make this expansion of Lassalle's argument take the case of
under-production, of deficient supply. Prices rise. What is
usually known as a scarcity value is conferred on commodities.
But this scarcity value Lassalle converts into a labour value ;
the commodity is produced by the same individual labour, but
the labour is more socially necessary. In plain English, there
is more demand for the product.
Lassalle's distinction is thus an ingenious invention for
expressing rarity value in terms of labour value. It has no
theoretical importance, but is of some practical service in the
socialistic argument. That argument is not that value is
constituted by labour pure and simple, but by labour modified
by certain general conditions of society; only it holds that
these conditions conditions of productivity, of rarity, of
demand have been created by nobody in particular, that,
therefore, nobody in particular should profit by them, and
that so far as the problem of the distribution of value goes,
the one factor in the constitution of value which needs to
be taken into account in settling that problem, is labour.
All value comes from labour, represents so much time of
labour, is, in fact, so much " labour-jelly," so much preserved
labour.
Ferdinand Lassalle. 1 2 1
While one accepted economic law thus declares that all
value is conferred by the labourer, and is simply his sweat,
brain, and sinew incorporated in the product, another econo-
mic law declares that he gains no advantage from the pro-
ductivity of his own work, and that whatever value he
produces, he earns only the same wages bare customary
subsistence. In that lies the alleged injustice of the present
system. Von Thuenen, the famous Feudalist landowner and
economic experimentalist, said, many years ago, that when the
modern working class once began to ask the question, What
is natural wages ? a revolution might arise which would reduce
Europe to barbarism. This is the question Lassalle asked,
and by which mainly he stirred up socialism. The effect of
the previous argument was to raise the question, What is the
labourer entitled to get? and to suggest the answer, he is
entitled to get everything. The next question is, What, then,
does the labourer actually get ? and the answer is, that on the
economists' own showing, he gets just enough to keep soul
and body together, and on the present system can never
get any more. Ricardo, in common with other economists,
had taught that the value of labour, like the value of every-
thing else, was determined by the cost of its production, and
that the cost of the production of labour meant the cost of
the labourer's subsistence according to the standard of living
customary among his class at the time. Wages might rise for
a season above this level, or fall for a season below it, but they
always tended to return to it again, and would not permanently
settle anywhere else. When they rose higher, the labouring
class were encouraged by their increased prosperity to marry, and
eventually their numbers were thus multiplied to such a degree
that by the force of ordinary competition the rate of wages was
brought down again ; when they fell lower, marriages diminished
and mortality increased among the working class, and the result
was such a reduction of their numbers as to raise the rate of
wages again to its old level. This is the economic law of
natural or necessary wages " the iron and cruel law " which
Lassalle declared absolutely precluded the wage-labourers i.e.,
96 per cent, of the population from all possibility of ever
improving their condition or benefiting in the least from the
122 Contemporary Socialism.
growing productivity of their own work. This law converted
industrial freedom into an aggravated slavery. The labourer
was unmanned, taken out of a relationship which, with all
its faults, was still a human and personal one, put under an
impersonal and remorseless economic law, sent like a com-
modity to be bought in the cheapest market, and there dis-
possessed by main force of competition of the value of the
property which his own hands had made. Das Eigenthum ist
Fremdthum geicorden.
It is no wonder that teaching like this should move the
minds of working men to an intolerable sense of despair and
wrong. Nor was there any possibility of hope except in a
revolution. For the injustice complained of lay in the essence
of the existing economic system, and could not be removed,
except with the complete abolition of the system. The only
solution of the question, therefore, was a socialistic recon-
struction which should make the instruments of production
collective property, and subordinate capital to labour, but such
a solution would of course be the work of generations, and
meanwhile, the easiest method of transition from the old order
of things to the new, lay in establishing productive associations
of working men on State credit. These would form the living
seed-corn of the new era. This was just Louis Blanc's scheme,
with two differences viz., that the associations were to be
formed gradually, and that they were to be formed voluntarily.
The State was not asked to introduce a new organization of
labour by force all at once, but merely to lend capital at
interest to one sound and likely association after another, as
they successively claimed its aid. This loan was not to be
gratuitous, as the French socialists used to demand in 1848,
and since there would be eventually only one association of
the same trade in each town, and since, besides, they would
also establish a system of mutual assurance against loss, trade
by trade, the State, it was urged, would really incur no risk.
Lassalle, speaking of State help, said he did not want a hand
from the State, but only a little finger, and he actually sought,
in the first instance at least, no more than Mr. Gladstone gave
in the Irish Land Act. The scheme was mainly urged, of
course, in the interests of a sounder distribution of wealth ; but
Ferdinand Lassalle. 123
Lassalle contended that it would also increase production ; and
it is important to remember that he says it would not other-
wise be economically justifiable, because " an increase of
production is an indispensable condition of every improvement
of our social state." This increase would be effected by a
saving of cost, in abolishing local competition, doing away
with middle-men and private capitalists, and adapting produc-
tion better to needs. The business books of the association
would form the basis of a sound and trustworthy system of
commercial statistics, so much required for the purpose of
avoiding over-production. The change would, he thought,
also introduce favourable alterations in consumption, and in
the direction of production ; inasmuch as the taste of the
working class for the substantial and the beautiful, would
more and more supplant the taste of the bourgeoisie for the
cheap and nasty.
After the death of Lassalle, the movement he began departed
somewhat from the lines on which he launched it. 1st, His
plan of replacing capitalistic industry by productive associa-
tions of labourers, founded on State credit, had always seemed
a mockery, or, at least, a makeshift, to many of the socialists
of Germany. It would not -destroy competition, for one
association would still of necessity compete with another ; and
it would not secure to every man the right to the full product
of his labour, for the members of the stronger productive
associations would be able to exploit the members of the
weaker as the ordinary result of their inter-competition. In
other words, Lassalle's plan would not in their eyes realize the
socialist claim, as that claim had been taught to them, by
Marx. Their claim could only be realized by the conversion of
all industrial instruments into public property, and the system-
atic conduct of all industry by the public authority ; and why
not aim straight for that result, they asked, instead of first
bringing in a merely transitional period of productive associa-
tions,which would, on Lassalle's own calculations, take two hun-
dred years to create, and which might not prove transitional to
the socialist state after all ? Rodbertus even had gone against
Lassalle on this point, because he wanted to see individual
property converted into national property, and thought con-
124 Contemporary Socialism.
verting it first into joint stock property was really to prevent
rather than promote the main end he had in view.
Then, 2nd, Lassalle was a national, not an international
socialist. He held that every country should solve its own
social question for itself, and that the working-class movement
was not, and should not be made, cosmopolitan. He was
even as Prince Bismarck said in Parliament, when taxed with
having personal relations with him patriotic. At least he
was an intense believer in Prussia ; less, however, because he
was a Prussian than because Prussia was a strong State, and
because he thought that strong States alone could do the
world's work in Germany or elsewhere. By nationality in
itself he set but little store ; a nationality had a right to
separate existence if it could assert it, but if it were weak
and struggling, its only duty was to submit with thankfulness
to annexation by a stronger power. He wished his followers,
therefore, to keep aloof from the doings of other nations, and
to concentrate their whole exertions upon victory at the
elections in their own country and the gradual development
of productive associations on national loans. This restriction
of the range of the movement had from the first dissatisfied
some of its adherents, especially a certain active section who
hated Prussia as much as Lassalle believed in her, and after
the influence of the International began to make itself felt
upon the agitation in Germany, this difference of opinion
gathered gradually to a head. In 1868 a motion was brought
before the general meeting of the League in favour of estab-
lishing relations with the International and accepting its
programme. The chief promoters of this motion were the two
present leaders of the Social Democratic party in the Reichs-
tag, Liebknecht and Bebel, and it was strongly opposed by
the president of the League, Dr. von Schweitzer, an advocate in
Frankfort, and a strong champion of Prussia, who was elected
to the presidency in 1866, just at the time t*he extension of the
suffrage gave a fresh impetus to the movement, and whose
energy and gifts of management contributed greatly to the
development of the organization. The motion was carried by
a substantial majority, but before next year Von Schweitzer
had succeeded in turning the tables on his opponents, and at
Ferdinand Lassalle. 125
the general meeting in 1869, Liebknecht and Bebel were
expelled from the League, as traitors to the labourers' cause.
After their expulsion they called together in the same year a
congress of working men at Eisenach, which was attended
mainly by delegates from Austria and South Germany, and
founded an independent organization on the principles of the
International, and under the name of the Social Democratic
Labour Party of Germany. The two organizations existed
side by side till 187-1, when a union was effected between them
at a general meeting at Gotha, and they became henceforth
the Socialist Labour Party. This was the burial of the
national socialism of Lassalle, for though in deference to his
followers, the new programme promised in the meantime to
work within national limits, it expressly recognised that the
labourers' movement was international, and that the great aim
to be striven after was a state of society in which every man
should be obliged to share in the general labour according to
his powers, and have a right to receive from the aggregate
product of labour according to what was termed his rational
requirements. Some " orthodox Lassalleans," as they called
themselves, held aloof from this compromise, b.ut they are too
few to be of any importance. They still remain apart from
the main body of German socialism, and live in such good
odour with the Government, whether on account of their
unimportance or of their supposed loyalty, that they were never
molested by any application of the Socialist Laws which were
enforced for twelve years strenuously against all other socialists.
Among the causes which brought the others to so much
unanimity was undoubtedly the establishment of the German
Empire in 1871, which was viewed with universal aversion
by socialists of every shade. On the outbreak of the war,
Schweitzer and the members of the original League gave their
sympathies warmly to the arms of their country, and the
Social Democratic party was nearly equally divided on the
subject ; but after the foundation of the French Republic,
they all with one consent declared that the war ought now to
cease, and the socialist deputies, no matter which organization
they belonged to, voted without exception against granting
supplies for its continuance. They were likewise opposed to
126 Contemporary Socialism.
the recognition of the title of Emperor and to the constitution
of the Empire, and indeed as republicans they could not be
anything else. From a recollection mainly of these votes
Prince Bismarck considered the movement to be unpatriotic
and hostile to the Empire, and accordingly suppressed its pro-
paganda in 1878, when its growth seemed likely to prove a
serious danger to an Empire whose stability was still far from
being assured by any experience of its advantages. The
socialists retorted upon this policy at their congress at Wyden,
Switzerland, in 1880, by striking out of their programme the
limitation of proceeding by legal means, on the ground that
the action of the Government having made legal means
impracticable, no resource was left but to meet force by force.
They thus threw aside the last shred of the practical policy of
Lassalle, and stood out thenceforth as a party of international
revolution.
The movement could, however, hardly help becoming inter-
national ; not, as some allege, because this is a peculiarity of
revolutionary parties ; on the contrary, other parties may also
exhibit it. What, for example, was the Holy Alliance but an
international league of the monarchical and aristocratic parties
against the advance of popular rights ? Nor is it a peculiarity
of the present time only. No doubt the increased inter-
communication and inter-dependence between countries now
facilitates its development. There are no longer nations in
Europe, said Heine, but only parties. But in reality it has
always been nearly as much so as now. Any party founded
on a definite general principle or interest may in any age
become international, and even what may seem unpatriotic.
The Protestants of France in the 16th century sought help
from England, and the Jacobites of England in the 18th
sought help from France ; just as the German socialists of
1870 sided with the French after Sedan, and the French
communists of 1871 preferred to see their country occupied
by the Germans rather than governed by the " Versaillais."
In all these cases the party principles were naturally inter-
national, and the party bias overcame the patriotic.
Besides, the socialist is, almost by necessity of his position
and principles, predisposed to discourage and condemn patriot-
Ferdinand Lassalle. 127
ism. Others, indeed, condemn it as well as he. Most of the
great writers who revived German literature towards the
beginning of this century Lessing, Herder, Wieland, Goethe
have all disparaged it. They looked on it as a narrow and
obsolete virtue, useful enough perhaps in rude times, but a
hindrance to rational progress now; the modern virtue was
humanity, the idea of which had just freshly burst upon their
age like a new power. This consideration may no doubt to
some extent weigh with socialists also, for their whole thinking
is leavened with the notion of humanity, but their most
immediate objection to patriotism is one of a practical nature.
Their complaint used always to be that the proletarian had
no country, because he was excluded from political rights. He
was not a citizen, and why should he have the feelings of
one? But now he has got political rights, and they still
complain. He is in the country, they say, but not yet of it.
He is practically excluded from its civilization, from all that
makes the country worth living or fighting for. He has no
country, for he is denied a man's share in the life that is
going in any. Edmund Ludlow wrote over his door in exile
" Every land is my fatherland,
For all lands are my Father's."
The modern socialist says, No land is my fatherland, for in
none am I a son. He believes himself to be equally neglected
in all, and that is precisely the severest strain that can try
the patriotic sentiment. The proletarian is taught that in
every country he is a slave, and that patriotism and religion
only reconcile him to remaining so. Moreover, as B,od-
bertus has remarked, the social question itself is, in a sense,
international because it is social.
CHAPTER IV.
KARL MARX.
IN opening the present chapter in the previous edition of this
book, I said it was not a little remarkable that the works of
Karl Marx, which had then excited considerable commotion
in other European countries, were still absolutely unknown
in England, though England was the country where they
were written, and to whose circumstances they were, in their
author's judgment, pre-eminently applicable. His principal
work, "Das Kapital," is a criticism of modern industrial develop-
ment as explained by English economists and exemplified in
English society. It shows a rare knowledge of English
economic literature, even of the most obscure writers ; it goes
very fully into the conditions of English labour as described
in our parliamentary reports; and out of four hundred odd
books it quotes, more than three hundred are English books.
Its illustrations are drawn from English industrial life, and
its very money allusions are stated in terms of English coin.
Its chief doctrine, moreover, was an old English doctrine,
familiar among the disciples of Owen ; and to crown all, if the
author's belief was true, England was the country ripest for
its reception, for the socialist revolution, he thought, would
inevitably come when the working class sunk into the condition
of a proletariat, and the working class of England had been
a proletariat for many years already. Yet Marx's work
was not at that time (1884) translated into English, though
it had been into most other European languages, and had
enjoyed a very large sale even in Russia, to whose circum-
stances it had admittedly very little adaptation. An English
translation appeared at length, however, in 1887, twenty years
after the publication of the original, and a considerable edition
was disposed of within a year, though the price was high. We
128
Karl Marx. 129
have therefore grown more familiar of late with the name and
importance of Karl Marx.
Born at Treves in 1818, the son of a Christian Jew who
had a high post in the civil service, Marx was sent to the
University of Bonn, towards the end of the '30s, won a con-
siderable reputation there in philosophy and jurisprudence,
determined, like Lassalle, to devote himself to the academic
profession, and seemed destined for an eminently successful
career, in which his subsequent marriage with the sister of the
Prussian Minister of State, Von "Westphalen, would certainly
have facilitated his advancement. But at the University he
came under the spell of Hegel, and passed, step by step, with
the Extreme Left of the Hegelian school, into the philosophical,
religious, and political Radicalism which finally concentrated
into the Humanism of Feuerbach. Just as he had finished his
curriculum, the accession of Frederick William IV. in 1840
stirred a rustle of most misplaced expectation among the
Liberals of Germany, who thought the day of freedom was at
length to break, and who rose with generous eagerness to the
tasks to which it was to summon them. Under the influence
of these hopes and feelings, Marx abandoned the professorial
for an editorial life, and committed himself at the very outset
of his days to a political position which compromised him
hopelessly with German governments, and forced him, step
by step, into a long career of revolutionary agitation and
organization. He joined the staff of the Ehenish Gazette, which
was founded at that time in Cologne by the leading Liberals
of the Rhine country, including Camphausen and Hansemann,
and which was the organ of the Young Hegelian, or Philo-
sophical Radical Party, and he made so great an impression
by his bold and vigorous criticism of the proceedings of the
Rhenish Landtag that he was appointed editor of the news-
paper in 1842. In this post he continued his attacks on the
Government, and they were at once so effective and so carefully
worded that a special censor was sent from Berlin to Cologne
to take supervision of his articles, and when this agency
proved ineffectual, the journal was suppressed by order of the
Prussian Ministry in 1843. From Cologne Marx went to
Paris to be a joint editor of the Deutsche Franzosische Jahr-
K
130 Contemporary Socialism.
Mcher with Arnold Ruge, a leader of the Hegelian Extreme
Left, who had been deprived of his professorship at the
University of Halle by the Prussian Government, and whose
magazine, the Deutsclie Jahrbiicher, published latterly at
Leipzig to escape the Prussian authority, had just been
suppressed by the Saxon. The Deutsche Franzoxische Jahr-
biicher were published by the well-known Julius Froebel,
who had some time before given up his professorship at
Zurich to edit a democratic newspaper, and open a shop
for the sale of democratic literature ; who professed himself a
communist in Switzerland, and had written some able works,
with very radical and socialistic leanings, but who seems to
have gone on a different tack at the time of the Lassallean
movement, for he was as Meding shows us in his " Memoiren
zur Zeitgeschichte " the prime promoter of the ill-fated
Congress of Princes at Frankfort in 1865. The new magazine
was intended to be a continuation of the suppressed Deutsche
Jahrbucher, on a more extended plan, embracing French as
well as German contributors, and supplying in some sort a
means of uniting the Extreme Left of both nations ; but no
French contribution ever appeared in it, and it ceased alto-
gether in a year's time, probably for commercial reasons,
though there is no unlikelihood in the allegation sometimes
made, that it was stopped in consequence of a difference
between the editors as to the treatment of the question of
communism.
The Young Hegelians had already begun to take the
keenest interest in that question, but were, for a time,
curiously perplexed as to the attitude they should assume
towards it. They seem to have been fascinated and repelled
by turns by the system, and to have been equally unable to
cast it aside or to commit themselves fairly to it. Karl
Griin, himself a Young Hegelian, says that at first they feared
socialism, and points, for striking evidence of this, to the fact
that the Rhenish Gazette bestowed an enthusiastic welcome on
Stein's book on French communism, although that book con-
demned the sj^stem from a theologically orthodox and politically
reactionary point of view. But he adds that the Young
Hegelians contributed to the spread of socialism against their
Karl Marx. 131
will, that it was through the interest they took in its specula-
tions and experiments that socialism acquired credit and
support in public opinion in Germany, and that the earliest
traces of avowed socialism are to be found in the Rhenish
Gazette. If we may judge by the extracts from some of Marx's
articles in that journal which are given in Bruno Bauer's
" Vollstandige Geschichte der Parthei-Kampfe in Deutschland
wahrend der Jahre 1842-46," we should say that Marx was
even at this early period a decided socialist, for he often
complains of the great wrong " the poor dumb millions " suffer
in being excluded by their poverty from the possibility of a
free development of their powers, " and from any participation
in the. fruits of civilization," and maintains that the State had
far other duty towards them than to come in contact with
them only through the police. When Ruge visited Cabet in
Paris, he said that he and his friends (meaning, he explained,
the philosophical and political opposition) stood so far aloof
from the question of communism that they had never yet
so much as raised it, and that, while there were communists
in Germany, there was no communistic party. This state-
ment is probably equivalent to saying that he and his school
took as yet a purely theoretical and Platonic interest in socialism,
and had not come to adopt it as part of their practical pro-
gramme. Most of them were already communists by con-
viction, and the others felt their general philosophical and
political principles forcing them towards communism, and the
reason of their hesitation in accepting it is probably expressed
by Ruge, when he says (in an article in Heinzen's " Die
Opposition," p. 103), that the element of truth in communism
was its sense of the necessity of political emancipation, but
that there was a great danger of communists forgetting the
political question in their zeal for the social. It was chiefly
under the influence of the Humanism into which Feuerbach
had transformed the Idealism of Hegel, that the Hegelian
Left passed into communism. Humanist and communist
became nearly convertible terms. Friedrich Engels mentions
in his book on the condition of the English working classes,
published in 1845, that all the German communists of that
day were followers of Feuerbach, and most of the followers
132 Contemporary Socialism.
of Feuerbach in Germany (Ruge seems to have remained an
exception) were communists. Lassalle was one of Feuerbach's
correspondents, and after he started the present socialist move-
ment in Germany, he wrote Feuerbach on 21st October,
1863, saying that the Progressists were political rationalists
of the feeblest type, and that it was the same battle which
Feuerbach was waging in the theological, and he himself now
in the political and economic sphere. Stein attributed French
socialism greatly to the prevailing sensualistic character of
French philosophy, which conceived enjoyment to be man's
only good, and never rose to what he calls the great German
conception, the logical conception of the Ego, the idea of
knowing for the sake of knowing. The inference this con-
trast suggests is that the metaphysics of Germany had been
her protector, her national guard, against socialism, but as
we see, at the very time he was writing the guard was turning
traitor, and a native socialism was springing up by natural
generation out of the idealistic philosophy. The fact, how-
ever, rather confirms the force of Stein's remark, for the
Hegelian idealism first bred the more sensualistic system of
humanism, and then humanism bred socialism.
Hegel had transformed the transcendental world of current
opinion, with its personal Deity and personal immortality, into
a world of reason; and Feuerbach went a step further, and
abolished what he counted the transcendency of reason itself.
Heaven and God, he entirely admitted, were nothing but
subjective illusions, fantastic projections of man's own being
and his own real world into external spheres. But mind, an
abstract entity, and reason, a universal and single principle,
were, in his opinion, illusions too. There was nothing real
but man the concrete flesh and blood man who thinks and
feels. " God," says Feuerbach, speaking of his mental develop-
ment, " was my first thought, Reason my second, Man my
third and last." He passed, as Lange points out, through
Comte's three epochs. Theology was swept away, and then
metaphysics, and in its room came a positive and materialistic
anthropology which declared that the senses were the sole
sources of real knowledge, that the body was nob only part of
man's being, but its totality and essence, and, in short, that man
Karl Marx. 133
is -what he eats Zter Mensch ist was er isst. Man, therefore,
had no other God before man, and the promotion of man's
happiness and culture in this earthly life which was his only
life was the sole natural object of his political or religious
interest. This system was popularized by Feuerbach's brother
Friedrich, in a little work called the " Religion of the Future,"
which enjoyed a high authority among the German com-
munists, and formed a kind of lectionary they read and com-
mented on at their stated meetings. The object of the new
religion is thus described in it : " Man alone is our God, our
father, our judge, our redeemer, our true home, our law and
rule, the alpha and omega of our political, moral, public, and
domestic life and work. There is no salvation but by man."
And the cardinal articles of the faith are that human nature
is holy, that the impulse to pleasure is holy, that everything
which gratifies it is holy, that every man is destined and
entitled to be happy, and for the attainment of this end has the
right to claim the greatest possible assistance from others, and
tli duty to afford the same to them in turn.
Now the tendency of this metaphysical and moral teaching
was strongly democratic and socialistic. There was said to be
in the existing political system a false transcendency identical
with that of the current religious system. King and council
hovered high and away above the real life of society in a world
of their own, looking on political power as a kind of private
property, and careless of mankind, from whom it sprang, to
whom it belonged, and by whom and for whom it should be
administered. " The princes are gods," says Feuerbach, " and
they must share the same fate. The dissolution of theology
into anthropology in the field of thought is the dissolution of
monarchy into republic in the field of politics. Dualism, sepa-
ration is the essence of theology ; dualism, separation is the
essence of monarchy. There we have the antithesis of God
and world ; here we have the antithesis of State and people."
This dualism must be abolished. The State must be humanized
must be made an instrument in the hands of all for the wel-
fare of all ; and its inhabitants must be politized, for they, all
of them, constitute the polis. Man must no longer be a means,
but must be everywhere and always an end. There was no-
134 Contemporary Socialism.
body above man ; there was neither superhuman person, nor
consecrated person ; neither deity, nor divine right. And, on
the other hand, as there is no person who in being or right is
more than man, so there must be no person who is less. There
must be no unmenschen, no slaves, no heretics, no outcasts, no
outlaws, but every being who wears human flesh must be
placed in the enjoyment of the full rights and privileges of
man. The will of man be done, hallowed be his name.
These principles already bring us to the threshold of social-
ism, and now Feuerbach's peculiar ethical principle carries us
into its courts. That principle has been well termed Tuism,
to distinguish it from Egoism. The human unit is not the
individual, but man in converse with man, the sensual Ego
with the sensual Tu. The isolated man is incomplete, both as
a moral and as a thinking being. " The nature of man is con-
tained only in the community, in the unity of man with man.
Isolation is finitude and limitation, community is freedom and
infinity. Man by himself is but man ; man with man, the
unity of I and Thou, is God." Feuerbach personally never
became a communist, for he says his principle was neither
egoism nor communism, but the combination of both. They
were equally true, for they were inseparable, and to condemn
self-love would be, he declared, to condemn love to others at
the same time, for love to others was nothing but a recogni-
tion that their self-love was justifiable. But it is easy to per-
ceive the natural tendency of the teaching that the social man
was the true human unit and essence, and was to the indi-
vidual as a God. With most of his disciples Humanism meant
making the individual disappear in the community, making
egoism disappear in love, and making private property dis-
appear in collective. Hess flatly declared that " the species
was the end, and the individuals were only means." Huge
disputed this doctrine, and contended that the empirical indi-
vidual was the true human unit and the true end ; but even he
said that socialism was the humanism of common life. Griin
passes into socialism by simply applying to property Feuer-
bach's method of dealing with theology and monarchy. He
argues that if the true essence of man is the social man, then,
just as theology is anthropology, so is anthropology socialism,
Karl Marx. 135
for property is at present entirely alienated, externalized from
the social man. There is a false transcendency in it, like that
of divinity and monarchy. " Deal, therefore," he says, " with
the practical God, money, as Feuerbach dealt with the theo-
retical " ; humanize it. Make property an inalienable posses-
sion of manhood, of every man as man. For property is a
necessary material for his social activity, and therefore ought
to belong as inalienably and essentially to him as everything
which he otherwise possesses of means or materials for his
activity in life ; as inalienably, for example, as his body or his
personal acquirements. If man is the social man, some social
possession is then necessary to his manhood, and might be
called an essential part of it ; but existing property is some-
thing outside, as separate from him as heaven or the sovereign
power. Griin accordingly says that Feuerbach's " Essence of
Christianity " supplies the theoretical basis for Proudhon's
social system, because the latter only applies to practical life
the principles which the former applied to religion and meta-
physics, but he admits that neither Feuerbach nor Proudhou
would acknowledge the connection.
We thus see how theoretical humanism a philosophy and
a religion led easily over into the two important articles of
practical humanism, a democratic transformation of the State
and a communistic transformation of society. This was the
ideal of the humanists, and it contains ample and wide-reach-
ing positive features ; but when it came to practical action they
preferred for the present to take up an attitude of simple but
implacable negation to the existing order of things. No doubt
variety of opinion existed among them ; but if they are to be
judged by what seemed their dominant interest, they were
revolutionaries and nothing else. They repudiated with one
consent the socialist Utopias of France, and refrained on prin-
ciple from committing themselves to, or even discussing, any
positive scheme of reconstruction whatsoever. They held it
premature to think of positive proposals, which would, more-
over, be sure to sow divisions among themselves. Their first
great business was not to build up, but to destroy, and their
work in the meantime was therefore to develop the revolu-
tionary spirit to its utmost possible energy, by exciting hatred
136 Contemporary Socialism.
against all existing institutions; in short, to create an immense
reservoir of revolutionary energy which might be turned to
account when its opportunity arrived. Their position is singu-
larly like the phase of Russian nihilism described by Baron.
Fircks, and presented to us in TurgeniefFs novels. It is ex-
pressed very plainly by W. Marr. himself an active humanist,
who carried Feuerbach's " Essence of Christianity " as his con-
stant companion, and founded a secret society for promoting
humanistic views. In his interesting book on Secret Societies
in Switzerland, he says, " The masses can only be gathered
under the flag of negation. "When you present detailed plans,
you excite controversies and sow divisions ; you repeat the
mistake of the French socialists, who have scattered their
redoubtable forces because they tried to carry formulated
systems. We are content to lay down the foundation of the
revolution. We shall have deserved well of it if we stir hatred
and contempt against all existing institutions. We make war
against all prevailing ideas, of religion, of the State, of country.,
of patriotism. The idea of God is the keystone of a perverted
civilization. It must be destroyed. The true root of liberty,
of equality, of culture, is Atheism. Nothing must restrain the
spontaneity of the human mind." All this work of annihila-
tion could neither be done by reform, nor by conspiracy, but
only by revolution, and " a revolution is never made ; it makes
itself." While the revolution was making, Marr founded an
association in Switzerland, " Young Germany," which should
prepare society for taking effective action when the hour came.
There was a " Young Germany " in Switzerland when he
arrived there; part of a federation of secret societies established
by Mazzini in 1834, under the general name of "Young
Europe," and comprising three series of societies : " Young
Italy," composed of Italians; "Young Poland," of Poles; and
" Young Germany," of Germans. But this organization was
not at all to Marr's mind, because it concerned itself with
nothing but politics, and because its method was conspiracy.
" Great transformations," he said, "are never prepared by con-
spiracies," and it was a very great transformation indeed that
he contemplated. He therefore formed a " Young Germany "
of his own. His plan was to plant a lodge, or " family," wher-
Karl Marx. 137
ever there existed a German working men's association. The
members of this family became members of the association,
and formed a leaven which influenced all around them, and,
through the wandering habits of the German working class,
was carried to much wider circles. The family met for poli-
tical discussion once a week, read Friedrich Feuerbach to-
gether on the Sundays with fresh recruits, who, when they
had mastered him, were said to have put off the old man ; and
their very password was humanity, a brother being recognised
by using the half-word human ? interrogatively, and the other
replying by the remaining half Hat. The members were all
ardent democrats, but, as a rule, so national in their sym-
pathies that the leaders made it one great object of their disci-
pUna arcani to stifle the sentiment of patriotism by subjecting
it to constant ridicule.
Their relations to communism are not quite easy to deter-
mine. Marr himself sometimes expresses disapproval of the
system. He says, " Communism is the expression of impotence
of will. The communists lack confidence in themselves. They
suffer under social oppression, and look around for consolation
instead of seeking for weapons to emancipate themselves with.
It is only a world-weariness desiring illusion as the condition
of its life." He says the belief in the absolute dependence of
man on matter is the shortest and most pregnant definition of
communism, and that it starts from the principle that man is
a slave and incapable of emancipating himself. But, on the
other hand, he complains that the members of " Young Ger-
many" did not sufficiently appreciate the social question, being
disgusted with the fanaticism of the communists. By the
communists, he here means the followers of "Weitling and
Albrecht, who were at that time creating a party movement
in Switzerland. The prophet Albrecht, as he is called, was
simply a crazy mystic with proclivities to sedition which
brought him at length to prison for six years, and which took
there an eschatological turn from his having, it is said, nothing
to read but the Bible, so that on his release he went about pro-
phesying that Jehovah had prepared a way in the desert,
which was Switzerland, for bringing into Europe a reign of
peace, in which people should hold all things in common and
138 Contemporary Socialism.
enjoy complete sensuous happiness, sitting under their common
vine and fig-tree, with neither king nor priest to make them
any more afraid. Weitling was not quite so unimportant, but
the attention he excited at the time is certainly not justified
by any of the writings he has left us. He was a tailor from
Magdeburg, who was above his work, believing himself to be a
poet and a man of letters, condemned by hard fate and iniqui-
tous social arrangements to a dull and cruel lot. Having
gone to Paris when socialism was the rage there, he eagerly
embraced that new gospel, and went to Switzerland to carry
its message of hope to his own German countrymen. There
he forsook the needle altogether, and lived as the paid apostle
of the dignity of manual labour, for which he had himself little
mind. His ideas are crude, confused, and arbitrary. His ideal
of society was a community of labourers, with no State, no
Church, no individual property, no distinction of rank or posi-
tion, no nationality, no fatherland. All were to have equal
rights and duties, and each was to be put in a position to
develop his capacity and gratify his bents as far as possible.
He was moved more by the desire for abstract equality than
German socialists of the humanist or contemporary type, for
they do not build on the justice of a more equal distribution of
wealth so much as on the necessity of the possession of pro-
perty for the free development of the human personality. He
is entirely German, however, in his idea of the government of
the new society. It was to be governed by the three greatest
philosophers of the age, assisted by a board of trade, a board of
health, and a board of education. In Switzerland he founded,
to promote his views, a secret society, the " Alliance of the
Just," which had branches in most of the Swiss towns. Its
members were chiefly Germans from Germany, for very few
'of the communists in Switzerland were born Swiss, and
according to Marr, who was present at some of their meetings,
they were three-fourths of them tailors. " I felt," says Marr,
" when I entered one of these clubs, that I was with the
mother of tailors. The tailor sitting and chatting at his work
is always extreme in his opinions. Tailor and communist are
synonymous terms." It was to some of the leaders of this
alliance that Weitling unfolded his wild scheme of a proleta-
Karl Marx. 139
riat raid, according to which an army of 20,000 brigands was
to be raised among the proletariat of the large towns, to go
with torch and sword into all the countries of Europe, and
terrify the bourgeoisie into a recognition of universal commu-
nity of goods. It is only fair to add that his proposal met
with no favour. Letters were found in his possession, and
subsequently published in Bluutschli's official report, which
show that some of Weitling's correspondents regarded his
scheme with horror, and others treated it with ridicule. One
of them said it was trying to found the kingdom of heaven
with the furies of hell. The relations between " Young Ger-
many " and Weitling's allies were apparently not cordial,
though they had so much in common that, on the one hand,
"Weitling's correspondents urge him to keep on good terms
with " Young Germany," and, on the other, Marr says he
actually tried to get a common standing ground with the
communists, and thought he had found it in the negation of
the present system of things the negation of religion, the
negation of patriotism, the negation of subjection to authority.
Now the importance of this excursus on the Young Hegelians
lies in the fact that Karl Marx was a humanist, and looked on
humanism as the vital and creative principle in the renovation
of political and industrial society. In the Deutsche Franzos-
ische Jahrbilcher he published an article on the Hegelian
Philosophy of Right, in which he sa} 7 s : " The new revolution
will be introduced by philosophy. The revolutionary tradition
of Germany is theoretical. The Reformation was the work of
a monk ; the Revolution will be the work of a philosopher."
The particular philosophy that was to do the work is that of
the German critics, whose critique of religion had ended in the
dogma that man is the highest being for man, and in the
categorical imperative, " to destroy everything in the present
order of things that makes a man a degraded, insulted, for-
saken, and despised being." But philosophy cannot work a
revolution without material weapons ; and it will find its
material weapon in the proletariat, which he owns, however,
was at the time he wrote only beginning to be formed in
Germany. But when it rises in its strength, it will be irre-
sistible, and the revolution which it will accomplish will be the
140 Contemporary Socialism.
only one known to history that is not Utopian. Other revolu-
tions have been partial, wrought by a class in the interests of a
class ; but this one will be a universal and uniform revolution,
effected in the name of all society, for the proletariat is a
class which possesses a universal character because it dissolves
all other separate classes into itself. It is the only class that
takes its stand on a human and not a historical title. Its
very sorrows and grievances have nothing special or relative
in them; they are the broad sorrows and grievances of
humanity. And its claims are like them ; for it asks no
special privileges or special prerogatives ; it asks nothing but
what all the world will share along with it. The history of
the world is the judgment of the world, and the duration of an
order of things founded on the ascendancy of a limited class
possessing money and culture, is practically condemned and
foredoomed by the rapid multiplication of a large class outside
which possess neither. The growth of this latter body not
merely tends to produce, but actually is, the dissolution of the
existing system of things. For the existing system is founded
on the assertion of private property, but the proletariat is
forced by society to take the opposite principle of the negation
of private property for the principle of its own life, and will
naturally carry that principle into all society when it gains
the power, as it is rapidly and inevitably doing. Marx
sums up : " The only practical emancipation for Germany is
an emancipation proceeding from the standpoint of the theory
which explains man to be the highest being for man. In
Germany the emancipation from the middle ages is only
possible as at the same time an emancipation from the partial
conquests of the middle ages. In Germany one kind of bond
cannot be broken without all other bonds being broken too.
Germany is by nature too thorough to be able to revolutionize
without revolutionizing from a fundamental principle, and
following that principle to its utmost limits ; and therefore the
emancipation of Germany will be the emancipation of man.
The head of this emancipation is philosophy ; its heart is the
proletariat." He adds that when things are ripe, " when all
the inner conditions have been completed, the German resur-
rection day will be heralded by the crowing of the Gallic cock."
Karl Marx. 141
In this essay we mark already Marx's overmastering belief
in natural historical evolution, which he had learnt from
Hegel, and which prevented him from having any sympathy
with the Utopian projects of the French socialists. They
vainly imagined, he held, that they could create a new world
right off, whereas it was only possible to do so by observing a
rigorous conformity to the laws of the development already in
progress, by making use of the forces already at work, and
proceeding in the direction towards which the stream of things
was itself slowly but mightily moving. Hegel sought the
principle of organic development in the State, but Marx
sought it rather in civil society, and believed he had discovered
it in that most mighty though unconscious product of the
large system of industry, the modern proletariat, which was
born to revolution as the sparks fly upward ; and in the
simultaneous decline of the middle classes, that is, of the con-
servative element which could resist the change. The process
which was, as he held, now converting society into an aggre-
gate of beggars and millionaires was bound eventually to
overleap itself and land in a communism. I shall not discuss
the truth of this conception at present, but it contributes, along
with the sentiments of justice and humanity that animate
rightly or wrongly the ideal of the socialists, to lend some-
thing of a religious force to their movement, for they feel that
they are fellow-workers with the nature of things.
"\\~e- left Marx in Paris, and on returning to him, we find
him engaged as indeed we usually do when his history comes
into notice in a threefold warfare. Besides his general war
against the arrangements of modern society, he is always
carrying on a bitter and implacable war against the Prussian
Government, and is often engaged in controversy sometimes
very personal with foes of his own philosophical or revolu-
tionary household. After the cessation of the Deutsche Franzos-
ische Jahrbticher, Marx edited a paper called Vorwarts, and in
this and other journals open to him, he attacked the Prussian
administration so strongly that that administration complained
to Guizot, who gave him orders to quit France. His more
personal controversy at this time arose out of one of the
schisms of the Young Hegelians, and he and his friend
142 Contemporary Socialism.
Friedrich Engels wrote a pamphlet " Die Heilige Familie "
against the Hegelian Idealism, and especially against Bnmo
Bauer, who had offended him says Erdmaiin, in his " History
of Philosophy " at once as Jew, as Radical, and as journalist.
When expelled from France, he went to Brussels, where he
was allowed to continue his war upon the Prussian Govern-
ment without interference, till the revolution of 1848. During
this period he devoted his attention more particularly than
hitherto to commercial subjects, and published in 1846 his
" Discours sur le Libre-echange," and in 1847 his " Misere de
la Philosophie," a reply to Proudhon's " Philosophic de la
Misere " both in French.
While in Brussels, Marx received an invitation from the
London Central Committee of the Communist League to join
that society. This league had been founded in Paris in 1836,
for the purpose of propagating communist opinions among the
working men of Germany. Its organization was analogous to
that of the International and other societies of the same kind.
A certain number of members constituted a Gemeinde, the
several Gemdnden in the same town constituted a Kreis, a
number of Kreise were grouped into a leading Kreis, and at
the head of the whole was the Central Committee, which was
chosen at a general congress of deputies from all the Krei*<-,
and which had since 1840 had its seat in London. The method
of the league was to establish, as a sphere of operation, German
working men's improvement associations everywhere. The
travelling custom of German working men greatly facilitated
this work, and numbers of these associations were soon founded
in Switzerland, England, Belgium, and the United States.
The reason its committee applied to Marx was that he had just
published a series of pamphlets in Brussels, in which, as he
tells us, he " submitted to a merciless criticism the medley
of French-English socialism and communism and of German
philosophy, which then constituted the secret doctrine of the
League," and insisted that " their work could have no tenable
theoretical basis except that of a scientific insight into the
economic structure of society, and that this ought to be put
into a popular form, not with the view of carrying out any
Utopian system, but of promoting among the working classes
Karl Marx. 143
and other classes a self-conscious participation in the process
of historical transformation of society that was taking place
under their eyes." This is always with Marx the distinctive
and ruling feature of his system. The French schemes were
impracticable Utopias, because they ignored the laws of history
and the real structure of economic society ; and he claims
that his own proposals are not only practicable but inevitable,
because they strictly observe the line of the actual industrial
evolution, and are thus, at worst, plans for accelerating the day
after to-morrow. But, besides this difference of principle,
Marx thought the League should also change its method and
tactics. Its work, being that of social revolution, was different
from the work of the old political conspirators and secret socie-
ties, and therefore needed different weapons ; the times, too,
were changed, and offered new instruments. Street insurrec-
tions, surprises, intrigues, pronunciamentos might overturn a
dynasty, or oust a government, or bring them to reason, but were
of no avail in the world for introducing collective property or
abolishing wage labour. People would just begin again the day
after to work for hire and rent their farms as they did before.
A social revolution needed other and larger preparation ; it
needed to have the whole population first thoroughly leavened
with its principles ; nay, it needed to possess an international
character, depending not on detached local outbreaks, but on
steady concert in revolutionary action on the part of the
labouring classes everywhere. The cause was not political, or
even national, but social ; and society which was indeed
already pregnant with the change must be aroused to a con-
scious consent to the delivery. What was first to be done,
therefore, was to educate and move public opinion, and in this
work the ordinary secret society went but a little way. A
secret propaganda might still be carried on, but a public and
open propaganda was more effectual and more suitable to the
times. There never existed greater facilities for such a move-
ment, and they ought to make use of all the abundant means
of popular agitation and intercommunication which modern
society allowed. No more secret societies in holes and corners,
no more small risings and petty plots, but a great broad
organization working in open day, and working restlessly by
144 Contemporary Socialism.
tongue and pen to stir the masses of all European countries
to a common international revolution. Marx sought, in short,
to introduce the large system of production into the art of
conspiracy.
Finding his views well received by the Central Committee of
the Communist League, he acceded to their request to attend
their General Congress at London in 1847, and then, after
several weeks of keen discussion, he prevailed upon the Con-
gress to adopt " the Manifesto of the Communist party," which
was composed by himself and Engels, and which was afterwards
translated from the German into English, French, Danish,
and Italian, and sown broadcast everywhere just before the
Revolution of 1848. This Communist League may be said to
be the first organization and this Communist Manifesto the
first public declaration of the International Socialist Demo-
cracy that now is. The Manifesto begins by describing the
revolutionary situation into which the course of industrial
development has brought modern society. Classes were dying
out ; the yeomanry, the nobility, the small tradesmen, would
soon be no more ; and society was drawn up in two widely
separated hostile camps, the large capitalist class or bourgeoisie,
who had all the property and power in the country, and the
labouring class, the proletariat, who had nothing of either. The
bourgeoisie had played a most revolutionary part in history.
They had overturned feudalism, and now they had created pro-
letarianism, which would soon swamp themselves. They had
collected the masses in great towns ; they had kept the course of
industry in perpetual flux and insecurity by rapid successive
transformations of the instruments and processes of production,
and by continual recurrences of commercial crises ; and while
they had reduced all other classes to a proletariat, they had made
the life of the proletariat one of privation, of uncertainty,
of discontent, of incipient revolution. They exploited the
labourer of political power ; they exploited him of property,
for they treated him as a ware, buying him in the cheapest
market for the cost of his production, that is to say, the cost of
his living, and taking from him the whole surplus of his work,
after deducting the value of his subsistence. Under the
system of wage labour, it could not be otherwise. Wages
Karl Marx. 145
could never, by economic laws, rise above subsistence.
While wage labour created property, it created it always for
the capitalist, and never for the labourer ; and, in fact, the latter
only lived at all, so far as it was for the interests of the
governing class, the bourgeoisie, to permit him. Class rule and
wage labour must be swept away, for they were radically
unjust, and a new reign must be inaugurated which would be
politically democratic and socially communistic, and in which
the free development of each should be the condition for the
free development of all.
The Manifesto went on to say that communism was not the
subversion of existing principles, but their universalization.
Communism did not seek to abolish the State, but only the
bourgeois State, in which the bourgeois exclusively hold and
wield political power. Communism did not seek to abolish
property, but only the bourgeois system of property, under
which private property is really already abolished for nine-
tenths of society, and maintained merely for one-tenth. Com-
munism did not seek to abolish marriage and the family, but
only the bourgeois system of things under which marriage and
the family, in any true sense of those terms, were virtually
class institutions, for the proletariat could not have any family
life worthy of the name, so long as their wages were so low
that they were forced to huddle up their whole family regard-
less of all decency, in a single room, so long as their wives and
daughters were victims of the seduction of the bourgeoisie, and
so long as their children were taken away prematurely to
labour in mills for bourgeois manufacturers, who yet held up
their hands in horror at the thought of any violation of the
institution of the family. Communism did not tend to abolish
fatherland and nationality that was abolished already for the
proletariat, and was being abolished for the bourgeoisie, too, by
the extensions of their trade.
As to the way of emancipation, the proletariat must strive
to obtain political power, and use it to deprive the bourgeoisie
of all capital and means of production, and to place them in the
hands of the State, i.e., of the proletariat itself organized as
a governing body. Now, for this, immediate and various
measures interfering with property, and condemned by our
L
146 Contemporary Socialism.
current economics, were requisite. Those measures would
naturally be different for different countries, but for the most
advanced countries the following were demanded : (1) Expro-
priation of landed property and application of rent to State
expenditure; (2) abolition of inheritance; (3) confiscation of
the property of all emigrants and rebels ; (4) centralization of
credit in the hands of the State by means of a national bank,
with State capital and exclusive monopoly ; (5) centralization
of all means of transport in hands of State ; (6) institution of
national factories, and improvement of lands on a common
plan ; (7) compulsory obligation of labour upon all equally, and
establishment of industrial armies, especially for agriculture ;
(8) joint prosecution of agriculture and mechanical arts, and
gradual abolition of the distinction of town and country ; (9)
public and gratuitous education for all children, abolition of
children's labour in factories, etc. The Manifesto ends by say-
ing : " The communists do not saek to conceal their views
and aims. They declare openly that their purpose can only
be obtained by a violent overthrow of all existing arrange-
ments of society. Let the ruling classes tremble at a com-
munistic revolution. The proletariat have nothing to lose in
t but their chains ; they have a world to win. Proletarians of
all countries, unite ! "
When the French Revolution of February, 1848, broke out,
Marx was expelled without circumstance from Brussels, and
received an invitation from the Provisional Government of
Paris to return to France. He accepted this invitation, but
was only a few weeks in Paris when the German revolution of
March occurred, and he hastened to the theatre of affairs.
With his friends, Freiligrath, Wolff, En gels, and others, he
established on June 1st in Cologne the New Rhenish Gazette,
which was the soul of the Rhenish revolutionary movement, the
most important one of the year in Germany, and that in which,
as we have seen, the young Lassalle first emerged on the
troubled surface of revolutionary politics. After the coup d'etat of
November, dissolving the Prussian Parliament, the New Rhen-
ish Gazette strongly urged the people to stop paying their taxes,
and thus meet force by force. It inserted an admonition to
that effect in a prominent place in every successive number,
Karl Marx. 147
and Marx was twice tried for sedition on account of this
admonition, but each time acquitted. The newspaper, how-
ever, was finally suppressed by civil authority after the
Dresden insurrection of May, 1849, its last number appearing
on June 19th in red type, and containing Freiligrath's well-
known " Farewell of the New Rhenish Gazette " spiritedly
translated for us by Ernest Jones which declared that the
journal went down with " rebellion " on its lips, but would
reappear when the last of the German Crowns was overturned.
Farewell, but not for ever farewell !
They cannot kill the spirit, my brother ;
In thunder I'll rise on the field where I fell,
More boldl}' to fight out another.
"When the last of Crowns, like glass, shall break
On the scene our sorrows have haunted,
And the people its last dread " Guilty " shall speak,
By your side you shall find me undaunted.
On Rhine or on Danube, in war and deed,
You shall witness, true to his vow,
On the wrecks of thrones, in the midst of the field,
The rebel who greets you now.
This vow is no mere Parthian flourish of poetical defiance.
Freiligrath and his friends undoubtedly believed at this time
that the political movements of 1848 and 1849 were but pre-
liminary ripples, and would be presently succeeded by a great
flood-wave of revolution which they heard already sounding
along in their dangerously expectant ear. His poem on the
Revolution remains as evidence to us that in 1850 he still
clung to that hope, and it would not have been out of tune
with his sanguine beliefs of the year before if he promised,
not merely that the spirit of the journal would rise again, but
that its next number would be published, after the Deluge.
Meanwhile Marx went to London, where he remained for
the rest of his life. Finding that the revolutionary spirit did
not revive, and that historical societies, which have not lost
their moral and economic vitality, had a greater readjusting
power against political disturbance than he previously believed,
he gave up for the next ten or twelve years the active wort of
revolutionizing. The Communist League, which had got
disorganized in the revolutionary year, and was rent in two by
148 Contemporary Socialism.
a bitter schism in 1850, was, with his concurrence, dissolved
in 1852, on the ground that its propaganda was no longer
opportune ; and the story of the Brimstone League, with its
iron discipline and ogrish desires, of which Mehring says Marx
was, during his London residence, the head-centre, is simply a
fairy tale of Karl Vogt's, whose baselessness Marx has himself
completely exposed, Before leaving the Communist League,
two circumstances may be mentioned, because they repeat
themselves constantly in this revolutionary history. The one
is that this schism took place not on a point of doctrine, but of
opportunity ; the extremer members thought the conflict in
Germany on the Hessian question offered a good chance for a
fresh revolutionary outbreak, and they left the League because
their views were not adopted. The other is that in one of its
last reports (quoted by Mehring) the League definitely justifies,
and even recommends, assassination and incendiarism " the
so-called excesses, the inflictions of popular vengeance on hated
individuals, or on public buildings which revive hateful
associations." For the next ten years Marx lived quietly in
London, writing for the New York Tribune and other journals,
and studying modern industry on this its " classical soil.''
He read much in the British Museum Library, gaining his
remarkable acquaintance with the English economic writers,
and it was probably in this period he elaborated his famous
doctrine of surplus value, with its corollary of the right of
the labourer to the full product of his labour. There can be
no doubt that the original suggestion of this doctrine came
from English sources, for it was taught more than a generation
before among the English socialists, notably by William
Thompson in his " Inquiry into the Principles of the Distri-
bution of "Wealth," which was published as early as 1824, and
is actually quoted by Marx in his work on Capital. Marx built
up the doctrine, however, into a more systematic form, and it
is through him and not through the Owenites it has come into
the present socialist movement in which it plays so conspicuous
a part. During this period of reading and rumination,
Marx published a pamphlet against Louis Napoleon ; another
against Lord Palmerston, which was widely circulated by
David Urquhart ; a third of a personal and bitter character
Karl Marx. 149
against his fellow-socialist, Karl Vogt ; and a more solid and
important work, the "Kritik der Politischen Oekonomie " (1859),
the firstfruits of his new economic studies. But a revolu-
tionist never permanently gives up revolutionizing, and after
his prolonged abstinence from that excitement, Marx returned
to it again in 1864, on the foundation of the famous Inter-
national Working Men's Association.
The International was simply the Communist League raised
again from the dead. Their principles were the same ; their
constitution was the same ; and Marx began his inaugural
address to the International in 1864 with the very words that
concluded his Communistic Manifesto of 1847, " Proletarians of
all nations, unite ! " When the representatives of the English
working men first suggested the formation of an international
working men's association, in the address they presented in the
Freemasons' Tavern to the French working men who were
sent over at the instance of Napoleon III. to the London Exhi-
bition of 1862, they certainly never dreamt of founding an
organization of revolutionary socialist democracy which in a
few years to come was to wear a name at which the world
turned pale. Their address was most moderate and sensible.
They said that some permanent medium of interchanging
thoughts and observations between the working men of differ-
ent countries was likely to throw light on the economic secrets
of societies, a-nd to help onwards the solution of the great
labour problem. For they declared that that solution had not
yet been discovered, and that the socialist systems which had
hitherto professed to propound it were nothing but magnificent
dreams. Moreover, if the system of competition were to con-
tinue, then some arrangement of concord between employer
and labourer must be devised, and in order to assert the views of
the labouring class effectively in that arrangement, a firm and
organized union must be established among working men, not
merely in each country, but in all countries, for their interests,
both as citizens and as labourers, were everywhere identical.
Those ideas would constitute the basis of a very rational and
moderate programme. But when, in the following year, after
a meeting in favour of the Polish insurrection, which was held
in St. Martin's Hall under the presidency of Professor Beesly,
150 Contemporary Socialism.
and at -which some of the French delegates of 1862 were pre-
sent, a committee was appointed to follow up the suggestion,
this committee asked Marx to prepare a programme and sta-
tutes for the proposed association, and he impressed upon it at
its birth the stamp of his own revolutionary socialism. He never
had a higher official position in the International than corre-
sponding secretary for Germany, for it was determined, pro-
bably with the view of securing a better hold of the great
English working class and their extensive trade organizations,
that the president and secretary should be English working
men, and then, after a time, the office of president was abo-
lished altogether because it had a monarchical savour. But
Marx had the ablest, the best informed, and probably the most
made-up mind in the council ; he governed without reigning ;
and, with his faithful German following, he exercised an al-
most paramount influence on its action from first to last, in
spite of occasional revolts and intrigues against an authority
which democratic jealousy resented as dictatorial, or worse
still monarchical. The statutes of the association, which were
adopted at the Geneva Congress of 1866, declared that " the
economic subjection of the labourer to the possessor of the
means of labour, i.e. of the sources of life, is the first cause of
his political, moral, and material servitude, and that the econo-
mic emancipation of labour is consequently the great aim to
which every political movement ought to be subordinated."
Now no doubt the " economic emancipation of labour " meant
different things to different sections of the Association's mem-
bers, To the English trades unionists it meant practically
better wages ; to the Russian nihilists it meant the downfall of
the Czar and of all central political authority, and leaving the
socialistic communal organization of their country to manage
itself without interference from above ; to some of the French
members (as appeared at the Lausanne Congress in 1867) it
meant the nationalization of credit and all land except that
held by peasant proprietors, a class which it was necessary to
maintain as a counterpoise to the State ; while, to the German
socialists, it meant the abolition of wages, the nationalization
of land and the instruments of production, the assumption by
the State of a supreme direction of all trade, commerce, finance,
Karl Marx. I5 1
and agriculture, and the distribution by the State of land, tools,
and materials to guilds and productive associations as the actual
industrial executive. There were thus very different elements
in the composition of the International, but a modus vivendi
was found for some years by nursing an ultimate ideal, which
was desirable, and meanwhile practically working for a proxi-
mate and much narrower ideal, which was more immediately
feasible or necessary. The association could thus hold that
nothing could benefit the working class but an abolition of
wages, and could yet, as it sometimes did, help and encourage
strikes which wanted only to raise wages. At its Congress in
Brussels in 1868 it declared that a strike was not a means of
completely emancipating the labourers, but was often a neces-
sity in the present situation of labour and capital. Most of the
other practical measures to which the association addressed
itself the eight hours normal day of labour, gratuitous educa-
tion, gratuitous justice, universal suffrage, abolition of standing
armies, abolition of indirect taxes, prohibition of children's
labour, State credit for productive associations contemplated
modifications of the existing system of things, but always con-
templated them as aids to and instalments of the coming
transformation of that system. The consciousness was con-
stantly preserved that a revolution was impending, and that,
as Lassalle said, it was bound to come and could not be checked,
whether it approached by sober advances from concession to
concession, or flew, with streaming hair and shod with steel,
right into the central stronghold.
This was very much the keynote struck by Marx in his
inaugural address. That address was simply a review of the
situation since 1848, and an encouragement of his forces to a
renewal of the combat. "Wealth had enormously increased in
the interval ; colonies had been opened, new inventions dis-
covered, free trade introduced ; but misery was not a whit the
less ; class contrasts were even deeper marked, property was
more than ever in the hands of the few ; in England the num-
ber of landowners had diminished eleven per cent, in the pre-
ceding ten years ; and if this rate were to continue, the country
would be rapidly ripe for revolution, While the old order of
things was thus hastening to its doom, the new order of things
152 Contemporary Socialism.
had made some advances. The Ten Hours Act was " not merely
a great practical result, but was the victory of a principle. For
the first time the political economy of the bourgeoisie had been
in clear broad day put in subjection to the political economy of
the working class." Then, again, the experiment of co-opera-
tion had now been sufficiently tried to show that it was possible
to carry on industry without the intervention of an employing
class, and had spread abroad the hope that wage labour was,
like slavery and feudal servitude, only a transitory and subor-
dinate form, which was destined to be superseded by associated
labour. The International had for its aim to promote this
associated labour ; only it sought to do so, not piecemeal and
sporadically, but systematically, on a national scale, and by
State means. And for this end the labouring class must first
acquire political power, so as to obtain possession of the means
of production ; and to acquire political power, they must unite.
The International, though, as we have seen, possessing no
real solidarity in its composition, held together till the out-
break of the Franco-German war, and of the revolution of the
Paris Commune. It was, of course, strongly opposed to the
war, as it was to all war ; and strongly in favour of the revolu-
tion, as it was of all revolution. Its precise complicity in the
work of the Commune is not easy to determine, but there can
be no doubt that its importance has been greatly exaggerated,
both by the fears of his enemies and the vanity of its members.
Some of the latter were certainly among those who sat in the
Hotel de Ville, but none of them were leading minds there ;
and, as for the Association itself, it never had a real member-
ship, or ramifications, of any formidable extent. For example,
the English trades unions were in connection with it, and their
members might be, in a sense, counted among its members,
but it is certain they never recognised it as an authority over
them, and they probably subscribed to it mainly as to a useful
auxiliary in a strike. The leaders of the International, how-
ever, were, undoubtedly, heart and soul with the Commune,
and approved probably both of its aims and methods, and
Marx, at the Congress of the International, at the Hague, in
1872, drew from its failure the lesson that " revolution must
be solidary " in order to succeed. A revolution in one capital
Karl Marx. 153
of Europe must be supported by simultaneous revolutions in the
rest. But, while there is little ground for the common belief
that the International had any important influence in creating
the insurrection of the Commune, it is certain that the insurrec-
tion of the Commune killed the International. The English
members dropped off from it and never returned, and at its
first Congress after the revolution (the Hague, 1872), the Associ-
ation itself was rent by a fatal schism arising from differences
of opinion on a question as to the government of the society of
the future, which would probably not have become a subject
of such keen present interest at the time but for the Paris
Commune. The question concerned the maintenance or aboli-
tion of the State, of the supreme central political authority,
and the discussion brought to light that the socialists of the
International were divided into two distinct and irreconcilable
camps the Centralist Democratic Socialists, headed by Marx,
and the Anarchist Socialists, headed by Michael Bakunin, the
Russian revolutionist. The Marxists insisted that the socialist
regime of collective property and systematic co-operative pro-
duction could not possibly be introduced, maintained, or regu-
lated, except by means of an omnipotent and centralized poli-
tical authority call it the State, call it the collectivity, call it
what you like which should have the final disposal of every-
thing. The Bakunists held that this was just bringing back
the old tyranny and slavery in a more excessive and intolerable
form. They took up the tradition of Proudhon, who said that
" the true form of the State is anarchy," meaning by anarchy,
of course, not positive disorder, but the absence of any supreme
ruler, whether king or convention. They would have property
possessed and industry pursued on a communistic principle by
groups or associations of workmen, but these groups must form
themselves freely and voluntarily, without any social or politi-
cal compulsion. The Marxists declared that this was simply
a retention of the system of free competition in an aggravated
form, that it would only lead to confusion worse confounded,
and that the Bakunists, even in trying to abolish the evils of
laissez-faire, were still foolishly supposing that the world could
go of itself. This division of opinion really a broader one
than that which parts socialist from orthodox economist rent
154 Contemporary Socialism.
the already enfeebled International into two separate organiza-
tions, which languished for a year or two and passed away.
And so, with high thoughts of spreading a reign of fraternity
over the earth, the International Working Men's Association
perished, because, being only human, it could not maintain
fraternity in its own narrow borders. This is a history that
repeats itself again and again in socialist movements. As "W.
Marr said in the remark quoted above, revolutionists will only
unite on a negation ; the moment they begin to ask what they
will put in its place they differ and dispute and come to nought.
Apprehend them, close their meetings, banish their leaders,
and you but knit them by common suffering to common re-
sistance. You supply them with a negation of engrossing
interest, you preoccupy their minds with a negative programme
which keeps them united, and so you prevent them from rais-
ing the fatal question What next ? which they never discuss
without breaking up into rival sects and factions, fraternal
often in nothing but their hatred. " It is the shades that hate
one another, not the colours." Such disruptions and secessions
may as they did in Germany by emulation increase for a
time the efficiency of the organization as a propagandist
agency, but they certainly diminish its danger as a possible in-
strument of insurrection. A socialist organization seems always
to contain two elements of internal disintegration. One is the
prevalence of a singular and almost pathetic mistrust of their
leaders, and of one another. The law of suspects is always in
force among themselves. At meetings of the German Social-
ists, Liebknecht denounces Schweitzer as an agent of the
Prussian Government, Schweitzer accuses Liebknecht of being
an Austrian, spy, and the frequent hints at bribery, and open
charges of treason against the labourers' cause, disclose to us
now duller and now more acute phases of that unhappy state
of mutual suspicion, in which the one supreme, superhuman
virtue, worthy to be worshipped, if haply it could anywhere
be discovered, is the virtue men honoured oven in Robespierre
the incorruptible. The other source of disintegration is
the tendency to intestine divisions on points of doctrine. A
reconstruction of society is necessarily a most extensive
programme, and allows room for the utmost variety of opinion
Karl Marx. 155
and plan. The longer it is discussed, the more certainly do
differences arise, and the movement becomes a strife of schools
in no way formidable to the government. All this only fur-
nishes another reason for the conclusion that in dealing with
socialist agitations, a government's safest as well as justest
policy is, as much as may be, to leave them alone. Their
danger lies in the cloudiness of their ideas, and that can only
be dispersed in the free breezes of popular discussion. The
sword is an idle method of reasoning with an idea ; an idea will
eventually yield to nothing but argument. Repression, too, is
absolutely impossible with modern facilities of inter-commu-
nication, and can at best but drive the offensive elements for
a time into subterranean channels, where they gather like a
dangerous choke-damp that may occasion at any moment a
serious explosion.
After the fall of the International, Marx took no further
part in public movements, but occupied his time in completing
his work Das Capital, under frequent interruption from ill-
health, and he died in Paris in the spring of 1883, leaving that
work still unfinished.
The Das Capital of Marx may be said to be the sacred book
of contemporary socialism, and though, like other sacred
books, it is probably a sealed one to the body of the faithful,
for it is extremely stiff reading, it is the great source from
which socialist agitators draw their inspiration and arguments.
Apart from the representative authority with which it is thus
invested, it must be at once acknowledged to be an able,
learned, and important work, founded on diligent research,
evincing careful elaboration of materials, much acuteness of
logical analysis, and so much solicitude for precision that a
special terminology has been invented to secure it. The
author's taste for logical distinctions, however, as he has
actually applied it, serves rather to darken than to elucidate
his exposition. He overloads with analysis secondary points
of his argument which are clear enough without it, and he
assumes without analysis primary positions which it is most
essential for him to make plain. His style and method carries
us back to the ecclesiastical schoolmen. His superabcunding
156 Contemporary Socialism.
love of scholastic formalities is unmodern ; and one may be
permitted to hope that the odium more than theological with
which he speaks of opponents has become unmodern too.
Marx's argument takes the form of an inquiry into the
origin and social effects of capital ; understanding the word
capital, 'however, in a peculiar sense. Capital, according to
the elementary teaching of political economy, always means
the portion of wealth which is saved from immediate con-
sumption to be devoted to productive uses, and it matters not
whether it is so saved and devoted by the labourer who is to
use it, or by some other person who lends it to the labourer
at interest or employs the labourer to work with it at a fixed
rate of wages. A fisherman's boat is capital as much as a
Cunard Company's steamer, although the boat is owned by
the person who sails it and the steamer by persons who may
never have seen it. The fisherman is labourer and capitalist
in one, but in the case of the steamer the capital is supplied
by one set of people and the labour undertaken by another.
Now Marx speaks of capital only after this division of func-
tions has taken place. It is, he says, not a logical but a
historical category. In former times men all wrought for the
supply of their own wants, the seed and stock they received
was saved and owned by themselves, capital was an instru-
ment in the hands of labour, But in modern times, especially
since the rise of foreign commerce in the 16th century, this
situation has been gradually reversed. Industry is now con-
ducted by speculators, who advance the stock and pay the
labourer's wages, in order to make gain out of the excess of
the product over the advances, and labour is a mere instru-
ment in the hands of capital. The capitalist is one who,
without being personally a producer, advances money to pro-
ducers to provide them with materials and tools, in the hope
of getting a larger sum of money in return, and capital is the
money so advanced. With this representation of capital as
money, so long as it is but a popular form of speech, no fault
need be found, but Marx soon after falls into a common fallacy
and positively identifies capital with money, declaring them
to be only the same thing circulating in a different way.
Money as money, he says, being a mere medium of exchange,
Karl Marx. 157
is a middle term between two commodities which it helps to
barter, and the order of circulation is C M C, i.e. com-
modity is converted into money and money is reconverted into
commodity. On the other hand, money as capital stands at
the two extremes, and commodity is a middle term, a medium
of converting one sum of money into another and greater ; the
order of circulation being expressed as M C M. Of course
capital, like other wealth, may be expressed in terms of money,
but to identify capital with money in this way is only to
introduce confusion, and the real confusion is none the less
pernicious that it presents itself under an affectation of mathe-
matical precision.
Capital, then, as Marx understands it, may be said to be
independent wealth employed for its own increase, and in
" societies in which the capitalistic method of production pre-
vails " all wealth bears distinctively this character. In more
primitive days, wealth was a store of means of life produced
and preserved for the supply of the producer's future wants,
but now it " appears as a huge collection of wares," made for
other people's wants, made for sale in the market, made for
its own increase. What Marx wants to discover is how all
this independent wealth has come to accumulate in hands that
do not produce it, and in particular from whence comes the
increase expected from its use, because it is this increase that
enables it to accumulate. "What he endeavours to show is
that this increase of value cannot take place anywhere except
in the process of production, that in that process it cannot
come from the dead materials, but only from the living crea-
tive power of labour that works upon them, and that it is
accordingly virtually stolen from the labourers who made it
by the superior economic force of the owners of the dead
materials, without which indeed it could not be made, but
whose service is entitled to a much more limited reward.
Xo increase of value, he contends, can occur in the process
of exchange, for an exchange is a mere transposition of things
of equal value. In one sense both parties in the transaction are
gainers, for each gets a thing he wants for a thing he does not
want. The usefulness of the two commodities is thus increased
by the exchange, but their value is not. An exchange simply
158 Contemporary Socialism.
means that each party gives to the other equal value for equal
value, and even if it were possible for one of them to make a gain
in value to-day to get a more valuable thing for a less valu-
able thing still, as all the world is buyer and seller in turn,
they would lose to-morrow as buyers what they gained to-day
as sellers, and the old level of value would be restored. No
increase whatever would be effected. There is indeed a class
of people whom he describes as always buying and never
selling the unproducing class who live on their money, and
who, he says, receive by legal titles or by force wealth made
by producers without giving anything in exchange for it.
And it may be supposed that perhaps value is created by
selling things to this class of persons, or by selling things to
them above their true value, but that is not so ; you would
have brought no new value into the world by such a transac-
tion, and even if you got more for your goods than their
worth, you would only be cheating back from these rich
people part of the money that they had previously received
for nothing. Another supposition remains. Perhaps new
value is created in the process of exchange when one dealer
takes advantage of another when Peter, say, contrives to
induce Paul to take 40 worth of wine for 50 worth of iron.
But in this case there has been no increase of value ; the
value has merely changed hands ; Peter has 10 more than he
had before, and Paul 10 less. The commodities have between
them after the transaction, as they had before it, a total value
of 90, and that total cannot be increased by a mere change
of possessor.
Having thus established to his satisfaction that commerce,
being only a series of exchanges, cannot produce any increase
of value, or what he terms surplus value, Marx says that that
only makes the problem of the origin of surplus value more
enigmatical than ever. For we are thus left in presence of an
apparent contradiction : surplus value cannot spring up in the
circulation of commodities because circulation is nothing but
an exchange of equivalents ; and yet surplus value cannot
spring up anywhere except in circulation, because the class of
persons who receive it and live by it do nob produce. Here,
then, is a riddle, and Marx sets himself to rede it. True, he
Karl Marx. 159
says, value is not created directly in the market, but a com-
modity is purchased in the market which has the remarkable
property of creating value. That commodity is the human
powers of labour. The very use of these powers, their con-
sumption, their expenditure, is the creation of value. But
marvellous as they are, their possessor is obliged to sell them,
because while they are yielding their product he must mean-
while live, and he sells a day's use of them for a day's means
of living. They create in a day far more than the value of
the wages for which they are bought. This excess is surplus
value, and is the secret and fountainhead of all accumulations
of capital. Powers which can create six shillings worth in a
day may be procured in the market for three shillings, because
three shillings will pay for their necessary maintenance. Sur-
plus value is the difference between the value of the labourer's
necessary maintenance and the value of the labourer's pro-
duction, and it is in the present system entirely appropriated
by the dealer who advances him his wages.
Marx thus bases his argument on two principles which he
borrows from current economic writers, without, however,
observing the limitations under which those writers taught
them, and introducing besides important modifications of his
own. The one principle is that value comes from labour, or
as economists stated their law, that the natural value of com-
modities is determined by the cost of their production. The
second is only a special application of the first ; that the
natural wages of labour are determined by the cost of its pro-
duction, and that the cost of the production of labour is the
cost of the labourer's subsistence. The fault he finds with the
present system is accordingly this, that while labour creates
all value it is paid only by its stated living, no matter how
much value it creates ; and he then goes over the phenomena
of modern industrial life to show how each arrangement is
invented so as to extract more and more value out of the
labourer by prolonging his hours of work or enhancing its
speed without giving him any advantage whatever from the
increase of value so obtained. "We shall get a fair view of
Marx's argument, therefore, if we follow it through the suc-
cessive heads : 1st, Value ; 2nd, Wages ; 3rd, Normal day of
160 Contemporary Socialism.
labour ; 4th, Machinery ; 5th, Piecework ; 6th, Relative over-
population.
1st. Value. Marx holds that all capital all industrial ad-
vances except wages is absolutely unproductive of value, and
therefore not entitled to the acknowledgment known as in-
terest. The original value of all such capital the purchase
price of the materials, together with a certain allowance made
for tear and wear of machinery is carried forward into the
value of the product, and preserved in it, and even that could
not be done except by labour. The old value is preserved by
labour, and all new value is conferred by it, and therefore
interest is a consideration entirely out of the question. It is
obvious to object that labour by itself is as unproductive as
capital by itself, but Marx would reply that while labour and
capital are equally indispensable to produce new commodities,
it is labour alone that produces new value, for value is only so
much labour preserved, it is merely a register of so many hours
of work. His whole argument thus turns upon his doctrine of
the nature of value, and that doctrine must therefore be closely
attended to.
What, then, is value ? Marx considers that most errors on
this subject have arisen from confusing value with utility on
the one hand or with price on the other, and he regards his
discrimination of value from these two ideas as his most im-
portant contribution to political economy. He takes his start
from the distinction current since the days of Adam Smith
between value in use and value in exchange, and of course
agrees with Smith in making the value of a commodity in
exchange to be independent of its value in use. Water had
great value in use and none in exchange, and diamonds had
great value in exchange and little in use. Value in use is
therefore not value strictly so called, it is utility ; but strictly
speaking value in exchange, according to Marx, is not value
either, but only the form under which in our state of society
value manifests itself. There was no exchange in primitive
society when every family produced things to supply its own
wants, and there would be no exchange in a communism, for
in an exchange the transacting parties stand to one another
equally as private proprietors of the goods they barter. And
Karl Marx. 161
where there was no exchange there could of course be no
exchange value. No doubt there was value for all that in
primitive times, and there would be value under a communism,
though it would manifest itself in a different form. But as we
live in an exchanging society, where everything is made for
the purpose of being exchanged, it is in exchange alone that
we have any experience of value, and it is only from an exam-
ination of the phenomena of exchange that we can learn its
nature.
What, then, is value in exchange? It is the ratio in which
one kind of useful commodity exchanges against another kind
of useful commodity. This ratio, says Marx, does not in the
least depend on the usefulness of the respective commodities,
or their capacity of gratifying any particular want. For, first,
that is a matter of quality, whereas value is a ratio between
quantities ; and second, two different kinds of utility cannot
be compared, for they have no common measure; but value,
being a ratio, implies comparison, and comparison implies a
common measure. A fiddle charms the musical taste, a loaf
satisfies hunger, but who can calculate how much musical
gratification is equivalent to so much satisfaction of hunger.
The loaf and the fiddle may be compared in value, but not by
means of their several uses. Third, there are many commodi-
ties which are useful and yet have no value in exchange : air,
for example, water, and, he adds, virgin soil. In seeking what
in the exchange the value depends on, we must therefore leave
the utility of the commodities exchanged entirely out of
account ; and if we do so, there is only one other attribute they
all possess in common, and it must be on that attribute that
their value rests. That attribute is that they are all products
of labour. While we looked to the utility of commodities, they
were infinite in their variety, but now they are all reduced to
one sober characteristic they are so many different quantities
of the same material, labour. Diversity vanishes ; there are
no longer tables and chairs and houses, there is only this much
and that much and the next amount of preserved human labour
And this labour itself is not discriminated. It is not joiner
work, mason work, or weaver work ; it is merely human labour
in the abstract, incorporated, absorbed, congealed in exchange-
M
1 62 Contemporary Socialism.
able commodities. In an exchange commodities are quantities
of labour jelly, and they exchange in the ratio of the amount
of labour they have taken in.
Value, then, is quantity of abstract labour, and now what is
quantity of labour ? How is it to be ascertained ? Labour is
the exertion or use of man's natural powers of labour, and the
quantity of labour is measured by the duration of the exertion.
Quantity of labour is thus reduced to time of labour, and is
measured by hours and days and weeks. Marx accordingly
defines value to be an immanent relation of a commodity to
time of labour, and the secret of exchange is that " a day's
labour of given length always turns out a product of the same
value." Value is thus something inherent in commodities
before they are brought to market, and is independent of the
circumstances of the market.
Marx has no sooner reduced value to the single uniform
element of time of labour, and excluded from its constitution
all considerations of utility and the state of the market, than
he reintroduces those considerations under a disguised form.
In the first place, if a day's labour of given length always
produces the same value, it is obvious to ask whether then an
indolent and unskilful tailor who takes a week to make a coat
has produced as much value as the more expert hand who turns
out six in this time, or, with the help of a machine, perhaps
twenty ? Marx answers, Certainly not, for the time of labour
which determines value is not the time actually taken, but the
time required in existing social conditions to produce that
particular kind of commodity the time taken by labour of
average efficiency, using the means which the age affords in
short, what he calls the socially necessary time of labour. Value
is an immanent relation to socially necessary time of labour.
Marx's standard is thus, after all, not one of quantity of labour
pure and simple ; it takes into account, besides, the average
productive power of labour in different branches of industry.
" The value of a commodity," says he, " changes directly as
the quantity, and inversely as the productive power, of the
labour which realizes itself in that commodity." Before we
know the value of a commodity we must therefore know not
only the quantity of labour that has gone into it, but the
Karl Marx. 163
productive power of that labour. We gather the quantity
from the duration of exertion, but how is average productive
power to be ascertained ? By simply ascertaining the total
product of all the labour engaged in a particular trade, and
then striking the average for each labourer. Diamonds occur
rarely in the crust of the earth, and therefore many seekers
spend days and weeks without finding one. Hits and misses
must be taken together ; the productive power of the diamond
seeker is low ; or, in other words, the time of labour socially
necessary to procure a diamond is high, and its value corre-
sponds. In a good year the same labour will produce twice
as much wheat as in a bad ; its productive power is greater ;
the time socially necessary to produce wheat is less, and the
price of the bushel falls. The value of a commodity is there-
fore influenced by its comparative abundance, whether that be
due to nature, or to machinery, or to personal skill.
But, in the next place, if value is simply so much labour, it
would seem to follow, on the one hand, that nothing could have
value which cost no labour, and, on the other, that nothing
could be devoid of value which cost labour. Marx's method
of dealing with these two objections deserves close attention,
because it is here that the fundamental fallacy of his argument
is brought most clearly out. He answers the first of them by
drawing a distinction between value, and price, which he and
his followers count of the highest consequence. Things which
cost no labour may have a price, but they have no value, and,
as we have seen, he mentions among such things conscience
and virgin soil. No labour has touched those things; they
have no immanent relation to socially necessary time of
labour ; they have not, and cannot have, any value, as Marx
understands value. But then, he says, they command a price.
Virgin soil is actually sold in the market ; it may procure
things that have value though it has none itself. Now, this
distinction between value and price has no bearing on the
matter at all, for the simple reason that, as Marx himself
admits, price is only a particular form, of value. Price, he
says, is " the money form of value " ; it is value expressed in
money ; it is the exchange value of a commodity for money,
To say that uncultivated land may have a price but not a
164 Contemporary Socialism.
value is, on Marx's own showing, to say that it has an ex-
change value which can be definitely measured in money, and
has yet no value. But he has started from the phenomena of
exchange ; he has told us that exchange value is the only form
in which we experience value now ; and he thus arrives at a
theory of value which will not explain the facts. If he argued
that a thing had value, but no exchange value, his position
might be false, but he says that a thing may have exchange
value but no value, and so his position is contradictory. More-
over, he describes money accurately enough as a measure of
value, and says that it could not serve this function except it
were itself valuable, i.e., unless it possessed the quality that
makes all objects commensurable, the quality of being a pro-
duct of labour. Yet here we find him admitting that virgin
soil, which, ex hypothesi, does not possess that quality, and
ought therefore to be incommensurable with anything that
possesses it, is yet measured with money every day. Such are
some of the absurdities to which Marx is reduced by refusing
to admit that utility can confer value independently of labour.
Let us see now how he deals with the other objection. If
labour is just value-forming substance, and if value is just
preserved labour, then nothing which has cost labour should
be destitute of value. But Marx frankly admits that there are
such things which have yet got no value ; and they have no
value, he explains, because they have no utility. " Nothing
can have value without being useful. If it is useless, the work
contained in it is useless, and therefore has no value." He
goes further ; he says that a thing may be both useful and the
product of labour and yet have no value. " He who by the
produce of his labour satisfies wants of his own produces
utility but not value. To produce a ware, i.e., a thing which
has not merely value in use, but value in exchange, he must
produce something which is not only useful to himself, but
useful to others," i.e., socially useful. A product of labour
which is useless to the producer and everybody else has no
value of any sort ; a product of labour which, while useful to
the producer, is useless to any one else, has no exchange value.
It satisfies no want of others. This would seem to cover the
case of over-production, when commodities lose their value for
Karl Marx. 165
a time because nobody wants them. Lassalle explained this
depreciation of value by saying that the time of labour socially
necessary to produce the articles in question had diminished.
Marx explains it by saying that the labour is less socially
useful or not socially useful at all. And why is the labour not
socially useful ? Simply because the product is not so. The
social utility or inutility of the labour is a mere inference from
the social utility or inutility of the product, and it is therefore
the latter consideration that influences value. Marx tries in
vain to exclude the influence of that consideration, or to ex-
plain it as a mere subsidiary qualification of labour. Labour
and social utility both enter equally into the constitution of
value, and Marx's radical error lies in defining value in terms
of labour only, ignoring utility.
For what, after all, is value? Is Marx's definition of it
in the least correct ? No. Value is not an inherent relation
(whatever that may mean) of a commodity to labour ; it is
essentially a social estimate of the relative importance of com-
modities to the society that forms the estimate. It is not an
immanent property of an object at all ; it is a social opinion
expressed upon an object in comparison with others. This
social opinion is at present collected in an informal but effec-
tive way, through a certain subtle tact acquired in the market,
by dealers representing groups of customers on the one hand,
and manufacturers representing groups of producers on the
other ; and it may be said to be pronounced in the verdict of
exchange, i.e., according to Mill's definition of value, in the
quantity of one commodity given in exchange for a given
quantity of another. Now, on what does this social estimate
of the relative importance of commodities turn ? In other
words, by what is value and difference in value determined ?
Value is constituted in every object by its possession of two
characteristics : 1st, that it is socially useful ; 2nd, that it costs
some labour or trouble to procure it. No commodity lacks
value which possesses both of these characteristics; and no
commodity has value which lacks either of them. Now there
are two kinds of commodities. Some may be produced to an
indefinite amount by means of labour, and since all who desire
them can obtain them at any time for the labour they cost,
1 66 Contemporary Socialism.
their social desirableness, their social utility, has no influence
on their value, which, therefore, always stands in the ratio of
their cost of production alone. Other classes of commodities
cannot be in this way indefinitely multiplied by labour ; their
quantity is strictly limited by natural or other causes ; those
who desire them cannot get them for the mere labour of pro-
ducing them ; and the value of commodities of this sort will
consequently always stand in excess of their relative cost of
production, and will be really determined by their relative
social utility. In fact, so far from the labour required for their
production being any guide to their value, it is their value
that will determine the amount of labour which will be
ventured in their production. A single word may be added
in explanation of the conception of social utility. Of course a
commodity which is of no use to any one but its owner has no
economic value, unless it happens to get lost, and, in any case,
it is of no consequence in the present question. The social
utility of a commodity is its capacity to satisfy the wants of
others than the possessor, and it turns on two considerations :
1st, the importance of the want the commodity satisfies, and,
2nd, the number of persons who share the want. All com-
modities which derive a value from their rarity or their special
excellence belong to this latter class, and the vice of Marx's
theory of value is simply this, that he takes a law which is
true of the first class of commodities only to be true of all
classes of them.
2. Wages. Having concluded by the vicious argument now
explained that all value is the creation of the personal labour of
the workman is but the registered duration of exertion of his
labouring powers Marx next proceeds to show that, as things
at present exist, the value of these labouring powers them-
selves is fixed not by what they create but by what is neces-
sary to create or at least renovate them. The rate of wages,
economists have taught, is determined by the cost of the
production of labouring powers, and that is identical with the
cost of maintaining the labourer in working vigour. Marx
accepts the usual explanations of the elasticity of this standard
of cost of subsistence. It includes, of course, the maintenance
Karl Marx. 167
of the labourer's family as well as his own, because he will die
some day, and the permanent reproduction of powers of labour
requires the birth of fresh hands to succeed him. It must also
cover the expenses of training and apprenticeship, and Marx
would probably agree to add, though he does not actually do
so, a superannuation allowance for old age. It contains, too, a
variable historical element, differs with climate and country,
and is, in fact, just the customary standard of living among
free labourers of the time and place. The value of a com-
modity is the time of labour required to deliver it in normal
goodness, and to preserve the powers of labour in normal
goodness a definite quantity of provisions and comforts is
necessary according to time, country, and customs. The part
of the labouring day required to produce this definite quantity
of provisions and comforts for the use of the day may be called
the necessary time of labour the time during which the work-
man produces what is necessary for keeping him in existence
and the value created in this season may be called necessary
value. But the workman's physical powers may hold on
labouring longer than this, and the rest of his working day
may accordingly be called surplus time of labour, and the value
created in it surplus value. This surplus value may be created
or increased in two ways : either by reducing or cheapening
the labourer's subsistence, i.e., by shortening the term of
necessary labour ; or by prolonging the length of the working
day, i.e., by increasing the term of surplus labour. There are
limits indeed within which this kind of action must stop. The
quantity of means of life cannot be reduced below the
minimum that is physically indispensable to sustain the
labourer for the day. and the term of labour cannot be
stretched beyond the labourer's capacity of physical endu-
rance. But within these limits may be played an important
role, and the secret of surplus value lies in the simple plan of
giving the labourer as little as he is able to live on, and work-
ing him as long as he is able to stand. A labourer works 12
hours a day because he cannot work longer and work perma-
nently and well, and he gets three shillings a day of wages,
because three shillings will buy him the necessities he requires.
In six hours' labour he will create three shillings' worth of
1 68 Contemporary Socialism.
value, and he works the other six hours for nothing, creating
three shillings' worth of surplus value for the master who
advances him his wages. It is from these causes that we come
on the present system of things to the singular result that
powers of labour which create six shillings a day are them-
selves worth only three shillings a day. This absurd conclu-
sion, says Marx, could never have held ground for an hour, had
it not been hid and disguised by the practice of paying wages
in money. This makes it seem as if the labourer were paid for
the whole day when he is only paid for the half. Under the
old system of feudal servitude there were no such disguises.
The labourer wrought for his master one day, and for himself
the other five, and there was no make-believe as if he were
working for himself all the time. But the wages system gives
to surplus labour that is really unpaid the false appearance of
being paid. That is the mystery of iniquity of the whole
system, the source of all prevailing legal conceptions of the
relation of employer and employed, and of all the illusions
about industrial freedom. The wages system is the lever of
the labourer's exploitation, because it enables the capitalist to
appropriate the entire surplus value created by the labourer
i.e., the value he creates over and above what is necessary to
recruit his labouring powers withal.
Now surplus value, as we have seen, is of two kinds, absolute
and relative. Absolute surplus value is got by lengthening
the term of surplus labour ; relative surplus value by shorten-
ing the term of necessary labour, which is chiefly done by
inventions that cheapen the necessaries of life. The considera-
tion of the first of these points leads Marx into a discussion of
the normal length of the day of labour ; and the consideration
of the second into a discussion of the effects of inventions and
machinery on the condition of the working classes. We shall
follow him on these points in their order.
3. Normal day of labour. There is a normal length of the
day of labour, and it ought to be ascertained and fixed by law.
Some bounds are set to it by nature. There is a minimum
length, for example, beneath which it cannot fail ; that
minimal limit is the time required to creat:? an equivalent to
Karl Marx. 169
the labourer's living ; but as under the capitalistic system the
capitalist has also to be supported out of it, it can never be
actually shortened to this minimum. There is also a maximum
length above which it cannot rise, and this upper limit is fixed
by two sorts of considerations, one physical, the other moral.
1st. Physical limits. These are set by the physical endurance
of the labourer. The day of labour cannot be protracted
beyond the term within which the labourer can go on from
day to day in normal working condition to the end of his
normal labouring career. This is always looked to with respect
to a horse. He cannot be wrought more than eight hours
a day regularly without injury. 2nd. Moral limits. The
labourer needs time (which the horse does not, or he would
perhaps get it) for political, intellectual, and social wants,
according to the degree required by society at the time.
Between the maximum and minimum limit there is, however,
considerable play-room, and therefore we find labouring days
prevailing of very different length, 8 hours, 10, 12, 14, 16, and
even 18 hours. There is no principle in the existing industrial
economy which fixes the length of the day ; it must be fixed
by law on a sound view of the requirements of the case.
Marx pitches upon 8 hours as the best limit, because it affords
a security for the permanent physical efficiency of the labourer,
and gives him leisure for satisfying those intellectual and
social wants which are becoming every day more largely
imperative. He makes no use of the reason often urged for
the 8 hours day, that the increased intelligence it would tend
to cultivate in the working class would in many ways conduce
to such an increase of production as would justify the shorter
term of work. But he is very strong for the necessity of
having it fixed by law, and points out that even then employers
will need to be carefully watched or they will find ways and
means of extending the day in spite of the law. When the
day was fixed in England at 10 hours in some branches of
industry, some masters gained an extra quarter or half-hour by
taking five minutes off each meal time, and the profit made in
these five minutes was often very considerable. He mentions
a manufacturer who said to him, " If you allow me ten minutes
extra time every day, you put 1,000 a year into my pocket,"
I/O Contemporary Socialism.
and he says that is a good demonstration of the origin of surplus
value, for how much of this 1,000 would be given to the man
whose extra ten minutes' labour had made it ? Marx enters
very fully into the history of English factory legislation,
acknowledges the great benefit it has conferred both upon the
labouring class and the manufacturers, and says that since the
Act of 1850 the cotton industry has become the model industry
of the country. As might be expected, he thinks the gradual
course taken by English legislation on the subject much
inferior, as a matter of principle, to the more revolutionary
method taken by France in 1848, when a twelve hours Act was
introduced simultaneously as a matter of principle for every
trade in the whole country ; but he admits that the results
were more permanent in England.
4. Effects of machinery, and the growth of fixed capital on the
working classes. The whole progress of industrial improve-
ments is a history of fresh creations of relative surplus value,
and always for the benefit of the capitalist who advances the
money. Everything that economizes labour or that adds
positively to its productivity, contracts the labourer's own part
of the working day and prolongs the master's. Division and
subdivision of labour, combination, co-operation, organization,
inventions, machinery, are all " on the one hand elements of
historical progress and development in the economic civilization
of society, but on the other are all means of civilized and refined
exploitation of the labourer." They not only increase social
wealth at his expense, but in many cases they do him positive
injury. These improvements have cost capitalists nothing,
though capitalists derive the whole advantage from them. Sub-
division, combination, organization, are simply natural resources
of social labour, and natural resources of any kind are not
produced by the capitalist. Inventions, again, are the work
of science, and science costs the capitalist nothing. Labour,
association, science these are the sources of the increase ;
capital is nowhere, yet it sits and seizes the whole. Machinery,
of course, is capital, but then Marx will not admit that it
creates any value, and contends that it merely transfers to
the product the value it loses by tear and wear in the process
Karl Marx. 171
of production. The general effect of industrial improvements,
according to Marx, is 1st, to reduce wages ; 2nd, to prolong
the day of labour ; 3rd, to overwork one-half of the working
class ; 4th, to throw the rest out of employ ; and, 5th, to concen-
trate the whole surplus return in the hands of a few capitalists
who make their gains by exploiting the labourers, and increase
them by exploiting one another. This last point we need not
further explain, and the third and fourth we shall unfold under
the separate heads of Piecework and Relative Over-population.
The remaining two I shall take up now, and state Marx's views
about a little more fully.
(a). Industrial improvements tend to reduce wages. They
do so, says Marx, through first mutilating the labourer in-
tellectually and corporeally. As a result of subdivision of
labour, workmen are rapidly becoming mere one-sided
specialists. Headwork is being separated more and more from
handwork in the labourer's occupation, and this differentiation
of function leads to a hierarchy of wages which affords great
opportunity for exploiting the labourer. Muscular power is
more easily dispensed with than formerly, and so the cheaper
labour of women and children is largely superseding the dearer
labour of men. If this goes on much further, the manufacturer
will get the labour of a whole family for the wages he used to
pay to its head alone, and the labourer will be converted into
a slave-dealer who sells his wife and children instead of his
own labour. That this kind of slavery will find no sort of resis-
tance from either master or labourer, is to Marx's mind placed
beyond doubt by the fact that though the labour of children
under 13 years of age is restricted in English factories, adver-
tisements appear in public prints for " children that can pass
for 13."
(&). Industrial improvements tend to lengthen the da.y of
labour. Machinery can go on for ever, and it is the interest of
the capitalist to make it do so. He finds, moreover, a ready
and specious pretext in the greater lightness of the work as
compared with hand labour, for keeping the labourer employed
beyond the normal limits of human endurance. Capitalists
always complain that long hours are a necessity in consequence
of the increasing extent of fixed capital which cannot other-
172 Contemporary Socialism.
wise be made to pay. But this is a mistake on their part,
says Marx. For, according to the factory inspector's reports,
shortening the day of labour to 10 hours has increased produc-
tion and not diminished it, and the explanation is that the
men can work harder while they are at it, if the duration of
their labour is shortened. Shortening the day of labour has
not only increased production, but actually increased wages.
Mr. Redgrave, in his Report for 1860, says that during the
period 1839-1859 wages rose in the branches of industry that
adopted the ten hours' principle, and fell in trades where men
wrought 14 and 15 hours a day. Small wages and long hours
are always found to go together, because the same causes
which enable the employer to reduce wages enable him to
lengthen the labouring day.
5. Piecework. Industrial improvements tend, Marx main-
tains, to overwork, to undue intensification of labour, for
machinery can go at almost any rate all day and all night,
and labourers are compelled by various expedients to work up
to it. Among these expedients none is more strongly con-
demned by Marx than piecework, as encouraging over-exertion
and overtime. He says that though known so early as the
14th century, piecework only came into vogue with the large
system of production, to which he thinks it the most suitable
form of payment. He states (though this is not quite accurate)
that it is the only form of payment in use in workshops that
are under the factory acts, because in these workshops the day
of labour cannot be lengthened, and the capitalist has no other
way open to him of exploiting the labourer but by increasing
the intensity of the labour. He ridicules the idea of a writer
who thought " the system of piecework marked an epoch in
the history of the working man, because it stood halfway
between the position of a mere wage labourer depending on
the will of the capitalist and the position of the co-operative
artisan who in the not distant future promises to combine the
artisan and the capitalist in his own person." Better far, he
holds, for the labourer to stick to day's wages, for he can be
much more easily and extensively exploited by the piece
system. He contends that experience has proved this in trades
Karl Marx. 173
like the compositors and ship carpenters, in which both systems
of payment are in operation side by side, and he cites from the
factory inspectors' reports of 1860 the case of a factory employ-
ing 400 hands, 200 paid by the piece and 200 by the day. The
piece hands had an interest in working overtime, and the day
hands were obliged to follow suit without receiving a farthing
extra for the additional hour or half-hour. This might be
stopped by further legislation, but then Marx holds that the
system of piece payment is so prone to abuse that when one
door of exploitation shuts another only opens, and legislation
will always remain ineffectual. Every peculiarity of the
system furnishes opportunity either for reducing wages or
increasing work. On the piece system the worth of labour
is determined by the worth of the work it does, and unless the
work possess average excellence the stipulated price is withheld.
There is thus always a specious pretext ready to the employer's
hand for making deductions from wages on the ground that
the work done did not come up to the stipulated standard.
Then again, it furnishes the employer with a definite measure
for the intensity of labour. He judges from the results of
piecework how much time it generally takes to produce a
particular piece, and labourers who do not possess the average
productivity are turned off on the ground that they are unable
to do a minimum day's work. Even those who are kept on
get lower average wages than they would on the day system.
The superior workman earns indeed better pay working by
the piece, but the general body do not. The superior workman
can afford to take a smaller price per piece than the others,
because he turns out a greater number of pieces in the same
time, and the employer fixes, from the case of the superior
workman, a standard of payment which is injurious to the
rest. In the end a change from day's wages to piece wages
will thus be found to have merely resulted in the average
labourer working harder for the same money. Marx, how-
ever, admits that when a definite scale of prices has been in
long use and has become fixed as a custom, there are so many
difficulties to its reduction that employers are obliged, when
they seek to reduce it, to resort to violent methods of trans-
forming it into time wages again. He gives an example of
i 74 Contemporary Socialism.
this from the strike of the Coventry ribbon-weavers in 1860,
in resistance to a transformation of this kind.
These are only some of the evils Marx lays at the door of
piecework ; he has many more charges. From rendering the
superintendence of labour unnecessary, it leads to abuses like
the sub-contracts known in this country as " the sweating
system," or what is a variety of the same, to contracts of the
employer with his manager, whereby the latter becomes re-
sponsible for the whole work, and employs and pays the men.
From making it the pecuniary interest of the labourer to work
overtime, piecework induces him to overstrain his powers, and
both to transgress the legal or normal limits of the day of
labour, and to raise or exceed the normal degree of the intensity
of labour. Marx, quoting from Dunning, says that it was
customary in the engineering trade in London for employers
to engage a foreman of exceptional physical powers, and pay
him an extra salary per quarter to keep the men up to his own
pace ; an expedient which, he adds, is actually recommended
to farmers by Morton in his " Agricultural Encyclopaedia."
He attributes to piecework, especially in its operation on
women and children, the degeneration of the labouring class
in the potteries, which is shown in the Report of the Com-
mission on the Employment of Children. But while Marx
thus objects to piecework because it leads to overwork, he
objects to it also because it leads to underwork. It enables
employers to engage more hands than they require, when they
entertain perhaps only an imaginary expectation of work, for
they know they run no risk, since paying by the piece they
pay only for what is done. The men are thus imperfectly
employed and insufficiently paid.
6. Relative Over-population. One of the worst features of
modern industrial development is the vast number of labourers
whom it constantly leaves out of employ. This Marx calls
relative over-population. Of absolute over-population he has
no fear. He is not a Malthusian. He holds that there is no
population law applicable to all countries and times alike.
Social organisms differ from one another as do animals and
plants ; they have different laws and conditions. Ever}- coun-
Karl Marx. 175
try and age has its own law of population. A constant and
increasing over-population is a characteristic of the present
age ; it is a necessary consequence of the existing method of
carrying on industry ; but it is nothing in the nature of an
absolute over-growth ; it is only, to Marx's thinking, a relative
superfluity. There is plenty of work for all, more than plenty.
If those who have employment were not allowed to be over-
wrought, and if work were to-morrow to be limited to its due
amount for every one according to age and sex, the existing work-
ing population would bequite insufficient to carry on the national
production to its present extent. Even in England, where the
technical means of saving labour are enormous, this could not be
done except by converting most of our present " unproductive"
labourers into productive. There is therefore, Marx conceives,
no reason why any one should be out of work ; but at present,
what with the introduction of new machinery, the industrial
cycles, the commercial crises, the changes of fashion, the
transitions of every kind, we have always, besides the industrial
army in actual service, a vast industrial reserve who are either
entirely out of employment or very inadequately employed.
This relative over-population is an inevitable consequence of
the capitalistic management of industry, which first compels
one-half of the labouring community to do the work of all, and
then makes use of the redundancy of labour so created to
compel the working half to take less pay. Low wages spring
from the excessive competition among labourers caused by this
relative over-population. " Rises and falls in the rate of wages
are universally regulated by extensions and contractions in the
industrial reserve army which correspond with changes in the
industrial cycle. They are not determined by changes in the
absolute number of the labouring population, but through
changes in the relative distribution of the working class into
active army and reserve army through increase or decrease in
the relative numbers of the surplus population through the
degree in which it is at one time absorbed and at another
dismissed." The fluctuations in the rate of wages are thus
traced to expansions or contractions of capital, and not to
variation in the state of population. Marx ridicules the theory
of these fluctuations given by political economists, that high
176 Contemporary Socialism.
wages lead to their own fall by encouraging marriages, and so
in the end increasing the supply of labour, and that low wages
lead to their own rise by discouraging marriages and reducing
the supply of labour. That, says Marx, is very fine, but before
high wages could have produced a redundant population
(which would take eighteen years to grow up), wages would,
with modern industrial cycles, have been up, down, and up
again through ordinary fluctuations of trade.
Relative over-population is of three kinds : current, latent,
and stagnant. Current over -population is what comes from
incidental causes, the ordinary changes that take place in the
every-day course of industry. A trade is slack this season and
brisk the next, has perhaps its own seasons, like house-painting
in spring, posting in summer. Or one trade may from tempo-
rary reasons be busy, while others are depressed. In the last
half year of 1860 there were 90,000 labourers in London out of
employment, and yet the factory inspectors report that at that
very time much machinery was standing idle for want of
hands. This comes from the labourer being mutilated that
is, specialized under modern subdivision of labour, and fit for
only a single narrow craft. Another current cause of over-
population is that under the stress of modern labour the
workman is old before his years, and while still in middle life
becomes unfit for full work, and passes into the reserve. Marx
says this is the real reason for the prevalence of early marriages
among the working class. They are generally condemned for
being improvident, but they are really resorted to from con-
siderations of providence, for working men foresee that they
will be prematurely disabled for work, and desire, when that
day comes, to have grown-up children about them who shall be
able to support them. Other current causes are new inventions
and new fashions, which always throw numbers out of work.
Latent over-population is what springs from causes whose
operation is long and slow. The best example of it is the case
of the agricultural labourers. They are being gradually super-
seded by machinery, and as they lose work in the country they
gather to the towns to swell the reserve army there. A great
part of the farm servants are always in this process of transi-
tion, a few here, and a few there, and a few everywhere. The
Karl Marx. 177
constancy of this flow indicates a latent over-population in the
rural districts, and that is the cause of the low wages of
agricultural labourers. By stagnant over-population Marx
means that which is shown in certain branches of industry,
where none of the workmen are thrown back entirely into the
reserve, but none get full regular employment.
CHAPTER V.
THE FEDERALISM OF GAEL MAELO.
MAELO and Rodbertus are sometimes spoken of as the pre-
cursors of German socialism. This, however, is a mistake.
The socialism which now exists appeared in Germany among
the Young Hegelians forty years ago, before the writings of
either of these economists were published, and their writings
have had very little influence on the present movement.
Rodbertus, it is true, communicated a decided impulse to
Lassalle, both by his published letter to Von Kirchmann
in 1853, and by personal correspondence subsequently. He
was a landed proprietor of strongly liberal opinions, who was
appointed Minister of Agriculture in Prussia in 1848, but after
a brief period of office retired to his estates, and devoted
himself to economic and historical study. He took a very
decided view of the defects of the existing industrial system,
and held in particular that, in accordance with Ricardo's law
of necessary wages, the labourer's income could never rise
permanently above the level of supplying him with a bare
subsistence, and consequently that, while his labour was
always increasing in productivity, through mechanical inven-
tions and other means, the share which he obtained of the
product was always decreasing. What was required was
simply to get this tendency counteracted, and to devise
arrangements by which the labourer's share in the product
might increase proportionally with the product itself, for
otherwise the whole working population would be left behind
by the general advancement of society. The remedy, he
conceives, must lie in the line of a fresh contraction of the
sphere of private property. That sphere had been again and
again contracted in the interests of personal development, and it
The Federalism of Carl Mario. 1 79
must be so once more. And the contraction that was now
necessary was to leave nothing whatever in the nature of
private property except income. This proposal is substantially
identical with the scheme of the socialists ; it is just the
nationalization of all permanent stock ; but then he holds that
it could not be satisfactorily carried out in less than five
hundred years. Rodbertus's writings have never been widely
known, but they attracted some attention among the German
working class, and he was invited, along with Lassalle and
Lothar Bucher, to address the Working Men's Congress in
Leipzig in 1863. He promised to come and speak on the law
of necessary wages, but the Congress was never held in
consequence of the action of Lassalle in precipitating his own
movement, and from that movement Rodbertus held entirely
aloof. He agreed with Lassalle's complaints against the present
order of things, but he disapproved of his plan of reform. He
did not think the scheme of founding productive associations
on State credit either feasible or desirable, and he would still
retain the sj-stem of wages, though with certain improvements
introduced by law. He thought, moreover, that Lassalle erred
gravely in making the socialists a political party, and that
they should have remained a purely economic one. Besides,
he looked on it as mere folly to expect, with Lassalle, the
accomplishment in thirty years of changes which, as we have
seen, he believed five centuries little enough time to evolve.
Rodbertus may thus be said to have had some relations with
the present movement, but Mario stands completely apart from
it : and his large and important work, " Untersuchungen iiber
die Organization der Arbeit, oder System der Welt-okonomie,"
published at Kassel in 1850-5 though original, learned, and
lucid remained so absolutely unknown that none of the
lexicons mention his name, and even an economist like
SchaefHe who was the first to draw public attention to it, and
has evidently been considerably influenced by it himself had
never read it till he was writing his own work on socialism
(1870). But though Mario cannot be said to have contributed
in any respect to the present socialistic movement, his work
deserves attentive consideration as a plea for fundamental
social reform, advanced by a detached and independent
180 Contemporary Socialism.
thinker, who has given years of patient study to the pheno-
mena of modern economic life, and holds them to indicate
the presence of a deep-seated and widespread social disease.
Carl Mario is the nom de plume of a German professor of
chemistry named "Wmkelblech, and he gives us in the preface
to his second volume a touching account of how he came to
apply himself to social questions. In 1843 he made a tour of
investigation through Northern Europe in connection with a
technological work he was engaged in writing, and visited
among other places the blue factory of Modum, in Norway,
where he remained some days, charmed with the scenery,
which he thought equal to that of the finest valleys of the Alps.
One morning he went up to a neighbouring height, whence he
could see the whole valley, and was calmly enjoying the view
when a German artisan came to ask him to undertake some
commission to friends in the fatherland. They engaged in con-
versation. The artisan went over his experiences, and re-
peated all the privations he and his fellows had to endure.
His tale of sorrow, so alien apparently to the ravishing beauty
around, made a profound impression on Winkelblech, and
altered the purpose and work of his life. " What is the
reason," he asked himself, " that the paradise before my eyes
conceals so much misery ? Is nature the source of all this
suffering, or is it man that is to blame for it ? I had before,
like so many men of science, looked, while in workshops, only
on the forges and the machinery, not on the men on the pro-
ducts of human industry, and not on the producers, and I was
quite a stranger to this great empire of misery that lies at the
foundation of our boasted civilization. The touching words
of the artisan made me feel the nullity of my scientific work
and life in its whole extent, and from that moment I resolved
to make the sufferings of our race, with their causes and
remedies, the subject of my studies." He pursued these
studies with the greatest industry for several years, and found
the extent of men's sufferings to be greatly beyond his ex-
pectation. Poverty prevailed everywhere among labourers
and among employers, too with peoples of the highest in-
dustrial development, and with peoples of the lowest in
luxurious cities, and in the huts of villagers in the rich plains
The Federalism of Carl Mario. 181
of Lombardy, no less than the sterile wilds of Scandinavia.
He arrived at the conclusion that the causes of all this lay not
in nature, but in the fact that human institutions rested on
false economic foundations, and he held the only possible
remedy to consist in improving these institutions. He became
convinced that technical perfection of production, however
great, would never be able to extinguish poverty or lead to
the diffusion of general comfort, and that civilization was now
come to a stage in its development at which further progress
depended entirely on the advancement of political economy.
Political economy was, therefore, for our time the most impor-
tant of all sciences, and Winkelblech now determined to give
himself thoroughly to its study. Hitherto he had not done so.
" During the progress of my investigations," he says, " the doc-
trines of economists, as well as the theories of socialists, remained
almost unknown to me except in name, for I intentionally
abstained from seeking any knowledge of either, in order that
I might keep myself as free as possible from extraneous influ-
ences. It was only after I arrived at the results described that
I set myself to a study of economic literature, and came to
perceive that the substance of rny thoughts, though many of
them were not new, and stood in need of correction, departed
completely from the accepted principles of the science." He
reached the conclusion that there prevailed everywhere the
symptoms of a universal social disease, and that political
economy was the only physician that could cure it ; but that
the prevailing system of economy was quite incompetent for
that task, and that a new system was urgently and indis-
pensably required. To set forth such a system is the aim of
his book. He derides Proudhon's idea of social reforms coming
of themselves without design, and argues strongly that no
reform worthy the name can ever be expected except as the
fruit of economic researches. He agrees with the Socialists
in so far as they seek to devise a new economic system, but
he thinks they make a defective diagnosis of the disease, and
propose an utterly inadequate remedy. He counts them
entirely mistaken in attributing all existing evils to the un-
equal distribution of wealth, a deficiency of production being,
in his opinion, a much more important source of misery than
1 82 Contemporary Socialism.
any error of distribution. In fact, his fundamental objection to
the existing distribution is that it is not the distribution which
conduces to the highest production, or to the most fruitful use
of the natural resources at the command of society. He differs
from the German socialists in always looking at the question
from the standpoint of society in general, rather than from that
of the proletariat alone, and he maintains that a new organiza-
tion of labour is even more necessary for the interest of the
capitalists than for that of the labourers, because he believes
the present system will infallibly lead, unless amended, to
the overthrow of the capitalist class, and the introduction of
communism. His point of view is moreover purely economic
and scientific, entirely free from all partizan admixture, and
while he declares himself to be a zealous member of the re-
publican party, he says that he purposely abstains from inter-
vention in politics because he regards the political question as one
of very minor rank, and holds that, with sound social arrange-
ments, people could live more happily under the Russian
autocracy than, with unsound ones, they could do under the
French republic. The organization of labour is, in his opinion,
something quite independent of the form of the State, and its
final aim ought to be to produce the amount of wealth necessary
to diffuse universal comfort among the whole population without
robbing the middle classes. These characteristics sufficiently
separate him from the socialist democrats of the present day.
His book was published gradually in parts, sometimes after
long intervals, between 1848 and 1856, and it was finally inter-
rupted by his death in 1865. A second edition appeared in
1885, containing some additions from his manuscripts, but the
work remains incomplete. It was to have consisted .of three
parts ; 1st, a historical part, containing an exposition and esti-
mate of the various economic systems ; 2nd, an elementary or
doctrinal part, containing an exposition of the principles of
economic science ; and, 3rd, a practical part, explaining his plan
for the organization of labour. The first two parts are all we
possess ; the third, and most important, never appeared, which
must be regretted by all who recognise the evidences of original
power and singular candour that the other parts present.
Mario's account of the social problem is that it arises from
The Federalism of Carl Mario. 183
the fact that our present industrial organization is not in
correspondence with the idea of right which is recognised by
the public opinion of the time. That idea of right is the
Christian one, which takes its stand on the dignity of man-
hood, and declares that all men, simply because they are men,
have equal rights to the greatest possible happiness. Up till
the French Revolution, the idea of right that prevailed was
the heathen one, which might be called the divine right of the
stronger. The weak might be made a slave without wrong.
He might be treated as a thing and not as a person or an
equal, who had the same right with his master or his feudal
superior to the greatest possible enjoyment. Nature belonged
to the conqueror, and his dominion was transmitted by privi-
lege. Inequality of right was therefore the characteristic of
this period ; Mario calls it monopolism. But at the French
Revolution the Christian idea of right rose to its due ascendancy
over opinion, and the sentiments of love and justice began to
assume a control over public arrangements. Do as you would
be done by, became a rule for politics as well as for private
life, and the weak were supported against the strong. Equality
of right was the mark of the new period ; Mario calls it panpol-
ism. This idea could not be realized before the present day,
because it had never before taken possession of the public
mind, but it has done this now so thoroughly that it cannot be
expected to rest till it has realized itself in every direction in
all the practical applications of which it is susceptible. The
final arbiter of institutions is always the conception of right
prevailing at the time ; contemporary industrial arrangements
are out of harmony with the contemporary conception of right ;
and stability cannot be looked for until this disturbance is
completely adjusted.
Now the first attempts that society made to effect this adjust-
ment were not unnaturally attended with imperfection. In
the warmth of their recoil from the evils of monopolism, men
ran into extreme and distorted embodiments of the opposite
principle, and they ran contrary ways. These contrary ways
are Liberalism and Communism. Liberalism fixed its atten-
tion mainly on the artificial restrictions, the privileges, the
services, the legal bonds by which monopoly and inequality
184 Contemporary Socialism.
were kept up, and it thought a perfect state of society would
be brought about if only every chain were snapped and
every fetter stripped away. It conceived the road to the
greatest possible happiness for every man was the greatest
possible freedom ; it idolized the principle of abstract liberty,
and it fancied if evil did not disappear, it was always because
something still remained that needed emancipation. Com-
munism, on the other hand, kept its eyes on the inequalities of
monopolistic society ; imagined the true road to the greatest
possible happiness was the greatest possible equality ; that all
ills would vanish as soon as things were levelled enough ; in
short, it idolized the principle of abstract equality. Modern
Liberalism and modern Communism are therefore of equal
birth ; they have the same historical origin in the triumph of
the principle of equality of right in 1789 ; they are only differ-
ent modes of attempting to reduce that principle to practice ;
and Liberalism happens to be the more widely disseminated of
the two, not because it represents that principle better, but
merely because being more purely negative than the other, it
was easier of introduction, and so got the start of Communism
in the struggle of existence. According to Mario, they are
both equally bad representatives of the principle, and their
chief good lies in their mutual criticism, by means of which
they prepare the way for the true system, the system of
Federalism, which will be presently explained. The history
of revolution, he says, begins in the victory of Liberalism and
Communism together over Monopolism ; it proceeds by the
conflict of the victors with one another, and it ends in the final
triumph of Federalism over both.
Mario next criticises the two systems of Liberalism and
Communism with considerable acuteness. Both the one and
the other are Utopias ; they are absorbed in realizing an
abstract principle, and they, as a matter of fact, produce
exactly the opposite of what they aim at. Communism seeks
to reach the greatest possible happiness by introducing first
the greatest possible equality. But what is equality ? Is it
equality when each man gets a coat of the same size, or is it
not rather when each man gets a coat that fits him ? Some
communists would accept the former alternative. They would
The Federalism of Carl Mario. 185
measure off the same length to the dwarf and the giant, to
the ploughman and the judge, to the family of three and the
family of thirteen. But this would be clearly not equality,
but only inequality of a more vicious and vexatious kind.
Most communists, however, prefer the second alternative, and
assign to every man according to his needs, to every man the
coat that fits him. But then we must first have the cloth,
and that is only got by labour, and every labourer ought if
possible to produce his own coat. The motive to labour, how-
ever, is weakened on the communistic system ; and if those who
work less are to be treated exactly like those who work more,
then that would be no abolition of monopoly, but merely the
invention of a new monopoly, the monopoly of indolence and
incapacity. The skilful and industrious would be exploited
by the stupid and lazy. Besides, production would for the
same reason, insufficient inducement to labour, be diminished,
progress would be stopped, and therefore the average of
human happiness would decline. Communism thus conducts
to the opposite of everything it seeks. It seeks equality, it
ends in inequality; it seeks the abolition of monopoly, it
creates a new monopoly ; it seeks to increase happiness, it
actually diminishes it. It is a pure Utopia, and why ? Because
it misunderstands its own principle. Equality does not mean
giving equal things to every man ; it means merely affording
the greatest possible playroom for the development of every
personalitj^, and that is exactly the principle of freedom. The
greatest possible equality and the greatest possible freedom
can only be realized together ; they must spring out of the
same conditions, and a system of right which shall adjust these
conditions is just what is now wanted.
Liberalism is a failure from like causes. It seeks to realize
happiness by freedom ; it realizes neither. For it mistakes the
nature of freedom, as the Communists mistake the nature of
equality. It takes freedom to be the power of doing what one
likes, instead of being the power of doing what is right. Its
whole bent is to exempt as much as possible of life from
authoritative restraint, and to give as much scope as exigencies
will allow to the play of individuality. It is based on no
positive conception of right whatever, and looks on the State
1 86 Contemporary Socialism.
as an alien whose interference is something exceptional, only
justified on occasional grounds of public necessity or general
utility. It fails to see that there are really no affairs in a com-
munity which are out of relation to the general wellbeing,
and destitute of political significance. Nothing demonstrates
the error of this better than the effects of the Liberal regime
itself. For half a century the industrial concerns of the people
have been treated as matters of purely private interest, and
this policy has resulted in a political as well as economical
revolution. Industrial freedom, which has produced capitalism
in the economic field, has resulted in political life in the
ascendancy of a new class, a plutocracy, " the worst masters,"
said De Tocqueville, " the world has yet seen, though their
reign will be short." The change which was effected by the
legislation of the Revolution was not a development of a
fourth estate, as is sometimes said ; it was really nothing more
than the creation of a money aristocracy, and the putting of
them in the place of the old hereditary nobility. The system
of industrial right that happens to prevail, therefore, so far
from being, as Liberals fancy, outside the sphere of political
interest, is in truth the very element on which the distribution
of political power, in the last analysis, depends. Nothing is
more political than the social question. Liberals think slight
of that question, but it is, says Mario, the real question of the
day, and it is neither more nor less than the question of the
existence or abolition of Liberalism, the question of the main-
tenance or subversion of the principle of industrial freedom,
the question of the ascendancy or overthrow of a money
aristocracy. The fight of our age is a fight against a pluto-
cracy bred of Liberalism. It is not, as some represent it, a
struggle of labourers against employers; it is a joint struggle of
labourers and lower bourgeoisie against the higher bourgeoisie,
a struggle of those who work and produce against those who
luxuriate idly on the fruits of others' labour. As compared
with this question, constitutional questions are of very minor
importance, for no matter whether the State be monarchy or
republic, if the system of industrial right that prevails in it be
the system of industrial freedom, the real power of the country
will be in the hands of the capitalist class. He who fails to
The Federalism of Carl Mario. 187
see this, says Mario, fails to understand the spirit of his time
It is always the national idea of right that governs both in
social and political relations, and as long as the national idea
of right is that of Liberalism, we shall continue to have capi-
talism and a plutocracy. It is the mind that builds the body
up, and it is only when a new system of right has taken as
complete possession of the national consciousness as Liberalism
did in 1789, that the present social conflict will cease and a
better order of things come in.
From want of such a system of right from want even of
seeing the necessity for it, Liberalism has defeated its own
purpose. It sought to abolish monopoly ; it has only sub-
stituted for the old monopoly of birth the more grievous
monopoly of wealth. It sought to establish freedom ; it has
only established plutocratic tyranny. It has erred because it
took for freedom an abstraction of its own and tried to realize
that, just as Communism erred by taking for equality an
abstraction of its own and trying to realize that. The most
perfect state of freedom is not reached when every man has
the power of doing what he likes, any more than the most
perfect state of equality is reached when every man has equal
things with every other ; but the greatest possible freedom is
attained in a condition of society where every man has the
greatest possible play-room for the development of his person-
ality, and the greatest possible equality is attained in exactly
the same state of things. Real freedom and real equality are
in fact identical. Every right contains from the first a social
element as well as an individual element, and it cannot be
realized in the actual world without observing a due adjust-
ment between these two elements. Such an adjustment can
only be discovered by a critical examination of the economic
constitution of society, and must then be expressed in a distinct
system of industrial right, which imposes on individual action
its just limits. True liberty is liberty within these limits ; and
the true right of property is a right of property under the same
conditions. The fundamental fault of Liberalism, the cause
of its failure, is simply that it goes to work without a sound
theory of right, or rather perhaps without any clear theory at
all, and merely aims at letting every one do as he likes, with
1 88 Contemporary Socialism.
the understanding that the State can always be called in to
correct accidents and excesses.
This defect is what Federalism claims to supply. It claims
to be the only theory that abandons abstractions and keeps
closely to the nature of things, and therefore to be the only
theory that is able to realize even approximately the Christian
principle of equality of right. The name furnishes no very
precise clue to the conclusion it designates, and it has no
reference to the federative form of State, for which Mario
expressly disavows having any partiality. He has chosen the
word merely to indicate the fact that society is an organic
confederation of many different kinds of associations families,
churches, academies, mercantile companies, and so on ; that
association is not only a natural form, but the natural form in
which man's activity tends to be carried on ; and that in anj r
sound system of industrial right this must be recognised by
an extension of the collective form of property and the co-
operative form of production. Communism, says Mario, is
mechanical, Liberalism is atomistic, but Federalism is organic.
When he distinguishes his theory from communism, it must
be remembered that it is from the communism which he has
criticised, and which he would prefer to denominate Equalism ;
it is from the communism of Baboeuf, which would out of
hand give every man according to his needs, and would
consequently, through impairing the motives to industry, leave
those needs themselves in the long run less satisfactorily
provided for than they are now. But his system is nearly
identical with the communism of the Young Hegelians of his
own time that is, with the German socialism of the present
day although he arrived at it in entire independence of their
agitations, and builds it on deductions peculiar to himself.
Like them, he asks for the compulsory transformation of land
and the instruments of production from private property into
collective property ; like them, he asks for this on grounds of
social justice, as the necessary mechanism for giving effect to
positive rights that are set aside under the present system ;
and he says himself, "If you ask the question, how is the
democratic social republic related to Federalism, the most
suitable answer is, as the riddle to its solution."
The Federalism of Carl Mario. 189
He starts from the position that all men have equally the
right to property. Not merely in the sense, which is com-
monly acknowledged, that they have the right to property if
they have the opportunity of acquiring it ; but in the further
significance, that they have a right to the opportunity. They
are in fact born proprietors de jure at least, and they are so
for two reasons. First, God has made them persons, and
not things, and they have, therefore, all equally a natural
right to their amplest personal development. If society inter-
feres with this liberty of personal development if it suffers
any of its members to become the slaves of others, for example
it robs them of original rights which belong to them by the
mere fact of their manhood. But, secondly, property, resources
of some sort, being indispensable means of personal develop-
ment, God, who has imposed the end, has supplied the means.
He has given nature, the earth and the lower creation, into the
dominion of man, not of this or that man, or class of men, but
of mankind, and consequently every man has, equally with
every other, a right to participate in the dominion of nature,
a right to use its bounty to the extent required for his personal
development. No appropriation of nature can be just which
excludes this possibility and robs any man of this natural right.
It is, therefore, wrong to allow to any single person, or to any
limited number of persons, an absolute dominion over natural
resources in which everybody else has, by nature, a right to
some extent to share. He who should have complete and
exclusive lordship over all nature, would be lord and master
of all his fellow-men, and in a period after natural agents are
all appropriated the system of complete and absolute property
leaves the new-comers at the mercy of those who are already
in possession. They can only work if the latter give them
the productive instruments ; they can only reap from their
work so much of its fruits as the latter are pleased to leave
with them ; and they must perish altogether unless the latter
employ them. They are slaves, they are beggars ; and yet
they came into the world with the rights of a proprietor, of
which they can never be divested. Nature laid covers for
them as well as for the rest, and a system of property is
essentially unjust which ousts them from their seat at her
19 Contemporary Socialism.
table. The common theory of property starts from the
premiss, that all men have the right to property, and draws
the conclusion, that, therefore, some men have the right to
monopolize it. As usually understood, the proprietary right
is as much a right of robbery as a right of property, and
Proudhon would have been quite correct in describing property
as theft, if no better system of property could be devised than
the present.
But such a system can be devised ; one under which the
right of new-comers may be respected without disturbing those
of possessors. This can only be done by putting entirely aside
the complete and absolute form of property which is in so
much favour with Liberalism, and by making the right of
property in any actual possession a strictly limited and circum-
scribed right from the first the right not to an arbitrary
control over a thing, but to a just control over it. So long as
property is always thought of as an arbitrary and absolute
dominion over a thing, the proprietary right cannot possibly
be explained in a way that does not make it a right given to
some to rob others. "Why not, therefore, define property from
the beginning as subject to limitations, and contrive a new
form or system of it, in which these limitations shall for ever
receive due recognition, and no man be thereafter denied the
opportunity of acquiring as much of the bounty of nature as is
necessary for him to carry out his personal development ?
That is Mario's task, and it would have been an easy one, if
all goods, if everything that satisfies a human want, had been
supplied directly by nature, as air is supplied, without the
need of industry to procure it or the power of industry to
multiply it. Then the problem would be solved very simply
as the earlier communists desired to solve it. Every member
of society would be entitled to partake of nature's supplies, t s
he now does of air, in the measure of his need, and when those
supplies ran exhausted, just as when the air became vitiated,
society would be entitled, nay obliged, to suppress further
propagation. But the question is far from being so simple.
Nature only yields her bounties to us after labour ; they are
only converted into means of life by labour; and they are
capable of being vastly multiplied by labour. This element of
The Federalism of Carl Mario. 191
labour changes the situation of things considerably, and must
be allowed a leading role in determining a just right and
system of property. The only case where a proprietary right
can be recognised which is unmodified by this consideration,
is the case of those who are unable to labour. They fall back
on their original right to a share in the bounty of nature in
the measure that their personal development requires ; in
other words, according to their needs. Their share does not
lie waste, though they are unable to work it themselves, and
their share belongs to them immediately because they are
persons, and not because they may afterwards become la-
bourers. Mario recognises, therefore, antecedently to labour
the right to existence, and this right he proposes to realize for
the weak and disabled by means of a compulsory system of
national insurance.
The other natural proprietary rights are consequent in one
way or another upon labour. First, there is the right to
labour. If every man has a right to a share in the dominion
of nature, then every man who is able to labour has a right to
obtain the natural resources that are necessary to give him
employment according to capacity and trade. No private
appropriation of these resources can divest him of his title to
get access to them, and if he cannot find work himself, the
State is bound to provide it for him in public workshops.
Second, every man has a right to the most profitable possible
application of labour to natural resources. He has an interest
in seeing the common stock put to the best account, and he is
wronged in this interest when waste is permitted, when in-
ferior methods are resorted to, or when the distribution .of
work and materials is ill arranged. Now the best arrangement
is when each man is equipped according to the measure and
quality of his powers. Nature will be then best worked, and
man's personal development will then be best furthered. If
such an arrangement cannot be effected on the system of pro-
perty now in vogue, while it may be under another, it is every
man's right to have the former system supplanted by the
latter. The most economical form of property is the most just.
Third, the next right is a right to an almost unlimited control
over the fruits of one's own labour. Not over the means of
192 Contemporary Socialism.
labour ; these can only be justly or economically held by a
circumscribed control; but over the fruits of labour. These
ought to be retained as exclusive property, for the simple
reason that the natural resources will be so turned to the best
account. On any other system of payment the motive to
labour is impaired, and the amount of its produce diminished.
Distribution by need defeats its own end ; the very needs
of the community would be less amply satisfied after it than
before it. Distribution according to work is the sound econo-
mic principle, and therefore the just one. Mario here leaves
room for the play of the hereditary principle and of competi-
tion to some extent, and he allows the free choice of occupation
on similar grounds. Men will work best in lines their own
tastes and powers lead them to. Everything is determined by
economic utility, and economic utility is supposed to be at its
height when the natural resources of a country are distributed
among its inhabitants according to the requirements of their
labouring powers.
This condition of things can only be realized, first, if popula-
tion is regulated ; second, if unproductive labour is suppressed ;
and third, if the means of labour are made common property.
The necessity for regulating population comes, of course, from
the limitation of the natural resources at society's command.
In any community there is a certain normal limit of popula-
tion the limit at which all the natural resources are distri-
buted among all the inhabitants according to their powers
and the community will learn when this limit is reached from
the number of workmen who are unable to obtain private
employment, and are obliged to seek work from the State.
Then it can regulate population by various expedients. It may
require the possession of a certain amount of fortune as a preli-
minary condition to marriage, and raise this amount according
to necessit3 r . It may encourage emigration. It may forbid
marriages under a fixed age, and to prevent illegitimacy, it
might give natural children the same rights as legitimate ones.
But Mario trusts most to the strong preventive check that
would be supplied by the power imparted to working men
under the Federal regime of improving their position.
The same necessity that makes it legitimate, and, indeed,
The Federalism of Carl Mario. 193
imperative to regulate population, makes it legitimate and im-
perative also to suppress what Mario calls unproductive acqui-
sition, i.e., the acquisition by persons who are able to work of
any other property than they earn as the fruit of their work ;
and to suppress likewise all waste of the means of life and
enjoyment, such, for example, as is involved in the mainte-
nance of unnecessary horses, dogs, or other animals that only
eat up the products of the soil. The obligation to labour and
the curtailment of luxury would come into exercise before the
restrictions on population, and be more and more rigorously
enforced as the normal limit of population was approximated.
But the most important and the most necessary innovation
is the conversion of land and the instruments of production
into the form of collective property. The form in which pro-
perty should be held ought to be strictly determined by
considerations of economic utility. From such considerations
the Liberals themselves have introduced important changes
into the system of property ; they have abolished fiefs, heredi-
tary tenancies, entail, servitudes, church and village lands, all
the peculiarities of monopolistic society, because, as they said,
they wished to substitute a good form of property for a bad ;
and they at least have no right, Mario thinks, to turn round
now on Communists or Federalists for proposing to supersede
this good form of property by a better. They have themselves
transformed property by law, and they have transformed it on
grounds of economic advantage ; they have owned that the
economic superiority of a particular form of property imposes
a public obligation for its compulsory introduction. They
asserted the competency of the State against the monopolists,
and they cannot now deny it against the socialists. If the
private form of property is best, then let the State maintain it ;
but if the collective form is best, then the State is bound, even
on the principles of Liberals themselves, to introduce it. The
question can only be determined by experience of the com-
parative economic utility of the two. Without offering any
detailed proof of his proposition from experience Mario then
affirms that the most advantageous form of property is reached
when the instruments of production are the collective property
of associations, and the instruments of enjoyment (except wells,
o
194 Contemporary Socialism.
bridges, and the like) are the property of individuals. Each
man's house would still be his castle ; his house and the fulness
thereof would still belong to him ; but outside of it he could
acquire no individual possessions. Of land and the means of
labour, he should be joint-proprietor with others, or rather
joint-tenant with them under the Crown. Industrial property
would be held in common by the associations that worked it,
and these associations would be organized by authority with
distinct charters of powers and functions.
Mario thus arrives at the same practical scheme as Marx,
though by a slightly different road. Marx builds his claim on
Eicardo's theory of value and Ricardo's law of necessary wages.
Mario builds his on man's natural right, as a sharer in the do-
minion of nature, to th9 most advantageous exercise of that
dominion.
CHAPTER VI.
THE SOCIALISTS OF THE CHAIE.
THE Socialists of the Chair have done themselves injustice and
sown their course with embarrassing misconceptions by adopt-
ing too hastily an infelicitous name. It is more descriptive
than most political nicknames, and therefore more liable to
mislead. It was first used in 1872 in a pamphlet by Oppen-
heim, then one of the leaders of the National Liberals, to
ridicule a group of young professors of political economy who
had begun to show a certain undefined sympathy with the
socialist agitations of Lassalle and Von Schweitzer, and to
write of the wrongs of the labouring classes and the evils of
the existing industrial system with a flow of emotion which
was thought to befit their years better than their position. A
few months later these young professors called together at
Eisenach a Congress of all who shared their general attitude
towards that class of questions. In opening this Congress
which was attended by almost every economist of note in
Germany, and by a number of the weightiest and most
distinguished Liberal politicians Professor Schmoller em-
ployed the name " Socialists of the Chair " to describe himself
and those present, without adding a single qualifying remark,
just as if it had been their natural and chosen designation.
The nickname was no doubt accepted so readily, partly from
a desire to take the edge off the sneer it was meant to convey,
but partly also from the nobler feeling which makes men stand
by a truth that is out of favour. Not that they approved of
the contentions of social democracy out and out, but they
believed there was more basis of truth in them than persons in
authority were inclined to allow, and besides that the truth
they contained was of special and even pressing importance.
They held, as Schmoller said, that " Social Democracy was
195
196 Contemporary Socialism.
itself a consequence of the sins of modern Liberalism." They
went entirely with the Social Democrats in maintaining both
that a grave social crisis had arisen, and that it had been
largely brought about by an irrational devotion on the part of
the Liberals to the economic doctrine of laissez-faire. But
they went further with them. They believed that the salvation
of modern society was to come, not indeed from the particular
scheme of reconstruction advocated by the Social Democrats,
but still from applications in one form or another of their
fundamental principle, the principle of association. And it
was for that reason it was for the purpose of marking the
value they set upon the associative principle as the chief source
of healing for the existing ills of the nations that they chose
to risk misunderstanding and obloquy by accepting the nick-
name put upon them by their adversaries. The late Professor
Held, who claims as a merit that he was the first to do so,
explains very clearly what he meant by calling himself a
socialist. Socialism may signify many different things, but,
as he uses the word, it denotes not any definite system of
opinions or any particular plan of social reform, but only a
general method which may guide various systems, and may
be employed more or less according to circumstances in direct-
ing many different reforms. He is a socialist because he would
give much more place than obtains at present to the associative
principle in the arrangements of economic life, and because
he cannot share in the admiration many economists express for
the purely individualistic basis on which these arrangements
have come to stand. A socialist is simply the opposite of an
individualist. The individualist considers that the perfection
of an industrial economy consists in giving to the principles of
self-interest, private property, and free competition, on which
the present order of things is founded, the amplest scope they
are capable of receiving, and that all existing economic evils
are due, not to the operation of these principles, but only to
their obstruction, and will gradually disappear when self-
interest comes to be better understood, when competition is
facilitated by easier inter-communication, and when the law
has ceased from troubling and left industry at rest. The
socialist, in Held's sense, is, on the other hand, one who rejects
The Socialists of the Chair. 197
the comfortable theory of the natural harmony of individual
interests, and instead of deploring the obstructions which
embarrass the operations of the principles of competition, self-
interest, and private property, thinks that it is precisely in
consequence of these obstructions that industrial society con-
trives to exist at all. Strip these principles, he argues, of the
restraints put upon them now by custom, by conscience, by
public opinion, by a sense of fairness and kind feeling, and the
inequalities of wealth would be immensely aggravated, and
the labouring classes would be unavoidably ground to misery.
Industrial society would fall into general anarchy, into a liellum
omnium contra omnes, in which they that have would have
more abundantly, and they that have not would lose even what
they have. Held declines to join in the admiration bestowed
by many scientific economists upon this state of war, in which
the battle is always to the rich. He counts it neither the state
of nature, nor the state of perfection, of economic society,
but simply an unhappy play of selfish and opposing forces,
which it ought to be one of the distinct aims of political
economy to mitigate and counteract. Individualism has
already had too free a course, and especially in the immediate
past has enjoyed too sovereign a reign. The work of the
world cannot be carried on by a fortuitous concourse of hostile
atoms, moving continually in a strained state of suspended
social war, and therefore, for the very safety of industrial
society, we must needs now change our tack, give up our
individualism, and sail in the line of the more positive and
constructive tendencies of socialism. To Held's thinking
accordingly, socialism and individualism are merely two
contrary general principles, ideals, or methods, which may be
employed to regulate the constitution of economic society,
and he declares himself a socialist because he believes that
society suffers at present from an excessive application of the
individualistic principle, and can only be cured by an extensive
employment of the socialistic one.
This is all clear enough, but it is simply giving to the word
socialism another new meaning, and creating a fresh source of
ambiguity. That term has already contracted definite associa-
tions which it is impossible to dispel by mere word of mouth,
198 Contemporary Socialism.
and which constitute a refracting medium through which the
principles of the Socialists of the Chair cannot fail to be pre-
sented in a very misleading form. These writers assume a
special position in two relations first, as theoretical economists ;
and, second, as practical politicians or social reformers ; and in
both respects alike the term socialism is peculiarly inappro-
priate to describe their views. In regard to the first point, by
adopting that name they have done what they could to " Nico-
demus" themselves into a sect, whereas they might have
claimed, if they chose, to be better exponents of the catholic
tradition of the science than those who found fault with them.
This is a claim, however, which they would be shocked indeed
to think of presenting. With a natural partiality for their
own opinions, they exaggerated immensely the extent and also
the value of their divergence from the traditional or, as it is
sometimes called, the classical economics. In the energy of
their recoil from the dogmatism which had for a generation
usurped an excessive sway over economic science, they were
carried too far in the opposite direction, but they had in their
own minds the sensation that they were carried a great deal
farther than they really were. They liked to think of their
historical method as constituting a new epoch, and effecting a
complete revolution in political economy, but, as will subse-
quently appear, that method, when reduced to its real worth,
amounts to no more than an application, with somewhat
distincter purpose and wider reach, of the method which
Smith himself followed. Of this they are in some degree
conscious. Brentano, who belongs to the extreme right of the
school, says that Smith would have been a Socialist of the
Chair to-day if he were alive ; and Samter, who belongs to the
extreme left, though he is doubtful regarding Smith, has no
hesitation in claiming Mill, whom he looks upon as standing
more outside than inside the school of Smith. Their position
is, therefore, not the new departure which many of them
would fain represent it to be. They are really as natural and
as legitimate a line of descent from Adam Smith as their
adversaries the German Manchester Party who claimed the
authority of his name. Perhaps they are even more so, for in
science the true succession lies with those who carry the prin-
The Socialists of the Chair. 199
ciples of the master to a more fruitful development, and not
with those who embalm them as sacred but sterile simulacra.
But it is as practical reformers that the Socialists of the
Chair suffer most injustice from their name. Since the word
socialism was first used by Reybaud fifty years ago, it has
always been connected with Utopian or revolutionary ideas.
Now the Socialists of the Chair are the very opposite of
revolutionaries both by creed and practice. None of the
various parties which occupy themselves with the social
problem in Germany is so eminently and advisedly practical.
Their very historical method, apart from anything else, makes
them so. It gives them a special aversion to political and
social experiments, for it requires as the first essential of any
project of reform that it shall issue naturally and easily out of
or at least be harmonious with the historical conditions of
the time and place to which it is to be applied. Roscher, who
may be regarded as the founder of the school, says that
reformers ought to take for their model Time, whose reforms
are the surest and most irresistible of all, but yet so gradual that
they cannot be observed at any given moment. They make,
therefore, on the whole a very sparing use of the socialistic
principle they invoke. Certainly the world, in their eyes, is
largely out of joint, but its restoration is to proceed gently,
like Solomon's temple, without sound of hammer. Some of
them of course go farther than others, but they would all still
leave us rent, wages, and profits, the three main stems of
individualism. They struck the idea of taxing speculative
profits out of their programme, and so far from having any
socialistic thought of abolishing inheritance, none of them,
except Von Scheel would even tax it exceptionally. Samter
stands alone in urging the nationalization of the land ; and
Wagner stands alone in desiring the abolition of private
property in ground-rents in towns ; the other members cannot
agree even about the expediency of nationalizing the railways.
They work of set purpose for a better distribution of wealth
for what Schmoller calls a progressive equalization of the
excessive and even dangerous differences of culture that exist
at present but they recoil from all suggestion of schemes of
repartition, and they have no fault to find with inequality in
2OO Contemporary Socialism.
itself. On the contrary they regard inequality as being not
merely an unavoidable result of men's natural endowments,
but an indispensable instrument of their progress and civiliza-
tion. Schmoller explains that their political principles are
those of Radical Toryism, as portrayed in Lord Beaconsfield's
novels ; and he means that they rest on the same active
sympathy with the ripening aspirations of the labouring classes,
and the same zealous confidence in the authority of the State,
and in these respects are distinguished from modern Liberalism,
whose governing sympathies are with the interests and ideas
of the bourgeoisie, and which entertains a positive jealousy of
the action of the State. The actual reforms which the
Socialists of the Chair have hitherto promoted have been in
the main copied from our own English legislation our Factory
Acts, our legalization of Trade Unions, our Savings Banks, our
registration of Friendly Societies, our sanitary legislation, etc.,
etc. measures which have been passed, with the concurrence
of men of opposite shades of opinion, out of no social theory
but from a plain regard to the obvious necessities of the hour.
So that we have been simply Socialists of the Chair for a
generation without knowing it, doing from a happy political
instinct the works which they deduce out of an elaborate
theory of economic politics. Part of their theory, however,
is, that in practical questions they are not to go by theory, and
the consequence is that while they sometimes lay down general
principles in which communism might steal a shelter, they
control these principles so much in their application by con-
siderations of expediency, that the measures they end in
proposing differ little from such as commend themselves to
the common sense and public spirit of middle-class Englishmen.
Their general theory had been taught in Germany for
twenty years before it was forced into importance by the policy
it suggested and the controversies it excited in connection
with the socialist movement which began in 1863. "Wilhelm
Roscher, the lately deceased professor of economics in Leipzig,
first propounded the historical method in his " Grundriss zu
Vorlesungen iiber die Staatswirthschaft nach geschichtlicher
Methode," published in 1843, though it deserves to be noticed
that in this work he spoke of the historical method as being
The Socialists of the Chair. 201
the ordinary inductive method of scientific economists, and
distinguished it from the idealistic method proceeding by
deduction from preconceived ideas, which he said was the
method of the socialists. He had no thought as yet of repre-
senting his method as diverging from that of his predecessors,
even in detail, much less as being essentially different in
principle. Then the late Bruno Hildebrand, professor of
political science at Jena, in his work on the "National
Economy of the Present and the Future," published in 1847,
proclaimed the historical method as the harbinger and instru-
ment of a new era in the science, but he speaks of it only as a
restoration of the method of diligent observation which Adam
Smith practised, but which his disciples deserted for pure
abstractions. In 1853, a more elaborate defence and exposi-
tion of the historical method appeared in a work on " Political
Economy from the Standpoint of the Historical Method," by
Carl G. A. Knies, professor of national economics at Heidelberg.
But it was never dreamt that the ideas broached in these
works had spread beyond the few solitary thinkers who issued
them. The Free Traders were still seen ruling everything in
the high places of the land in the name of political economy,
and they were everywhere apparently accepted as authorized
interpreters of the mysteries of that, to the ordinary public,
somewhat occult science. They preached the freedom of
exchange like a religion which contained at once all they
were required to believe in economic matters, and all they were
required to do. There was ground for Lassalle's well-known
taunt : " Get a starling, Herr Schultze, teach it to pronounce
the word ' exchange,' ' exchange,' ' exchange/ and you have
produced a very good modern economist." The German
Manchester Party certainly gave to the principle of laissez-
faire, laissez-aller, a much more unconditional and universal
application than any party in this country thought of accord-
ing to it. They looked on it as a kind of orthodoxy which it
had come to be almost impious to challenge. It had been
hallowed by the consensus of the primitive fathers of the
science, and it seemed now to be confirmed beyond question
experimentally by the success of the practical legislation in
which it had been exemplified during the previous quarter of
2O2 Contemporary Socialism.
a century. The adherents of the new school never raised a
murmur against all this up till the eventful time of the
socialist agitation and the formation of the new German Empire,
and the reason is very plain. On the economic questions
which came up before that period, they were entirely at one
with the Free Traders, and gave a hearty support to their
energetic lead. They were, for example, as strenuously
opposed to protective duties and to restrictions upon liberty
of migration, settlement, and trading, as Manchester itself.
But with the socialist agitation of 1863, a new class of econo-
mic- questions came to the front questions respecting the
condition of the working classes, the relations of capital and
labour, the distribution of national wealth, and the like and
on these new questions they could not join the Free Traders
in saying " Hands off!" They did not believe with the Man-
chester school that the existing distribution of wealth was the
best of all possible distributions, because it was the distribu-
tion which Nature herself produced. They thought, on the
contrary, that Nature had little to do with the matter ; but
even if it had more, there was only too good cause for applying
strong corrections by art. They said it was vain for the Man-
chester party to deny that a social question existed, and to
maintain that the working classes were as well off as it was
practical for economic arrangements to make them. They
declared there was much truth in the charges which socialists
were bringing against the existing order of things, and that
there was a decided call upon all the powers of society, and,
among others, especially upon the State, to intervene with
some remedial measures. A good opportunity for concerted
and successful action seemed to be afforded when the German
Empire was established, and this led to the convening of the
Eisenach Congress in 1872, and the organization of the Society
for Social Politics in the following year.
Men of all shades of opinion were invited to that Congress,
provided they agreed on two points, which were expressly
mentioned in the invitation : 1st, in entertaining an earnest
sense of the gravity of the social crisis which existed ; and 2nd,
in renouncing the principle of laissez-faire and all its works,
The Congress was attended by 150 members, including many
T/ie Socialists of the Chair. 203
leading politicians and most of the professors of political
economy at the Universities. Roscher, Knies, and Hildebrand
were there, with their younger disciples Schmoller, professor
at Strasburg and author of the " History of the Small Indus-
tries " ; Lujo Brentano, professor at Breslau, well known in
this country by his book on " English Gilds " and his larger
work on " English Trade Unions"; Professors A. "Wagner of
Berlin and Schonberg of Tubingen. Then there were men
like Max Hirsch and Duncker the publisher, both members of
the Imperial Diet, and the founders of the Hirsch-Duncker
Trade Unions ; Dr. Engel, director of the statistical bureau
at Berlin ; Professor von Holtzendorff, the criminal jurist ;
and Professor Gneist, historian of the English Constitu-
tion, who was chosen to preside. After an opening address
by Schmoller, three papers were read and amply discussed,
one on Factory Legislation by Brentano, a second on trade
Unions and Strikes by Schmoller, and a third on Labourers'
Dwellings by Engel. This Congress first gave the German
public an idea of the strength of the new movement ; and the
Free Trade party were completely, and somewhat bitterly,
disenchanted, when they found themselves deserted, not as
they fancied merely by a few effusive young men, but by
almost every economist of established reputation in the
country. A sharp controversy ensued. The newspapers, with
scarcely an exception, attacked the Socialists of the Chair
tooth and nail, and leading members of the Manchester party,
such as Treitschke the historian, Bamberger the Liberal poli-
tician, and others, rushed eagerly into the fray. They were
met with spirit by Schmoller, Held, Von Scheel, Brentano,
and other spokesmen of the Eisenach position, and one result
of the polemic is, that some of the misunderstandings which
naturally enough clouded that position at the beginning have
been cleared away, and it is now admitted by both sides that
they are really much nearer one another than either at first
supposed. The Socialists of the Chair did not confine their
labours to controversial pamphlets. They published news-
papers, periodicals, elaborate works of economic investiga-
tion ; they held meetings, promoted trade unions, insurance
societies, savings banks ; they brought the hours of labour,
204 Contemporary Socialism.
the workmen's houses, the effects of speculation and crises, all
within the sphere of legislative consideration. The modera-
tion of their proposals of change has conciliated to a great
extent their Manchester opponents. Even Oppenheim, the
inventor of their nickname, laid aside his scoffing, and
seconded some of their measures energetically. Indeed, their
chief adversaries are now the socialists, who cannot forgive
them for going one mile with them and yet refusing to go
twain for adopting their diagnosis and yet rejecting their
prescription. Brentano, who is one of the most moderate, as
well as one of the ablest of them, takes nearly as grave a view
of the state of modern industrial society as the socialists them-
selves do ; and he says that if the evils from which it suffers
could not be removed otherwise, it would be impossible to
avoid much longer a socialistic experiment. But then he
maintains that they can be removed otherwise, and one of the
chief motives of himself and his allies in their practical work
is to put an end to socialistic agitation by curing the ills
which have excited it.
The key to the position of the Socialists of the Chair lies
in their historical method. This method has nothing to do
with the question sometimes discussed whether the proper
method of political economy is the inductive or the deductive.
On that question the historical school of economists are entirely
agreed with the classical school. Roscher, for example, adopts
Mill's description of political economy as a concrete deductive
science, whose a priori conclusions, based on laws of human
nature, must be tested by experience, and says that an
economic fact can be said to have received a scientific ex-
planation only when its inductive and deductive explanations
have met and agreed. He makes, indeed, two qualifying
remarks. One is, that it ought to be remembered that even
the deductive explanation is based on observation, on the self-
observation of the person who offers it. This will be admitted
by all. The other is, that every explanation is only provi-
sional, and liable to be superseded in the course of the pro-
gress of knowledge, and of the historical growth of social and
economic structure. This will also be admitted, and it is no
peculiarity of political economy. There is no science whose
The Socialists of the Chair. 205
conclusions are not, modified by the advance of knowledge ;
and there are many sciences besides political economy whose
phenomena change their type in lapse of time. Roscher's
proviso, therefore, amounts to nothing more than a caution
to economic investigators to build their explanations scrupu-
lously on the facts, the whole facts, and nothing but the
facts, and to be specially on their guard against applying to
the circumstances of one period or nation explanations and
recommendations which are only just regarding another. The
same disease may have different symptoms in a child from
what it has in a man, and a somewhat different type at the
present day from what it had some centuries ago ; and it may
therefore require a quite different treatment. That is a very
sound principle and a very self-evident one, and it contains
the whole essence of the historical method, which, so far as it
is a method of investigation at all, is simply that of other
economists applied under a more dominating sense of the com-
plexity and diversity of the phenomena which are subjected
to it. There is consequently with the historical school mere
rigour of observation and less rigour of theory, and this pecu-
liarity leads to practical results of considerable importance,
but it has no just pretensions to assume the dignity of a new
economic method, and it is made to appear much bigger than
it is by looming through the scholastic distinctions in which
it is usually set forth.
The historical school sometimes call their method the realistic
and ethical method, to distinguish it from what they are pleased
to term the idealistic, and selfish or materialistic method of
the earlier economists. They are realists because they can-
not agree with the majority of economists who have gone
before them in believing there is one, and only one, ideal of
the best economic system. There are, says Roscher, as many
different ideals as there are different types of peoples, and he
completely casts aside the notion, which had generally pre-
vailed before him, that there is a single normal system of
economic arrangements, which is built on the natural laws
of economic life, and to which all nations may at all times
with advantage conform. It is against this notion that the
historical school has revolted with so much energy that they
206 Contemporary Socialism.
wish to make their opposition to it the flag and symbol of a
schism. They deny that there are any natural laws in political
economy ; they deny that there is any economic solution
absolutely valid, or capable of answering in one economic
situation because it has answered in another. Roscher, Knies,
and the older members of the school make most of the latter
point ; but Hildebrand, Schonberg, Schmoller, Brentano, and
the younger spirits among them, direct against the former
some of their keenest attacks. They declare it to be a survival
from the exploded metaphysics of the much-abused Aufklarung
of last century. They argue that just as the economists of
that period took self-interest to be the only economic motive,
because the then dominant psychology that of the selfish
or sensual school represented it as the only real motive of
human action, of which the other motives were merely modi-
fications ; so did they come to count the reciprocal action and
reaction of the self-interest of different individuals to be a
system of natural forces, working according to natural laws,
because they found the whole intellectual air they breathed
at the time filled with the idea that all error in poetry, art,
ethics, and therefore also economics, had come through de-
parting from nature, and that the true course in everything
lay in giving the supremacy to the nature of things. We
need not stop to discuss this historical question as to the origin
of the idea ; it is enough here to say that the Socialists of
the Chair maintain that in economic affairs it is impossible
to make any such distinction between what is natural and
what is not so. Everything results from nature, and every-
thing results from positive institution too. There is in
economics either no nature at all, or there is nothing else.
Human will effects or affects all ; and human will is itself
influenced, of course, by human nature and human condition.
B-oscher says that it is a mistake to speak of industry being
forced into "unnatural " courses by priests or tyrants, for the
priests and tyrants are part and parcel of the people them-
selves, deriving all their resources from the people, and in no
respect Archimedeses standing outside of their own world.
The action of the State in economic affairs is just as natural
as the action of the farmer or the manufacturer ; and the
The Socialists of the Chair. 207
latter is as much matter of positive institution as the former.
But while Roscher condemns this distinction, he does not go
the length his disciples have gone, and reject the whole idea
of natural law in the sphere of political economy. On the
contrary, he actually makes use of the expression, " the natural
laws of political economy," and asserts that, when they are
once sufficiently known, all that is then needed to guide
economic politics is to obtain exact and reliable statistics
of the situation to which they are to be applied. Now that
statement is exactly the position of the classical school on the
subject. Economic politics is, of course, like all other politics,
an affair of times and nations ; but economic science belongs
to mankind, and contains principles which may be accurately
enough termed, as Roscher terms them, natural laws, and
which may be applied, as he would apply them, to the
improvement of particular economic situations, on condition
that sufficiently complete and correct statistics are obtained
beforehand of the whole actual circumstances. Economic
Jaws are, of course, of the nature of ethical laws, and not of
physical ; but they are none the less on that account natural
laws, and the polemic instituted by the Socialists of the Chair
to expel the notion of natural law from the entire territory of
political economy is unjustifiable. Phenomena which are
the result of human action will always exhibit regularities
while human character remains the same ; and, moreover, they
often exhibit undesigned regularities which, not being imposed
upon them by man, must be imposed upon them by Nature.
While, therefore, the Socialists of the Chair have made a
certain point against the older economists by showing the
futility and mischief of distinguishing between what is natural
in economics and what is not, they have erred in seeking
to convert that point into an argument against the validity
of economic principles and the existence of economic laws.
At the same time their position constitutes a wholesome pro-
test against the tendency to exaggerate the completeness or
finality of current doctrines, and gives economic investigation
a beneficial direction by setting it upon a more thorough and
all-sided observation of facts.
But when they complain of the earlier economists being so
208 Contemporary Socialism.
wedded to abstractions, the fault they chiefly mean to censure
is the habit of solving practical economic problems by the
unconditional application of certain abstract principles. It is
the " absolutism of solutions " they condemn. They think
economists were used to act like doctors who had learnt the
principles of medicine by rote and applied them without the
least discrimination of the peculiarities of individual constitu-
tions. With them the individual peculiarities are everything,
and the principles are too much thrown into the shade. Eco-
nomic phenomena, they hold, constitute only one phase of
the general life of the particular nations in which they appear.
They are part and parcel of a special concrete social organism.
They are influenced they are to a great extent made what
they are by the whole ethos of the people they pertain to,
by their national character, their state of culture, their habits,
customs, laws. Economic problems are consequently always
of necessity problems of the time, and can only be solved for
the period that raises them. Theii very nature alters under
other skies and in other ages. They neither appear every-
where in the same shape, nor admit everywhere of the same
answer. They must therefore be treated historically and
empirically, and political economy is always an affair for the
nation and never for the world. The historical school inveigh
against the cosmopolitanism of the current economic theories,
and declare warmly in favour of nationalism ; according to
which every nation has its own political economy just as it
has its own constitution and its own character. Now here
they are right in what they affirm, wrong in what they deny.
They are right in affirming that economic politics is national,
wrong in denying that economic science is cosmopolitan. In
German the word economy denotes the concrete industrial
system as well as the abstract science of industrial systems,
and one therefore readily falls into the error of applying to
the latter what is only true of the former. There may be
general principles of engineering, though every particular pro-
ject can only be successfully accomplished by a close regard to
its particular conditions. In claiming a cosmopolitan validity
for their principles, economists do not overlook their essential
relativity. On the contrary, they describe their economic
The Socialists of the Chair. 209
laws as being in reality nothing more than tendencies, which
are not even strictly true as scientific explanations, and are
never for a moment contemplated as unconditional solutions
for practical situations. Moreover Roscher, in defining his
task as an economist, virtually takes up the cosmopolitan
standpoint and virtually rejects the national. He says a
political economist has to explain what is or has been, and
not to show what ought to be ; he quotes the saying of
Dunoyer, Je ri impose ri-en, je ne propose merne rien, /expose;
and states that what he has to do is to unfold the anatomy and
physiology of social and national economy. He is a scientific
man, and not an economic politician, and naturally assumes
the position of science, which is cosmopolitan, and not that
of politics, which is national and even opportunist.
I pass now to a perhaps more important point, from which
it will be seen that the Socialists of the Chair are far from
thinking that political economy has nothing to do with what
ought to be. Next to the realistic school, the name they prefer
to describe themselves by is the ethical school. By this they
mean two things, and some of them lay the stress on the one
and some on the other. They mean, first, to repudiate the
idea of self-interest being the sole economic motive or force.
They do not deny it to be a leading motive in industrial
transactions, and they do not, like some of the earlier socialists,
aim at its extinction or replacement by a social or generous
principle of action. But they maintain that the course of
industry never has been and never will be left to its guidance
alone. Many other social forces, national character, ideas,
customs the whole inherited ethos of the people individual
peculiarities, love of power, sense of fair dealing, public opinion,
conscience, local ties, family connections, civil legislation all
exercise upon industrial affairs as real an influence as personal
interest, and, furthermore, they exercise an influence of pre-
cisely the same kind. They all operate ethically, through
human will, judgment, motives, and in this respect one of
them has no advantage over another. It cannot be said,
except in a very limited sense, that self-interest is an essential
and abiding economic force and the others only accidental
and passing. For while customs perish, custom remains ;
2io Contemporary Socialism.
opinions come and go, but opinion abides ; and though any
particular act of the State's intervention may be abolished,
State intervention itself cannot possibly be dispensed with. It
is all a matter of more or less, of here or there. The State is
not the intruder in industry it is represented to be. It is
planted in the heart of the industrial organism from the begin-
ning, and constitutes in fact part of the nature of things from
which it is sought to distinguish it. It is not unnatural for
us to wear clothes because we happen to be born naked, for
Nature has given us a principle which guides us to adapt our
rlress to our climate and circumstances. Reason is as natural
as passion, and the economists who repel the State's intrusion
find think they are thus leaving industry to take its natural
course, commit the same absurdity as the moralist who re-
commends men to live according to Nature, and explains living
according to Nature to mean the gratification as much as
possible of his desires, and his abandonment as much as possible
of rational and, as he conceives, artificial plan. The State
cannot observe an absolute neutrality if it would. Non-inter-
vention is only a particular kind of intervention. There must
be laws of property, succession, and the like, and the influence
of these spreads over the whole industrial system, and affects
both the character of its production and the incidence of its
distribution of wealth.
But, second, by calling their method the ethical method, the
historical school desire to repudiate the idea that in dealing
with economic phenomena they are dealing with things
which are morally indifferent, like the phenomena of physics,
and that science has nothing to do with them but to explain
them. They have certainly reason to complain that the opera-
tion of the laws of political economy is sometimes represented
as if it were morally as neutral as the operation of the law of
gravitation, and it is in this conception that they think the
materialism of the dominant economic school to be practically
most offensively exhibited. Economic phenomena are not
morally indifferent ; they are ethical in their very being, and
ought to be treated as such. Take, for example, the labour
contract. To treat it as a simple exchange between equals is
absurd. The labourer must sell his labour or starve, and may
The Socialists of the Chair. 2 1 1
be obliged to take such terms for it as leave him without the
means of enjoying the rights which society awards him, and
discharging the duties which society claims from him. Look
on him as a ware, if you will, but remember he is a ware that
has life, that has connections, responsibilites, expectations,
domestic, social, political. To get his bread he might sell his
freedom, but society will not permit him; he may sell his
health, he may sell his character, for society permits that ; he
may go to sea in rotten ships, and be sent to work in un-
wholesome workshops ; he may be herded in farm bothies
where the commonest decencies of life cannot be observed ; and
he may suck the strength out of posterity by putting his
children to premature toil to eke out his precarious living.
Transactions which have such direct bearings on freedom, on
health, on morals, on the permanent well-being of the nation,
can never be morally indifferent. They are necessarily within
the sphere of ends and ideals. Their ethical side is one of their
most important ones, and the science that deals with them is
therefore ethical. For the same reason they come within the
province of the State, which is the normal guardian of the
general and permanent interests, moral and economic, of the
community. The State does not stand to industry like a
watchman who guards from the outside property in which he
has himself no personal concern. It has a positive industrial
office. It is, says Schmoller, the great educational institute of
the human race, and there is no sense in suspiciously seeking
to reduce its action in industrial affairs to a minimum. His
theory of the State is that of the Cultur-Staat, in distinction
from the Polizei-Staat, and the Eechts-Staat. The State can no
longer be regarded as merely an omnipotent instrument for the
maintenance of tranquillity and order in the name of Heaven ;
nor even as a constitutional organ of the collective national
authority for securing to all individuals and classes in the
nation, without exception, the rights and privileges which they
are legally recognised to possess ; but it must be henceforth
looked upon as a positive agency for the spread of universal
culture within its geographical territory.
With these views, the Socialists of the Chair could not fail
to take an active concern with the class of topics thrown up by
212 Contemporary Socialism.
the socialist movement, and exciting still so much attention in
Germany under the name of the social question. They neither
state that question nor answer it like the socialists, but their
first offence, and the fountain of all their subsequent offending,
in the judgment of their Manchester antagonists, consisted in
their acknowledgment that there was a social question at all.
Not that the Manchester party denied the existence of evils in
the present state of industry, but they looked upon these evils
as resulting from obstructions to the freedom of competition
which time, and time alone, would eventually remove, and
from moral causes with which economists had no proper
business. The Socialists of the Chair, however, could not
dismiss their responsibility for those evils so easily. They
owned at once that a social crisis had arisen or was near at
hand. The effect of the general adoption of the large system
of production had been to diminish the numbers of the middle
classes, to reduce the great bulk of the lower classes per-
manently to the position of wage-labourers, and to introduce
some grave elements of peril and distress into the condition of
the wage-labourers themselves. They are doubtless better fed.
better lodged, better clad, than they were say in the middle
and end of last century, when not one in a hundred of them
had shoes to his feet, when seven out of eight on the Continent
were still bondsmen, and when three out of every four in
England had to eke out their wages by parochial relief. But,
in spite of these advantages, their life has now less hope and
less security than it had then. Industry on the great scale has
multiplied the vicissitudes of trade, and rendered the labourer
much more liable to be thrown out of work. It has diminished
the avenues to comparative independence and dignity which
were open to the journeyman under the regime of the small
industries. And while thus condemned to live by wages alone
all his days, he could entertain no reasonable hope at least
before the formation of trade unions that his wages could be
kept up within reach of the measure of his wants, as these
wants were being progressively expanded by the general
advance of culture. Moreover, the twinge of the case lies here,
that while the course which industrial development is taking
seems to be banishing hopa and security more and more from
The Socialists of the Chair. 2 1 3
the labourer's life, the progress of general civilization is making
these benefits more and more imperatively demanded. The
working classes have been growing steadily in the scale of
moral being. They have acquired complete personal freedom,
legal equality, political rights, general education, a class con-
sciousness ; and they have come to cherish a very natural and
legitimate aspiration that they shall go on progressively sharing
in the increasing blessings of civilization. Brentano says that
modern public opinion concedes this claim of the working man
as a right to which he is entitled, but that modern industrial
conditions have been unable as yet to secure him in the
possession of it ; hence the Social Question. Now some persons
may be ready enough to admit this claim as a thing which it
is eminently desirable to see realized, who will yet demur to
the representation of it as a right, which puts society under
a corresponding obligation. But this idea is a peculiarity
belonging to the whole way of thinking of the Socialists of the
Chair upon these subjects. Some of them indeed take even
higher ground. Schmoller, for example, declares that the
working classes suffer positive wrong in the present distribution
of national wealth, considered from the standpoint of distri-
butive justice ; but his associates as a rule do not agree with
him in applying this abstract standard to the case. "Wagner
also stands somewhat out of the ranks of his fellows by
throwing the responsibility of the existing evils directly and
definitely upon the State. According to his view, there can
never be anything which may be legitimately called a Social
Question, unless the evils complained of are clearly the con-
sequences of existing legislation, but he holds that that is so in
the present case. He considers that a mischievous turn has
been given to the distribution of wealth by legalizing indus-
trial freedom without at the same time imposing certain
restrictions upon private property, the rate of interest, and the
speculations of the Stock Exchange. The State has, therefore,
caused the Social Question ; and the State is bound to settle it.
The other Socialists of the Chair, however, do not bring the
obligation so dead home to the civil authority alone. The duty
rests on society, and, of course, so far on the State also, which
is the chief organ of society ; but it is not to State-help alone,
214 Contemporary Socialism.
nor to self-help alone, that the Socialists of the Chair ask work-
ing men to look ; but it is to what they term the self-help of
society. Society has granted to the labouring classes the
rights of freedom and equality, and has, therefore, come bound
to give them, as far as it legitimately can, the amplest
facilities for practically enjoying these rights. To give a man
an estate mortgaged above its rental is only to mock him ; to
confer the status of freedom upon working men merely to
leave them overwhelmed in an unequal struggle with capital
is to make their freedom a dead letter. Personal and civil
independence require, as their indispensable accompaniment,
a certain measure of economic independence likewise, and
consequently to bestow the former as an inalienable right, and
yet take no concern to make the latter a possibility, is only to
discharge one-half of an obligation voluntarily undertaken, and
to deceive expectations reasonably entertained. No doubt this
independence is a thing which working men must in the main
win for themselves, and day after day, by labour, by provi-
dence, by association ; but it is nevertheless an important point
to remember, with Brentano, that it forms an essential part of
an ideal which society has already acknowledged to be legiti-
mate, and which it is therefore bound to second every effort to
realize. The Social Question, conceived in the light of these
considerations, may accordingly be said to arise from the fact
that a certain material or economic independence has become
more necessary for the working man, and less possible. It is
more necessary, because, with the sanction of modern opinion,
he has awoke to a new sense of personal dignity, and it is less
possible, in consequence of circumstances already mentioned,
attendant upon the development of modern industry. It is not,
as Lord Macaulay maintained, that the evils of man's life are
the same now as formerly, and that nothing has changed but
the intelligence which has become conscious of them. The
new time has brought new evils and less right or disposition
to submit to them. It is the conflict of these two tendencies
which, in the thinking of the Socialists of the Chair, constitutes
the social crisis of the present day. Some of them, indeed,
describe it in somewhat too abstract formulae, which exercise
an embarrassing influence on their speculations. For example,
The Socialists of the Chair. 215
Von Scheel says the Social Question is the effect of the felt
contradiction between the ideal of personal freedom and equality
which hangs before the present age, and the increasing in-
equality of wealth which results from existing economic
arrangements ; and he proposes as the general principle of
solution, that men should now abandon the exclusive devotion
which modern Liberalism has paid to the principle of freedom,
and substitute in its room an adhesion to freedom plus equality.
But then equality may mean a great many different things,
and Von Scheel leaves us with no precise clue to the particular
scope he would give his principle in its application. He
certainly seems to desire more than a mere equality of right,
and to aim at some sort or degree of equality of fact, but what
or how he informs us not; just as Schmoller, while pro-
pounding the dogma of distributive justice, condemns the
communistic principle of distribution of wealth as being a
purely animal principle, and offers us no other incorporation of
his dogma. In spite of their antipathy to abstractions, many
of the Socialists of the Chair indulge considerably in barren
generalities, which could serve them nothing in practice, even
if they did not make it a point to square their practice by the
historical conditions of the hour.
Brentano strikes on the whole the most practical keynote,
both in his conception of what the social question is and of
how it is to be met. "What is needed, he thinks, very much is
to give to modern industry an organization as suitable to it as
the old guilds were to the industry of earlier times, and this is
to be done in great part by adaptations of that model. He
makes comparatively little demand on the power of the State,
while of course agreeing with the rest of his school in the lati-
tude they give to the lawfulness of its intervention in industrial
matters. He would ask it to bestow a legal status on trade
unions and friendly societies, to appoint courts of conciliation,
to regulate the hours of labour, to institute factory inspection,
and to take action of some sort on the daily more urgent sub-
ject of labourers' dwellings. But the elevation of the labouring
classes must be wrought mainly by their own well-guided and
long-continued efforts, and the first step is gained when they
have resolved earnestly to begin. The pith of the problem
216 Contemporary Socialism.
turns on the matter of wages, and, so far at any rate, it has
already been solved almost as well as is practicable by the
English trade unions, which have proved to the world that
they are always able to convert the question of wages from the
question how little the labourer can afford to take, into the
question how much the employer is able to give i.e., from the
minimum to the maximum which the state of the market
allows. That is, of course, a very important change, and it is
interesting to know that F. A. Lange, the able and distinguished
historian of Materialism, who had written on the labour ques-
tion with strong socialist sympathies, stated to Brentano that
his account of the English trade unions had converted him
entirely from his belief that a socialistic experiment was neces-
sary. Brentano admits that the effect of trade unions is partial
only ; that they really divide the labouring class into two
different strata those who belong to the trade unions being
raised to a higher platform, and those who do not being left as
they were in the gall of bitterness. But then, he observes,
great gain has been made when at least a large section of the
working class has been brought more securely within the pale
of advancing culture, and it is only in this gradual way section
by section that the elevation of the whole body can be eventu-
ally accomplished. The trade union has imported into the life
of the working man something of the element of hope which it
wanted, and a systematic scheme of working-class insurance is
now needed to introduce the element of security. Brentano
has published an excellent little work on that subject ; and
here again he asks no material help from the State. The work-
ing class must insure themselves against all the risks of their
life by association, just as they must keep up the rate of their
wages by association ; and for the same reasons first, because
they are able to do so under existing economic conditions,
and second, because it is only so the end can be gained con-
sistently with the modern moral conditions of their life i.e.,
with the maintenance of their personal freedom, equality, and
independence. Brentano thinks that the sound principle of
working-class insurance is that every trade union ought to be-
come the insurance society for its trade, because every trade
has its own special risks and therefore requires its own insur-
The Socialists of the Chair. 217
ance premium, and because malingering, feigned sickness,
claims for loss of employment through personal fault, and the
like, cannot possibly be checked except by the fund being ad-
ministered by the local lodges of the trade to which the sub-
scribers belong. The insurance fund might be kept separate
from the other funds of the union, but he sees no reason why
it should not be combined with them, as it would only consti-
tute a new obstacle to ill-considered strikes, and as striking in
itself will, he expects, in course of time, give way to some sys-
tem of arbitration. Brentano makes no suggestion regarding
the mass of the working class who belong to no trade union.
They cannot be dealt with in the same way, or so effectively.
But this is quite in keeping with the general principle of the
Socialists of the Chair in which they differ toto cceZo from the
socialists that society is not to be ameliorated by rigidly
applying to every bit of it the same plan, but only by a
thousand modifications and remedies adapted to its thousand
varieties of circumstances and situations.
CHAPTER VII.
THE CHRISTIAN SOCIALISTS.
THE idea that a radical affinity exists between Christianity and
socialism in their general aim, in their essential principles, in
their pervading spirit, has strong attractions for a certain by
no means inferior order of mind, and we find it frequently
maintained in the course of history by representatives of both
systems. Some of the principal socialists of the earlier part of
this century used to declare that socialism was only Christi-
anity more logically carried out and more faithfully practised ;
or, at any rate, that socialism would be an idle superfluity, if
ordinary Christian principles were really to be acted upon
honestly and without reserve. St. Simon published his views
under the title of the " Nouveau Christianisme," and asserted
that the prevailing forms of Christianity were one gigantic
heresy ; that both the Catholic and the Protestant Churches
had now lost their power, simply because they had neglected
their great temporal mission of raising the poor, and because
their clergy had given themselves up to barren discussions of
theology, and remained absolutely ignorant of the living social
questions of the time ; and that the true Christian regime which
he was to introduce was one which should be founded on the
Christian principle that all men are brothers ; which should be
governed by the Christian law, " Have ye love one to another,"
and in which all the forces of society should be mainly conse-
crated to the amelioration of the most numerous and poorest
class. Cabet was not less explicit. He said that " if Christi-
anity had been interpreted and applied in the spirit of Jesus
Christ, if it were rightfully understood and faithfully obeyed
by the numerous sections of Christians who are really filled
with a sincere piety, and need only to know the truth to follow
it, then Christianity would have sufficed, and would still suffice,
The Christian Socialists. 219
to establish a perfect social and political organization, and to
deliver mankind from all its ills."
The same belief, that Christianity is essentially socialistic,
has at various times appeared in the Church itself. The social-
ism of the only other period in modern history besides our own
century, in which socialistic ideas have prevailed to any con-
siderable extent, was, in fact, a direct outcome of Christian con-
viction, and was realized among Christian sects. The socialism
of the Anabaptists of the Reformation epoch was certainly
mingled with political ideas of class emancipation, and contri-
buted to stir the insurrection of the German peasantry ; but
its real origin lay in the religious fervour which was abroad at
the time, and which buoyed sanguine and mystical minds on
dreams of a reign of God. When men feel a new and better
power arising strongly about them, they are forward to throw
themselves into harmony with it, and there were people,
touched by the religious revival of the Reformation, who
sought to anticipate its progress, as it were, by living together
like brothers. Fraternity is undoubtedly a Christian idea,
come into the world with Christ, spread abroad in it by Chris-
tian agencies, and belonging to the ideal that hovers perpe-
tually over Christian society. It has already produced social
changes of immense consequence, and has force in it, we can-
not doubt, to produce many more in the future ; and it is
therefore in nowise strange that in times of religious zeal or
of social distress, this idea of fraternity should appeal to some
eager natures with so urgent an authority, both of condemna-
tion and of promise, that they would fain take it at once by
force and make it king.
The socialism of the present day is not of a religious origin.
On the contrary, there is some truth in the remark of a distin-
guished economist, M. Paul Leroy-Beaulieu, that the prevalence
of socialistic ideas is largely due to the decline of religious
faith among the working classes. If there is only the one life,
they feel they must realize their ideal here and realize it quickly,
or they will never realize it at all. However this may be, the
fact is certain that most contemporary socialists have turned
their backs on religion. They sometimes speak of it with a
kind of suppressed and settled bitterness as of a friend that has
22O Contemporary Socialism.
proved faithless : " "We are not atheists : we have simply done
with God." They seem to feel that if there be a God, He is,
at any rate, no God for them, that He is the God of the rich,
and cares nothing for the poor, and there is a vein of most
touching, though most illogical, reproach in their hostility to-
wards a Deity whom they yet declare to have no existence.
They say in their heart, There is no God, or only one whom
they decline to serve, for He is no friend to the labouring man,
and has never all these centuries done anything for him. This
atheism seems as much matter of class antipathy as of free-
thought ; and the semi-political element in it lends a peculiar
bitterness to the socialistic attacks on religion and the Church,
which are regarded as main pillars of the established order of
things, and irreconcileable obstructives to all socialist dreams
The Church has, therefore, as a rule looked upon, the whole
movement with a natural and justifiable suspicion, and has,
for the most part, dispensed to it an indiscriminate condemna-
tion. Some Churchmen, however, scruple to assume this atti-
tude ; they recognise a soul of good in the agitation, if it could
be stripped of the revolutionary and atheistic elements of its
propaganda, which they hold to be, after all, merely accidental
accompaniments of the system, at once foreign to its essence
and pernicious to its purpose. It is in substance, they say, an
economic movement, both in its origin and its objects, and
so far as it stands on this ground they have no hesitation in
declaring that in their judgment there is a great deal more
Christianity in socialism than in the existing industrial regime.
Those who take this view, generally find a strong bond of
union with socialists in their common revolt against the mam-
monism of the church-going middle classes, and against some
current economic doctrines, which seem almost to canonize what
they count the heartless and un-Christian principles of self-
interest and competition.
Such, for example, was the position maintained by the
Christian Socialists of England thirty years ago a band of
noble patriotic men who strove hard, by word and deed, to
bring all classes of the community to a knowledge of their
duties, as well as their interests, and to supersede, as far as
might be, the system of unlimited competition by a system of
The Christian Socialists. 221
universal co-operation. They inveighed against the Manchester
creed, then in the flush of success, as if it were the special
Antichrist of the nineteenth century. Lassalle himself has
not used harder, more passionate, or more unjust words of
it. Maurice said he dreaded above everything " that horrible
catastrophe of a Manchester ascendancy, which I believe
in my soul would be fatal to intellect, morality, and free-
dom " ; and Kingsley declared that " of all narrow, conceited,
hypocritical, anarchic, and atheistic schemes of the uni-
verse, the Cobden and Bright one was exactly the worst."
They agreed entirely with the socialists in condemning the
reigning industrial system: it was founded on unrighteous-
ness ; its principles were not only un-Christian, but anti-
Christian ; and in spite of its apparent commercial victories,
it would inevitably end in ruin and disaster. Some of them
had been in Paris and witnessed the Revolution of 1848, and
had brought back with them two firm convictions one, that
a purely materialistic civilization, like that of the July
Monarchy, must sooner or later lead to a like fate ; and the
other, that the socialist idea of co-operation contained the
fertilizing germ for developing a really enduring and Christian
civilization. Mr. J. M. Ludlow mentioned the matter to
Maurice, and eventually a Society was formed, with Maurice as
president, for the purpose of promoting co-operation and educa-
tion among the working classes. It is beyond the scope of
the present work to give any fuller account of this interesting
and not unfruitful movement here ; but it is to the purpose to
mark two peculiarities which distinguish it from other phases
of socialism. One is, that they insisted strongly upon the
futility of mere external changes of condition, unattended by
corresponding changes of inner character and life. " There
is no fraternity," said Maurice, finely, " without a common
Father." Just as it is impossible to maintain free institutions
among a people who want the virtues of freemen, so it is im-
possible to realize fraternity in the general arrangements of
society, unless men possess a sufficient measure of the industrial
and social virtues. Hence the stress the Christian Socialists
of England laid on the education of the working classes. The
other peculiarity is, that they did not seek in any way whatever
222 Contemporary Socialism.
to interfere with private property, or to invoke the assistance
of the State. They believed self-help to be a sounder principle,
both morally and politically, and they believed it to be suffi-
cient. They held it to be sufficient, not merely in course of
time, but immediately even, to effect a change in the face of
society. For they loved and believed in their cause with a
generous and touching enthusiasm, and were so sincerely and
absolutely persuaded of its truth themselves, that they hardly
entertained the idea of other minds resisting it. " I certainly
thought," says Mr. I. Hughes, " (and for that matter have never
altered my opinion to this day) that here we had found the
solution to the great labour question ; but I was also convinced
that we had nothing to do but just to announce it, and found
an association or two, in order to convert all England, and
usher in the millennium at once, so plain did the whole thing
seem to me. I will not undertake to answer for the rest of the
council, but I doubt whether I was at all more sanguine than
the majority." Seventeen co-operative associations in London,
and twenty-four in the provinces (which were all they had
established when they ceased to publish their Journal), may
seem a poor result, but their work is not to be estimated by
that alone. The Christian Socialists undoubtedly gave a very
important impetus to the whole movement of co-operation,
and to the general cause of the amelioration of the labouring
classes.
The general position of Maurice and his allies (though with
important differences, as will appear) has been taken up again
by two groups in Germany at the present day one Catholic,
the other Protestant in dealing with the social question which
has for many years agitated that country. In one respect the
Christian Socialists of England were more fortunate than their
German brethren. Nobody ever ventured to question the
purity of their motives. The intervention of the clergy in
politics is generally unpopular : they are thought, rightly or
wrongly, to be Churchmen first, and patriots afterwards ; but
it was impossible to suspect Maurice and his friends of being
influenced in their efforts at reform by considerations of
ecclesiastical or electoral interest, or of having any object at
heart but the social good of the nation. It is otherwise with
The Christian Socialists. 223
the Christian Socialists of Germany, Neither of the two
German groups affects to conceal that one great aim of its
work is to restore and extend the influence of the Church
among the labouring classes; and it is unlikely that the
Clerical party in Germany were insensible to the political
advantage of having organizations of working men under
ecclesiastical control, though it ought to be acknowledged that
these organizations were contemplated before the introduction
of universal suffrage. But even though ecclesiastical con-
siderations mingled with the motives of the Christian Socialists,
we see no reason to doubt the genuineness of their interest in
the amelioration of the masses, or the sincerity of their convic-
tion of the economic soundness of their programme.
The Catholic group deserves to be considered first, because
it intervened in the discussion much sooner than the Evan-
gelical, and because it originated a much more important
movement larger in its dimensions than the other, and
invested with additional consequence from the circumstance
that being promoted under the countenance of dignitaries, it
must be presumed to have received the sanction of the Roman
Curia, and may therefore afford an index to the general
attitude which the Catholic Church is disposed to assume
towards Continental socialism. The socialist agitation had
no sooner broken out, in 1863, than Dr. Dollinger, then a
pillar of the Church of Rome, strongly recommended the
Catholic clubs of Germany to take the question up. These
clubs are societies for mutual improvement, recreation, and
benefit, and are composed mainly of working men. Father
Kolping, himself at the time a working man, had, in 1847,
founded an extensive organization of Catholic journeymen,
which, in 1872, had a total membership of 70,000, and consisted
of an affiliation of small journeyman clubs, with a member-
ship of from 50 to 400 each, in the various towns of Germany.
Then there were also Catholic apprentice clubs in many
cases in alliance with those of the journeymen ; there were
Catholic master clubs, Catholic peasant clubs, Catholic benefit
clubs, Catholic young men's clubs, Catholic credit clubs,
Catholic book clubs, etc., etc. These clubs naturally afforded
an organization ready to hand for any general purpose the
224 Contemporary Socialism.
members might share in common, and being composed of
working men, they seemed reasonably calculated to be of
effective service in forwarding the cause of social amelioration.
Early in 1864, accordingly, Bishop Ketteler, of Mayence,
warmly seconded Bellinger's idea, and at the same time
published a remarkable pamphlet on " The Labour Question
and Christianity," in which he unfolded his views of the causes
and the cure of the existing evils.
"William Immanuel, Baron von Ketteler, had been for twenty
years a powerful and impressive figure in the public life of
Germany. His high rank, social and ecclesiastical, his immense
energy, his weight of character, his personal disinterestedness
of purpose, and his intellectual vigour and acuteness, had
combined to give him great importance both in Church and
State. Born in 1811, of an ancient Westphalian family, he
was trained in law and politics for the public service, and
actually entered upon it, but resigned his post in 1838, in
consequence of the dispute about the Cologne bishopric, and
resolved to give himself to the work of the Church. After
studying theology at Munich and Minister, he was ordained
priest in 1844, and became soon afterwards pastor at Hopster,
in Westphalia. Being sent as member for Langerich to the
German National Assembly at Frankfort in 1848, he at once
made his mark by the vigour with which he strove for the
spiritual independence of the Church, by the lectures and
sermons he delivered on questions of the day, and especially
by a bold and generous oration he pronounced at the grave
of the assassinated deputy, Prince Lichnowsky. This oration
excited sensation all over Germany, and Ketteler was pro-
moted, in 1849, to the Hedwigsburg Church, in Berlin, and
in 1850 to the Bishopric of Mayence. In this position he found
scope for all his powers. He founded a theological seminary
at Mayence, erected orphan-houses and reformatories, intro-
duced various religious orders and congregationist schools, and
entering energetically into the disputes in Baden regarding
the place and rights of the Catholic Church, he succeeded in
establishing an understanding whereby the State gave up
much of its patronage, its supervision of theological seminaries,
its veto on ecclesiastical arrangements, restored episcopal
The Christian Socialists. 225
courts, and assigned the Church extensive influence over
popular education. He was one of the bishops who authorized
the dogma of the Immaculate Conception in 1854, but he
belonged to the opposition at the Vatican Council of 1870.
He wrote a pamphlet strongly deprecating the promulgation
of the dogma of infallibility, and went, even at the last
moment, to the Pope personally, and implored him to abandon
the idea of promulgating it ; but as his objection respected
its opportuneness and not its truth, he did not secede with
Dollinger when his opposition failed, but accepted the dogma
himself and demanded the submission of his clergy to it.
Bishop Ketteler was returned to the German Imperial Diet
in 1871, and led the Clerical Faction in opposing the eccle-
siastical policy of the Government. He died at Binghausen,
in Bavaria, in 1877, and is buried in Mayence Cathedral.
Ketteler had always been penetrated with the ambition of
making the Catholic Church a factor of practical importance
in the political and social life of Germany, and with the con-
viction that the clergy ought to make themselves masters of
social and political science so as to be able to exercise a leading
and effective influence over public opinion on questions of
social amelioration. He has himself written much, though
nothing of permanent value, on these subjects, and did not
approach them with unwashed hands when he published his
pamphlet in 1864.
In this pamphlet, he says the labour question is one which
it is his business, both as a Christian and as a bishop, to deal
with : as a Christian, because Christ, as Saviour of the world,
seeks not only to redeem men's souls, but to heal their sorrows
and soften their condition ; and as a bishop, because the Church
had, according to her ancient custom, imposed upon him, as
one of his consecration vows, that he would, " in the name of
the Lord, be kind and merciful to the poor and the stranger,
and to all that are in any kind of distress." He considers the
labour question of the present day to be the very serious and
plain question, how the great bulk of the working classes are
to get the bread and clothing necessary to sustain them in
life. Things have come to this pass in consequence of two
important economic changes which he incorrectly ascribes
Q
226 Contemporary Socialism,
to the political revolution at the end of last century, merely
because they have taken place mostly since that date the
spread of industrial freedom, and the ascendancy of the large
capitalists. In consequence of these changes the labourer is
now treated as a commodity, and the rate of his wages settled
by the same law that determines the price of every other
commodity the cost of its production ; and the employer is
always able to press wages down to the least figure which the
labourer will take rather than starve. Ketteler accepts en-
tirely Lassalle's teaching about " the iron and cruel law,' ? and
holds it to have been so conclusively proved in the course of
the controversy that it is no longer possible to dispute it with-
out a deliberate intention of deceiving the people. Now there
is no doubt that Kicardo's law of value is neither so iron nor
so cruel as Lassalle took it to be ; and that when Lassalle
alleged that in consequence of this law 96 per cent, of the
population of Germany had to support their families on less
than ten shillings a week, and were therefore in a state of
chronic starvation, he based his statement on a calculation of
Dieterici's, which was purely conjectural, and which, besides,
disregarded the fact that in working-class families there were
usually more breadwinners than one. Ketteler, however,
adopts this whole statement of the case implicitly, and says
the social problem of our day is simply how to emancipate the
labouring class from the operation of this economic law. " It
is no longer possible to doubt that the whole material exis-
tence of almost the entire labouring population i.e., of much
the greatest part of men in modern states, and of their families
that the daily question about the necessary bread for man,
wife, and children, is exposed to all the fluctuations of the
market and of the price of commodities. I know nothing
more deplorable than this fact. What sensations must it
cause in those poor men who, with all they hold dear, are
day after day at the mercy of the accidents of market price ?
That is the slave market of our Liberal Europe, fashioned
after the model of our humanist, rationalistic, anti-Christian
Liberalism, and freemasonry." The bishop never spares an
opportunity of attacking " heathen humanist Liberalism,"
which he says has pushed the labouring man into the water,
The Christian Socialists. 227
and now stands on the bank spinning fine theories about his
freedom, but calmly seeing him drown.
After this it might be expected that Ketteler would be all
for abolishing industrial freedom, and for restoring a reginif
of compulsory guilds and corporations ; but he is not. He
acknowledges that the old system of guilds had its advantages ;
it was a kind of assured understanding between the workman
and society, according to which the former adjusted his work
and the latter his wages. But it was the abuses of the com-
pulsory powers of the guilds that led to industrial freedom ;
and, on the other hand, industrial freedom has great counter-
vailing advantages of its own which he scruples to give up.
It has immensely increased production and cheapened com-
modities, and so enabled the lower classes to enjoy means of
life and enjoyment they had not before. Nor does Ketteler
approve of Lassalle's scheme of establishing productive associa-
tions of working men upon capital supplied by the State. Not
that he objects to productive associations ; on the contrary, he
declares them to be a glorious idea, and thinks them the
true solution of the problem. But he objects to supplying
their capital by the State, as involving a direct violation of
the law of property. The Catholic Church, he says, has never
maintained an absolute right of property. Her divines have
unanimously taught that the right of property cannot avail
against a neighbour who is in extreme need, because God
alone is absolute proprietor, and no man is more than a
limited vassal, holding under God, and on the conditions
which He imposes ; and one of these conditions is that any
man in extremities is entitled to satisfy his necessity where
and how he pleases.* In such a case, according to Catholic
* The bishop draws this conclusion from the principle that God had
directed all men to nature to obtain from it the satisfaction of their
necessiry wants, and that this original right of the needy cannot be
superseded by the subsequent institution of private property. No doubt,
he admits, that institution is also of God. It is the appointed way by
which man's dominion over nature is to be realized, because it is the way
in which nature is best utilized for the higher civilization of man. But
this purpose is secondary and subordinate to the other. And, therefore,
concludes the bishop, " firmly as theology upholds the right of private
228 Contemporary Socialism.
doctrine, it is not the man in distress that is the thief, but the
proprietor who would gainsay and stop him. The distressed
have a positive right to succour, and the State may therefore,
without violating any of the rights of property, tax the
parishes, or the proprietors, for the relief of the poor. But
beyond this the State has no title to go. It may legitimately
tax people for the purpose of saving working men from ex-
tremities, but not for the purpose of bettering their normal
position.
But where the civil authority ends the Christian authority
comes in, and the rich have only escaped the obligation of
compulsory legal enactment, to find themselves under the
more far-reaching obligations of moral duty and Christian
love. The Church declares that the man who does not give
alms where he ought to give it stands in the same category
as a thief; and there is no limit to this obligation but his
power of giving help, and his belief that it would be more
hurtful to give than to keep it. Ketteler's plan, accordingly,
is that the capital for the productive associations should be
raised by voluntary subscriptions on the part of Christian
people. He thinks he has made out a strong case for estab-
lishing this as a Christian obligation. He has shown that a
perilous crisis prevails, that this crisis can only be removed by
productive associations, that productive associations cannot be
started without capital, and he says it is a vain dream of
Huber's to think of getting the capital from the savings of
working men themselves, for most of the working men are in
a distressed condition, and if a few are better off, their savings
could only establish associations so few in number and so small
in scale, as to be little better than trifling with the evil. He
sees no remedy but making productive associations a scheme
of the Church, and appealing to that Christian philanthropy
and sense of duty which had already done great service of a
property, it asserts at the same time that the higher right by which all
men are directed to nature's supplies dare not be infringed, and that,
consequently, any one who finds himself in extreme need is justified,
when other means fail, in satisfying this extreme need where and how he
may (wo und wie er es vermag)." Die Arbeiter-frage und das Christen-
thum (p. 78).
The Christian Socialists. 229
like nature as, for example, in producing capital to emanci-
pate slaves in Italy and elsewhere.
This remarkable proposal of the bishop seems to have fallen
dead. Though he wrote and laboured much in connection
with the labour question afterwards, he never reverted to it
again ; and when a Christian Socialist party was formed,
under his countenance, they adopted a programme which
made large demands not only on the intervention, but on the
pecuniary help of the State. It was not till 1868 that any
steps were taken towards the actual organization of such a
party. In June of that year three Catholic clubs met together
at Crefeld, and, after discussing the social question, agreed to
publish a journal (the Christliclie Sociale Blatter} to promote
their views. In September of the following year the whole
subject of the relations of the Church to the labour question
was discussed at a conference of the Catholic bishops of Ger-
many, held at Fulda, and attended by Ketteler among others.
This conference strongly recommended the clergy to make
themselves thoroughly acquainted with that and other econo-
mic questions, to interest themselves generally in the con-
dition of the working class they moved among, and even to
travel in foreign countries to see the state of the labourers
there and the effects of the institutions established for their
amelioration. The conference also approved of the formation
of Catholic Labourers' Associations, for the promotion of the
general elevation of their own class, but held that the Church
had no call, directly or officially, to take the initiative in
founding them. This duty was undertaken, however, later
in the same month, by a general meeting of the Catholic Clubs
of Germany, which appointed a special committee, including
Professor Schulte and Baron Schorlemer-Abst, for the express
purpose of founding and organizing Christian social clubs,
which should strive for the economic and moral amelioration
of the labouring classes. This committee set itself immediately
to work, and the result was the Christian Social Associations,
or, as they are sometimes called from their patron saint, the
St. Joseph Associations. They were composed of, and managed
by, working men, though they liked to have some man of
eminence never a clergyman at the head of them, and
230 Contemporary Socialism.
though they allowed persons of property, clergymen, and
especially employers of labour, to be honorary members.
They met every Sunday evening to discuss social questions,
and politics were excluded, except questions affecting the
Church, and on these a decided partisanship was encouraged.
The principles of this party or what may be called their
programme is explained in a speech delivered by Canon
Moufang to his constituents in Mayence, in February, 1871,
and published with warm approbation, in the CkristKche
Sociale Blatter in March. Christoph Moufang is, like Ketteler,
a leader of the German Clerical party, and entitled to the
highest esteem for his character, his intellectual parts, and his
public career. Born in 1817, he was first destined for the
medical profession, and studied physic at Bonn ; but he soon
abandoned this intention, and bstook himself to theology.
After studying at Bonn and Munich, he was ordained priest
in 1839. He was appointed in 1851 professor of moral and
pastoral theology in the new theological seminary which
Bishop Ketteler had founded at Mayence, and in 1854 was
made canon of the cathedral. Moufang entered the First
Hessian Chamber in 1862 as representative of the bishop, and
made a name as a powerful champion of High Church views
and of the general ecclesiastical policy of Bishop Ketteler. In
1868 he was chosen one of the committee to make preparations
for the Vatican Council ; but at the Council he belonged to the
opponents of the dogma of infallibility, and left Rome before
the dogma was promulgated. He submitted afterwards, how-
ever, and worked sedulously in its sense. Moufang sat in the
Imperial Diet from 1871 to 1877, was a leading member of the
Centre, and stoutly resisted the Falk legislation. He is joint-
editor of the Katholik, and is author of various polemical
writings, and of a work on the history of the Jesuits in Ger-
many.
Moufang takes a different view of the present duty of the
Church in relation to the social question from that which we
saw to have been taken by Ketteler. He asks for no pecuniary
help from the Church, nor for any special and novel kind of
activity whatever. The problem cannot, in his opinion, be
effectively and permanently solved without her co-operation,
The Christian Socialists. 231
but then the whole service she is able and required to render is
contained in the course of her ordinary ministrations in diffus-
ing a spirit of love and justice and fairness among the various
classes of society, in maintaining her charities for the poor and
helpless in dispensing comfort and distress, and in offering to
the weary the hope of a future life. Moufang makes much
more demand on the State than on the Church, in this also dis-
agreeing with Bishop Ketteler's pamphlet. He says the State
can and must help the poorer classes in four different ways :
1st. By giving legislative protection. Just as the landlord
and the money-lender are legally protected in their rights by
the State, so the labourer ought to be legally protected in his
property, which are his powers and time of labour. The State
ought to give him legal security against being robbed of these,
his only property, by the operation of free competition. "With
this view, Moufang demands the legalization of working men's
associations of various kinds, the prohibition of Sunday labour,
the legal fixing of a normal day of labour, legal restriction of
labour of women and children, legal provision against un-
wholesome workshops, appointment of factory inspectors, and
direct legal fixing of the rate of wages. The last point is an
important peculiarity in the position of the Catholic Socialists.
Moufang contends that competition is a sound enough principle
for regulating the price of commodities, but that it is a very
unsound one, and a very unsafe one, for determining the price
of labour, because he holds that labour is not a commodity.
Labour is a man's powers of life ; it is the man himself, and
the law must see to its protection. The law protects the
capitalist in his right to his interest, and surely the labouring
man's powers of life are entitled to the same consideration. If
an employer says to a capitalist from whom he has borrowed
money : " A crisis has come, a depression in trade, and I am
no longer able to pay such high interest ; I will pay you two-
thirds or one-third of the previous rate," what does the
capitalist say ? He refuses to take it, and why ? Simply
because he knows that the law will sustain him in his claim.
But if the employer says to his labourer : " A depression of
trade has come, and I cannot afford you more than two-thirds
or one-third of your present wages," what can the labourer do?
232 Contemporary Socialism.
He has no alternative. He must take the wages offered him
or go, and to go means to starve. Why should not the law
stand at the labourer's back, as it does at the capitalist's, in
enforcing what is right and just ? There is no more infraction
of freedom in the one case than in the other. Moufang's
argument here is based on an illusive analogy; for in the
contract for the use of capital the employer agrees to pay a
fixed rate of interest so long as he retains the principal, and he
can only avail himself of subsequent falls in the money market
by returning the principal and opening a fresh contract ;
whereas in the contract for the use of labour the employer
engages by the week or the day, returning the principal, as it
were, at the end of that term, and making a new arrangement.
The point to be noted, however, is that Moufang's object, like
Ketteler's, is to deliver working men from their hand-to-mouth
dependence on the current fluctuations of the market ; that he
thinks there is something not merely pernicious but radically
unjust in their treatment under the present system ; and that
he calls upon the State to institute some regular machinery
a board with compulsory powers, and composed of labourers
and magistrates for fixing everywhere and in every trade a
fair day's wages for a fair day's work.
2nd. The State ought to give pecuniary help. It advances
money on easy terms to railway schemes ; why should it not
offer working men cheap loans for sound co-operative enter-
prises ? Of course it ought to make a keen preliminary exam-
ination of the projects proposed, and keep a sharp look-out
against swindling or ill-considered schemes ; but if the project
is sound and likely, it should be ready to lend the requisite
capital at a low interest. This proposal of starting productive
associations on State credit is an important divergence from
Ketteler, who, in his pamphlet, condemns it as a violation of
the rights of property.
3rd. The State ought to reduce the taxes and military
burdens of the labouring classes.
4th. The State ought to fetter the domination of the money
power, and especially to check excesses of speculation, and
control the operations of the Stock Exchange.
From this programme it appears that the Catholic move-
The Christian Socialists. 233
ment goes a long way with the socialists in their cries of
wrong, but only a short way in their plans of redress.
Moufang's proposals may be wise or unwise, but they con-
template only corrections of the present industrial system, and
not its reconstruction. Many Liberals are disposed to favour
the idea of establishing courts of conciliation with compulsory
powers, and Bismarck himself once said, before the socialists
showed themselves unpatriotic at the time of the French war,
that he saw no reason why the State, which gave large sums
for agricultural experiments, should not spend something in
giving co-operative production a fair trial. The plans of labour
courts and of State credit to approved co-operative under-
takings are far from the socialist schemes of the abolition of
private property in the instruments of production, and the
systematic regulation of all industry by the State ; and they
afford no fair ground for the fear, which many persons of
ability entertain, of " an alliance " to use Bismarck's phrase
" between the black International and the red." Bishop
Martensen holds Catholicism to be essentially socialistic, be-
cause it suppresses all individual rights and freedom in the
intellectual sphere, as socialism does in the economic. But
men may detest private judgment without taking the least
offence at private property. A bigot need not be a socialist,
any more than a socialist a bigot, though each stifles the
principle of individuality in one department of things. If
there is to be any alliance between the Church and socialism,
it will be not because the former has been trained, under an
iron organization, to cherish a horror of individuality and a
passion for an economic organization as rigid as its own
ecclesiastical one, but it will be because the Church happens
to have a distinct political interest at the time in cultivating
good relations with a new political force. How far Moufang
and his associates have been influenced by this kind of con-
sideration we cannot pretend to judge, but the sympathy they
show is not so much with the socialists as with the labouring
classes generally, and their movement is meant so far to take
the wind from socialism, whether with the mere view of
filling their own sails with it or no.
No voice was raised in the Protestant Churches in Germany
234 Contemporary Socialism.
on the social question till 1878. They suffer from their absolute
dependence on the State, and have become churches of doctors
and professors, without effective practical interest or initiative,
and without that strong popular sympathy of a certain kind
which almost necessarily pervades the atmosphere of a Church
like the Catholic, which pits itself against States, and knows
that its power of doing so rests, in the last analysis, on its hold
over the hearts of the people. The Home Missionary Society
indeed discussed the question from time to time, but chiefly in
connection with the effects of the socialist propaganda on the
religious condition of the country ; and it was this aspect of
the subject that eventually stirred a section of the orthodox
Evangelical clergy to take practical action. They asked
themselves how it was that the working classes were so largely
adopting the desolate atheistic opinions which were found
associated with the socialist movement, when the Church
offered to gather them under her wing, and brighten their life
with the comforts and encouragements of Christian faith and
hope. They felt strongly that they must take more interest in
the temporal welfare of the working classes than they had
hitherto done, and must apply the ethical and social principles
of Christianity to the solution of economic problems and the
promotion of social reform. In short, they sought to present
Christianity as the labourer's friend. The leaders of this
movement were men of much inferior calibre to those of the
corresponding Catholic movement. The principal of them
were Rudolph Todt, a pastor at Barentheim in Old Preignitz,
who published in 1878 a book on " Radical German Socialism
and Christian Society," which created considerable sensation;
and Dr. Stocker, then one of the Court preachers at Berlin, a
member of the Prussian Diet, and an ardent promoter of
reactionary policy in various directions. He is a warm
advocate of denominational education, and of extending the
power of the Crown, of the State, and of the landed class ; and
he was a prime mover in the Jew-baiting movement which
excited Germany a few years ago. This antipathy to the Jews
has been for many years a cardinal tendency of the " Agra-
rians," a small political group mainly of nobles and great
landed proprietors, with whom Stocker frequently allies him-
The Christian Socialists. 235
self, and who profess to treat all political questions from a
strictly Christian standpoint, but work almost exclusively to
assert the interests of the landowners against the growing
ascendancy of the commercial and financial classes, among
whom Jews occupy an eminent place. We mention this anti-
Jewish agitation here to point out that, while no doubt fed by
other passions also, one of its chief ingredients is that same
antagonism to the bourgeoisie compounded of envy of their
success, contempt for their money-seeking spirit, and anger
at their supposed expropriation of the rest of society which
animates all forms of continental socialism, and has already
proved a very dangerous political force in the French Revolu-
tion of 1848.
Todt's work is designed to set forth the social principles and
mission of Christianity on the basis of a critical investigation
of the New Testament, which he believes to be an authorita-
tive guide on economic as well as moral and dogmatic ques-
tions. He says that to solve the social problem, we must take
political economy in the one hand, the scientific literature of
socialism in the other, and keep the New Testament before us.
As the result of his examination, he condemns the existing
industrial regime as being decidedly unchristian, and declares
the general principles of socialism, and even its main concrete
proposals, to be directly prescribed and countenanced by Holy
Writ. Like all who assume the name of socialist, he cherishes
a marked repugnance to the economic doctrines of modern
Liberalism, the leaven of the bourgeoisie ; and much of his
work is devoted to show the inner affinity of Christianity and
socialism, and the inner antagonism between Christianity
and Manchesterdom. He goes so far as to say that every
active Christian who makes conscience of his faith has a so-
cialistic vein in him, and that every socialist, however hostile
he may be to the Christian religion, has an unconscious Chris-
tianity in his heart ; whereas, on the other hand, the merely
nominal Christian, who has never really got out of his natural
state, is always a spiritual Manchestrist, worshipping laissez
faire, laixsez aller, with his whole soul, and that a Manchestrist
is never in reality a true and sound Christian, however much
he may usurp the name. Christianity and socialism are en-
236 Contemporary Socialism.
gaged in a common work, trying to make the reality of things
correspond better with an ideal state ; and in doing their work
they rely on the same ethical principle, the love of our neigh-
bour, and they repudiate the Manchester idolatry of self-in-
terest. The socialist ideas of liberty, equality, and fraternity
are part and parcel of the Christian system ; and the socialist
ideas of solidarity of interests, of co-operative production, and
of democracy have all a direct Biblical foundation, in the con-
stitution and customs of the Church, and in the apostolic
teaching regarding it.
Radical socialism, according to Todt, consists of three ele-
ments : first, in economics, communism ; second, in politics,
republicanism ; third, in religion, atheism. Under the last
head, of course, there is no analogy, but direct contradiction,
between Socialism and Christianity ; but Todt deplores the
atheism that prevails among the socialists as not merely an
error, but a fatal inconsistency. If socialism would but base
its demands on the Gospel, he says, it would be resistless, and
all labourers would flow to it; but atheistic socialism can
never fulfil its own promises, and issues a draft which Christi-
anity alone has the power to meet. It is hopeless to think of
founding an enduring democratic State on the principles of
liberty, equality, and fraternity, unless these principles are
always sustained and reinvigorated by the Divine fraternal
love that flows from faith in Jesus Christ.
As to the second principle of socialism, Todt says, that
while Holy Scripture contains no direct prescription on the
point, it may be inferentially established that a republic is the
form, of government that is most harmonious with the Chris-
tian ideal. His deduction of this is peculiar. The Divine
government of the world, he owns, is monarchical, but then it
is a government which cannot be copied by sinful men, and
therefore cannot have been meant as a pattern for them. But
God, he says, has established His Church on earth as a visible
type of His own invisible providential government, and the
Church is a " republic under an eternal President, sitting by
free choice of the people, Jesus Christ." This is both fanciful
and false, for Christ is an absolute ruler, and no mere minister
of the popular will ; and there is not the remotest ground for
The Christian Socialists. 237
founding a system of Biblical politics on the constitution of the
Church. But it shows the length Todt is disposed to go to
conciliate the favour of the socialists.
But the most important element of socialism is its third or
economic principle communism ; and this he represents to
be entirely in harmony with the economic ideal of the New
Testament. He describes the communistic idea as consisting
of two parts : first, the general principles of liberty, equality,
and fraternity, which he finds directly involved in the Scrip-
tural doctrines of moral responsibility, of men's common origin
and redemption, and of the law of love ; and second, the trans-
formation of all private property in the instruments of produc-
tion into common property, which includes three points : (a)
the abolition of the present wages system ; (6) giving the
labourer the full product of his labour; and (c) associated
labour. As to the first two of these points, Todt pronounces
the present wages system to be thoroughly unjust, because it
robs the labourer of the full product of his labour ; and be-
cause unjust, it is unchristian. He accepts the ordinary so-
cialist teaching about " the iron and cruel law." He accepts,
too, Marx's theory of value, and declares it to be unanswer-
able ; and he therefore finds no difficulty in saying that Chris-
tianity condemns a system which in his opinion grinds the
faces of the labouring classes with incessant toil, filches from
them the just reward of their work, and leaves them to hover
hopelessly on the margin of destitution. If there is any
scheme that promises effectually to cure this condition of
things, Christianity will also approve of that scheme ; and
such a scheme he discovers in the socialist proposal of col-
lective property and associated labour. This proposal, how-
ever, derives direct countenance, he maintains, from the New
Testament. It is supported by the texts which describe the
Church as an organism under the figure of a body with many
members, by the example of the common bag of the twelve,
and by the communism of the primitive Church of Jerusalem.
But the texts about the Church as an organism have no real
bearing on the subject at all ; for the Church is not meant to
be an authoritative pattern either for political or for econo-
mic organization ; and besides, the figure of the body and its
238 Contemporary Socialism.
members would apply better to Bastiat's theory of the natural
harmony of interests than to the socialist idea of the solidarity
of interests. Then the common bag of the disciples did not
prevent them from having boats and other instruments of pro-
duction of their own individual property ; and we know that
the communism of the primitive Church of Jerusalem (which
was a decided economic failure, for the poverty of that
Church had to be repeatedly relieved by collections in other
parts of Christendom) was not a community of property, but,
what is a higher thing, a community of use, and that it was
not compulsory but spontaneous.
Todt, however, after seeming thus to commit himself and
Christianity without reserve to socialism, suddenly shrinks
from his own boldness, and draws back. Collective property
may be countenanced by Scripture, but he finds private pro-
perty to be as much or even more so ; and he cannot 011 any
consideration consent to the abolition of private property by
force. It was right enough to abolish slavery by force, for
slavery is an unchristian institution. But though private
property is certainly founded on selfishness, there are so many
examples of it presented before us in the New Testament with-
out condemnation, that Todt shrinks from pronouncing it to
be an unchristian institution. Collective property may be
better, but private property will never disappear till selfishness
is swallowed up of love ; and a triumph of socialism at present,
while its disciples are unbelievers and have not Christ, the
fount of love, in their hearts, would involve society in much
more serious evils than those which it seeks to remove. Todt's
socialism, therefore, is not a thing of the present, but an ideal
of the distant future, to be realized after Christian proprietors
have come of their own accord to give up their estates, and
socialists have all been converted to Christianity. For the
present, in spite of his stern view of the great wrong and
injustice the working classes suffer, Todt has no remedy to
suggest, except that things would be better if proprietors
learnt more to regard their wealth as a trust of which they
were only stewards, and if employers treated their workmen
with the personal consideration due to Christian brothers ; and
he thinks the cultivation of this spirit ought to be more ex-
The Christian Socialists. 239
pressly aimed at in the work of the Church. This is probably,
after all, the sum of what Christianity has to say on the subject;
but it seems a poor result of so much figuring and flourishing,
to end in a general truth which can give no offence even in
Manchester.
Soon after the publication of Todt's book, Stocker and some
Evangelical friends founded two associations, for the purpose
of dealing with the social question from a Christian point of
view, and established a newspaper, the Staats-Socialist, to
advocate their opinions. Of the two associations, one, the
Central Union for Social Reform, was composed of persons
belonging to the educated classes professors, manufacturers,
landowners, and clergymen ; and the other, the Christian
Social "Working Men's Party, consisted of working men alone.
This movement was received on all sides with unqualified dis-
approbation. The press, Liberal and Conservative alike, spoke
with contemptuous dislike of this Mucker- Socialismus, and
said they preferred the socialists in blouse to the socialists in
surplice. The Social Democrats rose against it with virulence,
and held meetings, both of men and of women, at which they
glorified atheism and bitterly attacked the clergy and religion.
Even the higher dignitaries of the Church held coldly aloof or
were even openly hostile. Stocker met all this opposition with
unflinching spirit, convened public meetings in Berlin to pro-
mote his cause, and confronted the socialist leaders on the plat-
form. The movement gave promise of fair success. In a few
months seven hundred pastors, besides many from other pro-
fessions, including Dr. Koegel, Court preacher, and Dr. Buchsel,
a German Superintendent, had enrolled themselves in the
Central Union for Social Reform ; and the Christian Social
Working Men's Party had seventeen hundred members in
Berlin, and a considerable number throughout the provinces.
But its progress was interrupted by the Anti-Socialist Law,
passed soon after the same year, which put an end to meetings
of socialists ; and since this measure was supported, though
hesitatingly, by Stocker and his leading allies, that impaired
their influence with the labouring classes.
The principles of this party, as stated in their programme,
may be said generally to be that a decided social question
240 Contemporary Socialism.
exists, in the increasing gulf between rich and poor, and the
increasing want of economic security in the labourer's life ;
that this question cannot possibly be solved by social demo-
cracy, because social democracy is unpractical, unchristian,
and unpatriotic ; and that it can only be solved by means
of an extensive intervention on the part of a strong and
monarchical State, aided by the religious factors in the
national life. The State ought to provide by statute a
regular organization of the working classes according to their
trades, authorizing the trades unions to represent the labourers
as against their employers, rendering these unions legally
liable for the contracts entered into by their members, assum-
ing a control of their funds, regulating the apprentice system,
creating compulsory insurance funds, etc. Then it ought to
protect the labourers by prohibiting Sunday labour, by fixing
a normal day of labour, and by insisting on the sound sanitary
condition of workshops. Further, it ought to manage the
State and communal property in a spirit favourable to the
working class, and to introduce high luxury taxes, a progressive
income-tax, and a progressive legacy duty, both according to
extent of bequest and distance of relationship. These very
comprehensive reforms are, however, held to be inadequate
without the spread of a Christian spirit of mutual consideration
into the relations of master and workman, and of Christian
faith, hope, and love into family life. Moreover they are not
to be expected from a parliamentary government in which the
commercial classes have excessive influence, and hence the
Christian Socialists lay great stress on the monarchical element,
and would give the monarch absolute power to introduce social
reforms without parliamentary co-operation and even in face
of parliamentary opposition. We have seen that Todt was
disposed to favour a republican form of government, but
probably, like the Czar Nicholas, he has no positive objection
to any other save the constitutional. His party has certainly
adopted a very Radical social programme, but it is above all a
Conservative group, seeking to resist the revolutionary and
materialistic tendencies of socialism, and to rally the great
German working class once more round the standard of God,
King, and Fatherland.
The Christian Socialists. 241
Dr. Stocker lias during the past year resuscitated his
Christian Socialist organization under the name of the Social
Monarchical Union, but without any prospect of much success ;
for its founder, as the result of his twelve years' bustling in
the troubled waters of politics, has fallen out of favour alike
with court, Church, and people. He has lost his place as royal
chaplain, he is bitterly distrusted by the working classes, and
his socialist opinions are a great rock of offence to his eccle-
siastical brethren. A congress under Church auspices was
held at Berlin on May 28th and 29th, 1890, and it was called
the Evangelical Social Congress, as was explained by Professor
A. Wagner, the economist, in his inaugural speech, to avoid
being connected with the Christian Socialists. Dr. Stocker read
a paper at it on social democracy, which raised a storm of dis-
sension, mainly for its attack upon the Jews. This congress,
it may be noted, asked nothing from Government but a little
attention to the housing of the poor, and its chief recommenda-
tions were (1) that every parish be organized under the social-
political as well as spiritual supervision of the clergy ; (2) that
Evangelical Working Men's Unions be established in all indus-
trial centres ; (3) that benevolent or friendly societies be orga-
nized for all trades, such as exist now in mining ; (4) that since
social democracy threatened the Divine and human order of
society, and could only be successfully opposed by the power of
the gospel, a responsible mission lay upon the Church to com-
bat and counteract it. This mission was to be accomplished
in two ways : first, by awakening in all Evangelical circles the
conviction that the present social crisis was due to a universal
national guilt, the guilt of materialistic learning and living ;
and, second, by awakening masters to a sense of their duty to
their men, as morally their equals, and by awakening the men
to a sense of the moral vocation of the masters. In other words,
the social mission of the Church, according to the dominant
opinion at this congress, was just to do its ordinary work of
preaching repentance, faith, and love, and was much better
represented by Dr. Stocker's Home Missionary Society than by
his Social Monarchical Union.
On this question of the duty of the Church with regard to
the social amelioration of the people, there are everywhere two
B
242 Contemporary Socialism.
opposite tendencies of opinion. One says there is no specific
Christian social politics, and that the Church can never have
a specific social-political programme. Slavery is undoubtedly
inconsistent with the moral spirit of the gospel, but St. Paul
was not an emancipationist in practical life. He neither raises
the question of emancipation as a matter of political agitation,
nor does he bid, or beg, his friend Philemon to set Onesimus
at liberty, but to receive him as a brother beloved ; just as
any of St. Paul's successors might enjoin a Christian master
to treat his Christian servant, Christianity is an inspiration,
and may be expected to change the character of social relations
as it changes the character of men ; but political programmes
are always things of opportunity and temporary compromise,
and it would be very unadvisable to run at any moment a
Christian political party, because it would necessarily maks
Christianity responsible for imperfections incident to party
politics, and lessen rather than help the weight of its testimony
in the world.
Then, on the other hand, there are those who hold that there
is a specific Christian social politics ; that there is a distinct
social and political system, either directly enjoined by Holy
Writ, or inferentially resulting from it, so as to be truly a
system of Divine right. That is the claim put forward by Dr.
Stocker for his system of social monarchy, and it is the position
of sundry other groups of socialists, who base their policy on the
agrarian ordinances of Moses, or the communism of the primi-
tive Churches, or the general spirit of the teaching of Jesus
Christ. But Christian Socialism, in any of these forms, is evi-
dently at a discount in the Evangelical Church in Germany ;
and the representative men in that Church, whatever they
may do as private citizens, would seem to refrain, perhaps too
jealously, from formulating in the name of religion any demands
for the action of the State in the social question.
Indeed,, among Protestants, what is called Christian Social-
ism is little more than a vagrant opinion in any country , but
among Catholics it has grown into a considerable international
movement, and has in several States especially in Austria
left its mark on legislation. The movement was started in
Austria by a Protestant, Herr Rudolph Meyer, the well-known
The Christian Socialists 243
author of the " Emancipationskampf des Arbeit " and other
works ; but he was influentially and effectively seconded by
Prince von Liechtenstein, Counts Blome and Kuefstein, and
Herr von Vogelsang, who is now editor of the special organ of
the movement, the Vaterland, of Vienna. In France there had
long been a school of Catholic social reformers, the disciples of
the Economist Le Play, and they are still associated in the
Society of Social Peace, and advocate their views in the perio-
dical La Beforme Sociale. They are believers in liberty, how-
ever, and would not be called socialists. But there are now
two newer schools of Catholic social reformers, who declare their
aim to be the re-establishment of Christian principles in the
world of labour, but are divided on the point of State interven-
tion.
The school who believe in State intervention are the more
numerous ; they are led by Count Albert de Mun and the
Marquis de la Tour de Pin Chambly, have a separate organ,
L 'Association Catholique, and are supported by a large organi-
zation of Catholic workmen's clubs, founded by Count de
Mun. There were 450 of these clubs in 1880, and they com-
bine the functions of a religious club, a co-operative store, and
a friendly society. The school who uphold the principle of
liberty also publish an organ, L 1 Union Economique, edited by
the Franciscan Father le Basse, and their best known leaders
are two Jesuit priests, Fathers Forbes and Caldron. There is
likewise a Catholic Socialist movement in Switzerland and
Belgium, in both cases strongly in favour of State intervention;
and, indeed, Italy is the only Catholic country in which the
Church holds aloof from the social movement, forgetting the
unusual miseries of. the people in an ignoble sulk over the loss
of the Pope's temporal power.
The friends of this movement have now held three inter-
national congresses at Liege. The third was held in Septem-
ber, 1890, under the presidency of the bishop of the diocese,
and was attended by 1500 delegates, including eight or ten
bishops and many Catholic statesmen and peers from all
countries. Lord Ashburnham and the Bishops of Salford and
Nottingham represented England, and there were representa-
tives from Germany, Poland, Austria, Spain, and France, but
244 Contemporary Socialism.
none from Italy. The Pope himself sent a special envoy with
an address, and among letters from eminent Catholic leaders
who were unable to be present in person was one from Cardinal
Manning, which made a little sensation, but was received with
decided sympathy, though the Pope afterwards disavowed it
to some extent. The Cardinal expressed strong approval of
trade unions, and of State intervention to fix the hours of
labour to eight hours for miners and ten hours for less arduous
trades, and he declared his conviction that no pacific solution of
the conflict between capital and labour was possible till the
State regulated profits and wages according to some fixed scale
which should be subject to revision every three or four years,
and by which all free contracts between employers and
employed should be adjusted.
The Congress went over the whole gamut of social questions,
and exhibited the usual conflict of opinion between the party
of liberty and the party of authority; but the party of
authority, the " Statolaters " as the}' are called, had evidently
the great majority of the assembly. The party of liberty
were chiefly Frenchmen and Belgians, men like Fathers
Forbes and Caudron, already mentioned, or M. Woeste, the
leader of the Catholic party in Belgium, who said he believed
in moral suasion only, and that he feared the State and hated
Caesarism. The party of authority were German and English.
But whatever they thought of State intervention, all parlies
were one about the necessity of Church intervention. With-
out the Catholic Church there could be no solution of the
social question. Cardinal Manning said, a few days before the
Congress, that the labour question now raised everywhere
must go on till it was solved somehow, and that the only
universal influence that could guide it was the presence and
prudence of the Catholic Church. The Congress passed recom-
mendations about technical education, better homes for work-
ing people, shorter hours, intemperance, strikes, prison labour,
international factory legislation. It proposed the institution
of trade unions, comprising both employers and employed, as
the best means of promoting working-class improvement. In
the towns these unions might have distinct sections for the
different trades ; but in the country this subdivision was not
The Christian Socialists. 245
requisite. Every parish should have its trade union, and the
whole should be united in a federation like the Boerenbond,
or Peasants' League, lately established in some parts of
Belgium, and which the Congress recommended to the atten-
tion of Catholics. It recommended also the establishment
of a pension fund for aged labourers under State guarantee,
but without any compulsory exaction of premiums, and with-
out any special State subsidy ; and it received with favour
a proposal by the Spanish divine, Professor Rodriguez de
Cegrada, of Valencia, for papal arbitration in international
labour questions.
This Catholic Socialist movement shows no disposition to
coquet with revolutionary socialism ; on the contrary, its
leaders often say one of their express objects is to counteract
that agitation to produce the counter-revolution, as they
sometimes put it. They are under no mistake about the
nature or bearing of socialist doctrines. Our Christian
Socialists in London accept the doctrines of Marx, and hold
the labourer's right to the full product of his labour to be a
requirement of Christian ethics, and the orators at English
Church Congresses often speak of socialism as if it were a
higher perfection of Christianity. But Catholic Socialists
understand their Christianity and their socialism better than
to make any such identifications, and regard the doctrines and
organizations of revolutionary socialism in the spirit of the
firm judgment expressed in the Pope's encyclical of 28th
December, 1878, which said that " so great is the difference
between their (the socialists') wicked dogmas and the pure
doctrine of Christ that there can be no greater ; for what par-
ticipation has justice with injustice, or what communion has
light with darkness ? " This plain, gruff renunciation is on
the whole much truer than the amiable patronage of a very dis-
tinguished Irish bishop at the Church Congress of 1887, who said
socialism was only a product of Christian countries, (what of the
socialism of savage tribes, or of the Mahdi, or of the Chinese ?)
that the sentiment and aspiration of socialism were distinctly
Christian, and that every Christian is a bit of a socialist, and
every socialist a bit of a Christian. Socialism may proceed
from an aspiration after social justice, but a mistaken view of
246 Contemporary Socialism.
social justice is, I presume, really injustice ; and, as the Pope
says, what communion can there practically be between justice
and injustice ? Idolatry is a mistaken view of Divine things
a distortion of the religious sentiment ; but who would on that
account call it Christian ? The socialist may be at heart a
lover of justice ; he may love it, if you will, above his fellows ;
but what matters the presence of the sentiment if the system
he would realize it by is ruled essentially by a principle of
injustice? Justice, the greatest and rarest of the virtues, is
also the most difficult and the most easily perverted. It needs
a balance of mind, and in its application to complicated and
wide-reaching social arrangements, an exactitude of knowledge
and clearness of understanding which are ill replaced by
sentimentalism, or even by honest feeling ; and the fault of
the current talk about Christian Socialism and the identity
of socialism with Christianity is that it does not conduce to
this clearness of understanding, which is the first requisite for
any useful dealing with such questions. If socialism is just,
it is Christian that seems the sum of the matter. But do
socializing bishops believe it to be just ? Do they believe,
as all socialists believe, that it is unjust for one man to be paid
five thousand pounds a year, while his neighbours, with far
harder and more drudging work, cannot make forty pounds ?
or do they believe it wrong for a man to live on interest, or
rents, or profits ? or would they have the law lay its hands
on property and manufactures, in order to correct this wrong
and give every man the income to which he would be entitled
on socialist principles ? It is good, no doubt, to have more
equality and simplicity and security of living ; but these as-
pirations are neither peculiar to Christianity nor to socialism.
CHAPTER VIII.
ANARCHISM.
THE Jatesfc offspring of revolutionary opinion and the most
misshapen is anarchism. Seven or eight years ago the word
was scarcely known ; but then, as if on a sudden, rumours of
the anarchists and their horrid " propaganda of deed " echoed
in, one upon another, from almost every country in the old
world and the new. To-day they were haranguing mobs of
unemployed in Lyons and Brussels under a black flag the
black flag of hunger, which, they explained, knows no law.
To-morrow they were goading the peasants of Lombardy or
Naples to attack the country houses of the gentry, and lay
the vineyards waste. Presently they were found attempting
to assassinate the German Emperor at Niederwald, or laying
dynamite against the Federal Palace at Bern ; or a troop of
them had set off over Europe on a quixotic expedition of miscel-
laneous revenge on powers that be, and were reported succes-
sively as having killed a gendarme in Strasburg, a policeman
in Vienna, and a head of the constabulary in Frankfort. Before
these reports had time to die in our ears, fresh tales would arrive
of anarchists pillaging the bakers' shops in Paris, or exulting
over the murder of a mining manager at Decazeville, or fling-
ing bombs among the police of Chicago ; and it seemed as if a
new party of disorder had broke loose upon the world, busier
and more barbarous than any that went before it.
It is no new party, however; it is merely the extremer
element in the modern socialist movement. Mr. Hyndman
and other socialists would fain disclaim the anarchists alto-
gether, and are fond of declaring that they are the very
opposite of socialists that they are individualists of the
boldest stamp. But this contention will not stand. There
are individualist anarchists, no doubt. The anarchists of
247
248 Contemporary Socialism.
Boston, in America, are individualists ; one of the two groups
of English anarchists in London is individualist ; but these
individualist anarchists are very few in number anywhere, and
the mass of the party whose deeds made a stir on both sides of
the Atlantic is undoubtedly more socialist than the socialists
themselves. I have said in a previous chapter that the
socialism of the present day maybe correctly described .in three
words as Revolutionary Socialist Democracy, and in every one
of these three characteristics the anarchists go beyond other
socialists, instead of falling short of them. They are really
more socialist, more democratic, and more revolutionary than the
rest of their comrades. They are more socialist, because they
are disposed to want not only common property and common
production, but common enjoyment of products as well. They
are more democratic, because they will have no government
of any kind over the people except the people themselves
no king or committee, no representative institutions, either
imperial or local, but merely every little industrial group of
people managing its public affairs as it will manage its indus-
trial work. And they are more revolutionary, for they have
no faith, even temporarily, in constitutional procedure, and
think making a little trouble is always the best way of bring-
ing on a big revolution. Other socialists prepare the way for
revolution by a propaganda of word ; but the anarchists
believe they can hasten the day best by the propaganda of
deed. Like the violent sections of all other parties, they
injure and discredit the party they belong to, and they often
attack the more moderate section with greater bitterness than
their common enemy ; but they certainly belong to social-
ism, both in origin and in principle. There were anarchists
among the Young Hegelian socialists of Germany fifty years
ago. The Anti-socialist Laws bred a swarm of anarchists
among the German socialists in 1880, who left under Most and
Hasselmann, and carried to America the seed which led to the
outrages of Chicago. The Russian nihilists were anarchists
from the beginning; they broke up the International with
their anarchism twenty years ago, and they are among the
chief disseminators of anarchism in England and France to-
day, because to the Russians anarchism is only the socialism
Anarchism. 249
and the democracy of the rural communes in which they were
born. Socialists themselves are often obliged to admit the
embarrassing affinity. Dr. and Mrs. Aveling complain, in their
" Labour Movement in America," that while " the Chicago
capitalist wanted us to be hanged after we had landed, Herr
Most's paper, Die Freiheit, was for shooting us at sight " ; that
" anarchism ruined the International movement, threw back
the Spanish, Italian, and French movements for many years,
has proved a hindrance in America, and so much or so little
of it as exists in England is found by the revolutionary
socialist party a decided nuisance" ; but they admit that " well
nigh every word spoken by the chief defendants at the Chicago
trial could be endorsed by socialists, for they then preached
not anarchism, but socialism. Indeed/' they add, " he that
will compare the fine speech by Parsons in 1886 with that of
Liebknecht at the high treason trial at Leipzig will find the
two practically identical."
So far, then, as their socialism goes, there is admittedly no
real difference between Parsons, the Chicago anarchist, and
Liebknecht, the leader of the German socialists. Indeed, as I
have said, the anarchists seem to show a tendency even to out-
bid the socialists in their socialism. Socialists generally say
that, while committing all production to the public authority,
they have no idea of interfering with liberty of consumption.
Their opponents argue, in reply, that they would find an inter-
ference with consumption to be an inevitable result of their
systematic regulation of production; but they themselves always
repudiate that conclusion. They would make all the instru-
ments of production common property, but leave all the
materials of enjoyment individual property still. Ground
rents, for example, would belong to the public ; but every man
would own his own house and furniture, at least for life, if he
had built it by his own labour, or bought it from his own
savings, because a dwelling house is not an instrument of pro-
duction, but an article of enjoyment or consumption. But some
of the more representative spokesmen of the anarchists would
not leave this last remnant of private property standing, and
strongly contend for the old primitive plan, still in use among
savage tribes, of giving those who are in want of anything a
250 Contemporary Socialism.
claim a right to share the enjoyment of it with those who
happen to have it. They would municipalize the houses as
well as the ground rents, and no one should be allowed a right
to a spare bed or a disengaged sofa so long as one of the least
of his brethren huddled on straw in a garret in the slums, or
slept out on a bench in Trafalgar Square. In a recent number
of Freedom, for example, Prince Krapotkin announces that
" the first task of the Revolution will be to arrange things so
as to share the accommodation of available houses according to
the needs of the inhabitants of the city, to clear out the slums
and fully occupy the villas and mansions." Anarchist opinions
are no doubt capricious and variable. There are as many
anarchisms as there are anarchists, it has been said. But this
tendency to go further than other socialists, in superseding in-
dividual by common property, has repeatedly appeared in some
of their most representative utterances.
The Jurassian Federation of the International adopted a reso-
lution at their Congress in 1880, in which they say : " We
desire collectivism, with all its logical consequences, not only in
the sense of the collective appropriation of instruments of pro-
duction, but also of the collective enjoyment and consumption
of products. Anarchist communism will in this way be the
necessary and inevitable consequence of the social revolution,
and the expression of the new civilization which that revolution
will inaugurate."
Their principal difference with the other branch of the
socialists, however, and that from which they derive their
name is upon the government of the socialistic society. An-
archy as a principle of political philosophy was first advocated
by Proudhon, and he meant by it, not of course a state of chaos
or disorder, but merely a state without separate political or civil
institutions, " a state of order without a set government."
" The expression, anarchic government," he says, " implies a
sort of contradiction. The thing seems impossible, and the
idea absurd ; but there is really nothing at fault here but the
language. The idea of anarchy in politics is quite as rational and
positive as any other. It consists in this, that the political
function be re-absorbed in the industrial, and in that case social
order would ensue spontaneously out of the simple operation of
Anarchism. 251
transactions and exchanges. Every man might then be justly
called autocrat of himself, which is the extreme reverse of
monarchical absolutism " (" Die Princip Federatif," p. 29). He
distinguishes anarchy from democracy and from communistic
government, though his distinctions are not easy to apprehend
exactly. Communism, he says, is the government of all by all ;
democracy, the government of all by each ; and anarchy, the
government of each by each. Anarchy is, in his opinion, the
only real form of self-government. People would manage their
own public affairs together like partners in a business, and no
one would be subject to the authority of another. Govern-
ment is considered a mere detail of industrial management ;
and the industrial management is considered to be in the
hands of all who co-operate in the industry. The specific
preference of anarchism, therefore, seems to be for some form
of direct government by the people, in place of any form of
central, superior, or representative government ; and naturally
its political communities must be small in size, though they
may be left to league together, if they choose, in free and
somewhat loose federations. The anarchists are accordingly
more democratic in their political theory than the socialists
more strictly so called, inasmuch as they would give the
people more hand in the work of government, though of
course they preposterously underrate the need and difficulty of
that work.
On some minor points they contradict one another, and quite
as often contradict themselves. Proudhon, for example, would
still, even in anarchist society, retain the local policeman and
magistrate ; but anarchists of a stricter doctrine would either
have every man carry his own pistol and provide for his own
security, or, as the Boston anarchists prefer, apparently, would
have public security supplied like any other commodity by an
ordinary mercantile association in Proudhon's words, " by
the simple operation of transactions and exchanges." Emerson
said the day was coming when the world would do without
the paraphernalia of courts and parliaments, and a man who
liked the profession would merely put a sign over his door,
" John Smith, King." This is too much division of function
however for anarchists generally, and they would have every
252 Contemporary Socialism.
industrial group do its government as it did its business by
general co-operation. Just as in Russia every rural commune
has its own trade, and the inhabitants of one are all shoemakers,
while the inhabitants of another are all tailors, so in anarchist
society, according to the more advanced doctrine, every separate
group would have its own separate industry, because, in fact,
the separate industry makes it a separate group. And it would
be managed by all its members together, not by anything in
the nature of a board, for it is important to recollect that anar-
chists of the purest water entertain as much objection to the
domination of a vestry or a town council as to that of a king
or a cabinet. Some who side with them, especially old sup-
porters of the French Revolutionary Commune, have still a
certain belief in a municipal council ; but the Russian anar-
chists, at any rate, look upon this as a piece of faithless accom-
modation. Prince Krapotkin, I have already mentioned, thinks
the first business of the contemplated revolution must be to
redistribute the dwelling houses, so as to thin the slums and
quarter their surplus population in the incompletely occupied
villas or mansions of the West End. That is a very large task,
which it will seem, to an ordinary mind, obviously impossible
for the vast population of a great city like London to execute in
their own proper persons at an enormous town meeting ; yet,
if I understand Prince Krapotkin, it is this preposterous pro-
posal he is actually offering as a serious contribution to a more
perfect system of government. " For," says he, " sixty elected
persons sitting round a table and calling themselves a Muni-
cipal Council cannot arrange the matter on paper. It must be
arranged by the people themselves, freely uniting to settle the
question for each block of houses, each street, and proceeding
by agreement from the single to the compound, from the parts
to the whole ; all having their voice in the arrangements, and
putting in their claims with those of their fellow-citizens ; just
as the Russian peasants settle the periodical repartition of the
communal lands." And how do the Russian peasants settle
the periodical repartition of the communal lands? Stepniak
gives us a very interesting description of a meeting of a
Russian mir in his " Russia Under the Tsars " (vol. i. p. 2).
" The meetings of the village communes, like those of the
Anarchism. 253
Landesgemeinde of the primitive Swiss cantons, are held under
the vault of heaven, before the Starosta's house, before a tavern,
or at any other convenient place. The thing that most strikes
a person who is present for the first time at one of these meet-
ings is the utter confusion which seems to characterize its
proceedings. Chairman there is none. The debates are scenes
of the wildest disorder. After the convener has explained his
reasons for calling the meeting, everybody rushes in to express
his opinion, and for a while the debate resembles a free fight
of pugilists. The right of speaking belongs to him who can
command attention. If an orator pleases his audience, inter-
rupters are promptly silenced ; but if he says nothing worth
hearing, nobody heeds him, and he is shut up. "When the
question is somewhat of a burning one, and the meeting begins
to grow warna, all speak at once, and none listen. On these
occasions the assembly breaks up into groups, each of which
discusses the subject on its own account. Everybody shouts
his arguments at the top of his voice. Charges and objurga-
tions, words of contumely and derision, are heard on every
hand, and a wild uproar goes on from which it does not seem
possible that any good can result.
" But this apparent confusion is of no moment. It is a
necessary means to a certain end. In our village assemblies
voting is unknown. Controversies are never decided by a
majority of voices; every question must be settled unanimously.
Hence the general debate, as well as private discussions, must
be continued until a proposal is brought forward which con-
ciliates all interests, and wins the suffrage of the entire mir.
It is, moreover, evident that to reach this consummation the
debates must be thorough and the subject well threshed out ;
and in order to overcome isolated opposition, it is essential for
the advocates of conflicting views to be brought face to face,
and compelled to fight out their differences in single combat."
But beneath all this tough and apparently acrimonious strife
a singular spirit of forbearance reigns. The majority will not
force on a premature decision. Debate may rage fast and
furious day after day, but at last the din dies. A common
understanding is somehow attained, and the mir pronounces
its deliverance, which is accepted, in the rude belief of the
254 Contemporary Socialism.
peasants, as the decree of God Himself. In this way tens of
thousands of Russian villages have been, no doubt, managing
their own petty business with reasonable amity and success
for centuries, and the political philosophy of Russian writers
like Bakunin and Prince Krapotkin, who have propagated
anarchism in the west of Europe, is merely the naive sugges-
tion that the form of government which answers not intoler-
ably for the few trivial concerns of a primitive Russian village
would answer best for the whole complex business of a great
developed modern society.
The anarchists carry their dislike to authority into other
fields besides the political and industrial. They will have no
invisible master or ruler any more than visible. They renounce
both God and the devil, and generally with an energy beyond
all other revolutionists. Some of the older socialists were
believers ; St. Simon, Fourier, Leroux and Louis Blanc were
all theists ; but it is rare to find one among the socialists of
the present generation, and with the anarchists an aggressive
atheism seems an essential part of their way of thinking. They
will own no superior power or authority of any kind employer,
ruler, deity, or law. The Anarchist Congress of Geneva in
1882 issued a manifesto, which began thus :
" Our enemy, it is our master. Anarchists that is to say,
men without chiefs we fight against all who are invested or
wish to invest themselves with any kind of power whatsoever.
Our enemy is the landlord who owns the soil and makes the
peasant drudge for his profit. Our enemy is the employer who
owns the workshop, and has filled it with wage-serfs. Our
enemy is the State, monarchical, oligarchic, democratic, work-
ing class, with its functionaries and its services of officers, magis-
trates, and police. Our enemy is every abstract authority,
whether called Devil or Good God, in the name of which priests
have so long governed good souls. Our enemy is the law, always
made for the oppression of the weak by the strong, and for the
justification and consecration of crime."
Among other restraints, they entertain often a speculative
opposition to the restraint of the legal family, and sometimes
advocate a return to aboriginal promiscuity and relationship by
mothers ; but this is only an occasional element in their agita-
Anarchism. 255
tion. It is plain, however, that when law is believed to be
oppression, crime and lawlessness come to be humanity.
I have now shown that the anarchists, so far from represent-
ing an opposite movement to revolutionary social democracy,
are really ultra-socialist and ultra-democratic, and it seems
hardly necessary to show that they are ultra-revolutionary.
All social democrats contemplate an eventual revolution, but
some see no objection meanwhile to take part in current
politics ; while others, a more witnessing generation, practise
an ostentatious abstention, and call themselves political absten-
tionists. Some, again, think and desire that the revolution will
come by peaceful and lawful means ; others trust to violence
alone. The anarchists outrun all. They refuse to have
anything to do with any politics but revolution, and with any
revolution but a violent one, and they think the one means of
producing revolution now or at any future time is simply to
keep exciting disorder and class hatred, assassinating State
officers, setting fire to buildings, and paralyzing the bourgeoisie
with fear. All anarchists are not of this sanguinary mind,
and it is interesting to remember that Proudhon himself
wrote Karl Marx in 1846, warning him against " making a
St. Bartholomew of the proprietors," and opposed resort to
revolutionary action of any kind as a means of promoting
social reform. " Perhaps," he says, " we think no reform is
possible without a coup de main, without what used to be called
a revolution, and which is only a shake. I understand that
decision and excuse it, for I held it for a long time myself, but
I confess my latest studies have completely taken it away from
me. I believe we have no need of any such thing in order to
succeed, and that consequently we ought not to postulate
revolutionary action as a means of social reform, because that
pretended means is nothing more nor less than an appeal
to force, to arbitrary power, and is therefore a contradiction,
I state the problem thus : to restore to society, by an economic
combination, the wealth which has been taken from society
by another economic combination." ("Proudhon's Corre-
spondence," ii. 198.)
But whatever individual anarchists may hold or renounce,
the general view of the party is as I have stated. A meeting
256 Contemporary Socialism.
of 600 anarchists chiefly Germans and Austrians, but includ-
ing also some Russians, Spaniards, and Frenchmen was held
at Paris on the 20th April, 1884, and passed a resolution urgently
recommending the extirpation of princes, capitalists, and par-
sons, by means of " the propaganda of deed."* The Congress
held at London in 1881, which sought to re-establish the Inter-
national on purely anarchist lines, adopted a declaration of
principles, containing, among other things, the following : " It
is matter of strict necessity to make all possible efforts to
propagate by deeds the revolutionary idea and the spirit of
revolt among that great section of the mass of the people which
as yet takes no part in the movement, and entertains illusions
about the morality and efficacy of legal means. In quitting
the legal ground on which we have generally remained
hitherto, in order to carry our action into the domain of
illegality which is the only way leading to revolution, it is
necessary to have recourse to means which are in conformity
with that end. . . . The Congress recommends organiza-
tions and individuals constituting part of the International
Working Men's Association to give great weight to the study
of the technical and chemical sciences as a means of defence
and attack."t In the first French revolution Lavoisier and
other seven and twenty chemists were put to the guillotine
together, on the express pretence, " We have no need of
savants" ; but now "Technology" is a standing heading in
the anarchist journals; a revolutionary organization has its
chemical department as well as its press department ; and
anarchist tracts often end with the standing exhortation,
" Learn the use of dynamite," as socialist tracts end with
the old admonition of 1848, " Proletarians of all nations,
unite."
The object of this policy of violence is partly, as we see from
the above quotations, to inflame the spirit of revolt and dis-
order in the working classes ; and it is partly to terrorize the
bourgeoisie, so that they may yield in pure panic all they
* Much interesting information on this subject is given from official
sources in a recent anonymous work, " Socialismus und Anarchismus in
Europa und Nordamerika wahrend der Jahre 1883 bis 1886."
t Garin, " L'Anarchie et les Anarchistes," p. 48.
Anarchism. 257
possess. But for its expressly violent policy, anarchism would
be the least formidable or offensive manifestation of contem-.
porary socialism. For, in the first place, its specific doctrine is
one which it is really difficult to get the most ordinary common
sense puzzled into accepting. Men in their better mind may
be ready enough to listen to specious, or even not very specious,
schemes of reform that hold out a promise of extirpating
misery, and in their worse mind they may be quite as prone
to think that if everybody had his own, there would be fewer
rich ; but they are not likely to believe we can get on without
law or government of any sort. Even the vainest will feel that
however superfluous these institutions may be for themselves,
they are still unhappily indispensable for some of their neigh-
bours. Then in the next place this doctrine of the anarchists
is as great a stumbling-block to themselves as it is to other
people, for they carry their objection to government into their
own movement, and can consequently never acquire that
concentration and unity of organization which is necessary for
any effectual conspiracy. They are always found constituted
in very small groups very loosely held together, and small as
the several groups may be, they are always much more likely
to subdivide than to consolidate. Even the few anarchist
refugees in London who might be expected to be knit into
indissoluble friendship by their common adversity have broken
into separate clubs, and the " Autonomic " and the " Morgen-
rothe " though they have hardly more than a hundred
members between them, and all belong to the same socialist
variety of anarchist doctrine remain as the Jews and the
Samaritans. It is said to be a subject of speculative discussion
among anarchists whether two members are sufficient to con-
stitute an anarchist club. This laxity of organization is a natural
result of the dislike to authority which the anarchists cultivate
as a cardinal principle. Subjection to an executive committee
is as offensive to their feelings and as contrary to their prin-
ciples as subjection to a monarch. The dread of subjection
keeps them disunited and weak. As Machiavelli says, the
many ruin a revolutionary society, and the few are not enough.
A small group may concoct an isolated crime, but it can do
little towards the social revolution.
258 Contemporary Socialism.
The anarchist policy the propaganda of deed consists,
however, exactly in this concoction of isolated crimes and out-
rages. Some of the continental powers are conferring at this
moment on the propriety of taking international efforts against
the anarchists, and the question may at least be reasonably
raised before our own Government, whether a policy of pro-
miscuous outrage like this should continue to be included
among political offences, securing protection against extradi-
tion, and whether the propaganda of deed and the use of
dynamite should not rather be declared outside the limits of
fair and legitimate revolution, as, by the Geneva Convention,
explosive bullets are put outside the limits of fair or legitimate
war.
CHAPTEE IX.
RUSSIAN NIHILISM.
HAXTHAUSEN pronounced a confident opinion in 1847, when most
of the continental nations were agitated with rumours of revo-
lution, that Russia at any rate was safe from the danger, in-
asmuch as she enjoyed an absolute protection against all such
revolutionary agitation in her communistic rural institutions.
There was no proletariat in Russia, every man in the country
being born to a share in the land of the township he belonged
to ; and without a proletariat, concluded the learned professor,
there was neither motive nor material for social revolt. This
belief became generally accepted, and passed, indeed, for years
as a political commonplace ; but perhaps never has a political
prognostication so entirely reasonable proved on experience so
utterly fallacious. Instead of sparing or avoiding Russia, revo-
lutionary agitation has grown positively endemic in that
country ; it is more virulent in its type, and apparently more
deepseated than elsewhere ; and, stranger still, not the least of
its exciting causes has been that very communistic agrarian
system which was thought to be the surest preservation
against it.
In its earlier period, before the emancipation of the serfs,
the Russian revolutionary movement was largely inspired by
an extravagant idealization of the perfections of the rural
commune, and now since the emancipation it is fed far more
formidably by an actual experience of the commune's defects.
The truth is that the communistic land system of Russia, so
far from preventing the birth of a proletariat, is now of itself
begetting the most numerous and the most helpless proleta-
riat in the world. The emancipation dues would have been a
serious burden under any social arrangements, but they have
proved so much heavier under the communistic system of
259
2(5o Contemporary Socialism.
Russia than they would have been elsewhere that the system
itself is beginning to give way. "With an unlimited stock of
good land, all is plain sailing under any social institutions ; but
when land is limited in extent and every new-comer has the
right to cut in and get an equal share with those already in
possession, excessive subdivision is inevitable, and the point is
soon reached where any fresh impost or outgoing destroys the
profitableness of cultivation, and converts the right to the land
from an asset into a liability. This is what is now happening
in Russia. It appears there are already more paupers in
St. Petersburg proportionally to population than in any other
European capital, and as many as a third of the inhabitants
of the provinces are either entirely landless, or, more unhappy
still, find their land, instead of a benefit, to be only a grievous
burden of which they cannot shake themselves clear. I shall
have occasion later on to recur to this new economic develop-
ment in rural Russia, which is very interesting to the student
of socialism on its own account, but which will concern us in
the present chapter more particularly in its bearing on the
operations and prospects of the revolutionary party in that
country.
The revolutionary or nihilist movement in Russia has
passed through several successive phases ; but there is no good
reason for denying its continuity, nor any impropriety, as is
sometimes alleged, in the retention of the name of Nihilism,
which it bore when it first engaged the attention of Western
Europe, although it may be quite true that the word is more
descriptive of the earlier developments of the movement than of
the later. In its first stage, before the Emancipation Act, it was
scarce more than an intellectual fermentation an intellectual
revolt all round, if you will shaping more and more in its
political ideas towards democratic socialism, but as yet entirely
unorganized, and content to expend its force in violent opinions
without recourse to action. Then, second, the Emancipation Act
gave it organization, purpose, malignity, and made it, in short,
the nihilism we know, converting it into the engine of the
bitter discontent of the landed classes, who were seriously
straitened and many of them ruined by the operation of that
great reform. Third, while the impoverishment of thousands
Russian Nihilism. 261
of landed families was the first result of the Emancipation Act,
its slower but more serious result has been the impoverishment
of the peasantry, and nihilism is now assuming a more agrarian
character, and promoting the social revolution under the old
Eussian cry for " the black division."
For the origin of nihilism we must go back half a century
to a little company of gifted young men, most of whom rose to
great distinction, who used at that time to meet together at
the house of a rich merchant in Moscow, for the discussion of
philosophy and politics and religion. They were of the most
various views. Some of them became Liberal leaders, and
wanted Russia to follow the constitutional development of the
Western nations ; others became founders of the new Slavo-
phil party, contending that Russia should be no imitator, but
develop her own native institutions in her own way ; and there
were at least two among them Alexander Herzen and
Michael Bakunin who were to be prominent exponents of
revolutionary socialism. But they all owned at this period
one common master Hegel. Their host was an ardent He-
gelian, and his young friends threw themselves into the study
of Hegel with the greatest zeal. Herzen himself tells us in his
autobiography how assiduously they read everything that came
from his pen, how they devoted nights and weeks to clearing
up the meaning of single passages in his writings, and how
greedily they devoured every new pamphlet that issued from
the German press on any part of his system. From Hegel,
Herzen and Bakunin were led, exactly like Marx and the
German Young Hegelians, to Feuerbach, and from Feuerbach
to socialism. Bakuuin, when he retired from the army, rather
than be the instrument of oppressing the Poles among whom
he was stationed, went for some years to Germany, where he
lived among the Young Hegelians and wrote for their organ,
the HalUsche Jahrbiicher ; but before either he or Herzen ever
had any personal intercommunication with the members of
that school of thought, they had passed through precisely the
same development. Herzen speaks of socialism almost in the
very phrases of the Young Hegelians, as being the new " ter-
restrial religion," in which there was to be neither God nor
heaven ; as a new system of society which would dispense
262 Contemporary Socialism.
with an authoritative government, human or Divine, and
which should be at once the completion of Christianity and
the realization of the Revolution. " Christianity," he said,
" made the slave a son of man ; the Revolution has emanci-
pated him into a citizen. Socialism would make him a man"
This tendency of thought was strongly supported in the
Russian mind by Haxthausen's discovery and laudation of the
rural commune of Russia. The Russian State was the most
arbitrary, oppressive, and corrupt in Europe, and the Russian
Church was the most ignorant and superstitious ; but here at
last was a Russian institution which was regarded with envy
even by wise men of the west, and was really a practical anti-
cipation of that very social system which was the last work of
European philosophy. It was with no small pride, therefore,
that Alexander Herzen declared that the Muscovite peasant in
his dirty sheepskin had solved the social problem of the nine-
teenth century, and that for Russia, with this great problem
already solved, the Revolution was obviously a comparatively
simple operation. You had but. to remove the Czardom, the
services, and the priesthood, and the great mass of the people
would still remain organized in fifty thousand complete
little self-governing communities living on their common land
and ruling their common affairs as they had been doing long
before the Czardom came into being. And what, after all, was
the latest dream of philosophical socialism but a world of com-
munities like these? The new formula of civilization had
merely come back to the old Russian mir.
All Russian writers draw a kindly and charming picture of
the mir, the rude village council, in which the heads of families
have for ages managed their common land, distributed their
taxes, and settled all the burning problems of the hamlet with
remarkable freedom, fairness, and mutual respect. They meet
together on some open space perhaps in front of the tavern,
which is itself one of their common possessions ; they beat out
their question there till they are unanimous ; for the mir will
know nothing of decision by majorities the will of the mir is
believed to be the will of God Himself, and it must be no
divided counsel. They argue sometimes long and keenly, and,
as their interest waxes, they will raise many voices at once, or
Russian Nihilism. 263
perhaps break up into separate groups, each discussing the
subject apart ; but presently, out of all the apparent disorder,
the acceptable decision is somehow found, and peace reigns
again in the village street. In these meetings they have the
deepest feeling and habit of freedom ; and even when a political
question arises affecting their interests a question of taxes
or of administration they make no scruple to speak in the
plainest terms of the Government and the officials, and they
are never interfered with. "Nobody but God," they say,
" dare judge the mir" and the Czar, at any rate, respects the
tradition. That rude assembly is the only free institution in
Russia. Even revolutionary manifestoes have been publicly
read at its meetings, and socialist addresses publicly delivered.
And this instinctive spirit of freedom is attended there with
the instinctive spirit of equality. A recent Russian writer
observes that a Russian peasant would be quite unable to
understand the sort of respect the English labourer shows to
a gentleman. With its freedom, its equality, its strong family
sentiment, its common property, its self-government, the mir is
really the social democratic republic political philosophers have
projected, and a Russian who dislikes the State and loves the
mir is, without more ado, a social revolutionist of the anarchist
type. The favourite ideal among Russian revolutionists for
the last fifty years has accordingly all along been the anarchist
ideal of a free federation of local industrial communities with-
out any separate political organization ; for the anarchist ideal
is natural to the Russian situation.
Revolutionary opinions were very rife in Russia during the
reign of Nicholas ; but under his iron rule they were never
suffered to be spoken above the breath. His ascension to the
throne in 1825 had been greeted by a revolution a very
abortive one, it is true, but unfortunately sufficient to set every
fibre of the young Czar's strong nature inflexibly against all
the liberal tendencies encouraged by his father, and to stop the
political development of the country for a generation. A hand-
ful of constitutional reformers united three years before in
a secret society to promote peasant emancipation, the common
civil liberties, and stable instead of arbitrary law gathered
a crowd to a public place in the capital, and shouted for " the
264 Contemporary Socialism.
Archduke Constantine and a Constitution." Most part of the
crowd had so little idea why they had come together that
they thought Constitution was the name of the Archduke
Constantino's wife; and the most distinguished man among
the conspirators Pestel. the poet said, as he was going to
execution, " I wished to reap the harvest before sowing the
seed." He had done worse he really kept the seed from being
sown for thirty years to come. All freedom of opinion was
ruthlessly suppressed ; every means of influencing the public
mind was stopped ; there was no liberty of printing, speaking,
or meeting ; there was no saving grace but ignorance, for
people of reading and intelligence lived under perpetual
liability to most unreasonable suspicion. Alexander Herzen,
for example, was banished to the Asiatic frontier while still
a very young man, merely because he happened to make the
casual remark in a private letter to his father, which was
opened in the post, that a policeman had a few days before
killed a man in the streets of St. Petersburg.
But this system of lawless and unrighteous repression nursed
a deep spirit of revolt against constituted authority in the
heart of the people, and among the younger minds a kind of
passion for the most extreme and forbidden doctrines. All the
wildest phases of nihilist opinion in the sixties were already
raging in Russia in the forties. Haxthausen says he was
astounded, when he visited the Russian universities and
schools, to find the students at every one of them given over,
as he says, to political and religious notions of the most all-
destructive description. "It is a miasma," he says. And
although the only political outbreak of Nicholas's reign, the
Petracheffsky conspiracy of 1849, was little more than a petty
street riot, a storm of serious revolt against the tyranny of
the Czar was long gathering, which would have burst upon
his head after the disasters to his army in the Crimea, had
he survived them. He saw it thickening, however, and on
his death-bed said to his son, the noble and unfortunate
Alexander II., " I fear you will find the burden too heavy."
The son found it eventually heavy enough, but in the mean-
time he wisely bent before the storm, relaxed the restraints
the father had imposed, and gave pledges of the most liberal
Russian Nihilism. 265
reforms in every department of State judicial administration,
local government, popular education, serf emancipation. People
believed completely in the young Czar's sincerity, awaited with
great expectations the measures he would propose, and mean-
while indulged to the top of their bent in the practical liberties
they were already provisionally allowed to enjoy, and gave
themselves up to a restless fervour for liberty and reform.
An independent press was not among the liberties conceded,
but Russian opinion at this period found a most effective voice
in a newspaper started in London by Alexander Herzen, called
the Kolokol (Bell), which for a number of years made a great
impression in Russia by the accuracy of its information on
Russian affairs, by the boldness of its criticisms of the Govern-
ment, and by the ease with which it got smuggled into uni-
versal circulation. When Herzen was sent to the Urals as a
dangerous person, he was appointed, very anomalously per-
haps it was to keep him there to an administrative and
judicial post, in which he would have apparently to sen-
tence others while under sentence himself; but he grew
weary of his banishment, and was permitted to exchange it
for the more complete, but much more agreeable, banishment
from Russia altogether. After visiting Germany and France,
and after witnessing, with deep interest and deeper disappoint-
ment, some of the revolutions of 1848, and writing that they
had failed because their promoters were not prepared to follow
them up with a positive social programme, as if, he says, the
mere destruction of a Bastile were a revolution, he settled in
England, and learnt there, as his son assures us, that revolu-
tion itself was but a vain expedient, and that gradual reform
was the only effectual method of lasting social amelioration.
It was probably while he was learning this lesson it was cer-
tainly entirely in this spirit that he began his political agitation
on the accession of Alexander II. The moment the new Czar
ascended the throne, Herzen addressed to him a famous letter,
demanding amends for the ills his father, Czar Nicholas, had
done the people, a complete breach with the old system, and
the introduction of thoroughgoing Liberal reforms, and more
especially the emancipation of the serfs. It was in the same
spirit he conducted his agitation in the Kolokol. Without
266 Contemporary Socialism.
neglecting to ventilate his socialist and philosophical views,
he welcomed the contemplated reforms as being in themselves
true remedies for popular grievances, and intended in perfect
good faith by the Czar to be so ; and his chief care in all his
criticisms always was to secure that these reforms should be
real and thorough, that the judicial body should be inde-
pendent, the educational arrangements efficient ; above all,
that the peasants should not be deprived, in the emancipation
arrangements, of a foot of the land they then possessed, or
made to pay terms for their emancipation which would be too
heavy for them to meet. And perhaps the most popular and
stirring part of his paper was always his exposure of existing
abuses, and his criticism of the conduct of officials. The
journal was written with wit, vigour, and accurate know-
ledge; and, as it spoke what most men thought, but few
would as yet venture to say, it was greedily read and dis-
tributed, and was for some years a remarkable power in the
country. Herzen was the hero of the young. Herzenism, we
are told, became the rage, and Herzenism appears to have
meant, before all, a free handling of everything in Church or
State which was previously thought too sacred to be touched.
This iconoclastic spirit grew more and more characteristic of
Russian society at this period, and presently, under its influence,
Herzenism fell into the shade, and nihilism occupied the scene.
"We possess various accounts of the meaning and nature of
nihilism, and they all agree substantially in their description
of it. The word was first employed by Turgenieff in his novel
" Fathers and Sons," where Arcadi Petrovitch surprises his
father and uncle by describing his friend Bazaroff as a nihilist.
" A nihilist," said Nicholas Petrovitch. " This word must
come from the Latin nihil, nothing, as far as I can judge, and
consequently it signifies a man who recognises nothing."
'' Or rather who respects nothing," said Paul Petrovitch.
" A man who looks at everything from a critical point of
view," said Arcadi.
" Does not that come to the same thing ? " asked his uncle.
" No, not at all. A nihilist is a man who bows before no
authority, who accepts no principle without examination, no
matter what credit the principle has.' r
Russian Nihilism. 267
" Yes, before we had Hegelians ; now we have nihilists.
We shall see what you will do to exist in nothingness, in a
vacuum, as if under an air pump."
Koscheleff, writing in 1874, gives a similar explanation of
nihilism. " Our disease is a disease of character, and the most
dangerous possible. We suffer from a fatal unbelief in every-
thing. We have ceased to believe in this or in that, not
because we have studied the subject thoroughly and become
convinced of the untenability of our views, but only because
some author or another in Germany or England holds this or
that doctrine to be unfounded. Our nihilism is a thing of a
quite peculiar character. It is not, as in the West, the result
of long falsely directed philosophical studies and ways of think-
ing, nor is it the fruit of an imperfect social organization. It
is an entirely different thing from that. The wind has blown
it to us, and the wind will blow it from us again. Our
nihilists are simply Radicals. Their loud speeches, their fault-
finding, their strong assertions, are grounded on nothing.
They borrow negative views from foreign authors, and repeat
them and magnify them ad nauseam, and treat persons of
another way of thinking as absurd and antiquated people who
continue to cherish exploded ideas and customs. The chief
cause of the spread of this (I will not say doctrine, for I cannot
honour it with such a name, but) sect is this, that it imparts its
communications in secret conversations, so that, for one thing,
it cannot be publicly criticised and refuted, and, for another, it
charms by the fascination of the forbidden."
The same view precisely is given by Baron Fircks (" Schedo
Ferroti ") in his very elaborate and thoughtful account of
nihilism in his VAcenir de la Russie. It was merely, he said,
the critical spirit the spirit of intellectual revolt carried to
an extreme and running amuck against all accepted principles
in religion, in politics, in domestic and social life. It was
a common infirmity of contemporary society, and was in
no way peculiar to Russia ; but while that may be true, it
has undoubtedly as perhaps the Baron would admit been
carried into more extravagant manifestations in Russia than
elsewhere.
Nor are the reasons of this extravagance far to seek. First,
268 Contemporary Socialism.
the Russians are, in national character, singularly impression-
able, volatile, and predisposed to run to extremes. Diderot says
they were rotten before they were ripe. Second, they are mere
children in political experience, and even in intellectual training.
Their education is in general shallow, and they are liable to the
vagaries of the half educated. Third, both Baron Fircks and
Koscheleff think nihilism was largely due to the arbitrary
government of the country. The Czar and the bureaucracy
have themselves had much to do with destroying respect for
law and authority by their capricious habits of administration.
Laws were proclaimed to-day and repealed to-morrow, or
even broken by the very officials engaged in administering
them. Even in the days of Nicholas, Herzen complained
bitterly of this constant inconstancy of the law ; he said the
Russian Government was " infatuated with innovation," that
" nothing was allowed to remain as it was," that " everything
was always being changed," that " a new ministry invariably
began its work by upsetting that of its predecessors." Russia
being a Functionary State, not a Law State, to employ a useful
German distinction, the decrees of officials take the place
elsewhere filled by fixed laws established by legislative
authority ; and where these decrees are continually changing,
reverence for the law is impossible.
But in all this there was no practical political disaffection
before the Emancipation Act. The nihilists had as yet a
vague belief in the Czar and the coming reforms ; they felt
that the Russian people were at lasb to have a chance of
showing the rich genius that lay in them, and their whole
anxiety was to have the people adequately trained for this
great destiny. It was the common talk that the future be-
longed to Russia ; and that she was already beginning to out-
shine all other nations in literature, in art, in science, in music.
" Some young people among us," says Turgenieff, " have dis-
covered even a Russian arithmetic. Two and two do make
four with us as well as elsewhere, but more pompously, it
would seem. All this is nothing but the stammering of men
who are just awaking."
, Under these influences the energies of the nihilists took a
different outlet than plotting. Instead of founding secret
Russian Nihilism. 269
societies, they founded Sunday schools. For to their mind
the first need of the time, above even political liberty, was
popular education. As to liberty, the measure they practically
enjoyed at the gracious pleasure of the Czar for the present
contented them, inasmuch as it seemed an earnest of the better
securities that were expected to follow ; but they could not with
any satisfaction look round them and see the Russian people,
for whom they were prophesying such a great career, still
lying in almost aboriginal ignorance. The stuff was indeed
there which should yet astonish the world, but it must first be
made. To " make the people," as they phrased it, was the
task the nihilists now undertook, and they threw themselves
into it with the zeal of apostles. They put on shabby clothes
to avoid any offensive superiority to their poorer neighbours,
and they wore green spectacles to correct the even more
intolerable inequality of personal beauty, for, as they were fond
of saying, they had put off the old man and were now new
men created again by Buchner and Feuerbach in the gospel of
humanity ; but with all their extravagances they earned on
for some years a most active and no doubt useful work in
the Sunday schools and reading circles which they rapidly
established everywhere.
Although this movement fell eventually under the suspicion
of the Government, as in despotic countries any movement will,
it seems to have had no political, or what the authorities call
" ill-intentioned " purpose. It was pervaded with patriotic and
humanitarian feeling, and though no doubt many of the nihilists
who took part in it held as extreme opinions in politics as they
did in everything else, yet these opinions were mere matters
of speculation. It is certain that democratic and revolutionary
socialism was a very popular doctrine among the nihilists, even
at that earliest period of their history, for their most represen-
tative man during that period was Tchernycheffsky, the editor
of the Contemporary magazine, and a political economist of some
note in his day ; and Tchernycheffsky was undoubtedly a demo-
cratic and revolutionary socialist. He belonged to a younger
generation than Herzen and Bakunin, but, like them, he had
been led to socialism through Hegel and Feuerbach, and he
expounded his ideas in a famous romance entitled, "What is to
270 Contemporary Socialism.
be done ? " which the Government allowed him to write, and
even to publish, while in prison for sedition in 1862, though they
suppressed the book sternly when they saw it beginning to
make a sensation.
But although revolutionary and socialistic principles may
have been very considerably entertained by the nihilists from
the first, there was no practical revolutionary or socialistic
organization before the emancipation of the serfs. Up till then
nihilism may be said to have been a benignant growth, if I may
use a medical expression, and it was that great historical
measure that converted it into the malignant and deadly
trouble which we best know. The Russian Radicals, including
the socialists, were strongly disappointed with that measure
from the outset, because they thought it inflicted serious in-
justice on the peasantry. It deprived them, they said, of much
of the land they had hitherto enjoyed as of right, and which
was necessary for their comfortable subsistence, while it im-
posed on them for what they got excessive dues which their
holdings would never be able to bear; and so the first Land and
Liberty League was founded in 1863. But it was not the
peasants, or the peasants' friends it was the small landed
gentry who were the first to feel the effects of the Emancipa-
tion Act, and to raise the standard of revolt. The Act made a
serious change in their fortunes. Although the landlords were
allowed most liberal terms of compensation for the enforced
emancipation of their serfs, few of them actually received a
kopeck, because they were almost all of them already deeply
indebted to Government, and Government applied the compen-
sation money to cancel their old debts, and gave up the policy
of granting any more mortgages in the future. Then a great
part of the land which was formerly cultivated by means of
the serfs was now found to be too poor to afford the expense of
paid labour ; the landlords had neither stock nor implements to
work it, if it were more fertile, the peasantry having in the old
days tilled tne field for them with their own horses and ploughs ;
nor had they any means of raising the stock on credit, and,
besides, most of them were complete absentees, engaged as
Government or railway officials, or in other professional
work, and knew nothing whatever about the business of
Russian Nihilism. 271
agriculture. The smaller landlords have therefore been com-
pelled to sell their estates to the larger, or to leave much of
their ground entirely uncultivated. In Moscow there were 633
separate estates in 1861, before the emancipation, but only 422
in 1877, and not more than one-fifth of the land that was culti-
vated in that province in 1861 continued in cultivation in 1877.
Many of the sons of the smaller proprietors were at the univer-
sities studying for one of the professions, and had either to give
up their studies altogether for want of means, or were put on
shorter allowances, which was scarcely less annoying, and was
indeed a great cause of revolutionary opinions at the universi-
ties. Many more of the sons of the gentry were in the army,
and the pay of a Russian officer being extremely small, they
had been accustomed to receive allowances from home, without
which, indeed, they could hardly live ; and now in the altered
circumstances of the family these allowances were perforce
suddenly stopped. Much of the revolutionary discontent that
exists in the Russian army to such a serious extent that 200
arrests were made in March, 1885, and Government appointed
a special commission of inquiry into the subject, has come from
this source, and is practically a revolt against insufficient pay.
But what happened at the universities and in the army hap-
pened in other departments of Russian life ; the Emancipation
Act had left on every shore some wreckage of the gentry, an
upper-class and educated proletariat, whose distress might be
due originally to their own improvidence or ignorance, but
was undoubtedly first driven into an acute state by an act
of Government, and therefore clamoured for vengeance on the
Government that produced it.
The clamour of the victims of the Emancipation Act naturally
woke up all the earlier discontents of the country. The Poles
and the dissenting sects, with all their ancient wrongs, seem to
have contributed but a small contingent to the nihilist ranks ;
but the Jews, subject to a barbarous and often very acute per-
secution, have filled the secret societies from the beginning with
many of their most determined members, and have supplied a
great part of the " Nihilistesses " ; and even though the Revo-
lutionary Executive Committes has latterly issued a proclama-
tion against the Jews, mainly on the ground of the extortion
272 Contemporary Socialism.
practised by Jewish money- 1 Anders on the peasantry, there are
still, as appears very abundantly from the nihilist trials of 1890,
many Jews among the revolutionists.
Then there are thirteen millions of native heretics in Russia,
sects of various sorts springing up like the early Quakers from
the bosom of the people, and filled with a rude spirit of freedom
and a tendency towards socialistic ideas in their condemnation
of luxury and accumulation, their hatred of war and military
government, and their belief in fraternity and mutual assist-
ance. Some writers allege that these sects are an important
factor in the revolutionary movement ; but though they cer-
tainly have suffered many wrongs from Government, they do
not seem to have furnished any great quota to the revolution-
ary ranks. They are the freethinkers of the unlettered classes,
however, and their ideas no doubt have some influence in
preparing these classes for socialist principles. But there is
another class very numerous in Russia, who are the natural
allies of revolution the " illegal men " who. for various reasons,
go about on false passports, and are thus living in revolt
already. And to all these diverse sources of disaffection must
be added the aggravation arising at the moment from the
tyrannical and arbitrary measures to which the Government
resorted on the first outburst of complaints.
In 1862, perceiving the discontent raised by the Emancipa-
tion Act, Government took alarm, and withdrew or curtailed
the liberties it had for a few years allowed the people to enjoy.
It stopped some newspapers and warned a number more ; it
prohibited the Sunday schools and reading clubs altogether ;
it banished many persons on mere suspicion to remote
provinces ; and for a greater example it cast the eminent
writer Tchernycheffsky into prison on a charge of exciting the
peasantry to revolt, and after leaving him there without trial
for nearly two years, brought him out at length to a public
square in St. Petersburg, read out to him a sentence of trans-
portation, broke a sword over his head, and sent him to the
Siberian mines for the rest of his life. There he still remains,
broken now both in mind and bod}^ but probably doing more
harm to the Government by his wrongs than he could ever
have done by his pen, for nihilists have for twenty-seven years
Russian Nihilism. 273
been constantly exciting popular sympathy by descriptions
of his martyrdom and demands for his release.
It was while this alienation against the Government was
thickening that Michael Bakunin escaped from Siberia, and
it was by emissaries sent by Bakunin to Russia that the
first successful attempt was made to incite and organize all
these revolutionary materials into a revolutionary movement.
When Bakunin came back in 1862 and joined Herzen in
London, the two old friends found their ideas had parted far
asunder during their long separation. Herzen had, from his
twelve years' observation of affairs, broadened from revolutionist
to statesman, and had no patience now for the extravagance
of the young Russian patriots who visited him in London.
" Our black earth," he would say, " needs a deal of draining."
And there is a remarkable letter which he wrote shortly before
his death, and apparently to Bakunin himself, in which he
says :
" I will own that one day, surrounded by dead bodies,
by houses destroyed with balls and bullets, and listening
feverishly as prisoners were being shot down, I called with
my whole heart and intelligence upon the savage force of
vengeance to destroy the old criminal world, without thinking
much of what was to come in its place. Since that time
twenty years have gone by; the vengeance has come, but it
has come from the other side, and it is the people who have
borne it, because they comprehended nothing either then or
since. A long and painful interval has given time for passions
to calm, for thoughts to deepen ; it has given the necessary
time for reflection and observation. Neither you nor I have
betrayed our convictions ; but we see the question now from a
different point of view. You rush ahead, as you did before,
with a passion of destruction, which you take for a creative
passion ; you crush every obstacle ; you respect history only in
the future. As for me, on the contrary, I have no faith in the
old revolutionary methods, and I try to comprehend the march
of men in the past and in the present, to know how to
advance with them without falling behind, but without going
on so far before as you, for they would not follow me they
could not follow me ! "
T
274 Contemporary Socialism.
Herzen gradually lost hold over the wilder forces in Russia,
lie was even openly denounced as a reactionary by the revolu-
tionist Dolgourouki ; and when he alienatad the more moderate
parties likewise by his support of the Polish insurrection of
1863, his spell vanished, and during the remaining seven
years of his life his influence was of little account.
Bakunin was more in unison with the troubled spirit of the
times. While Herzen had been ripening in political wisdom
under the ampler intellectual life to which his exile intro-
duced him, Bakunin's twelve years' confinement had maddened
him into a fanatic, and instead of curing him of revolutionary
propensities, only fixed the idea of revolution in his mind like
a mania. When he came to London a huge, haggard man,
always excited, always talking, he used to speak of himself as
a Prometheus unbound, and he was to live henceforth for the
undoing of the powers and systems that were. He was never
found without a group of conspirators and refugees of all
shades and nationalities about him. With some reminiscences
of socialistic philosophy remaining in the background of his
mind, his only real interest now was revolution, and he seemed
always thenceforth to look on his socialism as a means of revo-
lution rather than on revolution as a means to socialism. His
socialism itself had grown less sane it was no longer the
anarchism of the old da3 7 s : it was what he called " amorphism ? '
society not merely without governmental institutions, but
without institutions of any kind ; and he was domineered by
the thought of a universal revolution, in which all States
and Churches and all institutions religious, political, judicial,
financial, academical, and social should perish in a common
destruction. " Amorphism " and ; ' Pan-destruction " are not
articles of a rational creed, but they were propagated with
almost preternatural energy by Bakunin. The \vork of exciting
revolution and disorder of any kind was the main business of
his life till he died in 1876. Others might play a waiting game,
but for him the work of the revolutionist was revolution ; and
he ought to be incessantly promoting it, not by word only,
but by deed, by an unremitting terrorism, by shooting a
policeman when you can't reach a king, and destroying a
Bastile if you cannot overturn an empire. In his " Revolu-
Russian Nihilism. 275
tiouary Catechism," written in cipher, but read by the public
prosecutor at a Russian nihilist trial in 1871, he says (I quote
the passage from M. de Laveleye) :
" The revolutionist is a man under a vow. He ought to
have no personal interests, no business, no sentiments, no
property. He ought to occupy himself entirely with one
exclusive interest, with one thought and one passion : the
E-svol ution. . . . He has only one aim, one science :
destruction. For that and nothing but that he studied
mechanics, physics, chemistry, and medicine. He observes
with the same object, the men, the characters, the positions
and all the conditions of the social order. He despises and
hates existing morality. For him everything is moral that
favours the triumph of the Revolution. Everything is im-
moral and criminal that hinders it. ... Between him
and society there is war to the death, incessant, irreconcilable,
He ought to be prepared to die, to bear torture, and to kill
with his own hands all who obstruct the revolution. So much
the worse for him if he has in this world any ties of parentage,
friendship, or love ! He is not a true revolutionist if these
attachments stay his arm. In the meantime he ought to live
in the middle of society, feigning to be what he is not. He
ought to penetrate everywhere, among high and low alike ;
into the merchant's office, into gthe church, into the Govern-
ment bureaux, into the army, into the literary world, into the
secret police, and even into the Imperial Palace. . . . He
must make a list of those who are condemned to death, and
expedite their sentence according to the order of their relative
iniquities. ... A new member can only be received into
the association by a unanimous vote, and after giving proofs
of his merit not in word but in action. Every ' companion '
ought to have under his hand several revolutionists of the second
or third degree, not entirely initiated. He ought to consider
them part of the revolutionary capital placed at his disposal,
and he ought to use them economically, and so as to extract
the greatest possible profit out of them, . . . The most
precious element of all are women, completely initiated, and
accepting our entire programme. Without their help we can
do nothing."
276 Contemporary Socialism.
Bakunin naturally turned his first attention to his own
country, and the subsequent development of Russian affairs
show sufficiently distinct signs of his ideas and influence.
In 1865 he sent a young medical student named Netchai'eff
to Moscow, to work among the students there, and Netcha'ieff
had, by 1869, established a number of secret societies, which he
linked together under the name of the Russian Branch of the
International "Working Men's Association. This organization
was not very numerous no Russian secret society is but in
1873 as many as eighty-seven persons were brought to trial for
connection with it, and in 1866 one of its members, a working
man called Karakasoff, who was suffering from an incurable
disease, made the first attempt on the life of the Czar an
event which had most important effects on the course of
Russian politics. It rang out the era of reform, and rang in
the era of reaction. The popular concessions which the Czar
had already given he now began to withdraw. The people
had never got, as they expected, an independent judiciary
perhaps in an autocratic country a judiciary independent of
the executive is hardly possible but they had enjoyed some
pretence of public trial, and now that pretence was done away,
and Karakasoff and his companions were not brought before
the court at all, but tried and condemned by an extraordinary
commission, with a military^ officer of approved ferocity at
its head. Administrative trial and administrative condem-
nation became again the regular rule in Russia ; and though
these things were borne in the days of Nicholas as almost
matters of course, they were now deeply resented as fresh
invasions of right and direct breaches of imperial promises.
Then the bodies to which a certain amount of the local govern-
ment of the country, the management of roads, schools, poor,
health, etc., had been entrusted, were obstructed in the exercise
of their powers, or gradually deprived of their powers altogether,
and forced into complete dependence on the imperial executive.
The students at the universities began to be interfered with in
their sick and benefit societies and their reading circles ; their
studies in the class-rooms were restricted to what was thought
a safe routine ; and even their private lives and motions were
watched with an exasperating espionage. People felt the hand
Russian Nihilism. 277
of the despot pressing back upon them everywhere, and they
felt it with a most natural and righteous recoil. This reac-
tionary policy, which has continued ever since this return to
the hated old methods of arbitrary and repressive rule
produced, as was inevitable, deep and general discontent at
the very moment when the great historical measure of serf
emancipation was desolating the families of the landed gentry,
province after province ; and when the execution of the Emanci-
pation Act was completed in 1870, Russian society was already
quivering with dangerous elements of revolt.
From that time evidences of an active revolutionary propa-
ganda multiplied rapidly every year. In 1871 and 1872 the
writings of the German socialists were translated and ran
into great favour. Even of Marx's far from popular work,
" Capital," a large edition was eagerly bought up, and ladies
of position baptized their children in the name of Lassalle.
Secret societies were discovered both north and south. From
1873 to 1877 nihilist arrests, nihilist prosecutions, nihilist con-
flicts with the police, were the order of the day, till at length,
in 1878, the young girl, Vera Sassulitch, fired the shot at the
head of the Russian police which began that long vendetta
between the revolutionists and the executive, in which so many
officials perished, and eventually, in 1881, after many un-
successful attempts, the Czar himself was so cruelly assassinated.
The ardent youth of Russia, who, in 1861, were still giving
themselves to the work of Sunday schools and reading circles,
were, in 1871, throwing their careers away to go out, like the
first apostles, without scrip or two coats, and propagate among
the rude people of the provinces the doctrines of modern revolu-
tionary socialism, and by 1881 had become absorbed in sheer
terrorism, in avenging the official murder of comrades without
trial by the revolutionary murder of officials, in contriving
infernal plots and explosions, and trying vainly to cast out
devils by the prince of devils.
Stepniak attributes the impetus which the socialist agita-
tion received in 1871 to the impression produced in Russia by
the Paris Commune ; but it would perhaps be more correct
simply to ascribe it to the exertions of two active Russian
revolutionists, who were themselves associated with the Com-
278 Contemporary Socialism.
munard movement, and who happened to enjoy at this period
unusual facilities of communication with the younger mind of
Russia. One was Bakunin, who had himself organized an
insurrection at Lyons on the principles of the Commune six
months before the outbreak at Paris in March, 1871 ; and the
other was Peter Lavroff, the present Nestor of Russian nihilism,
who actually took part in the Paris Commune itself. Lavroff,
who had been a colonel in the Russian army, and professor in
the military college of St. Petersburg, was compromised in the
attempt of Karakasoff in 1866 and administratively banished
to Archangel ; but, as happens so singularly often in Russia, he
escaped in 1869, and lived to edit a revolutionary journal in
Zurich, and play for a time no inconsiderable part in making
trouble in Russia. At present, communications between the
active revolutionists who are at work in Russia and their
predecessors who have withdrawn to "Western Europe are
entirely interrupted ; but they were still abundant twenty
years ago. Partly in consequence of the reactionary educa-
tional policy of the Government, young Russians nocked at that
tame to Switzerland for their education, and were there con-
veniently indoctrinated into the new gospel of the Inter-
national. Bakunin and Lavroff were both in Zurich, and in
the year 1872 there were 239 Russian students, male and
female, in Zurich alone. These young people were, of course,
in continual intercourse with the older refugees. Bakunin and
Lavroff both held stated and formal lectures on socialism and
revolution, which were always succeeded by open and animated
discussions of the subject treated in them. A little later there
were, according to Professor Thun, four distinct groups among
the Russian revolutionists in Zurich, some of them caused by
personal quarrels. But from the first there were always two,
one of whom swore by Bakunin, and the other by Lavroff.
Bakunin was an anarchist an " amorphist " even, as we
have seen and he believed in the propaganda of deeds.
Every little village, he thought, should make its own revolu-
tion ; and if it could not make a revolution, it might always be
making a riot, or an explosion, or a fire, or an assassination of
some official, or something else to raise panic or confusion.
All this seemed to Lavroff and his friends to be unmitigated
Russian Nihilism. 279
folly. They too believed in revolution ; but in their view re-
volution, to be successful, must be organized and simultaneous ;
it must, above all, first have the peasantry on its side ; and
therefore, instead of the mad and premature propaganda of
deed, the true policy for the present was manifestly " going into
the people," as they termed it that is, an itinerant mission
to indoctrinate the people into the faith of the coming revo-
lution. Then, again, Lavroff, though, like almost all Russian
revolutionists, an anarchist, was not, like most of them, pre-
pared to dispense all at once with the State. He thought the
new society would eventually be able to do without any central
authority, but not at first, nor for a considerable time, the
length of which could not now be more precisely determined.
In this Lavroff and his party stood much nearer the Social
Democrats of Germany than other Russian nihilists, and they
hava come nearer still since then, They have cast off the
Russian commune, of which the early nihilists made so great
an idol. They see that it is an old-world institution doomed
to dissolution, and rapidly undergoing the process.
The two tendencies diverging both in principle and in tac-i
tics appeared in Russia as well as Zurich. At first the more
peaceful method prevailed. Lavroff's idea of '' going into the
people " was the enthusiasm of the hour, and brought upon the
scene the typical nihilist missionary the young man of good
birth who laid down station and prospects, learnt a manual
trade, browned his hands with tar and his face by smearing it
with butter and lying in the sun, put on the peasant's sheep-
skin, and then, with a forged pass, procured at the secret nihilist
pass factory, and a few forbidden books in his wallet, set off
" without road " to be a peasant with peasants, if by any
means he could win them over to the cause ; and the still more
remarkable young woman who went through a marriage cere-
mony to obtain the right of independent action, and the moment
the ceremony was over, left father and mother and husband
and all in order to work among the peasants of the Volga as a
teacher or nurse, and live on milk and groats according to
Tchernycheffsky's prescription in " What is to be Done ? "
Stepniak justly remarks that " the type of propagandist of the
first lustre of 1870-80 was religious rather than revolutionary.
2 So Contemporary Socialism.
His hope was socialism, his God the people. Notwithstanding
all the evidence to the contrary, he firmly believed that from
one day to the other the revolution was about to break out, as
in the middle ages people believed at certain periods in the
approach of the day of judgment." (" Underground Russia,"
p. 30.)
For some years these ascetic devotees might be found in
every corner of Irjad Russia, working as shoemakers or
joiners most of them (why these were the favourite trades does
not appear), or as hawkers of images or tea, or, perhaps, like
Prince Krapotkin, as painters. Some of them went as horse-
dealers, from a dreamy idea that the horses might prove use-
ful in the day of revolution. They all belonged to one or
other of the secret societies which, as we have seen, began
to spring up about 1863, and grew numerous in the next ten or
fifteen years. None of these societies, however, was of any
great importance. Professor Thun mentions four varieties of
them. First, the Malikowsy, a handful of apparently harmless
and amiable enthusiasts a kind of Russian Quakers who
believed in one Malikov, and called themselves " God-men/'
because they held every man had a " divine spark " in him, and
was therefore every other man's equal and brother. Second,
the Bakunists, who adopted Bakunin's programme of "deeds,"
but did not, till 1875, think of putting it to practice, Third,
the Lavrists, who sent the money to print LavrofFs newspaper in
Zurich, the EnAvant, and who seem to have gradually imbibed
German socialism to the extent of thinking the Russian com-
mune a reactionary and decaying institution not worth stirring
a finger to preserve, and who called for the nationalization of
land and capital. And fourth, much the most important
society, the Tchaikowskists, founded in 1869 by one Tchaikow-
ski, who is now a teacher in London, but was then a student at
St. Petersburg. Prince Krapotkin belonged to this society,
and so did Sophia Perowskaia. It was at first a convivial
and mutual improvement club, but from discussing forbidden
subjects and circulating among its members forbidden books it
grew into natural antagonism to Government, and became a
focus of revolutionary agitation. Most of the 193 socialists
who were tried in 1874-7 belonged to it, and that protracted
Russian Nihilism. 281
trial killed the society and put an end to the mission " into the
people."
Government had marked the new propaganda with great
jealousy. In Russia, no propaganda among the peasants can
remain unobserved. "When a stranger arrives at a Russian
village, he is immediately the common talk, whatever he
says passes from mouth to mouth, and he may even be invited to
state his views publicly in the mir. A mission conducted under
these conditions soon attracted the notice of the authorities, who,
in 1874, discovered it in thirty-seven different provinces of
Russia, and arrested as many as 774 of the propagandists.
Some of these were at once banished administratively to
Siberia, and of the rest, 193 were, four years afterwards, brought
up for trial and condemned. With these apprehensions the
nihilist movement collapsed for the moment. Thun states
that Lavroffs newspaper during that period adopted a tone of
despair, and the revolutionists who escaped arrest recognised
very clearly that their scheme of " going into the people " was
a complete mistake, and that some safer and more effective
system of tactics must be concocted. They fell upon two
different expedients. The first was the plan of nihilist coloni-
zation. To avoid detection by the authorities, a band of
revolutionists settled down in a given district in a body, got
personally acquainted with the peasantry about them, and then,
after acquiring a sufficient knowledge of their characters, pro-
ceeded with due prudence to impart their ideas to those who
seemed most trustworthy, hoping in this way to be able, un-
observed, eventually to leaven the whole lump. The other
plan they now resorted to was an approach to the tactics of
Bakunin, and in the very year, 1876, in which that old revolu-
tionist died, they began a series of socialist demonstrations at
Odessa, Kasan, and elsewhere, which made a little local sensa-
tion at the time. This was the very opposite kind of tactics to
the cautious system of colonization that was pursued simulta-
neously with it, but there is always in revolutionary organiza-
tion only a step between reticence and rashness. Open demon-
strations like those practised at that period were simply suicidal
folly in Russia, where the forces of the Government were so
immeasurably superior to the forces of the demonstrationists.
282 Contemporary Socialism.
In 1878 they changed tactics again, inaugurating that
system of terrorism by which they are best known in the
West, and which has given them a name there at which the
world turns pale. The determination to adopt this system of
tactics sprang from an accidental circumstance. The day after
the trial of the 193 ended, one of their comrades, the young
woman Vera Sassulitch, called on General Trepoff, the head
of the St. Petersburg police, on pretence of business, and while
he was reading her papers, shot him with a revolver, flung
her weapon on the ground, and allowed herself to be quietly
arrested ; and when she was brought up for trial, pled justifica-
tion on the ground that her act was merely retaliation on the
General for having subjected a friend of hers, a young medical
student, to a brutal and causeless flogging while in prison on
a political charge. The court having acquitted her, she was
received by the public with every demonstration of enthusiasm,
and it was this remarkable public sympathy that made the
revolutionaries terrorists. They resolved to take up V. Sassu-
litch's idea of retaliation, and apply it on a great scale. The
whole public of Russia was at that time considerably flushed
with indignation against the imperial Government. The war
in Turkey had revealed, as wars always do, a great deal of
rottenness in the public administration ; it had brought nothing
but humiliation and debt upon the country, and it had exacted
cruel sacrifices from the people merely to confer on the Bul-
garians the political and constitutional liberty which was still
denied to the Russians themselves. For the moment the old
cry for a constitution rose again in St. Petersburg and Moscow,
and there was a deep feeling far beyond the circles of the revo-
lutionists that an end should be put to the autocratic regime.
The revolutionists found powerful encouragement in all this
outbreak of displeasure. Stepniak, who was himself one of the
most active of them at that period, says their real strength lay,
not in their numbers which he admits to have been few but
in the general sympathy they received from what he calls the
revolutionary nation around them. They had however special
wrongs of their own to avenge ; hundreds of their friends had
been transported without trial ; and in the case of the 193,
whose trial was just over, the few who had been acquitted were
Russian Nihilism. 283
nevertheless denied their liberty by the Czar, and banished
administratively to Siberia after all ; so that while Russian
society was clamouring on public grounds for the downfall
of the autocratic system, the revolutionists, for revenge, deter-
mined upon the death of the autocrat himself. The various
secret societies had united into a single body, called first
the "Troglodytes," and then "Land and Liberty," for the
better prosecution of the nihilist colonization scheme ; but in
1879 they broke again into two parties, one of which, the Will
of the People party, adopted terrorism as its exclusive busi-
ness for the time, issued, through its famous executive com-
mittee, sentences of death on the Czar and the State officials ;
and after making ten attempts on high officials, five of them
fatal, and four attempts on the Czar himself, finally succeeded
in their fifth on the 13th of March, 1881. "With this party the
political side of their programme overshadowed the socialistic,
and their first demand from the new Czar was for a consti-
tution.
The other party the party of the Black Division is an
agrarian party, living on the growing discontent of the
peasantry, and nursing their cry for what in Russia is known
as the Black Division. It is an old belief among the Russian
people that when the land possessed at any time by the com-
munes should become too small for the increasing population of
the communes, there would be a new division of all the land ot
the country, including, of course, the great estates now owned
by the noblesse, so that every inhabitant might be once more
accommodated with his proper share of the soil. This great
secular redistribution is the black division, and it belongs as
naturally to the Russian peasants' system of agrarian ideas as
the little local and periodical divisions that take place within
the communes themselves. The Black Division section of the
revolutionists are terrorist in their methods like the other
section, but they care nothing about a constitution, which they
say is only a demand of the bourgeoisie, but of no interest or
good to the peasant at all. They have the old aversion to
centralized government, which we have seen to be almost the
tradition of Russian revolutionists ; they are all for strengthen-
ing the communes, and for a light federal connection : and
284 Contemporary Socialism.
of all phases of the Russian revolutionary movement under
the reign of the present Czar theirs is the most important,
because it is founding itself on real and deepening rural dis-
content, and becoming substantially a peasants' cry for more
land and less rent and taxes.
I have already referred to the astonishing growth of a
Russian proletariat since the Emancipation Act. Professor
Janson, an eminent Russian statistician, calculated that as
many as a fourth of the people of St. Petersburg 229,000 out
of 876,000 got public relief in the year 1884. Stepniak, in
his recent work on the Russian peasantry, asserts that a third
of the rural population, or 20,000,000 souls in all, are in the
condition of absolute proletarians, and his account of the
situation is entirely supported by the descriptions of a com-
petent and unprejudiced German economist, Professor Al-
phonse Thun, who speaks partly from the results of official
inquiries instituted by the Russian Government into the
subject, and partly from his own personal observation during
a continuous residence of two years in the country. As the
subject is of importance to the student of socialistic institutions
as well as of the nihilist movement, I shall make no apology
for devoting some observations to its explanation.
In the first place, though it has never been well understood
in Western Europe, some ten per cent, of the Russian rural
population have no legal claim to a share of the land at all ;
these are old men who are past working, widows with children
too young to be able to work, and men who at the time of
the Emancipation were personal servants of the great land-
owners, and consequently not members of any village com-
mune. Men of this last class may reside in a village, and may
keep a shop or practise a trade there ; but not being born
villagers, they possess no right to participate in the distribution
of the village land. They are as much outside the commun-
istic system as the nobles or the foreign residents. Russian
citizenship alone is not enough to give a right to the land ;
local birth in a commune is also an essential pre-requisite, and
ability to work is another. A family gets one share for every
able-bodied member it contains ; the share is therefore called
a " soul " of land ; and although between one distribution and
Russian Nihilism. 285
another the widow may still retain the "soul " that belonged
to her husband, and hire a hand to work it, yet on the next
redistribution she must give it up unless she has a son who
in the meantime has grown to man's estate. The landless
widow and orphan must have been an occasional incident of
the Russian village system from all times ; but the incursion
of dismissed domestic menials with no birthright in the com-
mune has arisen only in recent years, when, in consequence of
a conspiracy of causes, so many of the nobility have been
obliged to reduce their establishments.
In the next place, a communistic tenure which gives every
new comer a right to share in the land of his native village
on an equal footing with those who are already in possession
could hardly fail to lead to excessive subdivision, and in Russia
at this moment scarce one family in a hundred has land
enough to furnish its maintenance for half the year. The
usual size of holding is ten acres, of which cultivated as they
are on the old three-field system one third is always fallow,
and the remainder, in consequence of the rude method of agri-
culture that prevails, yields only two, or at most three, returns
of the seed. They have no pasture, because at the time
of the emancipation they preferred to take out their whole
claim in arable ; and, having no pasture, they cannot keep
cattle as they formerly did because they cannot get manure.
According to the information of Professor Thun, in 1872 8 per
cent, of the families had no cow, and 4 per cent, no horse ; and
Stepniak says the inventory of horses taken for military pur-
poses in 1882 showed that one-fourth of the peasant families had
then no horse. Russia is, in fact, a vast continent of crofters,
practising primitive husbandry on mere " cat's-plots " of laud,
and depending for the greater part of their subsistence on
some auxiliary trade. In one respect they have the advantage
over our Scotch crofters ; they practise, in many cases, skilled
trades. Of course they work as ploughmen or fishermen when
that sort of work is wanted, or they will hire a piece of waste
land from a neighbouring owner and bring it into rude culti-
vation ; but every variety of craft is to be found among them.
They are weavers, hatters, cabinet-makers, workers in metals;
they make shoes, or images, or candles, or musical instruments,
286 Contemporary Socialism.
or grindstones ; they dress furs, they knit lace, they train
singing-birds. According to the official inquiry, most of the
goods of some of the best commercial houses of Moscow,
trading in Parisian silk hats and Viennese furniture, are
manufactured by these peasants in their rural villages. A
curious and very remarkable characteristic is mentioned by
Thun : not only has every Russian his bye-industry, but every
village has a different bye-industry from its neighbour. One
is a village of coopers a very thriving trade, it appears ;
another a village of tailors a declining one, in consequence
of the competition of ready-made stuff from the towns ; another
and there are several such may be a village of beggars,
with mendicity for their second staff ; and another a village of
seamen, going in a body in spring to the Baltic or the Volga,
and leaving only their women and children to tend the farm
till their return in the autumn. The Russians always work in
artels whether at home or abroad, and to work in artels they
must of course follow the same industry. Their individual
earnings in their auxiliary occupations are comparatively good ;
they make three-fourths of their annual income from that
source ; but it seems every trade is now overcrowded, and
there is some difficulty in obtaining constant employment.
Then the burdens of the peasantry are very heavy. In
Russia the superior classes enjoy many exemptions from taxa-
tion, and the public revenue is taken mainly from the peasant
classes. The annual redemption money they have to pay to
the State for their land is a most serious obligation, and
between one thing and another the burdens on the land in a
vast number of cases exceed its net return very considerably.
Professor Thun states, that in 2,009 cases of letting holdings
which had occurred in the province of Moscow at the time he
wrote, the average rent received was only 3 roubles 56 kopecks
per " soul " (land-share), while the average taxation was 10
roubles 30 kopecks. Stepniak says that in the thirty-seven
provinces of European Russia the class who were formerly
State peasants pay in taxes of every description no less than
92'75 per cent, of the average net produce of their land ; and
that the class who were formerly serfs of private owners pay
as much as 192'25per cent, of the net produce of theirs. Land-
Russian Nihilism, 287
owning on these terms is manifestly a questionable privilege,
and the moujik pays his land taxes as the Scotch crofter has
sometimes to pay his rent, not out of the produce of his hold-
ing, but out of the wages of his auxiliary labour ; but the
Scotch crofter, under his system of individual tenure, has one
great resource which is wanting to the other : he can always
cut the knot of his troubles by throwing up his holding, if he
chooses, and emigrating. To the Russian peasant emigration
brings no relief. He is born a proprietor, and cannot escape
the obligation of his position wherever he may go. He may
try to let his ground and in many cases he does but, as we
see, he cannot often get enough rent to meet the dues. He
may leave his village, if he will, but his village liabilities travel
with him wherever he may settle. He cannot obtain work
anywhere in Russia without showing his pass from his own
commune ; and since, under the principle of joint liability that
rules in the communistic system, the members of the commune
who remain at home would have to pay the emigrant's arrears
if he failed to pay them himself, they are not likely to renew
the pass to a defaulter. The Russian peasants are thus nearly
as much adstricti glebce as they ever were ; they are now under
the power of the commune as completely as they were before
under the power of their masters ; and their difficulty is still
how they can possibly obtain emancipation. Sometimes they
will defy the commune, forego the advantage of a lawful
pass, crowd the ranks of that large body in Russia who are
known as the " illegal men," and sometimes, we are assured
by Professor Thun, a whole village, every man and every
family, will secretly disappear in a body and seek refuge from
the tax-collector by settling in the steppes. The natural right
of every man to the land is thus, in the principal country
where any attempt is made to realize it, nothing but a harass-
ing pecuniarjr debt.
Now this class of worse than landless emigrants men who
carry their land as a perpetual burden on their back from
which they can get no respite is already very numerous in
Russia. Thun says there are millions of them. As far back as
1872, nearly half the town population of Moscow and more
than a fifth of the population of the landward district were
288 Contemporary Socialism.
strangers, who were inscribed members of rural communes
elsewhere ; and in many purely country districts some 14 per
cent, of the people have no houses because they are not living
in the villages they belong to. Sir Robert Morier says in his
report to the Foreign Office in September, 1887, on Pauperism
in Russia (p. 2) : " It is officially stated that in each of the
larger provinces, such as Kursk, Tambow, Kostroma, etc., over
100,000 peasants have abandoned the plot of ground granted
to them (8 acres) on one pretext or another in order to seek
means of subsistence elsewhere, (This probably means flock-
ing to the larger towns.) The number of beggars in 71
Governments was stated to be 300,000, of which 182,000 were
peasant proprietors. This number is, however, far below the
mark." But, as we learn from Stepniak, the bulk of the land-
less peasants, i.e. those who no longer cultivate their holdings,
do not leave their native villages, but seek employment as
hirelings in the village itself or in its neighbourhood, and
wander as day labourers from one master to another. Their
families continue to live in their old cottage in the village,
and the father returns to it when out of employment.
Their land is generally taken by a class of small usurers
(koulaks} who have grown up in every Russian village since
the emancipation. These koulaks are in most cases fellow-
peasants who have saved some money, but they are frequently
strangers who have come and opened a store in the place, and
have no right of their own to a share in the land and in the
councils of the village. Stepniak mentions one province where
as much as from 24 to 36 per cent, of the land is concentrated
into the hands of these rich usurers. Even the peasants who
still retain their land in their own hands are often deeply
indebted to them, and in some cases part with bits of their
land without parting with all ; and the general tendency of
the present economic situation is to divide the peasantry of
every village into a class of comparatively rich peasants, on the
one hand, holding and cultivating most of the land, and a
larger class of rural proletarians, without land and having
nothing to live by but their manual trade. The tendency, in
short, is towards the break-up of the communal tenure, and
instead of the Russian Commune invading Europe, as Cavour
Russian Nihilism, 289
once said there was fear it would do, we are likely to see the
individual tenure of Western Europe invading Russia and
superseding primitive rural institutions in that country, as it
has already superseded them in others. " It is quite evident,"
says Stepniak, " that Russia is marching in this direction. If
nothing happens to check or hinder the process of interior dis-
integration in our villages, in another generation we shall have
on one side an agricultural proletariat of sixty or seventy
millions, and on the other a few thousand landlords, mostly
former koulaks and mir-eaters, in possession of all the land." It
is legally permissible at present for a Russian commune, if it so
choose, to abolish its communal system of property and adopt
individual property instead of it ; and although this has been
very seldom done as yet, we are told by Thun that the rich
peasants and the very poor peasants are both strongly in favour
of the step, because it would give the one permanent ownership
of the land and the other permanent relief from its burdens.
When a commune gets divided in this way into a rich class of
members and a poor class, the old brotherliness and mutual
helpfulness of the Russian village are said by the same
authority always to disappear and a more selfish spirit to take
their place ; but then it should be remembered how much
easier it is to assist a neighbour out of a little difficulty of the
way than to meet the unremitting claims of a class that have
sunk into permanent poverty. Anyhow, the temptation is
equally strong on both parties to escape from the worries of
their present situation through the rich buying out the poor.
Another tendency working in the same direction is the rapid
dissolution of the old system of large house-communities that
prevailed before the emancipation. The average household
has been reduced from seven and a half to five souls, the
married children setting up houses of their own instead of
dwelling under one roof with their father and grandfather.
The house is a mere hut, with no furniture but a table and a
wooden bench used by night for a bed, but still the separate
menage has increased to an embarrassing extent the expenses of
the peasant's living at the very time that other circumstances
have reduced his resources. The reason for the break-up of
the house-communities has been the desire to escape partly
u
2 go Contemporary Socialism.
from the tyranny of the head of the household, but chiefly
from the incessant quarrels that prevailed between the several
members about the amount they each contributed to the
common funds as compared with the amount they ate and
drank out of them. One of the brothers goes to St. Petersburg
during the winter months as a cabman and brings back a
hundred roubles, while another gets work as a forester near
home, and earns no more than twenty-five. Now, according
to an author quoted by Stepniak, who is describing a family
among whom he has lived, the question always is : " Why
should he (the forester) consume with such avidity the tea
and sugar dearly purchased with the cabman's money ? And
in general, why should this tea be absorbed with such greedi-
ness by all the numerous members of the household by the
elder brother, for instance, who alone drank something like
eighty cups a day (the whole family consumed about nine
hundred cups per diem) whilst he did not move a finger
towards earning all this tea and sugar ? Whilst the cabman
was freezing in the cold night air. or busying himself with
some drunken passenger, or was being abused and beaten by a
policeman on duty near some theatre, this elder brother was
comfortably stretched upon his belly, on the warm family
oven, pouring out some nonsense about twenty-seven bears
whom he had seen rambling through the country with their
whelps in search of new land for settlement." And so the
quarrel goes round ; always the old difficulty of meum and
tmim, so hard to reconcile except under a regime of individual
property.
In fact, the shifts to which the Russian peasantry, like
other peasantries elsewhere, have been reduced to solve this
difficulty in the management of their common land constitute
one main cause of their agricultural backwardness and their
consequent poverty. Elisee Reclus calculates that if the
Russian fields were cultivated like those of Great Britain,
Russia could produce, instead of six hundred and fifty million
hectolitres of corn annually, about five milliards, which would
be sufficient to feed a population of five hundred million souls.
A few lessons in good husbandry will do much more for the
comfort of a people than many changes of social organization ;
Russian Nihilism. 291
but good husbandry is virtually impossible under a sj^stem of
unstable tenure, which turns a man necessarily out of his hold-
ing every few years for the purpose of a new distribution of
the land, and which compels him to take his holding, when he
gets it, in some thirty or forty scattered plots. Redistributions,
it is true, do not occur so very frequently as we might suppose.
As Russian land is all cultivated on a three years' rotation, one
might be apt to look for a new distribution every three years,
but that almost never occurs. Thun states that in the province
of Moscow during the twenty years 1858-1878 the average
interval of distribution was 12^ years, four rotations ; that 49
per cent, of the communes had a distribution only once in 15
years, and 37 per cent, only once in 20 years. The dislike to
frequent distributions is growing, on the obvious and very
reasonable ground that they either discourage a man from
doing well by his land, or they inflict on him the grave in-
justice of depriving him of the ground he has himself improved
before he has reaped from it the due reward of his labour.
The tendency towards individual property is therefore strongly
at work here, and as this system of periodical redistribution is
established merely to give every man that natural right by
virtue of his birth to a share in the land, which is now in so
many cases such a delusive irony, the resistance to the new
tendency cannot be expected to be very resolute. The runrig
system of cultivation, which prevails in Russia in the same
form as it did in the Highlands of Scotland, does not give any
similar appearance of decay. Stepniak says the peasants still
prefer that arrangement because it allows room for perfect
fairness perfect reconciliation of the meum and tuum in the
distribution of their most precious commodity, the land, which
alwaj^s presents great variety as to quality of soil and situation
with respect to roads, water, the village, etc. Under a com-
munal system with many members this method of arrange-
ment is almost indispensable to avoid quarrels and prevent the
indolent from shirking their proper share of the work, but its
agricultural disadvantages are so great that it never long resists
an improving husbandry. Although an owner, the Russian
peasant, in consequence of the shifting nature of his subject, is
said by Stepniak to have none of that passionate feeling of
292 Contemporary Socialism.
ownership and that profound delight in his land which are
characteristic of the peasant proprietors of the West, but
he has what is really the same thing a deep sense of
personal dignity from its possession, and he feels himself
to have lost caste if he is forced to give up his holding and
become a mere batrak, or wage labourer. All the pride of
ownership is already there, and in the changes of the imme-
diate future it will have plenty of opportunity for asserting
its place.
Under the pressure of this singular economic movement, the
nihilist agitation is now developing largely into a peasants' cry
for more land and less rent and taxes. As I have said, the
Russian peasantry look for the great black division once in an
age. The u Old Believers " mix this idea up with their dreams
of a great millennial reign, and keep on thinking that the day
after to-morrow is to bring in the happy period before the
end of the world, when truth is to prevail and the land is to
be equally divided among all ; and a feeling easily gets about
among the peasantry generally that the " black division " is at
last coming. Such a feeling was very widespread during the
reign of the late Czar, and, indeed, is still so. Rumours fly
every now- and then from hamlet to hamlet like wildfire, no
one knows whence or how, that the division is to be made in a
month, or a week, or a year ; that the Czar has decreed it, and
when it does not come, that the Czar's wishes have for the time
been thwarted, as they had so often been thwarted before, by
the selfish machinations of the nobility. For the peasant has
a profound and touching belief in his Czar. There may be
agrarian socialism in his creed, but it is not the agrarian
socialism of the schools. The first article of his faith and it
would appear to be the natural faith of the peasant all the
world over is that the earth is the Lord's and not the nobi-
lity's ; but his second is that the Czar is the Lord's steward,
sent for the very purpose of dividing the land justly among
his people. If the peasant hopes for the black division, he
hopes for it from the Czar. The Emancipation Act has been
far from giving him the land or the liberty he looked for, but
he believes and nothing will shake him out of the belief
that the Emancipation Law which the Czar actually decreed
Russian Nihilism. 293
was a righteous law that would have met all the people's
wishes and claims, but that this law has been altered seriously
to their disadvantage, under the influence of the nobility, in
the process of carrying it into execution. But his confidence
always is that the Czar will still interfere and put everything
to rights. And when, only a few years ago, the revolutionist
Stephanovitch stirred up some disturbances in Southern Russia,
which were commonly dignified at the time with the name of
a peasants' insurrection, he was only able to succeed in doing
what he did by first going to St. Petersburg with a petition
from the peasants of the district to the Czar, and then issuing
on his return a false proclamation in the Czar's name, com-
manding the people to rise against the nobility, who were
declared to be persistently obstructing and defeating his
Majesty's good and just intentions for his loyal people's wel-
fare. If an imperial proclamation were issued to the contrary
effect a proclamation condemning or repudiating the opera-
tions of the peasants the latter would refuse to believe it to
be genuine. That occurs again and again about this very idea
of the black division, which has obtained possession of the
brains of the rural population. It often happens that in a
season of excitement, like the time of the Russo- Turkish war,
or of famine, like the winter of 1880-81, the rumours and ex-
pectations of the black division become especially definite and
lively, and lead to meetings and discussions and disturbances
which the Government think it prudent to stop. In 1879 the
Minister of the Interior, with this object in view, issued a cir-
cular contradicting the rumours that were spread abroad, which
was read in all the villages and affixed to the public buildings.
It stated, as plainly as it was possible to state anything, that
there would be no redistribution, and that the landlords would
retain their property ; but it produced no effect. Professor
Engelhardt wrote one of his published '' Letters from a Village "
at that very moment, and states that the moujiks would not
understand the circular to mean anything more than a request
that they would for a time abstain from gossiping at random
about the coining redistribution. One of their reasons for
making this odd misinterpretation is curious. The circular
warned the people against " evil-intentioned " persons who
294 Contemporary Socialism.
disseminated false reports, and gave instructions to the author-
ities to apprehend them. These evil-intentioned persons were,
of course, the nihilist agitators, who were making use of these
reports to foment an agrarian insurrection ; but the peasants
took these enemies of the Government to be the landlords and
others who had, they believed, set themselves against the re-
distribution movement and prevented the benevolence and
righteous purposes of the Czar from descending upon his people.
In some parts of Russia there has sprung up since 1870 a group
of peasantry known as " the medalmen," who have persuaded
themselves that the Czar not only wants to give them more
land, but has long since decreed their exemption from all
taxation except the poll tax. They say, moreover, that he
struck a medal to commemorate this gracious design of his,
which has been, as usual, so wickedly frustrated by his sub-
ordinates ; and that even, as things are, one has but to get
hold of one of these medals and show it to the collector, and
the collector is bound to give the holder the exemption he
wants. The medals to which so much virtue is ascribed are
merely the medals struck to commemorate the Emancipation
of the Serfs ; but the " medalmen," who are generally men that
have parted with their land, sold their houses, and settled at
the mines, pay very high prices for one of these medals, wear
it constantly about their necks, and think it will secure
them a genuine respite from the burden of taxation they have
to bear.
The nihilist propagandists think and the idea seems very
remarkable that this childish and ignorant confidence in the
Czar will not be able to stand much longer the strain of the
increasing difficulties of the rural situation. The propagan-
dists make it their business to keep alive the idea of the black
division in the hearts of the moujilcs, and make use of every
successive disappointment at its continued delay as an instru-
ment of alienating the affections of the people from the throne.
A peasantry are very slow to throw over old sentiments, and
will suffer long before breaking with the past, but they take a
sure grip of their own interest, and they will turn sometimes
very decisively and very gregariously to new deliverers. The
Russian peasants see themselves settled on plots of ground too
Russian Nihilism. 295
small to work with profit, and overburdened with taxes ; they
have to pay sixty per cent, of all their earning? in dues of all
kinds on their land ; and they cast their eyes abroad and see
two-thirds of the country still unpossessed by the people, one-
half still owned by the State, and one-sixth by the greater
landowners ; and with the communistic ideas in which they
have been nursed, they feel that it is time for a new division
of the greater order to take place. A gigantic crofter question
is impending, and this agrarian agitation for more land is
likely enough to make nihilism a more formidable thing in the
future than it has been in the past. Hitherto it has taken little
hold of the peasantry. At first it was a movement of educated
young Russia merely, and might be counted with the ordinary
intellectual excesses of youth. It only became a serious poli-
tical force after the Emancipation Act; but it was still a
movement of the upper classes, and in spite of immense exer-
tions it has remained so. The situation, however, is rapidly
changing, and with the rise so remarkable in many ways of
a numerous rural proletariat in the country that was supposed
to enjoy special protection against it, with the growing distress
and discontent of the peasantry, with the louder and more
persistent cries for the black division, which their hereditary
conception of agrarian justice suggests to them as the only
solution of their troubles, who will say what to-morrow may
bring forth?
Meanwhile the Will of the People party has continued its
activity. We still hear occasionally of murders, and demon-
strations, and arrests, and discoveries of nihilist plots on the
life of the Czar or of high servants of the Crown, and of
alarming discoveries of the hold the movement was taking in
the army. But, according to one of the most recent writers
on the subject, the author of " Socialisrnus und Anarchismus,
1883-1886," who admits, however, that it is very difficult to
obtain authentic information about it under the rigorous system
of repression at present practised by the Russian authorities, a
small section of this party, whom he calls the followers of
Peter Lavroff, have been developing more in line with German
Social Democracy, and have organized themselves into a
society called the Labour Emancipation League, which pre-
296 Contemporary Socialism.
fers peaceful means of agitation, and in March, 1885, published
its programme, demanding (1) a constitution, (2) the nation-
alization of land, (3) the handing over of factories to the pos-
session of societies of productive labourers, (4) free education,
(5) abolition of a standing army, and (6) full liberty of asso-
ciation and meeting. The same writer states, however, that
this socialist group are not numerous, and that the various
robberies, murders, plots against the Czar's life, incitements of
peasant disturbances, seizures of weapons and printing presses
that keep on occurring, show that the nihilists, as the others
still appear to be called, are much the most active and the most
important section of the revolutionary party. He mentions
also that in 1884 considerable sensation was produced by the
discovery of an anarchist secret society in "Warsaw, with
several magistrates at its head, which aimed at creating a
revolution in Poland, Prussian and Austrian Poland, as well
as Russian, and rebuilding the Polish nation on a socialist
basis. On the apprehension of its leaders it dissolved, but
sprang to life again almost immediately in two separate
organizations one directly allied with the Russian Terrorists,
and the other, under the influence of a Jew named Men-
delssohn, suppressing its Polish nationalism for the present,
and linking itself with the Russian socialists presumably the
followers of Lavroff just mentioned.
CHAPTER X.
SOCIALISM AND THE SOCIAL QUESTION.
THE renewal of the socialist agitation has not been unpro-
ductive of advantage, for it has led to a general recognition
that the economic position of the people is far from satis-
factory and is not free from peril, and that industrial develop-
ment, on the lines on which it has hitherto been running,
offers much less prospect than was at one time believed of
effecting any substantial, steady, and progressive improvement
in their condition. It is only too manifest that the immense
increase of wealth which has marked the present century has
been attended with surprisingly little amelioration in the
general lot of the people, and it is in no way remarkable that
this fact should tend to dishearten the labouring classes, and
fill reflecting minds with serious concern. Under the influence
of this experience economists of the present day meet social-
ism in a very different way from Bastiat and the economists of
1848. They entertain no longer the same absolute confidence
in the purely beneficent character of the operation of the
principles at present guiding the process of industrial evolu-
tion, or in the sovereign virtue of competition, unassisted and
uncorrected, as an agency for the distribution as well as the
production of wealth ; and they no longer declare that there
is not and cannot possibly be a social question. On the con-
trary, some of them take almost as unfavourable a view of the
road we are on as the socialists themselves. Mr. Cairnes, one
of the very ablest of them, says : " The fund available for
those who live by labour tends, in the progress of society,
while growing actually larger, to become a constantly smaller
fraction of the entire national wealth. If, then, the means of
any one class of society are to be permanently limited to this
fund, it is evident, assuming that the progress of its members
keeps pace with that of other classes, that its material condi-
297
298 Contemporary Socialism.
tion in relation to theirs cannot but decline. Now, as it would
be futile to expect, on the part of the poorest and most
ignorant of the population, self-denial and prudence greater
than that actually practised by the classes above them, the
circumstances of whose life are so much more favourable than
theirs for the cultivation of these virtues, the conclusion to
which I am brought is this, that unequal as is the distribution
of wealth already in this country, the tendency of industrial
progress on the supposition that the present separation
between industrial classes is maintained is towards an in-
equality greater still. The rich will be growing richer ; and
the poor, at least relatively, poorer. It seems to me, apart
altogether from the question of the labourer's interest, that
these are not conditions which furnish a solid basis for a pro-
gressive social state ; but having regard to that interest, I
think the considerations adduced show that the first and
indispensable step towards any serious amendment of the
labourer's lot is that he should be, in one way or other, lifted
out of the groove in which he at present works, and placed in
a position compatible with his becoming a sharer in equal pro-
portion with others in the general advantages arising frcm
industrial progress." ("Leading Principles," p. 340.) He
thinks it beyond question that tLe condition of the labouring
population is not so linked to the progress of industrial
improvements that we may count on it rising pari passu with
that progress ; because, in the first place, the labourer can
only benefit from industrial inventions which cheapen com-
modities that enter into his expenditure, and the bulk of his
expenditure is on agricultural products, which are prevented
from being cheapened by the increase of population always
increasing the demand for them; and, second, the labourer is
practically more and more divorced from the control of capital,
and reduced to the position of a recipient of wages, and there
is no tendency in wages to grow pari pas.m with the growth
of wealth, because the demand for labour, on which, in the
last analysis, the rate of wages depends, is always in an in-
creasing degree supplied by inventions which dispense with
labour. He is thus debarred from participating in the advan-
tages of industrial progress either as consumer or as producer :
Socialism and the Social Question. 299
as consumer, by over-population ; as producer, by his divorce
from capital. Mr. Cairnes, like most economists, differs from
socialists in thinking that the first requisite for any material
improvement in the condition of the labouring classes lies in
effective restraints on population, but he says that " even a
very great change in the habits of the labouring classes as
bearing upon the increase of population a change far greater
than there seems any solid ground for expecting would be
ineffectual, so long as the labourer remains a mere receiver of
wages, to accomplish any great improvement in his state ; any
improvement at all commensurate with what has taken place
and may be expected hereafter to take place in the lot of
those who derive their livelihood from the profits of capital "
(p. 335). Here he is entirely at one with socialists in believing
that the only surety for a sound industrial progress lies in
checking the further growth of capitalism by the encourage-
ment of co-operative production, which, by furnishing the
labouring classes with a share in the one fund that grows with
the growth of wealth, the fund of capital, offers them " the
sole means of escape from a harsh and hopeless destiny "
(p. 338). Mr. Cairnes, then, agrees with the socialists in declar-
ing that the position of the wage-labourer is becoming less
and less securely linked with the progressive improvement of
society, and that the only hope of the labourer's future lies
in his becoming a capitalist by virtue of co-operation ; only,
of course, he is completely at issue with them in regard to the
means by which this change is to be effected, believing that
its introduction by the direct intervention of the State would
be unnecessary, ineffectual, and pernicious.
I am disposed to think that Mr. Cairnes takes too despondent
a view of the possibilities of progress that are comprised in the
position of the wage-labourer, but it is precisely that view that
has lent force to the socialist criticism of the present order of
things, and to the socialist calls for a radical transformation
by State agency. The main charges brought by socialists
against the existing economy are the three following, all of
which, they allege, are consequences of the capitalistic manage-
ment of industry and unregulated competition : 1st, that it
tends to reduce wages to the minimum required to give the
3OO Contemporary Socialism.
labourer his daily bread, and that it tends to prevent them
from rising above that minimum ; 2nd, that it has subjected
the labourer's life to innumerable vicissitudes, made trade
insecure, mutable and oscillatory, and created relative over-
population; and, 3rd, that it enables and even forces the
capitalist to rob the labourer of the whole increase of value
which is the fruit of his labour. These are the three great
heads of their philippic against modern society : the hopeless
oppression of the " iron and cruel law " of necessary wages,
the mischief of incessant crises and changes and of the chaotic
regime of chance, and the iniquity of capital in the light of
their doctrine of value. Let us examine them in their order.
I. Socialists found their first charge partly on their inter-
pretation of the actual historical tendency of things, and partly
on the teaching of Ricardo and other economists on natural
wages. Now, to begin with the question of historical fact, the
effect which has been produced by the large system of pro-
duction on the distribution of wealth and the general condi-
tion of the working class is greatly misconceived by them.
So far as the distribution of wealth is concerned, the principal
difference that has occurred may be described as the decadence
of the lower middle classes, a decline both in the number of
persons in proportion to population who enjoy intermediate
incomes, and also in the relative amount of the average income
they enjoy. Their individual income may be higher than that
of the corresponding class 150 or 200 years ago, but it bears
a less ratio to the average income of the nation. The reason
of this decline is, of course, obvious. The yeomanry, once a
seventh of our population, and the small masters in trade have
gradually given way before the economic superiority of the
large capital or other causes, and modern industry has as yet
produced no other class that can, by position and numbers,
fill their room ; for though, no doubt, the great industries call
into being auxiliary industries of various kinds, which are still
best managed on the small scale by independent tradesmen,
the number of middling incomes which the greater industries
have thus contributed to create has been far short of the num-
ber they have extinguished. The same causes have, of course,
Socialism and the Social Question. 301
exercised very important effects on the economic condition of
the working class. They have reduced them more and more
to the permanent position of wage-labourers, and have left
them relatively fewer openings than they once possessed for
investing their savings in their own line, and fewer oppor-
tunities for the abler and more intelligent of them to rise to a
competency. This want may perhaps be ultimately supplied
under existing industrial conditions by the modern system of
co-operation, which combines some of the advantages of the
small capital with some of the advantages of the large, though
it lacks one of the chief advantages of both, the energetic,
uncontrolled initiative of the individual capitalist. But at
present, at any rate, it is premature to expect this, and as
things stand, many of the old pathways that linked class with
class are now closed without being replaced by modern sub-
stitutes, and working men are more purely and permanently
wage-labourers than they used to be. But while the wage-
labourer has perhaps less chance than before of becoming any-
thing else, it is a mistake to suppose, as is sometimes done,
that he is worse off, or even, as is perhaps invariably imagined,
that he has a less share in the wealth of the country than he
had when the wealth of the country was less. On the con-
trary, the position of the wage-labourer is really better than it
has been for three hundred years. If we turn to the period of
the English Revolution, we find that the income which the
labourer and his family together were able to earn was habi-
tually insufficient to maintain them in the way they were
accustomed to live. Sir M. Hale, in his " Discourse Touching
the Poor," published in 1683, says the family of a working
man, consisting of husband, wife, and four children, could not
be supported in meat, drink, clothing, and house-rent on less
than 10.s\ a week, and that he might possibly be able to make
that amount, if he got constant employment, and if two of his
children, as well as their mother, could earn something by
their labour too. Gregory King classifies the whole labouring
population of the country in his time, except a few thousand
skilled artisans, among the classes who decrease the wealth of
the country, because, not earning enough to keep them, they
had to obtain occasional allowances from public funds. We
302 Contemporary Socialism.
do well to grieve over the pauperism that exists now in Eng-
land. A few years ago, one person in every twenty received
parochial support, and one in thirty does so yet. These
figures, of course, refer to those in receipt of relief at one time,
and not to all who received relief during a year. But for
Scotland we have statistics of both, and the latter come as
nearly as possible to twice as many as the former. If the
same proportion rules in England, then every fifteenth person
receives relief in the course of the year.* But in King's time,
out of a population of five millions and a half, 600,000 were in
receipt of alms, i.e., more than one in ten ; and if their children
under 16 years of age were included, their number would
amount to 900,000, or one in six. Now, while the labourers'
wages were then, as a rule, unequal to maintain them in the
way they lived, we know that their scale of living was much
below that which is common among their class to-day. The
only thing which was much cheaper then than now was
butcher meat, mutton being only 2d. a lb., and beef, l^d. ; but
half the population had meat only twice a week, and a fourth
only once. The labourer lived chiefly on bread and beer, and
bread was as dear as it is now. Potatoes had not come into
general use. Butter and milk were cheaper than now, but
were not used to the same extent. Fuel, light, and clothing
were all much dearer, and salt was so much so as to form an
appreciable element in the weekly bill. When so many of the
staple necessaries of life were high in price, the labourer's
wages naturally could not afford a meat diet. Nothing can
furnish a more decisive proof of the rise in the real remunera-
tion of the wage-labourer since the Revolution than the fact
that the wages of that period were insufficient to maintain the
lower standard of comfort prevalent then, without parochial
aid, while the wages of the same classes to-day are generally
able to maintain their higher standard of comfort without
such supplementary assistance. Then the hours of labour
were, on the whole, longer ; the death rate in London was 1
in 27, in place of 1 in 40 now ; and all those general advantages
* The proportion in England for 1857, according to official figures, was
3 times the number for one day, but whether that proportion continues
still we have no means of knowing.
Socialism and the Social Question. 303
of advancing civilization, which are the heritage of all, were
either absentor much inferior.
These facts sufficiently show that if the rich have got richer
since the Revolution, the poor have not got poorer, and that the
circumstances of the labouring class have substantially im-
proved with the growth of national wealth. As far as their
mere money income is concerned there is some reason for think-
ing that the improvement has been as near as may be propor-
tional with the increase of wealth. The general impression is
the reverse of this. It is usual to hear it said that while the
labourers' circumstances have undoubtedly improved absolutely,
they have not improved relatively, as compared with the pro-
gress in the wealth of the country and the share of it which
other classes have succeeded in obtaining. But this impres-
sion must be qualified, if not entirely rejected, on closer exa-
mination. Data exist by which it can be to some extent tested,
and these data show that while considerable alterations have
been made in the distribution of wealth since the rise of the
great industries, these alterations have not been unfavourable
to the labouring classes, but that the proportion of the wealth
of the country which falls to the working man to-day is very
much the same is indeed rather better than worse than the
proportion which fell to his share two hundred years ago.
Gregory King made an estimate of the distribution of wealth
among the various classes of society in England in 1688,
founded partly on the poll-books, hearth-books, and other offi-
cial statistical records, and partly on personal observation and
inquiry in the several towns and counties of England ; and Dr.
C. Davenant, who says he had carefully examined King's
statistics himself, checking them by calculations of his own and
by the schemes of other persons, pronounces them to be " very
accurate and more perhaps to be relied on than anything that
has been ever done of a like kind." Now, a comparison of
King's figures with the estimate of the distribution of the
national income made by Mr. Dudley Baxter from the returns
of 1867, will afford some sort of idea though of course only
approximately, and perhaps not very closely so of the changes
that have actually occurred. King takes the family income as
the unit of his calculations. Baxter, on the other hand, specifies
304 Contemporary Socialism.
all bread-winners separately men, women, and children ; but
to furnish a basis of comparison, let us take the men as repre-
senting a family each, and if so, that would give us 4,006,260
working-class families in the country in 1867. This is cer-
tainly a high estimate of their number, because in 1871 there
were only five million of families in England ; and according
to the calculations of Professor Leone Levi, the working class
comprises no more than two-thirds of the population, and
would consequently consist in 1871 of no more than 3.300,000
families. If we were to take this figure as the ground of our
calculations, the result would be still more striking ; but let us
take the number of working-class families to have been four
millions in 1867. The average income of a working-class
family in King's time was 12 12s. (including his artisan and
handicraft families along with the other labourers) ; the average
income of a working class family now is 81. The average
income of English families generally in King's time was 32 ;
the average income of English families generally now is 162.
The average income of the country has thus increased five-fold,
while the average income of the working class has increased six
and a half times. The ratio of the working class income to the
general income stood in King's time as 1 : 2, and now as 1 : 2.
In 1688, 74 per cent, of the whole population belonged to the
working class, and they earned collectively 26 per cent, of the
entire income of the country ; in 1867 according to the basis
we have adopted, though the proportion is doubtless really less
80 per cent, of the whole population belonged to the working
class, and they earned collectively 40 per cent, of the entire
income of the country. Their share of the population has
increased 6 per cent. ; their share of the income 14 per cent.
Now, I am far from adducing these considerations with the
view of suggesting that the present condition of the working
classes or the present distribution of wealth is even approxi-
mately satisfactory, but I think they ought to be sufficient to
disperse the gloomy apprehensions which trouble many minds
as if, with all our national prosperity, the condition of the
poorer classes were growing ever worse and could not possibly,
under existing industrial conditions, grow any better ; to pre-
vent us from prematurely condemning a system of society,
Socialism and the Social Question. 305
whose possibilities for answering the legitimate aspirations of
the working class are so far from being exhausted, that it may
rather be said that a real beginning has hardly as yet been
made to accomplish them ; and to give ground for the hope
that the existing economy, which all admit to be a most
efficient instrument for the production of wealth, may, by wise
correction and management, be made a not inadequate agency
for its distribution.
The socialists are not more fortunate in their argument from
the teaching of economists than in their account of the actual
facts and tendency of history. The " iron and cruel law " of
necessary wages is, as expounded by economists, neither so
iron nor so cruel as Lassalle represented it to be. They taught
that the price of labour, like the price of everything else,
tended to settle at the level of the relative cost of its produc-
tion, and that the cost of its production meant the cost of
producing the subsistence required to maintain the labourer in
working vigour and to rear his family to continue the work of
society after his day ; but they always represented this as a
minimum below which wages would not permanently settle,
but above which they might from other causes remain for a
continuity considerably elevated, and which, even as a mini-
mum, was in an essential way ruled by the consent of the
labouring classes themselves, and dependent on the standard of
living they chose habitually to adopt. If the rate of wages
were forced down below the amount necessary to maintain that
customary standard of living, the marriage rate of the labour-
ing classes would tend to fall and the rate of mortality to rise
till the supply of labour diminished sufficiently to restore the
rate of wages to its old level. And conversely, if the price of
labour rose above that limit, the marriage rate among the
labouring class would tend to rise and the rate of mortality to
fall, till the numbers of the working population increased to
such an extent as to bring it down again. But the rate of
marriage depended on the will and consent of the labouring
class, and their consent was supposed to be given or withheld
according as they themselves considered the current wages
sufficient or insufficient to support a family upon. The amount
of the labourer's " necessary " subsistence was never thought.
x
306 Contemporary Socialism.
to be a hard and fast limit inflexibly fixed by physical condi-
tions. It was not a bare living; it was the living which had
become customary or was considered necessary by the labourer.
Its amount might be permanently raised, if in consequence of
a durable rise of wages a higher standard of comfort came to
be habitual and to be counted essential, and the addition so
made to it would then become as real an element of natural
or necessary wages in the economic sense as the rest. Its
amount might also permanently fall, if the labourers ceased to
think it necessary and contentedly accommodated their habits to
the reduced standard, and there might thus ensue a permanent
degradation of the labourer, such as took place in Ireland in
the present century, when the labouring class adjusted them-
selves to reduction after reduction till their lower standard of
living served, in the first place, to operate as an inducement to
marriage instead of a check on it, because marriage could not
make things worse, and at least lightened the burdens of life
by the sympathy that shared them ; and served, in the second
place, to impair the industrial efficiency of the labourer till he
was hardly worth better wages if he could have got them. So
far then was the doctrine of economists from involving any
" iron or cruel " limit that they always drew from it the
lesson that it was in the power of the labouring classes to elevate
themselves by the pleasant, if somewhat paradoxical, expedient
of first enlarging their scale of expenditure. " Pitch your
standard of comfort high, and your income will look after itself,"
is scarcely an unfair description of the rule of prudent impru-
dence they inculcated on working people. They believed that
the chief danger to which that class was exposed was their
own excessive and too rapid multiplication, and they considered
the best protection against this danger to lie in the powerful
preventive of a high scale of habitual requirements.
Moreover, Ricardo distinctly maintained that though the
natural rate of wages was determined as he had explained, yet
the operation of that natural law might be practically suspended
in a progressive community for an indefinite period, and that
the rate of wages actually given might even keep on advancing
the whole time, because capital was capable of increasing much
more rapidly than population. The price of labour, he taugM,
Socialism and the Social Question. 307
would in that case be always settled by the demand for it
which was created by the accumulation of capital, and the sole
condition of the accumulation of capital was the productive
power of labour. The rate of wages in a progressive community
might therefore almost never be in actual fact determined by .
this "iron and cruel law" at all, and so there is not the smallest
ground for representing economists as teaching that the
present system compels the rate of wages or the labourer's
remuneration to hover to and fro over the margin of indigence.
Lassalle, then, built his agitation on a combination of errors.
He was wrong in his interpretation of the tendency of actual
historical development ; he was wrong in his interpretation of
the doctrine of economists ; and now, to complete the confusion,
that doctrine is itself wrong. If we are at all to distinguish a
natural or normal rate of wages from the fluctuating rates of
the market, that natural or normal rate will be found really to
depend, not on the cost of producing subsistence, but on the
amount or rate of general production, or the amount of pro-
duction per capita in the community, or, in other words, on
the average productivity of labour. It is manifest that this
would be so in a primitive condition of society in which
industry was as yet conducted without the intervention of a
special employing class, for then the wages of labour would
consist of its product, and be, in fact, as Smith says, only
another name for it. It would depend, however, not exclu-
sively on the individual labourer's own efficiency, but also on
the fertility of the soil and the general efficiency of the rest
of the labouring community. While according to his own
efficiency he would possess a greater or smaller stock of articles,
which, after providing for his own wants, he might exchange
for other articles produced by his neighbours ; the quantity he
would get in exchange for them would be great or small
according to the degree of his neighbour's efficiency. The
average real remuneration of labour, or the average rate of
wages, in such a community would therefore correspond with
the average productivity of its labour. But the same principle
holds good in the more comj : le.i organization of industrial society
that now exists, though its operation is more difficult to trace.
The price of labour is now determined by a struggle between
308 Contemporary Socialism.
the labourer and the employer, and the fortunes of the struggle
move between two very real, if not very definitely marked,
limits, the lower of which is constituted by the smallest
amount which the labourer can afford to take, and the higher
by the largest amount which the employer can afford to give.
The former is determined by the amount necessary to support
life, and the latter by the amount necessary to secure an ade-
quate profit. Now the space between these two limits will be
always great or small in proportion to the general productivity
of labour in the community. The general productivity of
labour acts upon the rate of wages in two ways, immediately
and mediately. Immediately, because, as is manifest, efficient
labour is worth more to the employer than inefficient; and
mediately, as I shall presently show, because it conduces to a
greater diversion of wealth for productive purposes, and so
increases the general demand for labour. In modern society,
as in primitive, the labourer not only obtains a higher re-
muneration if he is efficient himself, but gathers a higher
remuneration from the efficiency of his neighbours.
This will be obvious at once to any one who reflects on the
improved remuneration of the common unskilled labourers.
The man who works with pick and shovel makes, according to
Mr. Mulhall's estimate, 30 a year now, while he only made
12 a year in 1800, when bread was about twice as dear, and
yet he probably did quite as good a day's work then as he does
now, except so far as his better wages have themselves helped
his powers of labour, through affording him a more liberal diet,
and in that case the same question is raised, How did he come
to get these better wages ? It was not on account of an in-
crease in his own production, for that was the effect, not the
cause ; it was on account of the general increase in the pro-
ductivity of all labour round about him. The great improve-
ment in industrial processes have brought in more plentiful
times, and he shares in the general plenty, though he may not
have directly contributed to its production. He gets more for
the same work, not merely because people in general, with
their larger surplus, can afford to give him more, but because,
having more to devote to industrial investment, they increase
the demand for labour till they are obliged to give him more.
Socialism and the Social Question. 309
The proximate demand for labour is, of course, capital, but
the amount of capital which a community tends to possess in
other words, the amount of wealth it tends to detach for in-
dustrial investment bears a constant relation to the amount
of its general production. There is a disposition among econo-
mists to speak of the quantity of a nation's savings, as if it was
something given and complete that springs up independently
of industrial conditions, and as irrespectively of the purpose to
which it is to be applied as the number of eggs a fowl lays or
the amount of fruit a tree bears. But, in reality, it is not so.
The amount of a nation's savings is no affair of chance ; it is
governed much more by commercial reasons than is sometimes
supposed. It is no sufficient account of the matter to say that
men save because they have a disposition to save, because there
is a strong cumulative propensity in the national character.
They save because they think to get a profit by saving, and
the point at which the nation stops saving is the point at
which this expectation ceases to be gratified, the point at
which enough has been accumulated to occupy the entire
field of profitable investment which the community offers at
the time. Some part of a nation's savings will always have
originated in a desire to provide security for the future, but,
as this part is less subject to fluctuation, it exercises less in-
fluence in determining the extent of the whole than the more
variable part, which is only saved when there is sufficient hope
of gain from investing it. There may be said to be a natural
amount of capital in a country, in at least as true a sense as
there is a natural price of labour, or a natural price of com-
modities. Capital has its bounds in the general industrial
conditions and stature of the community, but it moves and
answers these conditions with much more elasticity than the
wage-fund theory used to acknowledge. It is, as Hermann
said, a mere medium of conveyance between consumer and
consumer, and has its size decreed for it by the quantities it
has to convey. The general demand for commodities is a
demand for capital. It creates the expectation of profit which
capital is diverted from expenditure to gratify, and since it is
itself in another aspect the general supply of commodities, it
furnishes the possibilities for meeting the demand for capital
310 Contemporary Socialism.
which it creates. This whole argument may seem to be
reasoning in a circle or wheeling round a pivot, and so in a
sense it may be, for the wheel of industry is circular. The
rate of wages depends on the demand for labour ; the demand
for labour depends on the amount of capital ; the amount of
capital depends on the aggregate production of and demand for
commodities ; and the amount of aggregate production depends
on the average productivity of labour. It is but a more cir-
cuitous way of saying the same thing as the older economists
said, when they declared the rate of wages to depend on the
supply of capital, as compared with population ; but it shows
that the supply of capital is a more elastic element than they
conceived, that it adjusts and re-adjusts itself more easily and
sensitively to industrial conditions, including perhaps even
those of population, and that it is governed in a very real way
by the great primary factor that determines the whole size
and scale of the industrial system in all its parts, the general
productivity of labour. Taking one country with another, the
rate of wages will be found to observe a certain proportion to
the amount of production per capita in the community.
This view will be confirmed by a comparison of the actual
rate of wages prevalent in different countries. Lord Brassey
has published an important body of positive evidence tending
to show that the cost of labour is the same all over the world,
that for the same wages you get everywhere the same work,
and that the higher price of labour in some countries than
in others is simply due to its higher efficiency. Mr. Cairnes,
who did not accept this conclusion unconditionally, had, how-
ever, himself previously estimated that a day's labour in
America produced as much as a day and a third's in Great
Britain, to a day and a half s in Belgium, a day and three-
fourths' or two days' in France and Germany, and to five
days' labour in India. Now, when due regard is had for the
influence of special historical circumstances, it will be found
that the rate of wages observes very similar proportions in
these several countries. In America it is higher than the
relative productivity of the country would explain, because a
new country with boundless natural resources creates a per-
manently exceptional demand for labour ; because the facilities
Socialism and the Social Question. 311
with which, land can be acquired and wrought, even by men
without previous agricultural training, affords a ready correc-
tion to temporary redundancies of labour; and because the
labour itself is more mobile, versatile, and energetic in a
nation largely composed of immigrants. Other modifying in-
fluences also interfere to preclude the possibility of a precise
correspondence between national rates of wages and national
amounts of production per capita, for different countries vary
much in the extent of the fixed capital they employ to econo-
mize personal labour. But enough has been said to show that,
.if a natural rate of wages is to be sought at all, it must be
looked for, not in the cost of the production of subsistence, but
in the rate of the production of commodities ; and while the
standard of living and the price of labour tend to some extent
to keep one another up, the higher standard of living prevalent
among labourers in some countries is a consequence much more
than a condition of the higher rate of wages, which the higher
productivity of labour in those countries occasions.
There is therefore no ground for Lassalle's representation
that the law of necessary wages condemns ninety-six persons
in every hundred to an existence of hopeless misery to enable
the other four to ride in luxury. The principles that goveni
the rate of wages are much more flexible than he supposed,
and the experience of trade unions has sufficiently demonstrated
that it is within the power of the wage-labourers themselves
to effect by combination a material increase in the price of
their labour. Trade unions have taken away the shadow of
despondency that lay over the hired labourer's lot. Their
margin of effective operation is strictly limited ; still such a
margin exists, and they have turned it to account. They
have put the labourer in a position to hold out for his price ;
they have converted the question of wages from the question,
how little the labourer can afford to take, into the question,
how much the employer can afford to give. They have been
able, in trades not subject' to foreign competition, to effect a
permanent rise in wages at the expense of prices, and they can
probably, in all trades, succeed in keeping the rate of wages
well up to its superior limit, viz., to the point at which, while
the skilful employers might still afford to give more, the un-
312 Contemporary Socialism.
skilful could not do so without ceasing to conduct a profitable
business and being driven out of the field altogether. For
unskilful management tells as ill on wages as inefficient
labour. On the other hand, high wages, like many other
difficult conditions, undoubtedly tend to develop skilful
management. The employer is put on his mettle, and all his
administrative resource is called into action and keen play.
They who, like socialists, inveigh against this modern despot,
ought to reflect how much less possible it would have been for
wages to have risen, if industry had been in the hands of hired
managers who were not put to their mettle, because they had
no personal stake in the result. It must not be forgotten,
however, that while trade unions are able to keep the rate of
wages up to its superior limit, they have no power to raise that
limit itself. This can only be done by an increase in the
general productivity of labour, and, in fact, the action of trade
unions could not have been so effective as it has been, unless
the high production of the country afforded them the condi-
tions for success. And since, in consequence of their action
and vigilance, the rate of wages in the trades they represent
may be now taken as usually standing close to its superior
limit, the chief hope of any further substantial improvement in
the future must now be placed in the possibility of raising that
limit by an increased productivity.
Of this the prospect is really considerable and promising.
Of course labourers will never benefit to the full from improve-
ments in the productive arts, until by some arrangement, or
by many arrangements, they are made sharers in industrial
capital ; but they will benefit from these improvements,
though in less measure, even as pure wage-labourers. Their
unions will be on the watch to prevent the whole advantage of
the improvement from going towards a reduction of the price
of the commodity they produce, and such reduction in the
price of the commodity as actually takes place will enable its
consumers to spend so much the more of their means on com-
modities made by other labourers, and to that extent to in-
crease the demand for the labour of the latter. But the field
from which I expect the most direct and extensive harvest to
the working class is the development of their own personal
Socialism and the Social Question. 313
efficiency. At present neither employers nor labourers seem
fully alive to the resources which this field is capable of yield-
ing, if it were wisely and fairly cultivated. Both classes are
often so bent on immediate advantage that they lose sight of
their real and enduring interest. It is doubtful whether em-
ployers are more slow to see how much inadequate remunera-
tion and uncomfortable circumstances impair efficiency and
retard production, or labourers to perceive how much limiting
the general rate of production tends to reduce the general rate
of wages. In labour requiring mainly physical strength, con-
tractors sufficiently appreciate the fact that their navvies must
be well fed if they are to stand to their work, and that an
extra shilling a day makes a material difference in the output.
But in all forms of skilled labour, likewise, analogous condi-
tions prevail. Just as slave-labour is inefficient because it is
reluctantly given, and is wanting in the versatility and re-
sourcefulness that comes from general intelligence, so is free
labour less efficient or more efficient in exact proportion to its
fertility of resource and to the hopefulness and cheerfulness
with which it is exerted ; and both conditions are developed
in the working class in precise ratio with their general com-
fort. The intelligent workman takes less time to learn his
trade, needs less superintendence at his work, and is less
wasteful of materials ; and the cheerful workman, besides
these merits, expends more energy with less exhaustion. But
men can have no hope in their work while they live purely
from hand to mouth, and you cannot spread habits of intelli-
gence among the labouring class, if their means are too poor
or their leisure too short to enable them to participate in the
culture that is going on around them.
But if employers are apt to take too narrow a view of the
worth of good wages as a positive source of high production,
labourers are apt to take equally narrow views of the worth
of high production as a source of good wages. The policy of
limiting production is expressly countenanced by a few of their
trade unions, with the concurrence, I fear, of a considerable
body of working-class opinion. This is shown in their idea of
" making work," in their 'prohibition of "chasing" i.e., of a
workman exceeding a given average standard of production
314 Contemporary Socialism.
and in their prejudice against piecework. Their notion of
making work is irrational. They think they can make work by
simply not doing it, by spinning it out, by going half speed,
under the impression that they are in this way leaving the
more over to constitute a demand for their labour to-morrow.
And so, in the immediate case in hand and for the particular
time, it may sometimes be. But if this practice were to be
turned into a law universal among working men, if all labourers
were to act upon it everywhere, then the general production of
the country would be immediately reduced, and the general
demand for labour, and the rate of wages, would inevitably fall
in a corresponding degree. Instead of making work, they
would have unmade half the work there used to be, and have
brought their whole class to comparative poverty by contract-
ing the ultimate sources from which wages come. The true
way to make work for to-morrow is to do as much as one can
to-day. For the produce of one man's labour is the demand
for the produce of another man's. There is nothing more diffi-
cult for any class than to reach an enlightened perception of
its own general interest.
The objection usually made to " chasing " and piecework is
that they always end in enabling employers to extract more
work out of the men without giving them any more pay, and
that they conduce to overstraining. Now piecework, without
a fixed list of prices, is of course liable to the abuse which, it is
alleged, masters have made of it. But with a fixed list of prices
the labourers ought, with the aid of their unions, to be as able
to hold their own against the encroachments of the masters
under piecework as under day work, and piecework is so de-
cidedly advantageous, both to masters and to men, that it
would be foolish for the former to refuse the reasonable conces-
sion of a fixed list of prices ; and it would be equally foolish for
the latter to oppose the system under the delusive fear of a
danger which it is amply in their own power to meet. There
is a good deal of force in the view of Mr. William Denny, that
piecework will prove the best and most natural transition from
the present system to a regime of co-operative production,
because it furnishes many kinds of actual opportunities for
practising co-operation ; but whatever may be the promise of
Socialism and the Social Question.
3*5
piecework for the age that is to come, there is no question about
its promise for the life that now is. Mr. Denny, speaking from
experience in his own extensive shipbuilding works at Dum-
barton, says that " a workman under piecework generally in-
creases his output in the long run partly by working hard,
but principally by exercising more intelligence and arranging
his work better by about 75 per cent., while the total amount
of his wages increases by about 50 per cent., making a distinct
saving in the wages portion of the cost of a given article of
about 14 per cent." (" The Worth of Wages," p. 19.) * Similar
testimony is given by Goltz, Boehmert, and a writer in Engels'
Zeitschrift for 1868, as to the effect of the introduction of piece-
work into continental industries, and Roscher ascribes much of
the industrial superiority of England to the prevalence of piece-
work here. According to Mr. Howell, more than seventy per
cent, of the work of this country is done at present by the piece,
and the Trades' Union Commission found it the accepted rule
in the majority of the industries that came under their in-
vestigation ; in fact, in all except engineering, ironfounding,
and some of the building trades. The engineers entertain a
* Mr. Denny was led by subsequent experience to a much less favour-
able view of the efficacy of piecework as an instrument of working-class
progress. He wrote me in June, 1886 (ten years after the publication of
the pamphlet I have quoted above) an interesting and valuable letter on this
subject, which is published in full in Dr. Bruce's biography of him ("Life
of William Denny," p. 113). A larger experience of piecework, he said, had
convinced him that, excepting in cases where rates can be fixed and made a
matter of agreement between the whole body of the men in any works and
their employers, piecework prices have not a self-regulating power, and
are liable, under the pressure of competition, to be depressed below what
he would consider a proper level. And this was chiefly, if not, indeed,
exclusively, the case with those lump jobs which were undertaken by
little copartneries of workmen, and afforded the occasions for practising
co-operation from which he had drawn the hopes I have mentioned above.
He came to see that in all kinds of work for which it was difficult to fix
regular rates, the beneficial operation of payment by the piece on wages was
much more uncertain than he previously supposed, except in the hands of a
good master, who was not an absentee. But for ordinary work, I think he
still adhered to his favourable opinion of the effect of the piece system in
increasing the worker's earnings. He said he had nothing to modify about
the figures adduced in his pamphlet, and I understood him to continue to
count them representative of the general operation of pieceworking.
316 Contemporary Socialism.
strong objection to it, and their union has sometimes expelled
members who have persisted in taking it. But the system
works smoothly enough when an established price-list has
become a recognised practice of the trade. The objection that
the piece system leads to careless, scamped and inferior work,
can hardly be considered a genuine working-class objection.
That is the look-out of the masters, and they find it easier to
check quality than to check quantity. Another reason some-
times given against piecework is that under it some men get
more than their share in the common stock of work, but there
lurks in this reason the same fallacy which lies in the notion of
" making work," the fallacy of seeking to raise the level of
wages by limiting production, and so diminishing the common
stock of work of society. Labourers seem sometimes to harbour
an impression as if they were losing something when their
neighbours were making more than themselves. Work appears
to them no doubt in consequence of the fluctuations and inter-
mittent activity of modern trade to come in bursts and wind-
falls, nobody knows whence or how, and they are sometimes
uneasy to see the harvest being apparently disproportionately
appropriated by more active and efficient hands. But in the
end, and as a steady general rule, they are gainers and not
losers by the efficiency of the more expert workmen, because
productivity, so far from drying up the sources of work, is the
very thing that sets them loose.
A more important objection is the danger of overstraining,
against which of course the working class are wise to exercise a
most jealous vigilance. But, in the first place, it is easy to ex-
aggerate this danger. It is not really from any deepened drain
on the physical powers of the workmen, so much as from a
quickening of his mental life in his work, that increase in his
productivity is to be expected. Mr. Denny, it will be observed,
attributes the additional output under piecework not nearly so
much to harder labour as to the exercise of more intelligence
and to a better arrangement of the work. But, in the next
place, to my mind the great advantage of piecework is that
it affords a sound economic reason for shortening the day of
labour. The work being intenser, demands a shorter day, and
being more productive, justifies it. If the figures I have quoted
Socialism and the Social Question. 317
from Mr. Denny are at all representative, then a labourer, work-
ing by the piece, can turn out 40 per cent, more in eight hours
than working by the day he can do in ten. Differences may be
expected to obtain in this respect in different trades and kinds of
work, so that there possibly cannot be any normal day of labour
for all trades alike, and each must adjust the term of its labour
to its own circumstances. But wherever piecework can increase
the rate of production to the extent mentioned by Mr. Denny,
the day of labour may be shortened with advantage, and it can
apparently do so in the very trades that most strongly object to it.
A fact mentioned by Mr. Nasmyth, in his remarkable evidence
before the Trades Union Commission, opens a striking view
of the possibilities of increasing production through develop-
ing the personal efficiency of the labouring class, and of doing
so without requiring any severe strain. " When I have been
watching men in my own work," he says, " I have noticed that
at least two-thirds of their time, even in the case of the most
careful workmen, is spent, not in work, but in criticising with
the square or straight-edge what they have been working, so
as to say whether it is right or wrong." And he adds " I have
observed that wherever you meet with a dexterous workman,
you will find that he is a man that need not apply in one case
in ten to his straight-edge or square." And why are not all
dexterous, or, at least, why are they not much more dexterous
than they now are ? Mr. Nasmyth's answer is, because the
faculty of comparison by the eye is undeveloped in them, and
he contends that this faculty is capable of being educated in
every one to a very much higher degree than exists at present,
and that its development ought to be made a primary object of
direct training at school. " If you get a boy," he says, " to be
able to lay a pea in the middle of two other peas, and in a
straight line with these two, that boy is a vast way on in the
arts." He has gone through a most valuable industrial appren-
ticeship before he has entered a workshop at all. If, through
training the eye, workmen can save two-thirds of their time,
it is manifest that there is abundant scope for increasing pro-
ductivity and shortening the day of labour at the same time.
Industrial efficiency is much more a thing of mind than of
muscle. Jeder Arbeiter ist auch Kopfarbeiter. All work is also
318 Contemporary Socialism.
head work. Skill is but a primary labour-saving apparatus
engrafted by mind on eye and limb, and it is in developing the
mental faculties of the labourers by well-directed training, both
general and technical, that the chief conditions for their further
improvement lie. Their progress in intelligence may therefore
be expected to increase their productivity so as to justify a
shortening of their day of labour, and the leisure so acquired
may be expected to be used so as to increase their intelligence.
Any advance men really make in the scale of moral and mental
being tends in this way to create the conditions necessary for
its maintenance.
We sometimes hear the same pessimist prophecy about
shorter hours as we have heard for centuries about better
wages, that they will only seduce the working class to in-
creased dissipation. But experience is against this view. Of
course more leisure and more pay are merely means which the
labourer may according to his habits use for his destruction as
easily as for his salvation. But the increase in the number of
apprehensions for drunkenness that frequently accompanies a
rise in wages proves neither one thing nor another as to the
general effect of the rise on the whole class of labourers who
have obtained it; it proves only that the more dissipated
among them are able to get oftener drunk. Nor can the
singular manifestations which the full hand sometimes takes
with the less instructed sections of the working class, especially
when it has been suddenly acquired, furnish any valid infer-
ence as to the way it would be used by the working class in
general, particularly if it were their permanent possession.
The evidence laid before the House of Lords Committee on
Intemperance shows that the skilled labourers of this country
are becoming less drunken as their wages and general position
are improving ; and Porter, in his " Progress of the Nation,"
adduces some striking cases of a steady rise of wages making
a manifest change for the better in the habits of unskilled
labourers. He mentions, on the authority of a gentleman who
had the chief direction of the work, that " the formation of a
canal in the North of Ireland for some time afforded steady
employment to a portion of the peasantry, who before that
time were suffering all the evils so common in that country
Socialism and the Social Question. 319
which result from precariousness of employment. Such work
as they could previously get came at uncertain intervals, and
was sought by so many competitors that the remuneration was
of the scantiest amount. In this condition the men were im-
provident to recklessness. Their wages, insufficient for the
comfortable maintenance of their families, were wasted in pro-
curing for themselves a temporary forgetfulness of their misery
at the whisky shop, and the men appeared to be sunk into a
state of hopeless degradation. From the moment, however,
that work was offered to them which was constant in its
nature and certain in its duration, and on which their weekly
earnings would be sufficient to provide for their comfortable
support, men who had been idle and dissolute were converted
into sober, hardworking labourers, and proved themselves kind
and careful husbands and fathers ; and it is stated as a fact
that, notwithstanding the distribution of several hundred
pounds weekly in wages, the whole of which would be con-
sidered as so much additional money placed in their hands,
the consumption of whisky was absolutely and permanently
diminished in the district. During the comparatively short
period in which the construction of this canal was in progress,
some of the most careful labourers men who most probably
before then never knew what it was to possess five shillings at
any one time saved sufficient money to enable them to emi-
grate to Canada, where they are now labouring in indepen-
dence for the improvement of their own land " (p. 451). It
may be difficult to extirpate drunkenness in our climate even
with good wages, but it is certainly impossible with bad, for
bad wages mean insufficient nourishment, comfortless house
accommodation, and a want of that elasticity after work which
enables men to find pleasure in any other form of enjoyment.
As with better wages, so with shorter hours. The leisure
gained may be misused, especially at first ; but it is neverthe-
less a necessary lever for the social amelioration of the labour-
ing class, and it will more and more serve this purpose as it
becomes one of their permanent acquisitions. There can be no
question that long hours and hard work are powerful predis-
posing causes to drunkenness. Studnitz mentions that several
manufacturers in America had informed him that they had
320 Contemporary Socialism.
invariably remarked, that with solitary exceptions here and
there, the men who wrought for the longest number of hours
were most prone to dissipation, and that the others were more
intelligent, and formed on the whole a better class. Part of
the prejudice entertained by working men against piecework
comes from the fact that it is very often accompanied with
overtime, and when that is the case, it generally exerts an
unfavourable effect on the habits of the workman. Mr. Apple-
garth said, in his evidence before the Trades Union Com-
mission, that nothing degraded the labourer like piecework
and overtime. Mr. George Potter stated, in his evidence
before the Select Committee on Masters and Operatives in
1860, that it was a common saying among working people
with regard to a man who works hard by piecework and over-
time, that such a man is generally a drunkard. He ascribed
much of the intemperance of the labouring class to the practice
of working " spells " i.e., heats of work at high pressure on
the piece and overtime system instead of steadily ; and he
says " When I was at work at the bench, I worked to a firm
where there was much overtime and piecework, and I found
that the men at piecework were men who generally spent five
or six times more money in intoxicating drink, for the purpose
of keeping up their physical strength, than the men at day
work. I find, on close observation, that the men working at
piecework are generally a worse class of men in every way,
both in intelligence and education, and in pecuniary matters."
Now, the ill effects which issue from piecework combined with
overtime could not accrue from piecework combined with
shorter hours. Besides, in a case of this kind it is sometimes
difficult to say which is cause and which effect, or how much
the one acts and reacts on the other. For both Mr. Potter and
the manufacturers mentioned by Studnitz represent the men
who wrought longest as being not only more drunken, but less
intelligent and educated, and, in fact, as being every way in-
ferior ; and we can easily understand how men of unsteady
habits should prefer to work " spells," and try to make up by
excessive work three days in the week, for excessive drinking
the other three.
Dissipation and overtime generally go together, but neither
Socialism and the Social Question. 321
of them is a necessary accompaniment of piecework. The
best check to both is probably the spread of general education
among the working class, for the better educated workmen are
even at present usually found against them ; and the spread of
general education I do not speak here of technical among
the working class is more fruitful than even piecework itself
in opening up fresh reserves of industrial efficiency in our
labouring manhood. Roscher has pointed out how a stimulant
like piecework produces in a fairly well-educated district twice
the result it produces in a comparatively illiterate one. Taking
the figures of Goltz on rural labour in different German States,
he shows that while the earnings of pieceworkers were only
11 per cent, higher than the earnings of day- workers in Osna-
bruck, they were as much as 23 per cent, higher in Hesse.
Mr. Peshine Smith mentions that the Board of Education in
Massachusetts procured from overseers of factories in that
State a return of the different amounts of wages paid and the
degree of education of those who received them. Most of the
work was done by the piece, and it was found that the wages
earned rose in exact ratio with the degree of education, from
the foreigners at the bottom who made their mark as the
signature of their weekly receipts to the girls at the top who
did school in winter and worked in factories in summer. In
some branches of industry many new improvements remain
unused because the workpeople are too ignorant to work them
properly. Moreover, for the supreme quality of resourceful-
ness, education is like hands and feet, and if we may judge
from the number of useful labour-saving inventions which
working men give us even now, we cannot set limits to the
number they will give when the whole labouring class will
have got the use of their mind by an adequate measure of
general education, and when, as we may hope, they will have
got leisure to use it in through a shortening of the day of
labour. The possibilities of this last source are very well
illustrated by an experiment of Messrs. Denny. In 1880 they
established in their ship-building yard at Dumbarton an
award scheme for recompensing inventions made by their
workmen for improving existing machinery or applying it to
a new class of work, or introducing new machinery in place of
Y
322 Contemporary Socialism.
hand labour, or discovering any new method of arranging or
securing work that either improved its quality or economized
its cost. Mr. William Denny stated, after the scheme had
been nearly seven years in operation, that in that time as many
as 196 awards had been given for inventions which were
thought useful to adopt, that three times that number had
been submitted for consideration, and that besides being
beneficial in causing so many useful improvements to be
made, the scheme had the effect of making the workmen of
all departments into active thinking and planning beings
instead of mere flesh and blood machines.
I cannot, therefore, take so dark a view as is sometimes
entertained of the futurity of the wage-labourer, even if he
were compelled to remain purely and permanently such. His
^ position has substantially improved in the past, and contains
considerable capabilities for continued improvement in the
future. Of course the action of trade unions, besides being
confined to the limits I have described, is subject to the
further restriction, that it can only avail for the labourers who
belong to them, and is indeed founded on the exclusion or
diminution of the competition of others. They impose limita-
tions on the number of apprentices, and prescribe a certain
standard of efficiency, loosely ascertained, as a condition of
membership. There can be no manner of objection to the
latter measure, nor does the former, though it is manifestly
liable to abuse and is sometimes vexatious in its operation,
seem to be practically worked so as to diminish the labour in
any particular industry beneath the due requirements of trade,
or to create an unhealthy monopoly. Then, though the trade
unionists gather their gains by keeping off the competition of
others, it cannot be said that these others are necessarily in
any worse position than they would have occupied if trade
unions had never come into existence. It may even be that
through the operation of custom, which will always have an
influence in settling the price of labour, a certain benefit may
be reflected upon them from a rise in the usual price effected
by trade union agency. But in any case, it is no sound objec-
tion to an agency of social amelioration that its efficiency is
only partial, for it is not so much to any single panacea, as to
Socialism and the Social Question.
the application of a multitude of partial remedies, that we can
most wisely trust for the accomplishment of our great aim.
II. The second main count in the socialist indictment of the
present industrial system is that it has multiplied the vicissi-
tudes of trade, and so imposed an incurable and distressing
insecurity upon the labourer's lot. The rapidity of technical
transformation and the frequency of commercial crises create,
it is alleged, a perpetual over-population, driving ever-increas-
ing proportions of the labourers out of active employment into
what Marx calls the industrial reserve, the hungry battalions
of the half-employed or the altogether unemployed. In regard
to technical transformation, the effects of machinery on the
working class are now tolerably well understood. Individuals
suffer in the first instance, but the class, as a whole, is eventu-
ally a great gainer. Machinery has always been the means of
employing far more hands than it superseded, when it did
supersede any (for it has by no means invariably done so).
There is no way of " making work " like producing wealth.
The increased production due to machinery cheapens the
particular commodities produced by it, and thus enables the
purchasers of these commodities to spend more of their income
on other things, and so practically to make work for other
labourers. But even in the trades into which the machinery
has been imported, the effect of its introduction has been to
multiply, instead of curtailing, employment. Take the textile
trades much the most important of the machine industries.
Mr. Mulhall, in his " Dictionary of Statistics " (p. 338), gives
the following statistics of the textile operatives in the United
Kingdom at various dates :
Year.
1835
1850
1880
Men. Women. Children. Total.
82,000 167,000 104,0(30 353,000
158,000 329,000 109,000 596,000
232,000 543,000 201,000 976,000
Marx and others dwell much on the fact, that machinery leads
frequently to the substitution of female for male labour ; but
the preceding table shows that while female labour has been
324 Contemporary Socialism.
largely multiplied, male labour has been scarcely less so, and
besides, a more extensive engagement of women is in itself no
public disadvantage. For half the question of our pauperism
is really the question of employment for women, it being so
much more difficult to find work for unemployed women than
for unemployed men ; and if the course of industrial transfor-
mation opens up new occupations that are suitable for them, it
is so far entirely a social gain, and no loss. No doubt, though
the good accruing from industrial transformation far out-
weighs the evil, yet evil does accrue from it, and evil of the
kind alleged, the tendency to develop local or temporary re-
dundancies of labour. But then that is an evil with which we
have never yet tried to cope, and it may probably be dealt with
as effectively on the present system as on any other. Socialism
would stop it by stopping the progress which it happens to
accompany, and would therefore envelop society in much more
serious distress than it sought to remove. In Marx's remark-
able survey of English industrial history almost every conquest
of modern civilization is viewed with regret ; but it is mani-
festly idle to think of forcing society back now to a state in
which there should be no producing for profit, but only for
private use, no subdivision of labour, no machinery, no steam,
for these are the very means without which it would be im-
possible for our vastly increased population to exist at all.
What may be done to meet the redundancies of labour that
are always with us is a difficult but pressing question which
I cannot enter upon here. State provision of work even in
producing commodities which are imported from abroad, and
which might therefore be produced in State workshops without
hurting home producers has many drawbacks, but the prob-
lem is one that ought to be faced, and something more must
be provided for the case than workhouse and prison.
In regard to commercial crises, they are rather lessening than
increasing. They may be more numerous, for trade is more
extensive and ramified, but they are manifestly less violent
than they used to be. The commercial and financial crises of
the present century have been moderate in their effects as com-
pared with the Darien scheme, Law's speculations in France,
or the Tulip mania in the Low Countries, and under the
Socialism and the Social Question. 325
influence of the beneficial expansion of international commerce
and the equally beneficial principle of free trade, we enjoy
now an absolute immunity from the great periodical visitation
of famine which was so terrible a scourge to our ancestors.
Facts like these are particularly reassuring for this reason, that
they are the result, partly of better acquaintance with the
principles of sound commercial and financial success, and partly
of the equalizing effect of international ramifications of trade,
and that these are causes from which even greater things may
be expected in the future, because they are themselves progres-
sive. There is no social system that can absolutely abolish
vicissitudes, because many of them depend on causes over
which man has no possible control, such as the harvests of the
world, and others on causes over which no single society of
men has any control, such as wars ; and, besides, it is possible
to do a great deal more under the existing system than is at
present done, to mitigate and neutralize some of their worst
effects. To provide the labouring population with the security
of existence, which is one of their pressing needs, a sound
system of working class insurance must be devised, which shall
indemnify them against all the accidents and reverses of life,
including temporary loss of work as well as sickness and age,
and it is not too much to hope, from the amount of attention
which the subject is at present attracting, that such a system
will be obtained. As far as yet appears, the scheme proposed
by Professor Lujo Brentano, to which I have already referred,
is, on the whole, the soundest and most satisfactory in its
general principles that has been advanced.
Again, much of the instability of trade arises from, the want
of commercial statistics, and the consequent ignorance and
darkness in which it must be conducted. More light would
lessen at once the mistakes of well-meaning manufacturers and
the opportunities of illegitimate and designing speculation.
Socialists count all speculation illegitimate, because they fail
to see that speculation, conducted in good faith, exercises a
moderating influence upon the oscillations of prices, preventing
them from falling so low, or rising so high, as they would
otherwise do. Speculation has thus a legitimate and beneficial
work to perform in the industrial system, and if it performed
326 Contemporary Socialism.
its work rightly, it ought to have the opposite effect from that
ascribed to it by socialists, and to conduce to the stability of
trade, instead of shaking it. But unhappily an unscrupulous
and fraudulent spirit too often presides over this work.
Schaeffle, who is not only an eminent political economist,
but has been Minister of Commerce to one of the great powers
of Europe, says that when he got acquainted with the bourse,
he gave up believing any longer in the economic harmonies,
and declared theft to be the principle of modern European
commerce. Socialists always take the bourse to be the type of
capitalistic society, and the fraudulent speculator to be the type
of the bourse, and however they may err in this, there is one
point at any rate which it is almost impossible for them to
exaggerate, and that is the mischief accruing to the whole com-
munity and, as is usual with all general evils, to the working
class more than any other from the prevalence of unsound
trading and inflated speculation. Confidence is the very quick
of modern trade. The least vibration of distrust paralyzes
some of its movements and depresses its circulation. Enter-
prise in opening new investments is indeed more and more
indispensable to the vitality of modern industry, but the
mischiefs of misdirected enterprise are as great as the benefits
of well-directed. Illegitimate speculation is very difficult to
deal with. It can never be reached by a public opinion which
worships success and bows to wealth with questionless devo-
tion. Nor is it practicable for the State to put it down by
direct measures. But the State may perhaps mitigate it some-
what by helping to procure a good system of commercial
statistics, for unsound speculation thrives in ignorance, and
may be to some extent prevented by better knowledge. The
socialist demand for commercial statistics is therefore to be
approved. They would benefit everybody but the dishonest
dealer. They would not only be a corrective against unsound
speculation, but they would tend to smooth the conflicts be-
tween capital and labour about the rate of wages, and the
working class in America press the demand on the ground
of their experience of the benefits they have already derived
from the Labour Statistical Bureaux established in certain of
the States there. Some of our own most weighty economic
Socialism and the Social Question. 327
authorities are strongly in favour of a measure of this kind.
Mr. Jevons, for example, says : " So essential is a knowledge of
the real state of supply and demand to the smooth procedure of
trade, and the real good of the community, that I conceive it
would be quite legitimate to compel the publication of requisite
statistics. Secrecy can only conduce to the profit of speculators
who gain from great fluctuations of prices. Speculation is
advantageous to the public only so far as it tends to equalize
prices, and it is therefore against the public good to allow
speculators to foster artificially the inequalities of prices by
which they profit. The welfare of millions, both of consumers
and producers, depends on an accurate knowledge of the stocks
of cattle and corn, and it would therefore be no unwarrantable
interference with the liberty of the subject to require any
information as to the stock in hand. In Billingsgate fish-
market it has been a regulation that salesmen shall fix up in
a conspicuous place every morning a statement of the kind
and amount of their stock ; and such a regulation, whenever
it could be enforced on other markets, would always be to the
advantage of every one except a few traders." (" Theory of
Political Economy," p. 88.)
III. The next principal charge brought by socialists against
the present order of things is that it commits a signal injustice
against the labouring class, by suffering the capitalists who
employ them to appropriate the whole increase of value which
results from the process of production, and which, as is alleged,
is contributed entirely by the labour of the artizans engaged
in the process. I have already exposed the fallacy of the
theory of value on which this claim is founded, and I need not
repeat here what for convenience sake has been stated in
another place. (See chap. iii. pp. 160-6). Value is not con-
stituted by time of labour alone, except in the case of commo-
dities admitting of indefinite multiplication ; it is constituted
in all other cases by social utility ; and the importance of this
distinction is especially manifest in treating of the very point
that comes before us here the value of labour. Why is one
kind of labour paid dearer than another ? Why is an organizer
of manual labour better paid than the manual labourer himself?
328 Contemporary Socialism.
Why is the railway chairman better paid than the railway
porter ? Or why has the judge a better salary than the police-
man? Is it because he exerts more labour, more socially
necessary time of labour ? No ; the porter works as long as
the chairman, and the policeman as long as the judge. Is it
because more time of labour has been expended in the pre-
paration and apprenticeship of the higher paid functionaries ?
No; because the railway chairman may have undergone no
special training that thousands of persons with much poorer
incomes have not also undergone, and the education of
the judge cost no more than the education of other barris-
ters who do not earn a twentieth part of his salary. The
explanation of differences of remuneration like these is not
to be found in different quantities of labour, but in different
qualities of labour. One man's work is higher, rarer, more
excellent, possesses, in short, more social utility than another's,
and for that reason is more valuable, as value is at present
constituted. It is thus manifest that the theory which declares
value to be nothing but quantity of labour, nothing but time of
labour, is inconsistent with some of the most obvious and im-
portant phenomena of the value of different kinds of labour.
Many forms of labour are much more remunerative than
others, nay, much more remunerative than many applications
of capital, and the difference of remuneration is in no way
whatever connected with the quantity of labour or the time of
labour undergone in earning it. Socialists may perhaps answer
that this ought not to be so ; that if things were as they should
be, the railway chairman, the station-master, the inspector, the
guard, and the porter would be paid by the same simple
standard of the duration of their labour in the service of the
line a standard which would probably reverse the present
gradation of their respective salaries ; but if they make that
answer, they change their ground ; they no longer base their
claim for justice to the labourer on value as it is constituted,
but on value as t they think it oughi to be constituted. Their
theory of value would in that case not be what it pretends to
be, a scientific theory of the actual constitution of value, but a
Utopian theory of its proper and just constitution. It would
be tantamount to saying, Every man, according to our ideas of
Socialism and the Social Question. 329
of justice, ought to be paid according to the value of his work,
and the value of his work, according to our ideas of justice,
ought to be measured by the time the socially necessary time
it occupied. But this whole argument is manifestly based
on nothing better than their own arbitrary conceptions of
justice, and it needs no great perspicacity to perceive that
these conceptions of justice are entirely wrong. In fact, the
common sense of men everywhere would unhesitatingly pro-
nounce it unjust to requite the manager who contrives,
organizes, directs, with only the same salary as the labourer
who executes under his direction, because, while both may
spend the same time of labour, the service rendered by the
one is much more valuable than the service rendered by the
other. Let every man have according to his work, if you will;
but then, in measuring work, the true standard of its value is
not its duration but its social utility, the social importance of
the service it is calculated to render.
This criterion of social utility is the principle that ought
to guide us in answering the question that is really raised
by the particular socialist charge now under consideration,
the question of the justice of interest on capital. Interest is
just because capital is socially useful, and because the owner
of capital, in applying it to productive purposes, renders a
service to society which is valuable in the measure of its social
utility. Of course the State might perform this service itself.
It might compulsorily abstract from the produce of each year
a sufficient portion to constitute the raw materials and in-
struments of future production ; but, as a matter of fact, the
State does not do so. It leaves the service to be rendered
spontaneously by private persons out of their private means.
The service rendered by these persons to production is as indis-
pensable as the service rendered by the labourers, and the
justice of interest stands on exactly the same ground as the
justice of wages. The labourer cannot produce by labour alone,
without materials and implements, any more than the capitalist
can produce by materials and implements alone, without labour;
and the possessor of capital needs a reward to induce him to
advance materials and implements just as much as the labourer
needs a reward to induce him to labour. Nobody will set aside
33 Contemporary Socialism.
a portion of his property to provide for future production if he
is to reap no advantage from doing so, and if the produce will
be distributed in exactly the same way whether he sets it apart
or not. It would be as unjust as it would be suicidal to with-
hold the recompense to which this service is entitled, and
without which nobody would do it.
The real question for socialists to answer is, not whether it
is just to pay private capitalists for the service society accepts
at their hands, but whether society can perform this service
better, or more economically, without them; whether, in short,
the abolition of interest would conduce to any real saving in
the end? This practical question, crucial though it be, is one,
however, to which they seldom address themselves they prefer
expatiating in cloudier regions. Tlie question may not, with
our present experience, admit of a definitive and authoritative
answer ; but the probabilities all point to the conclusion that
capitalistic management of production, costly as it may seem
to be, is really cheaper than that by which socialism would
supersede it. Capitalistic management is proverbially un-
rivalled for two qualities in which bureaucratic management
is as proverbially deficient economy and enterprise. Socialists
complain much of the hosts of middlemen who are nourished
on the present system, the heartless parasites who eat the
bread of society without doing a hand's turn of real good ; but
their own plan would multiply vastly the number of un-
necessary intermediaries depending on industry. Under the
regime of the capitalist there are, we may feel sure, no useless
clerks or overseers, for he has the strongest personal interest in
working his business as economically as possible. But with
the socialist mandarinate, the interest lies the other way, and
the tendency of the head officials would be to multiply their
subordinates and assistants, so that by abolishing the
capitalist, society would not by any means have got rid of
middlemen and parasites. There would be as much waste of
labour as before. Lord Brassey is certainly right in attri-
buting the industrial superiority of Great Britain as much
to the administrative skill and economy of her employers as
to the efficiency of her labourers. Individual capitalists are
more enterprising, as well as more economical managers, than
Socialism and the Social Question. 331
boards. Their keenly interested eyes and ears are ever on the
watch for opportunities, for improvements, for new openings ;
and having to consult nothing but their own judgment, they are
much quicker in adapting themselves to situations and taking
advantage of turns of trade. They will undertake risks that
a board would not agree to, and they will have entered the
field and established a footing long before a manager can get
his directors to stir a finger. Now this habit of being always
on the alert for new extensions, and new processes, and new
investments, is of the utmost value to a progressive community,
and it cannot be found to such purpose anywhere as with the
capitalistic despot the socialists denounce, whose zeal and
judgment are alike sharpened by his hope of personal gain and
risk of personal loss. Studnitz informs us that in 1878 he
found the mills of New York standing idle, but those of
Philadelphia all going, and his explanation is that the ibrmer
were under joint-stock management and the latter belonged to
private owners. The present tendency towards a multiplica-
tion of joint-stock companies is a perfectly good one, because,
for one thing, it helps to a better distribution of wealth ; but
society would suffer if this tendency were to be carried so far
as to supersede independent private enterprise altogether, and
if joint-stock companies were to become the only form of con-
ducting business. And if private enterprise is more advan-
tageous than joint-stock management, because it has more
initiative and adaptability, so joint-stock management is for
the same reason more advantageous than the official centralized
management of all industry.*
If there is any force in these considerations, it seems likely
that we should make a bad bargain, if we dismissed our capi-
talists and private employers, in the expectation that we could
do the work more cheaply by our own public administration.
And the mistake would be especially disappointing for this
reason, that in the ordinary progress of society in wealth and
security the rate of interest always tends to fall, and that
various forces are already in operation that may not unreason-
ably be expected to reduce the rate of profits as well. Profits,
* More will be found on this subject in the chapter on "State Social-
ism,'' under the sub-heading " State Socialism and State Management.''
332 Contemporary Socialism.
as distinguished from interest, are the earnings of management,
and the minimum which employers will be content to take is
at present largely determined by the entirely wrong principle
that their amount ought to bear a direct proportion to the
amount of capital invested in the business. In spite of com-
petition, customary standards of this kind are very influential
in the adjustment of such matters; they are the usual criteria
of what are called fair profits and fair wages; they always
carry with them strong persuasives to acquiescence ; and then,
from their very nature, they are very dependent on public
opinion. I am not sanguine enough to believe with the Ameri-
can economist, President F. A. "Walker, that employers will ever
come to be content with no other reward than the gratification
of power in the management of a great industrial undertaking ;
but there is nothing extravagant in expecting that, through
the influence of public opinion and the constant pressure of
trade unions, a fairer standard of profits may be generally
adopted, with the natural consequence of allowing a rise of
wages.
But whether these expectations are well grounded or no, one
thing is plain, the only thing really material to the precise
issue at present before us, and that is, that while interest and
profits may be both unfair in amount, just as rent may be, or
wages, or judicial penalties, neither of them is unjust in
essence, because they are merely particular forms of remunerat-
ing particular services, which are now actually performed by
the persons who receive the remuneration, and which, under
the socialist scheme, would have to be performed and in all
probability neither so well nor so cheaply by salaried func-
tionaries.
"With these remarks, we may dismiss the specific charge of
injustice brought by socialists against the present order of
things, and the specific claim of right for the labouring class
which they prefer. Let us now submit their proposals to a
more practical and decisive test will they or will they not
realize the legitimate aspirations, the ideal of the working class ?
Does socialism offer a better guarantee for the realization of
that ideal than the existing economy ? I believe it does not.
Socialism and the Social Question. 333
What is the ideal of the working class ? It may be said to be
that they shall share part passu in the progressive conquests of
civilization, and grow in comfort and refinement of life as other
classes of the community have done. Now this involves two
things first, progress; second, diffusion of progress; and
socialism is so intent on the second that it fails to see how
completely it would cut the springs of the first. Some of its
adherents do assert that production would be increased and
progress accelerated under a socialistic economy, but they offer
nothing in support of the assertion, and certainly our past
experience of human nature would lead us to expect precisely
the opposite result. The incentives and energy of production
would be relaxed. I have already spoken of the loss that
would probably be sustained in exchanging the interested zeal
and keen eye of the responsible capitalist employer for the
perfunctory administration of a State officer. A like loss would
be suffered from lightening the responsibility of the labourers
and lessening their power of acquisition. Under a socialist
regime they cannot by any merit acquire more property than
they enjoy in daily use. and they cannot by any fault fail to
possess that. Now socialist labourers are not supposed, any
more than socialist officials, to be angels from heaven ; they
are to carry on the work of society with the ordinary human
nature which we at present possess ; and in circumstances like
those just described, unstirred either by hope or fear, our
ordinary human nature would undoubtedly take its ease and
bask contentedly in the kind providence of the State which
relieved it of all necessity for taking thought or pains. The
inevitable result would be a great diminution of production,
which, with a rapidly increasing population (and socialism
generally scouts the idea of restraining it), would soon prove
seriously embarrassing, and could only be obviated by a resort
to the lash ; in a word, by a return to industrial slavery. Now,
with a lessening production, progress is clearly impossible, and
the more evenly the produce was distributed, the more certain
would be the general decline.
Socialists ignore the civilizing value of private property and
inheritance, because they think of property only as a means
of immediate enjoyment, and not as a means of progress and
334 Contemporary Socialism.
moral development. They would allow private property only
in what is sometimes termed consumers' wealth. You might
still own your clothes, or even purchase your house and garden.
But producers' wealth, they hold, should be common property,
and neither be owned nor inherited by individuals. If this
theory were to be enforced, it would be fatal to progress.
Private property has all along been a great factor in civiliza-
tion, but the private property that has been so has been much
more producers' than consumers'. Consumers' wealth is a
limited instrument of enjoyment; producers' is a power of
immense capability in the hands of the competent. Socialists
are really more individualistic than their opponents in the
view they take of the function of property. They look upon
it purely as a means for gratifying the desires of individuals,
and ignore the immense social value it possesses as a nurse
of the industrial virtues and an agency in the progressive
development of society from generation to generation.
There is still another and even more important spring of
progress that would be stifled by socialism freedom. Free-
dom is, of course, a direct and integral element in any worthy
human ideal, for it is an indispensable condition for individual
development, but here it comes into consideration as an equally
indispensable condition of social progress. Political philoso-
phers, like W. von Humboldt and J. S. Mill, who have pled
strongly for the widest possible extension of individual free-
dom, have made their plea in the interests of society itself.
They looked on individuality as the living seed of progress ;
without individuality no variation of type or differentiation of
function would be possible ; and without freedom there could
be no individuality. Under a regime of socialism freedom
would be choked. Take, for example, a point of great im-
portance both for personal and for social development, the
choice of occupations. Socialism promises a free choice of
occupations ; but that is vain, for the relative numbers that
are now required in any particular occupation are necessarily
determined by the demands of consumers for the particular
commodity the occupation in question sets itself to supply.
Freedom of choice is, therefore, limited at present by natural
conditions, which cause no murmuring ; but these natural
Socialism and the Social Question. 335
conditions would still exist under the socialist regime, and yet
they would perforce appear in the guise of legal and artificial
restrictions. It would be the choice of the State that would
determine who should enter the more desirable occupations,
and not the ichoice of the individuals themselves. The ac-
cepted would seem favourites ; the rejected would complain of
tyranny and wrong. Selection could not be made by competi-
tive examination without treason against the principles of a
socialist state, nor by lot without a sacrifice of efficiency. The
same difficulties would attend the distribution of the fertile
and the poor soils. Even consumption would not escape State
inquisition and guidance, for an economy that pretended to do
away with commercial vicissitudes must take care that a
change of fashion does not extinguish a particular industry
by superseding the articles it produces. Socialism would
introduce, indeed, the most vexatious and all-encompassing
absolutist government ever invented. It would impose on
its central executive functions that would require omniscience
for their discharge, and an authority so excessive that E. von
Hartmann is probably right in thinking that obedience could
only be secured by fabricating for it the illusion of a Divine
origin and reinforcing loyalty by superstition. The extensive
centralized authority given to government in France has un-
doubtedly been one of the main causes of the instability of the
political system of that State, and a socialist rule, with its
vastly greater prerogatives, could only maintain its ascendancy
by being fabulously hedged with the divinity of a Grand
Lama. A military despotism would be at least more con-
sistent with modern conditions ; but a military despotism
socialists abjure, and yet believe that they can exact from
free and equal citizens an almost animal submission to an
authority they elect themselves.
Progress is only possible on the basis of industrial freedom
and private property ; and in the socialist controversy there is
no question about the necessity of progress. That is an as-
sumption common to both sides ; socialists of the present day
acknowledge it as implicitly as the general opinion of the time.
They are no sharers in Mill's admiration for the stationary
state; they utterly ridicule his Malthusian horror of a pro-
336 Contemporary Socialism.
gressive population ; and, profoundly impressed as they are
with the vital need for a better distribution of -wealth, they
hesitate to sacrifice for it an increasing production. On the
contrary, they claim for their system that it would stimulate
progress, as well as spread its blessings, better than the system
that exists, and Lassalle at all events frankly declared that
unless socialism increased production, it would not be economic-
ally justifiable. But tried by this test, we have seen reason
to find it wanting. The problem to which it addresses itself,
the institution of a sound and healthy distribution of wealth,
is probably the greatest social problem of the time ; but
socialism fails to solve it, because no distribution can be sound
and healthy which destroys the conditions of further progress.
The true solution must adhere to the lines of the present
industrial system, the lines of industrial freedom and private
property.
It is one thing, however, to say that the principles of in-
dustrial freedom and private property are essential to a healthy
distribution, and it is quite another thing to hold that the
distribution is then healthiest and most perfect when these
principles enjoy the most absolute and unconditional operation.
If socialism errs by suppressing them, laissez-faire runs into
the opposite error of giving them unlimited authority. Laissez-
faire is perhaps hardty any longer a living faith. But even
when men still believed in the economic harmonies, they
always taught that the best and justest distribution of wealth
was that which issued out of the free competition of in-
dividuals, and that if this distribution ever turned out to be
really faulty or partial, it was only because the competition
was not free or perfect enough ; because some of the com-
petitors were not sufficiently enlightened as compared with
others, or not sufficiently mobile with their labour or capital ;
in other words, because the competition was not conducted on
equal terms. This theory manifestly makes the justice of the
distribution effected by free competition to depend on the false
assumption of the natural equality of the competitors, and
therefore as manifestly implies that unless men are equal in
talents and opportunities, the system of unlimited freedom
may produce a distribution that is seriously unjust. Laissez-
Socialism and the Social Question. 337
faire thus had a germ of socialism in its being, and even when
its ascendancy seemed to be highest, it was already being
practically replaced by a larger and more energetic theory of
social politics which imposed on the State the duty of cor-
recting many of the evils of the present distribution of wealth,
and promoting, if not equality of all conditions, yet certainly
amelioration of the inferior conditions. Instead of maintaining
equal freedom, for weak and strong, the State was to take
the part of the weak against the strong, in order to secure
to all citizens a real participation in progressive civilization.
It is said truly enough that the effect of such interferences
is not to destroy liberty, but to fulfil it, because, apart from
them, the labour contract is no more a free contract for
labourers living from hand to mouth than the capitulation of
a beleaguered garrison when their provisions have run down is
a free capitulation, and the legal intervention is necessary in
order to make the men first really free. Legal freedom is no
more an end in itself than legal intervention ; both are merely
means of giving men real freedom and enabling them effectu-
ally to work out their complete and normal vocation as human
beings. I shall treat more fully of the true theory of social
politics in a subsequent chapter on State Socialism ; but here,
in connection with its relation to industrial freedom, it will
be enough to say that the restraints it proposes are neither
meant nor calculated to impair real freedom, and that it is
separated from socialism by its constant care to develop rather
than supersede individual responsibility, to facilitate the spread
of private property rather than suppress it, and to remove ob-
stacles that are making men's own efforts a nullity rather than
to substitute for those efforts the providence of the State.
If, then, there is any truth in these considerations if the
general acquisition of private property, and not its universal
abolition, is the demand of the working-class ideal then the
business of social reform at present ought to be to facilitate
the acquisition of private property ; to multiply the oppor-
tunities of industrial investment open to the labouring classes,
and to devise means for credit, for saving, for insurance, and
the like. While, for reasons already explained, I have been
33$ Contemporary Socialism.
unaVe to agree with Mr. Cairnes' despondent view of the
economic position of the wage-paid labourers, I am entirely
at one with him in conceiving the surest means to their pro-
gressive amelioration to lie in participation, by one means or
another, in industrial capital. Much good may be done by a
wider extension of trade unions, and a better organization of
working class insurance ; but the labourers must not rest con-
tent till they have found their way, under the new conditions
of modern trade, to become capitalists as well as labourers.
Co-operative production seems- the most obvious solution of this
problem; but it is a mischievous, though a common mistake,
to regard it as the only solution. The fortunes of the working
class are not all embarked in one bottom, and their salvation
may be expected to fulfil itself in many ways. I cannot share
in the lamentation sometimes made because some of the earlier
productive associations have departed from the strict and
original form of co-operation, under which all the shareholders
in the business were labourers and all the labourers share-
holders. In the present situation of affairs, variety of experi-
ment is desirable, for only out of many various experiments
can we eventually discover which are most suitable to the
conditions and fittest to survive. Co-operative production
would perhaps have been further advanced to-day, if co-
operators had not been so faithful in their idolatry of their
original ideal, and had fostered instead of discouraging varia-
tions of type, which may yet justify their superiority by
persisting and multiplying. As it is, co-operative production
has not been such a complete failure as it is sometimes repre-
sented ; it can show at least a few very signal tokens of success
and great promise. It is often declared to be inapplicable to
the great industries, because they require more capital and
better management than co-operative working men are usually
able to furnish. But in the town and neighbourhood of Old-
ham there are 100 co-operative spinning mills, with a capital
of close on 8,000,000. They are managed entirely by working
men, their capital is contributed in 5 shares by working men,
and they have during the last ten years paid dividends varying
from 10 to 45 per cent. These are joint-stock companies rather
than co-operative societies in the stricter sense ; but they are
Socialism and the Social Question. 339
joint-stock companies of working men, and they furnish to
working men in an effective and successful way that partici-
pation in the industrial capital of the country which is really
what is wanted. The Oldham workman prefers to hold shares
in a different mill from that he works in, because he feels
himself more free to exercise his voice as a shareholder there,
and he prefers to carry his labour to the mill where he gets
the best wages and the best treatment, without being obliged
to change his investment when he changes his workshop. The
advantage of the Oldham system over the stricter co-operative
type is therefore the old advantage of freedom. It suits the
English character better, and the only wonder is why it is
still, after more than sixteen j^ears' successful experience, con-
fined exclusively to a single locality. It has been stated that
there are a thousand operatives working at these mills who
are worth 1000 to 2000, and besides the mills, there are
co-operative stores, building societies, and other working-class
companies in Oldham, with a combined capital of 3,500,000.
In all these ways the zone of participators in property broadens,
and hope and stimulus are introduced into the labourer's life.
The truth seems to be that the great need of the working man
is not so much money to invest as opportunity and motive
for investment. The amount lodged in savings banks, the
amount raised by trade unions, the amount wasted in drink,
the amount wasted in inefficient household economy, which
might be much lessened by better instruction in the arts of
cookery and household management all show that large
numbers of the working class possess means at their disposal
to constitute at least the beginnings of their emancipation,
if good opportunities were open to them of using it advan-
tageously in productive enterprise. Co-operation and profit-
sharing are not the only means by which this might be
realized. Private firms might initiate a practice of reserving
a certain amount of their capital to constitute a kind of stock
for their workmen to invest their savings in, under if that
were legalized limited liability. One advantage of this plan
over the ordinary industrial partnership would be, that while,
like it, it would enhance the workmen's zeal in their work,
it could not possibly have the effect of reducing wages, because
340 Contemporary Socialism.
the stock would be a free investment, and would probably not
be taken up by all or by more than a majority of the workmen.
Again, with a reform of our land laws, small investments in
land will certainly be facilitated, especially among the agri-
cultural class.
Socialists would no doubt condemn all such investments for
the same reason as they generally condemn the co-operative
movement, because they would tend to create " a new class
with one foot in the camp of the bourgeoisie and the other in
the camp of the proletariat." But that is precisely one of
their chief advantages, and in making this objection socialists
only betray how completely they ignore the operation of those
portions of human nature that are the real forces and factors
of social progress. It is only by linking a lower class to a
higher that you can raise the level of the whole, and every
pathway the working class makes into a comfortable equality
with the lower bourgeoisie will constitute at once an oppor-
tunity and a spur for others to follow them, which will exercise
an elevating effect upon the entire body. If it were generally
open to all the labouring classes to begin by being wage-
labourers and end by sharing in some degree in the industrial
capital of the country, this would raise the level of the whole
of those who after all remained wage-labourers still, as well
as of those who succeeded in gaining a better competency. It
would give them all something to keep looking forward to
during their working life, something to save for and strive
after, and a higher standard of comfort would get diffused
and considered necessary in the class generally through the
example of the better off. For the more comfortably situated
working men whether they have won their comfort by co-
operation or otherwise have not passed out of their class.
They have, as is alleged, one foot in the camp of the prole-
tariat still. They live and move and have their being among
working people, and constitute by their presence and social
connections a stimulating and elevating agency. It is through
connections like these that the ideas of comfort and culture
that prevail among an upper class permeate through to a
lower, and thus elevate the general standard of living upon
which the level of wages so much depends. Even the minor
Socialism and the Social Question. 341
inequalities in the ranks of the working class are not without
their use in quickening their exertions to maintain the standard
of respectability which they have won or inherited. Econo-
mists were not wrong in ascribing so much influence as they
always have done to men's tenacity in adhering to their
customary standard of life. Many striking illustrations of its
beneficial operation might be mentioned. I select one, because
it concerns an aspect of the condition of the labouring classes
of this country that is at present attracting much attention
their house accommodation. In all our large cities, the house
accommodation of the working class has hitherto been about
as bad as bad could be, but there is one singular exception it
is Sheffield. Porter drew attention to the fact many years
ago. " The town itself," he says, " is ill built and dirty beyond
the usual condition of English towns, but it is the custom
for each family among the labouring population to occupy a
separate dwelling, the rooms of which are furnished in a very
comfortable manner. The floors are carpeted, and the tables
are usually of mahogany. Chests of drawers of the same
material are commonly seen, and so in many cases is a clock
also, the possession of which article of furniture has often
been pointed out as the certain indication of prosperity and
of personal responsibility on the part of the working man."
("Progress of the Nation," p. 523.) The same condition of
things still prevails, for at the meeting of the British Associa-
tion in Sheffield in 1879 Dr. Hime read a paper on the vital
statistics of the town, in which he says : "Although handsome
public buildings are not a prominent feature in the town, still
there are few towns in England where the great bulk of the
population is so well provided for in the way of domestic
architecture. Overcrowding is very rare ; cellar dwellings are
unknown ; and almost every family has an entire house, a
most important agent in securing physical as well as moral
health." (Transactions of British Association, 1879.) Now this
is a fact of the highest interest, and we naturally ask what
peculiarity there is in the trade or circumstances of Sheffield,
in the first place, to create such an exceptional excellence in
the standard of working class house accommodation, and, in
the next place, to maintain it. One thing is certain : it is not
34 2 Contemporary Socialism.
due to better wages. There are trades in Sheffield very highly
paid, but the labourers belonging to them are described by the
anonymous author of " An Inquiry into the Moral, Social, and
Intellectual Condition of the Industrious Classes of Sheffield "
(London, 1839), as being much less comfortable in their circum-
stances than the others. This writer speaks of some trades
in which " the workmen are steady, intelligent, and orderly,
seldom the recipients of charity or parochial relief. They
depend on their own exertions for the respectable maintenance
of their families, and when trade is depressed they strive to
live on diminished wages, or fall back on resources secured by
industry and economy. This healthy and vigorous condition
is not attributable to high wages. The workmen in the edge-
tool trade are extravagantly remunerated, and yet, as a body,
they are perhaps as irregular and dissipated in their habits as
any in the town. Their families, in time of good trade, feel
few of the advantages of prosperity, and when labour is little
in demand, they are the first to need 1 the aid of charity. These
differences are familiar to the most superficial observer of the
social and moral condition of the workmen in the several
branches " (p. 14). But the same writer mentions a peculiarity
in the trade of Sheffield which, he says, marks it off from every
other manufacturing town, and that peculiarity may serve to
provide us with the explanation we are seeking. " With us,"
he says, "the distinctions between masters and men are not
always well marked. Persons are to a great extent both. The
transition from the one to the other is easy and frequent in
those branches where the tools are few and simple, and the
capital required extremely small, which applies to the whole
of the cutlery department." " The facility with which men
become masters causes extraordinary competition, and its in-
evitable result, insufficient remuneration." " Here merchants
and manufacturers cannot become princes. . . . There is
not sufficient play for large fortunes. The making of fortunes
is with us a slow process. It is, however, far from being
partial. . . . The longer period required in the making of
them allows the mind time to adapt itself to its improved
circumstances, not merely the speculative and money-getting
part of the understanding, but the whole of its social, moral,
Socialism and the Social Question. 343
and intellectual powers, without which, means are a question-
able good. Wealth and intelligence are accordingly with us
more generally associated than in towns where immense for-
tunes are rapidly made. In the latter case, there is no time
for adaptation, nor is it deemed necessary or at all important,
where money is the measure by which all things are estimated,
Another evil dependent on this sudden elevation in life is the
great distance which is immediately placed between employer
and employed " (p. 15). Class and class are thus better knit
together in Sheffield than elsewhere. The exceptional facility
of becoming masters seems to be the particular instrumentality
which has brought down the ideas and habits of comfort of
the bourgeoisie and spread them among the working class,
and which has always prevented the great mass of the latter
from sinking contentedly into a lower general standard of life.
It introduced among them that social ambition, which is the
most effective spur to progress, and the best preservative
against decline. The fact that the exceptionally good house
accommodation which prevails among the labouring population
of Sheffield is not owing to exceptional, or even at all superior,
wages, is one of much hope and encouragement. What is
possible in Sheffield cannot be impossible elsewhere ; and what
is possible in the matter of house accommodation cannot be
hopeless in other branches of consumption.
I shall be told that in all this I am only repeating the foolish
idea of the French princess, who heard the people complain
they could not get bread, and asked why then they did not
buy cake. Where combinations are possible, it will be said,
investments may be also possible ; but the great majority of
the working class are not in a position to combine, and it is
mere mockery to tell people to save and invest who can hardly
contrive to cover their backs. To this I reply, that there is no
reason to assume that trade unions have reached the utmost
extension of which they are susceptible, or to despair of their
introduction into the hitherto unorganized trades. It was only
lately common to deny the possibility of combination among
agricultural labourers, and yet, scattered as they are, they have
shown themselves not only able to combine, but to raise wages
effectively by means of their combinations. We have now
344 Contemporary Socialism,
very powerful unions of unskilled day labourers, and a be-
ginning has been made of an efficient organization even
among needlewomen. It is true that, even when organiza-
tion has spoken its last word, much of the distressing poverty
that now exists would probably still remain, because we must
not disguise from ourselves the fact that much of that poverty
is the direct fruit of vice, disease, or indolence. But socialism
could not cope with this mass of misery any better than the
present system, for men don't drink and loaf and enter into
improvident marriages or illicit alliances because they happen
to be paid for their labour by contract with a capitalist instead
of valuation by a State officer, and they certainly would not
cease doing any of these things because an indulgent State
undertook to save them from the natural penalties of doing
them.
CHAPTER XI.
STATE SOCIALISM.
I. State Socialism and English Economics.
STATE socialism has been described by M. Leon Say as a
German philosophy which was natural enough to a people
with the political history and habits of the Germans, but which,
in his opinion, was ill calculated to cross the French frontier,
and was contrary to the very nature of the Anglo-Saxons.
Sovereign and trader may be incompatible occupations, as
Adam Smith asserts, but in Germany, at least, they have never
seemed so. There, Governments have always been accustomed
to enter very considerably into trade and manufactures, partly
to provide the public revenue, partly to supply deficiencies of
private enterprise, and partly, within more recent times, for
reasons of a so-called " strategic " order, connected with the
defence or consolidation of the new Empire. The German
States possess, every one of them, more Crown lands and
forests, in proportion to their size, than any other countries in
Europe, some of them, indeed, being able to meet half their
public expenditure from this source alone ; and besides their
territorial domain, most of them have an even more extensive
industrial domain of State mines, or State breweries, or State
banks, or State foundries, or State potteries, or State railways,
and their rulers are still projecting fresh conquests in the same
direction by means of brandy and tobacco monopolies. But in
England things stand far otherwise. She has sold off most
of her Crown lands, and is slowly parting with, rather than
adding to, the remainder. She abolished State monopolies in
the days of the Stuarts, as instruments of political oppression,
and she has abandoned State bounties more recently as nurses
of commercial incompetency. She owes her whole industrial
345
346 Contemporary Socialism.
greatness, her manufactures, her banks, her shipping, her rail-
ways, to some extent her very colonial possessions, to the
unassisted energy of her private citizens. England has been
reared on the principle of freedom, and could never be brought,
M. Say might not unreasonably conclude, to espouse the opposite
principle of State socialism, unless the national character
underwent a radical change. And yet, while he was still
writing, he was confounded to see signs, as he thought, of this
alien philosophy obtaining, not simply an asylum, but really
an ascendancy in this country. It appeared to M. Say to be
striking every whit as strong a root in our soil and climate as
it had done in its native habitat, and he is disposed to join in
the alarm, then recently sounded at Edinburgh by Mr. Goschen,
that the soil and climate had changed, that the whole policy,
opinion, and feeling of the English people with respect to the
intervention of the public authority had undergone a revolution.
Mr. Goschen had, in raising the alarm, shown some perplexity
how far to condemn the change and how far to praise it, but
he was quite clear upon its reality, and was possessed by a
most anxious sense of its magnitude and gravity. " We can-
not," said he, " see universal State action enthroned as a prin-
ciple of government without misgiving." Mr. Herbert Spencer
took up the cry with more vehemence, declaring that the age
of British freedom was gone, and warning us to prepare for
" the coming slavery." M. de Laveleye, who is unquestionably
one of the most careful and competent foreign observers of our
affairs, followed Mr. Spencer, and although, being himself a
State socialist, he welcomed this alleged new era as much as
Mr. Spencer deprecated it, he gave substantially the same
description of the facts ; he said, England, once so jealous for
liberty, was now running ahead of all other nations on the
career of State socialism. And that seems to have become an
established impression both at home and abroad. The French
Academy of Moral and Political Sciences has devoted several
successive sittings to the subject ; the eminent German eco-
nomist, Professor Nasse, has discussed it and with much
excellent discrimination in an article on the decline of
economic individualism in England ; and it is now the current
assumption of the journals and of popular conversation in this
State Socialism. 347
country, that a profound change has come over the spirit of
English politics in the course of the present generation a
change from the old trust in liberty to a new trust in State
regulation, and from the French doctrine of laissez-faire to the
German doctrine of State socialism.
But this assumption, notwithstanding the currency it has
obtained and the distinguished authorities by whom it is sup-
ported, is in reality exaggerated and undiscriminating. While
marking the growing frequency of Government interventions,
it makes no attempt to distinguish between interventions of
one kind and interventions of another kind, and it utterly fails
to recognise that English opinion whether exhibited in legis-
lative work or economic writings was not dominated by the
principle of laissez-faire in the past any more than in the
present, but that it really has all along obeyed a fairly well-
defined positive doctrine of social politics, which gave the
State a considerable concurrent role in the social and industrial
development of the community. The increasing frequency of
Government interventions is in itself a simple and unavoidable
concomitant of the growth of society. With the rapid trans-
formations of modern industrial life, the increase and concen-
tration of population, and the general spread of enlightenment,
we cannot expect to retain the political or legislative inactivity
of stationary ages. As Mr. Hearn remarks, " All the volumes
of the statutes, from their beginning under Henry III. to the
close of the reign of George II., do not equal the quantity of
legislative work done in a decade of any subsequent reign."
(" Theory of Legal Duties and Rights," p. 21.) The process
has been continuous and progressive, and it suffered no inter-
ruption in the period which is usually supposed to have been
peculiarly sacred to laissez-faire. On the contrary, that period
will be found to exceed the period that went before it in legis-
lative activity, exactly as it has in turn been itself exceeded by
our own time. On any theory of the State's functions, an
increase in the number of laws and regulations was inevitable ;
it was only part and portion of the natural growth of things ;
but such an increase affords no evidence, not even a presump-
tion, of any change in the principles by which legislation is
governed, or in the purposes or functions for which the power
34-S Contemporary Socialism.
of the State is habitually invoked. A mere growth of work is
not a multiplication of functions ; to get a result, we must first
analyze the work done and discriminate this from that.
Now, in the first place, when compared with other nations,
England has been doing singularly little in the direction the
distinctively socialistic direction of multiplying State indus-
tries and enlarging the public property in the means of pro-
duction. Municipalities, indeed, have widened their industrial
domain considerably ; it has become common for them to take
into their own hands things like the gas and water supply of
the community which would in any case be monopolies, and
their management, being exposed to an extremely effective
local opinion, is generally very advantageous. But while local
authorities have done so much, the central Government has
held back. Many new industries have come into being during
the present reign, but we have nationalized none of them
except the telegraphs. We have added to the Post-Office the
departments of the Savings Bank and the Parcels Post ; we
have, for purely military reasons, extended our national dock-
yards and arms factories since the Crimean war, but without
thereby enhancing national confidence in Government manage-
ment ; we have, for diplomatic purposes, bought shares in the
Suez Canal ; we have undertaken a few small jobs of testing
and stamping, such as the branding of herrings ; but we are
now the only European nation that has no State railway ; we
have refrained from nationalizing the telephones, though
legally entitled to do so ; and we very rarely give subventions
to private enterprises. This is much less the effect of deliberate
political conviction than the natural fruit of the character and
circumstances of the people, of their powerful private resources
and those habits of commercial association which M. Chevalier
speaks of with so much friendly envy, complaining that his
own countrymen could never be a great industrial nation
because they had no taste for acquiring them. In the English
colonies, where capital is more scarce, Government is required
to do very much more ; most of them have State railways, and
some New Zealand, for instance State insurance offices for
fire and life. These colonial experiments will have great weight
with the English public in settling the problem of Government
State Socialism. 349
management under a democracy, and if they prove successful,
will undoubtedly influence opinion at home to follow their
example ; but as things are at present, there is no appearance
of any great body of English opinion moving in that direction.
But while England has lagged behind other nations in this
particular class of Government intervention, there is another
class in which she has undoubtedly run far before them all. If
we have not been multiplying State industries, we have been
very active in extending and establishing popular rights, by
means of new laws, new administrative regulations, or new
systems of industrial police. In fact, the greater part of our
recent social legislation has been of this order, and it is of that
legislation M. de Laveleye is thinking when he says England is
taking the lead of the nations in the career of State socialism.
But that is nothing new ; if we are in advance of other nations
in establishing popular rights to-day, we have been in advance
of them in that work for centuries already. That peculiarity
also has its roots in our national history and character, and is
no upstart fashion of the hour. Now, without raising the ques-
tion whether the rights which our recent social legislation has
seen fit to establish, are in all cases and respects rights that
ought to have been established, it is sufficient for our present
purpose to observe that at least this is obviously a very dif-
ferent class of intervention from the last, because if it does not
belong to, it is certainly closely allied with, those primary
duties which are everywhere included among the necessary
functions of all government, the protection of the citizen from
force and fraud. To protect a right, you must first establish
it ; you must first recognise it, define its scope, and invest it
with the sanction of authority. With the progress of society
fresh perils emerge and fresh protections must be devised ; the
old legal right needs to be reconstructed to meet the new
situation, or a new right must be created hitherto unknown
perhaps, unless by analogy, to the law. But even here the
novelty lies, not in the principle for all right is a protection
of the weak, or ought to be so but in the situation alone ; in
the rise of the factory system, which called for the Factory
Acts ; in the growth of large towns, which called for Health
and Dwellings Acts ; in the extension of joint-stock companies,
35 Contemporary Socialism.
which called for the Limited Liability Acts ; in the monopoly
of railway transportation, which called for the regulation of
rates ; or in the spread of scientific agriculture, which required
the constitution of a new sort of property, the property of a
tenant-farmer in his own unexhausted improvements.
This peculiarity of the industrial and social legislation of
England has not escaped the acute intelligence of Mr. Goschen.
Mistrustful as he is of Government intervention, Mr. Goschen
observes with satisfaction that the great majority of recent
Government interventions in England have been undertaken
for moral rather than economic ends. After quoting Mr.
Thorold Rogers' remark, that these interventions generally
had the good economic aim of preventing the waste of national
resources, he says : " But I believe that certainly in the case
of the Factory Acts, and to a great extent in the case of the
Education Acts, it was a moral rather than an economic influ-
ence the conscientious feeling of what was right rather than
the intellectual feeling of ultimate material gain it was
the public imagination touched by obligations of our higher
nature which supplied the tremendous motive-power for
passing laws which put the State and its inspectors in the
place of father or mother as guardians of a child's education,
labour, and health." (" Addresses," p. 62.)
The State interfered not because the child had a certain capi-
tal value as an instrument of future production which it would
be imprudent to lose, but because the child had certain rights
certain broad moral claims as a human being which the
parents' natural authority must not be suffered to violate or
endanger, and which the State, as the supreme protector of all
rights, really lay under a simple moral obligation to secure.
Reforms of this character are naturally inspired by moral in-
fluences, by sentiments of justice or of humanity, by a feeling
that wrong is being done to a class of the community who are
placed in a situation of comparative weakness, inasmuch as
they are deprived whether through the force of circumstances
or the selfish neglect of their superiors of what public opinion
recognises to be essential conditions of normal human existence.
Now, most of the legislation which has led Mr. Goschen to de-
clare that universal State action is now enthroned in England
State Socialism. 351
has belonged to this order. It has been guided by ethical and
not by economic considerations. It has been employed mainly
in readjusting rights, in establishing fresh securities for just
dealing and humane living; but it has been very chary of
following Continental countries in nationalizing industries.
When therefore Mr. Spencer tells M. de Laveleye that the
reason why England is extending the functions of her Govern-
ment so much more than other nations " is obviously because
there is great scope for the further extension of them here,
while abroad there is little scope for the further extension of
them," his explanation is singularly inappropriate. England
has not been extending the functions of Government all round,
but she has moved in the direction where she had less scope to
move, and has stood still in the direction where she had more
scope to move than other countries. And it is important to
keep this distinction in mind when we hear it so often stated
in too general terms that we have discarded our old belief in
individual liberty and set up " universal State action " in its
place.
But those who complain of England having broken off from
her old moorings, not only exaggerate her leanings to authority
in the present, but they also ignore her concessions to authority
in the past. English statesmen and economists have never
entertained the rigid aversion to Government interference that
is vulgarly attributed to them, but with all their profound
belief in individual liberty they have always reserved for the
Government a concurrent sphere of social and economic activity
what may even be designated a specific social and economic
mission. A few words may be usefully devoted to this English
doctrine of social politics here, not merely because they may
serve to dispel a prevailing error, but because they will furnish
a good vantage-ground for seizing and judging of a principle
of government which is to-day in every mouth, but unfor-
tunately bears in every mouth a different meaning the prin-
ciple of State socialism.
It is commonly believed that the English doctrine of social
politics is the doctrine of laissez-faire, and our economists are
continually reviled as if they sought to leave the world to the
play of self-interest and competition, unchecked by any ideas
35 2 Contemporary Socialism.
of social justice or individual human right. But in truth the
doctrine of laissez-faire has never been held by any English
thinker, unless, perhaps, Mr. Herbert Spencer. Mr. Spencer's
first work, " Social Statics," was an exposition of the theory
that the end of all government was the liberty of the in-
dividual, the realization for every citizen of the greatest
amount of liberty it was possible for him to enjoy without
interfering with the corresponding claims of his fellow-citizens.
The individual had only one right the right to equal freedom
with ever\-body else, and the State had only one duty the
duty of protecting that right against violence and fraud. It
could not stir beyond that task without treading on the right
of some one, and therefore it ought not to stir at all. It had
nothing to do with health, or religion, or morals, or education,
or relief of distress, or public convenience of any sort, except
to leave them sternly alone. It must, of course, renounce the
thought of bounties and protective duties, but it must also
give up marking plate, minting coin, and stamping butter ;
it must take no part in building harbours or lighthouses or
roads or canals ; and even a town council cannot without
offence undertake to pave or clean or light the streets under
its jurisdiction. It is only fair to say that Mr. Spencer refuses
to be bound now by every detail of his youthful theory, but
he has repeated the substance of it in his recent work, " The
Man versus The State," which is written to prove that the
only thing we want from the State is protection, and that the
protection we want most of late is protection against our pro-
tector.
This theory is certainly about as extreme a development of
individualism as could well be entertained ; and though it has
been even distanced in one or two points by Wilhelm von
Humboldt who objected, for example, to marriage laws* no
* It is only fair to this eminent man to remember that his mature
opii lious must not be looked for in his essay, " Ideen zu einem Versuch
die Granzen dor Wirksamkeit des Staats zu bestimmen," which was writ-
ten in his early youth, and never published until after its author's death.
Although in this work he condemns all State education, he lived to be a
famous Minister of Education himself, and to take a great part in estab-
lishing the Prussian system of public instruction.
State Socialism. 353
important English writer has ventured near it, The description
of the State's business as the business of protecting the citizens
from force and fraud, has indeed been familiar in our literature
since the days of Locke, and isolated passages may be cited
from the works of various political thinkers, which, if taken by
themselves, would seem to deny to the State any right to act
except for purposes of self-protection. John Stuart Mill him'
self speaks sometimes in that way, although we know, from the
chapter he devotes to the subject of Government interference
in his "Principles of Political Economy," that he really as-
signed to the State much wider functions. When we examine
the writings of English economists and statesmen, and the
principles they employ in the discussion of the social and indus-
trial questions of their time, it seems truly strange how they
ever came to be credited with any scruple on ground of
principle to invoke the power of the State for the solution of
such questions when that seemed to them likely to prove of
effectual assistance.
The social doctrine which has prevailed in England for the
last century is " the simple and obvious system of natural
liberty " taught by Adam Smith ; but the simple and obvious
system of natural liberty is a very different thing from the
system of laissez-faire with which it is so commonly con-
founded. Its main principle, it is true, is this : "Every man,"
says Smith, " as long as he does not violate the laws of justice,
is left perfectly free to pursue his own interest his own
way, and to bring both his industry and capital into com-
petition with those of any other man or order of men. The
Sovereign is completely discharged from a duty, in the attempt-
ing to perform which he must always be exposed to innumerable
delusions, and for the proper performance of which no human
wisdom or knowledge could ever be sufficient: the duty of
superintending the industry of private people and of directing
it towards the employments most suitable to the interests of
the society." (" "Wealth of Nations," book iv., chap, ix.) But
while the Sovereign is discharged from an industrial duty
which he is incapable of performing satisfactorily, he is far
from being discharged from all industrial responsibility what-
soever, for Smith immediately proceeds to map out the limits
A A
354 Contemporary Socialism.
of his functions as follows : "According to the system of natural
liberty, the Sovereign has only three duties to attend to three
duties of great importance, indeed, but plain and intelligible to
common understandings : first, the duty of protecting the society
from the violence or invasion of other independent societies ;
second, the duty of protecting, as far as possible, every member
of the society from the injustice or oppression of every other
member of it, or the duty of establishing an exact administra-
tion of justice ; and thirdly, the duty of erecting and main-
taining certain works and certain public institutions which it
can never be for the interest of any imdividual or small number
of individuals to erect and maintain ; because the profit could
never repay the expense to any individual or small number of
individuals, though it may frequently do much more than repay
it to a great society."
The State is required to protect us from other evils besides
the evils of force and fraud infectious diseases, for example,
are in the context mentioned expressly and to supply us with
many other advantages besides the advantage of protection.
Some of these advantages are of a material or economic order,
and others of an intellectual or moral. The material advan-
tages consist for the most part of provisions for facilitating the
general commerce of the country such things as roads, canals,
harbours, the post, the mint or provisions for facilitating par-
ticular branches of commerce: and among these he instances
the incorporation of joint-stock companies endowed by charter
with exclusive trading privileges ; and the reason which, ac-
cording to Smith, entitles the State to intervene in this class of
cases, and which at the same time prescribes the length to
which its intervention may legitimately go, is that individuals
are unable to do the work satisfactorily themselves, or that, the
State has from its nature superior qualifications for the task.
The intellectual or moral advantages which Smith asks from the
State are mostly provisions for sustaining the national manhood
and character, such as a system of compulsory military training
or a system of compulsory and if not gratuitous, still cheap
education ; and it is important to mark that he asks for these
measures, not on the ground of their political or military expe-
diency, but on the broad ground that cowardice and ignorance
State Socialism. 355
are in themselves public evils, from which the State is as much
bound, if it can, to save the people, as it is bound to save them
from violence or fraud. Of military training he observes: "To
prevent that sort of mental mutilation, deformity, and wretched-
ness which cowardice necessarily involves in it from spreading
themselves through the great body of the people, would deserve
the serious attention of Government, in the same manner as it
would deserve its most serious attention to prevent a leprosy
or any other loathsome and offensive disease, though neither
mortal nor dangerous, from spreading itself among them, though
perhaps no other public good might result from such attention
besides the prevention of so great a public evil." (" "Wealth of
Nations," book v., chap, i.) And he proceeds to speak of educa-
tion : " The same thing may be said of the gross ignorance and
stupidity which in a civilized society seems so frequently to
benumb the understanding of all the inferior ranks of people.
A man without the proper use of the intellectual faculties of a
man is, if possible, more contemptible than even a coward, and
seems to be mutilated and deformed in a still more essential part
of the character of human nature. Though the State was to
derive no advantage from the instruction of the inferior ranks
of people, it would still deserve its attention that they should
not be altogether uninstructed." Compulsory militai'y training
and a system of national education would no doubt be con-
ducive to the stricter ends of all government ; the one would
strengthen the defences of the nation against foreign enemies
and the other would tend to the diminution of crime at home ;
but Smith, it will be seen, explicitly refuses to take that ground.
The State's duty in the case would be the same, though no
such results were to follow, for the State has other duties to
perform besides the maintenance of peace and the repression
of crime. It would probably be admitted, he thinks, that it
was as incumbent on the State to take steps to arrest the pro-
gress of a " mortal and dangerous " disease as it was to stop a
foreign invasion; but he goes further, and contends that it was
equally incumbent on the State to arrest the progress of a
merely "loathsome and offensive" disease, for the simple reason
that such a disease was a mutilation or deformity of our physical
manhood. And just as the State ought to prevent the mutilation
356 Contemporary Socialism.
and deformity of our physical manhood, so the State ought to
prevent the mutilation and deformity of our moral and intellec-
tual manhood, and was bound accordingly to provide a system
of military training and a system of popular education, to
prevent people growing up ignorant and cowardly, because the
ignorant man and the coward were men without the proper use
of the faculties of a man, and were mutilated and deformed in
essential parts of the character of human nature. At bottom
Smith's principle is this that men have an original claim a
claim as original as the claim to safety of life and property to
all the essential conditions of an unmutilated and undeformed
manhood, and that is really only another expression for the
principle that lies at the foundation of all civil and human
right, that men have a right to the essential conditions of a
normal humanity, to the presuppositions of all humane living,
to the indispensable securities for the proper realization of our
common vocation as human beings. The right to personal
liberty to the power of working for ends of our own prescrib-
ing, and the right to property to the power of retaining what
we have made, to be the instrument of further activities for the
ends we have prescribed for ourselves rest really on no other
ground than that the privileges claimed are essential conditions
of a normal, an unmutilated and undeformed manhood, and it
is on this broad ground that Adam Smith justifies the State's
intervention to stop disease and supply education.
Smith held but a poor opinion of the capacities of Govern-
ment management, and especially of English Government
management, which, he asserted, was characterized in times
of peace by " the slothful and negligent profusion that was
natural to monarchies," and in times of war by " all the
thoughtless extravagance " that was peculiar to democracies ;
but nevertheless he had no hesitation in asking Government to
undertake a considerable number of industrial enterprises,
because he believed that these were enterprises which Govern-
ment with all its faults was better fitted to conduct success-
fully than private adventurers were. On the other hand,
Smith entertained the highest possible belief in individual
liberty, but he had never any scruple about sacrificing liberty
of contract where the sacrifice was demanded by the great
State Socialism. 357
moral end of Government the maintenance of just and hu-
mane dealing between man and man. For example, the sup-
pression of the truck S3"stem, which is sometimes condemned
as an undue interference with freedom of contract, was
strongly supported by Smith, who declared it to be "quite
just and equitable," inasmuch as it merely secured to the
workmen the pay they were entitled to receive and " imposed
no real hardship on the masters it only obliged them to pay
that value in money which they pretended to pay, but did not
really pay, in goods." It was only a just and necessary pro-
tection of the weaker party to a contract against an oppressive
exaction to which, like the apothecary in " Romeo and Juliet,"
his poverty might have consented, but not his will. Precisely
analogous is Smith's position concerning usury laws. Usury
laws are seldom defended now ; for one thing, money has be-
come so abundant that the competition of lender with lender
may be trusted to as a better security for fair and reasonable
treatment of borrowers than a Government enactment could
provide. But Smith in his day was strongly in favour of fixing
a legal rate of interest, because he thought it was necessary
to prevent the practice of extortion by unscrupulous dealers on
necessitous clients. His views on truck and usury show that
he had no sympathy with those who contend that the State
must on no account interfere with grown-up people in the
bargains they may make, inasmuch as grown-up people may
be expected to be quite capable of looking effectively after
their own interest. Smith recognised that grown-up people
were often in natural circumstances where it was practically
impossible for them to assert effectively not their interests
merel}', but even their essential claims as fellow-citizens ; and
that therefore it was the State's duty to come to the aid of
those whose own economic position was weak, and to force
upon the strong certain responsibilities or at least secure for
the weak certain broad, positive conditions which just and
humane dealing might demand.
Now, in these ideas about truck and usury, as in the pro-
posals previously touched upon for checking the growth of
disease or cowardice or ignorance, is not the principle of social
politics that is applied by Smith precisely the principle that
Contemporary Socialism.
runs through our whole recent social legislation factory, sani-
tary, and educational the principle of the State's obligation
to secure the people in the essential conditions of all normal
manhood ? German writers often take Smith for an exponent,
if not for the founder, of what they call the Eechtstaat theory
the theory that the State is mainly the protector of right ;
but in reality Smith's doctrine corresponded pretty closely
with their own Kultur-und-Wohlfahrtstaat theory the theory
that the State is a promoter of culture and welfare ; and if
further proof were wanted, it might be found in the fact that
in his doctrine of taxation he departs altogether from the eco-
nomic principle, which is popularly associated with the Eecht-
staat idea, and is supposed to be a corollary of it, that a tax is
a quid pro quo, a price paid for a service rendered, and ought
therefore to be imposed on individuals in proportion to the
service they respectively receive from the State ; and instead
of this economic principle he lays down the broad ethical one,
that a tax is a public obligation which individuals ought to
be called upon to discharge in proportion to their respective
abilities. The rich cannot fairly be said to get more good from
the State than the poor ; they probably get less, because they
are better capable of providing for their own defence ; but the
rich are able to do more good to the State than the poor, and
because they are able, they are bound.
Such is the social doctrine of Adam Smith, and it is mani-
festly no doctrine of rigid individualism, calling out for free-
dom at any price, or banning all interference with the natural
play of self-interest and competition. The natural liberty for
which the great English economist contended was not the
mere ghost of liberty worshipped by Mr. Spencer. An
ignorant man might be free, as an imprisoned man was free,
within limits, but he was not free within normal human limits.
He had not the use of his mind ; he was wanting in an essen-
tial part of his manhood. First make him a man a whole,
complete, competent man, fit for man's vocation then make
him free. There is a common metaphysical distinction be-
tween the formal freedom of the will and the material freedom
of the will. The drunkard, the lunatic, is formally free, for he
exerts his choice, but he is materially enslaved. The difference
State Socialism. 359
between liberty according to Mr. Spencer and liberty accord-
ing to Adam Smith is something analogous. The liberty
Smith desires is a substantial liberty ; it is clothed with a body
a definite body of universal human rights which the State
is bound to realize as it would realize liberty itself. The reason
of his difference from the laissez-faire theory of Mr. Spencer,
which is so often erroneously attributed to him, is that he
takes a much broader and more practical view of the original
moral rights of individuals than such ultra-individualists are
accustomed to do. "While they hold that the State is there
only to secure to individuals reality and equality of freedom,
he holds it is there to secure them reality and equality of
all moral rights. He would supply all alike, therefore, with
certain material securities the material conditions necessary
to secure their moral rights with equal completeness, and he
would protect them in the enjoyment of those conditions
against the assaults of poverty and misfortune no less than
the assaults of murderers and thieves. But beyond this line
he would refuse to go ; if he stands clearly out in advance of
the laissez-faire position of equality of legal freedom, he
stands equally clearly far short of the socialistic position of
equality of material conditions.
Now this doctrine of the great founder of English political
economy has been substantially the doctrine of his successors
as well. It would be beyond my present scope to trace the
history of the doctrine of social politics through the writings
of the whole succession of English economists, nor is it neces-
sary. I shall choose a representative economist from the
group who are generally reckoned the most narrow and
unsympathetic, who are accused of having shifted political
economy off the broader lines on which it had been launched by
Smith, who are counted the great idolaters of self-interest and
natural law, and the scientific associates of the much-abused
Manchester school viz., the disciples of Ricardo. Bicardo
himself touches only incidentally on the functions of the State,
but he then does so to defend interventions, such as minting
money, marking plate, testing drugs, examining medical can-
didates, and the like, which are meant to guard people against
deceptions they are themselves incompetent to detect. More-
360 Contemporary Socialism.
over, lie was a strong advocate for at least one important
extension of the State's industrial role he would establish
a National Bank of issue with exclusive privileges ; and it is
not uninteresting to remember that in his place in Parliament
he brought forward the suggestion of a system of Government
annuities for the accommodation of working men, which was
introduced by Mr. Gladstone half a century later, and has been
denounced in certain quarters as that statesman's first step in
socialism, and that he was one of a very small minority who
voted for a Parliamentary inquiry into the social system of
Robert Owen.
But if Ricardo is comparatively silent on the subject, we
fortunately possess a very ample discussion of it by one of
his leading disciples, J. R. McCulloch. "When Ricardo died,
James Mill wrote to McCulloch, " As you and I are his two
and only genuine disciples, his memory must be a point of
connection between us ; " and it was on McCulloch that the
mantle of the master descended. His " Principles of Political
Economy," which may be said to be an exposition of the
system of economics according to Ricardo, was for many years
the principal textbook of the science, and will still be admitted
to be the best and most complete statement of what, in the
cant of the present day, is called orthodox political economy.
McCulloch, indeed, is more than merely the expositor of that
system ; he is really one of its founders, the author of one of
its most famous dogmas, at least in its current form, the now
exploded doctrine of the Wages fund ; and of all the adherents
of this orthodox tradition, McCulloch is commonly considered
the hardest and most narrow. There are economists who are
supposed to show a native generous warmth which all the
severities of their science are unable to quell. John Stuart
Mill is known to have come under St. Simonian influences
in his younger days, and to have been fond ever afterwards of
calling himself a socialist ; and Professor Sidgwick, in our own
day, is often credited and not unjustly with a like breadth
of heart, and in publishing his views of Government inter-
ference, he gives them the name of " Economic Socialism."
But in selecting McCulloch, I select an economist the rigour
of whose principles has never been suspected, and yet so
State Socialism. 361
striking is the uniformity of the English tradition on this
subject, that in reality neither Mill nor Mr. Sidgwick
professes a broader doctrine of social politics, or goes a step
further, or more heartily on the road to socialism than that
accredited champion of individualism, John Ramsay Mc-
Culloch.
McCulloch's " Principles " contains from the second edition
in 1830 onward to the last author's edition in 1849 a special
chapter on the limits of Government interference ; and the
chapter starts with an explicit repudiation of the doctrine of
laissez-faire, which was then apparently only beginning to
come into vogue in England.
" An idea," says McCulloch, " seems however to have been
recently gaming ground that the duty of the Government with
regard to the domestic policy of the country is almost entirely
of a negative kind, and that it has merely to maintain the
security of property and the freedom of industry. But its duty
is by no means so simple and easily denned as those who sup-
port this opinion would have us to believe. It is certainly true
that its interference with the pursuits of individuals has been,
in very many instances, exerted in a wrong direction, and
carried to a ruinous excess. Still, however, it is easy to see
that we should fall into a very great error if we supposed that
it might be entirely dispensed with. Freedom is not, as some
appear to think, the end of government ; the advancement of
the public prosperity and happiness is its end ; and freedom is
valuable in so far only as it contributes to bring it about. In
laying it down, for example, that individuals should be per-
mitted, without let or hindrance, to engage in any business or
profession they may prefer, the condition that it is not injurious
to others is always understood. No one doubts the propriety
of a Government interfering to suppress what is or might
otherwise become a public nuisance ; nor does any one doubt
that it may advantageously interfere to give facilities to com-
merce by negotiating treaties with foreign powers, and by
removing such obstacles as cannot be removed by individuals.
But the interference of Government cannot be limited to cases
of this sort. However disinclined, it is obliged to interfere in an
infinite variety of ways and for an infinite variety of purposes.
362 Contemporary Socialism.
It must, to notice only one or two of the classes of objects
requiring its interference, decide as to the species of contract
to which it will lend its sanction, and the means to be adopted
to enforce true performance ; it must decide in regard to the
distribution of the property of those who die intestate, and the
effect to be given to the directions in wills and testaments ;
and it must frequently engage itself, or authorize individuals
or associations to engage, in various sorts of undertakings
deeply affecting the rights and interests of others and of
society. The furnishing of elementary instruction in the
ordinary branches of education for all classes of persons and
the establishment of a compulsory provision for the support
of the destitute poor are generally also included, and appar-
ently with the greatest propriety, among the duties incumbent
on administration " (p. 262).
He allows State ownership and State management of in-
dustrial works, wherever State ownership and management are
more efficient for the purpose than private enterprise in other
words, where they are more economical as in the cases of the
coinage, roads, harbours, postal communication, etc. He would
expropriate land for railway purposes, grant a monopoly to
the railway company, and then subject it to Government con-
trol in the public interest; he would impose many sorts of
restrictions on freedom of contract, freedom of industry, free-
dom of trade, freedom of property, and freedom of bequest ;
and, what is more important, he recognises clearly that with
the growth of society fresh interferences of a serious character
will be constantly called for, which may in some cases involve
the application of entirely new principles, or throw on the
Government work of an entirely new character.
For example, he is profoundly impressed with the dangers
of the manufacturing system, which he saw growing and
multiplying all around him, and so far from dreaming that the
course of industry should remain uncontrolled, he even ven-
tures, in a remarkable passage, to express the doubt whether
it may not " in the end be found that it was unwise to allow
the manufacturing system to gain so great an ascendancy as
it has done in this country, and that measures should have
been early adopted to check and moderate its growth " (p. 191).
State Socialism. 363
He admits that a decisive answer to this question could only
be given by the economists of a future generation, after a
longer experience of the system than was possible when he
wrote, but he cannot conceal the gravest apprehension at the
preponderance which manufactures were rapidly gaining in
our industrial economy. And his reasons are worthy of
attention. The first is the destruction of the old moral ties that
knit masters and men together.
" But we doubt whether any country, how wealthy soever,
should be looked upon as in a healthy, sound state, where the
leading interest consists of a small number of great capitalists,
and of vast numbers of workpeople in their employment, but
unconnected with them by any ties of gratitude, sympathy, or
affection. This estrangement is occasioned by the great scale
on which labour is now carried on in most businesses; and
by the consequent impossibility of the masters becoming
acquainted, even if they desired it, with the great bulk of
their workpeople. . . . The kindlier feelings have no share
in an intercourse of this sort ; speaking generally, everything
is regulated on both sides by the narrowest and most selfish
views and considerations ; a man and a machine being treated
with about the same sympathy and regard " (p. 193).
The second reason is the suppression of the facilities of ad-
vancement enjoyed by labourers under the previous regime.
" Owing to the greater scale on which employments are now
mostly carried on, workmen have less chance than formerly of
advancing themselves or their families to any higher situation,
or of exchanging the character of labourers for that of masters "
(p. 188). For the majority of the working-class to be thus, as
he expresses it, " condemned as it were to perpetual helotism,"
is not conducive to the health of a nation. The third reason
is the comparative instability of manufacturing business. It
becomes a matter of the most serious concern for a State,
" when a very large proportion of the population has been,
through their agency, rendered dependent on foreign demand,
and on the caprices and mutations of fashion " (p. 192). That
also is a state of things fraught with danger to the health of
a community. McCulloch always treats political economy as
if he defined it and the definition would be better than his
364 Contemporary Socialism.
own as the science of the working of industrial society in
health and disease ; and he always throws on the State a con-
siderable responsibility in the business of social hygiene ; going
so far, we have seen in the passages just quoted, as to suggest
whether a legal check ought not to have been imposed on the
free growth of the factory system, on account of its bad effects
on the economic position of the labouring class. We had
suffered the system to advance too far to impose that check
now, but there were other measures which, in his opinion, the
Legislature might judiciously take in the same interest. It is
of course impossible, by Act of Parliament, to infuse higher
views of duty or warmer feelings of ordinary human regard
into the relations between manufacturers and their workmen ;
but the State might, according to McCulloch, do something to
mitigate the modern plague of commercial crises, by a policy
of free trade, by adopting a sound monetary system, by secur-
ing a continuance of peace, and by " such a scheme of public
charity as might fully relieve the distresses without insulting
the feelings or lessening the industry of the labouring classes "
(p. 192).
As with commercial crises, so with other features of the
modern industrial system ; wherever they tend to the deteriora-
tion of the labouring class, McCulloch always holds the State
bound to intervene, if it can, to prevent such a result. He
would stop the immigration of what is sometimes called pauper
labour of bodies of workpeople brought up in an inferior
standard of life because their example and their competition
tend to pull down the native population to their own level.
The example he chooses is not the Jewish element in the East
End of London, but the much more important case of the
Irish immigration into Liverpool and Glasgow ; and while he
would prefer to see Government taking steps to improve the
Irish people in Ireland itself, he declares that, if that is not
practicable, then "justice to our own people requires that
measures should be adopted to hinder Great Britain from being
overrun with the outpourings of this officina pauperum, to
hinder Ireland from dragging us down to the same hopeless
abyss of pauperism and wretchedness in which she is sunk "
(p. 422). This policy may be wise, or it may not, but it shows
State Socialism. 365
very plainly what appears so often in his writings how
deeply McCulloch's mind was penetrated with the conviction
that one of the greatest of all the dangers from which the
State ought to do what it well can to preserve the people, was
the danger of falling to a lower standard of tastes and require-
ments, and thereby losing ambition and industry, and the very
possibility of rising again.
" This lowering of the opinions of the labouring class with
respect to the mode in which they should live is perhaps the
most serious of all the evils that can befall them. . . . The
example of such individuals or bodies of individuals as submit
quietly to have their wages reduced, and who are content if
they get only mere necessaries, should never be held up for
public imitation. On the contrary, everything should be done
to make such apathy be esteemed discreditable. The best
interests of society require that the rate of wages should be
elevated as high as possible that a taste for comforts and
enjoyments should be widely diffused, and, if possible, inter-
woven with national habits and prejudices. Very low wages,
by rendering it impossible for increased exertions to obtain any
considerable increase of advantages, effectually hinder them
from being made, and are of all others the most powerful cause
of that idleness and apathy that contents itself with what can
barely continue animal existence " (p. 415).
And he goes on to refute the idea of Benjamin Franklin,
that high wages breed indolent and dissipated habits, and to
contend that they not only improve the character and efficiency
of the labourer, but are in the end a source of gain, instead
of loss, to the employer. But, although the maintenance of a
high rate of wages is so great an object of public solicitude, it
was an object which it was, in McCulloch's judgment, outside
the State's province, simply because it was outside its power,
to do anything directly to promote, because while authority
could fix a price for labour, it could never compel employers
to engage labour at that price ; and consequently its inter-
ference in such a way would only end in injury to the class
it sought to befriend, as well as to the trade of the country in
general. Still, McCulloch is far from wishing to repel the
State's offices or the offices of public opinion in connection
366 Contemporary Socialism.
with the business altogether. In the passage just quoted he
expressly makes an appeal to public opinion for an active
interference in a direction where, he believes, its interference
might be useful ; and as for the action of the State, he approves,
for one thing, of the legalization of trades unions, and, for
another, of the special instruction of the public, at the national
expense, in the principles on which a high rate of wages
depend.
In regard to the Factory Acts, while he would have the
hours of labour in the case of grown-up men settled by the
parties themselves, because he thought them the only persons
competent to settle them satisfactorily, he strongly supported
the interference of the Legislature, .on grounds of ordinary
humanity, to limit the working day of children and women,
because " the former are naturally, and the latter have been
rendered, through custom and the institutions of society, unable
to protect themselves" (p. 426) ; and he seconded all Lord
Shaftesbury's labours down to the Ten Hours Act of 1847, to
which he objected on the ground that it involved a practical
interference with all adult factory labour. On the other hand,
he was in favour of the principle of employers' liability for
accidents in mines and workshops, because there seemed no
other way of saving the labourers from their own careless-
ness, except by making the masters responsible for the enforce-
ment of the necessary regulations (p. 307).
But McCulloch's general position on this class of questions is
still better exemplified in the view he takes of the State's duty
on a matter of great present interest, the housing of the poor.
Here he has no hesitation in throwing the principal blame for
the bad accommodation of the working-classes of that day, for
the underground cellar dwellings of Liverpool and Manchester,
the overcrowded lodging-houses of London, and the streets of
cottages unsupplied with water or drainage, on " the culpable
inattention of the authorities." Mr. Goschen vindicates the
legitimacy of Government interference with the housing of
the people, on the ground that it is the business of Govern-
ment to see justice done between man and man. When a man
hired a house, Government had a right to see that he got a
house, and a house meant a dwelling fit for human habitation.
State Socialism. 367
The inspection of houses is, according to this idea, only a case
of necessary protection against fraud, like the institution of
medical examinations, the assaying of metals, or the testing of
drugs ; and protection against fraud is admitted everywhere to
be the proper business of Government. McCulloch bases his
justification of the intervention on much broader grounds.
Government needs no other warrant for condemning a house
that is unfit for human habitation but the simple fact that the
house is unfit for human habitation, and it makes no difference
whether the tenant is cheated into taking the bad house, or
takes it openly because he prefers it. In fact, the strongest
reason, in McCulloch's opinion, for invoking Government inter-
ference in the case at all, is precisely the circumstance that so
many people actually prefer unwholesome houses from motives
of economy.
" Such cottages," he says, " being cheap, are always sure to
find occupiers. Nothing, however, can be more obvious than
that it is the duty of Government to take measures for the
prevention and repair of an abuse of this sort. Its injurious
influence is not confined to the occupiers of the houses referred
to, though if it were, that would be no good reason for declin-
ing to introduce a better system. But the diseases engendered
in these unhealthy abodes frequently extend their ravages
through all classes of the community, so that the best interests
of the middle and higher orders, as well as of the lowest, are
involved in this question. And, on the same principle that we
adopt measures to guard against the plague, we should en-
deavour to secure ourselves against typhus, and against the
brutalizing influence, over any considerable portion of the
population, of a residence amid filth and disease " (p. 308).
The last clause is remarkable. The State is required to
protect the people from degrading influences, to prevent them
from being brutalized through the avarice or apathy of others,
and to prevent them being brutalized through the avarice or
apathy of themselves. It is not what many persons would
expect, but here we have political economy, and the most
" orthodox " political economy, forcing people to go to a dearer
market for their houses, in order to satisfy a sentiment of
humanity, and imposing on the State a social mission of a
368 Contemporary Socialism.
broad positive character the mission of extirpating brutalizing
influences. Yet, expected or not, this is really the ordinary
tradition of English economists it is the principle laid down
by Smith of obliging the State to secure for the people an un-
mutilated and undeformed manhood, to provide for them by
public means the fundamental conditions of a humane existence.
McCulloch's position comes out more clearly still in the
reasons he gives for advocating a compulsory provision for the
able-bodied poor, and a national system of popular education.
With regard to the impotent poor, he is content with saying
that it would be inhumanity to deny them support, and in-
justice to throw their support exclusively on the benevolent.
A poor-rate is sometimes defended on what are professed to be
strictly economical grounds, by showing that it is both less
mischievous and less expensive than mendicity ; but what
strikes McCulloch is not so much the wastefulness of private
charity in the hands of the benevolent as the injustice of suffer-
ing the avaricious to escape their natural obligations. Few,
however, have much difficulty in finding one good reason or
another for making a public provision for the impotent poor ;
the crux of the question of public assistance is the case- of the
able-bodied poor. A provision for the able-bodied poor is
practically a recognition in a particular form of " the right to
labour," and the right to labour resounds with many revolu-
tionary terrors in our English ears, although it has, as a matter
of fact, been practised quietly, and most of the time in one of
its most pernicious forms, in every parish of England for
nearly three hundred years.
Now on this question McCulloch was a convert. He con-
fessed to the Committee on the State of the Poor in Ireland, in
1830, that he had changed his views on the subject entirely
since his previous evidence in 1825. He had formerly been,
he said, "too much imbued with mere theory, with the
opinions of Malthus and Townsend " ; but he had become a
firm believer in the necessity and the public advantage of a
legal provision for the able-bodied poor, and he strongly re-
commended the introduction of such a system into Ireland, in
the first instance as an instrument of individual relief, but also
as an effectual engine of social improvement. He gives the
State Socialism. 369
reasons for his conversion partly in his evidence, and partly in a
more systematic form in his " Principles of Political Economy."
First, Malthus had attributed to the Poor Law itself effects
which really sprang from certain bad arrangements that had
been engrafted on the English system of relief, but were not
essential to it viz., the allowance system, and the law known
as Gilbert's Act, which deprived parishes of the right to refuse
relief except in workhouses, and forced them to provide work
for paupers, if paupers desired it, at or near their own houses.
These two arrangements, in McCulloch's opinion, converted
the English provision for the able-bodied poor from what we
may term a wise and conditional right of labour into an unwise
and dangerous one. In the second place, he had come to see
that a legal provision for the poor, instead of having, as was
alleged, a necessary tendency to multiply pauperism, had in
reality a natural tendency to prevent its growth, because it
gave the landlords and influential ratepayers a strong pecuniary
as well as moral interest in producing that result. Its effect
was thus to establish in every parish a new local stimulus to
social improvement, and it was on account of this effect of a
Poor Law that McCulloch thought it would be specially benefi-
cial to Ireland, because there was nothing Ireland needed more
than just such a local stimulus. In the third place, he had
become more and more profoundly impressed with the in-
creasing gravity of the vicissitudes and fluctuations of employ-
ment to which English labourers were subject since England
became mainly a manufacturing country, and that unhappy
feature of manufacturing industry was his principal reason for
invoking legislative assistance. A purely agricultural country,
he thought, might be able to do without a Poor Law, because
agricultural employment was comparatively steady ; but in a
manufacturing country a Poor Law was indispensable, on ac-
count of the long periods of depression or privation which were
normal incidents in the life of labour in such a country, and on
account of the pernicious effect which these periods of priva-
tion would, if unchecked, be certain to exercise upon the
character and habits of the labouring classes, through " lower-
ing their estimate of what is required for their comfortable
and decent subsistence." ("Political Economy," p. 448.)
B B
3/o Contemporary Socialism.
"During these periods of extraordinary privation the labourer,
if not effectually relieved, would imperceptibly lose that taste
for order, decency, and cleanliness which had been gradually
formed and accumulated in better times by the insensible opera-
tion of habit and example, and no strength of argument, no
force of authority, could again instil into the minds of a new
generation, growing up under more prosperous circumstances,
the sentiments and tastes thus uprooted and destroyed by the
cold breath of penury. Every return of temporary distress
would therefore vitiate the feelings and lower the sensibilities
of the labouring classes " (p. 449).
McCulloch quotes these words from Barton, but he quotes
them to express his own view, and their teaching is very
explicit on the duty of Government to the unemployed in
seasons of commercial distress. In such seasons of " extra-
ordinary privation " the State is called upon to take "effectual"
measures extraordinary measures, we may infer, if extra-
ordinary measures were necessary for the relief of the un-
employed, not merely to save them from starvation, but to
prevent them from losing established habits of "order, decency,
and cleanliness " ; from getting their feelings vitiated, their
sensibilities impaired, so that they were in danger of remain-
ing content with a worse standard of living, and sinking to a
lower scale in the dignity of social and civilized being. In a
word, it is held to be the duty of the State to prevent, if it can,
the temporary reverses of the labouring class from resulting in
its permanent moral decadence ; and as the object of the State's
intervention is to preserve the dignity, the self-respect, the
moral independence and energy of the labouring class, the
manner of the intervention, the choice of actual means and
steps for administering the relief, must, of course, be governed
by the same considerations. " The true secret of assisting the
poor," says McCulloch, borrowing the words of Archbishop
Sumner, " is to make them agents in bettering their own con-
dition, and to supply them, not with a temporary stimulus, but
with a permanent energy " (p. 475).
The same principles come out even more strongly in McCul-
loch's remarks on national education. He says, "the providing
of elementary instruction for all classes is one of the most
State Socialism. 371
pressing duties of Government " (p. 473) ; and the elementary
instruction he -would provide would not stop at reading and
writing, but would include even a knowledge of so much
political economy as would explain " the circumstances which
elevate and depress the rate of wages" (p. 474). It was the
duty of Government to extirpate ignorance, because, " of all
obstacles to improvement, ignorance was the most formidable";
and it was its duty to establish Government schools for the
purpose, because charity schools impaired the self-respect and
sense of independence which were themselves first essentials of
all social improvement.
"No extension of the system of charity and subscription
schools can ever fully compensate for the want of a statutory
provision for the education of the public. Something of degra-
dation always attaches to the fact of one's having been brought
up in a charity school. The parents who send children to such
an institution, and even the children, know that they have
been received only because they are paupers unable to pay for
their education ; and this consciousness has a tendency to
weaken that state of independence and self-respect, for the
want of which the best education may be but an imperfect
substitute. But no such feeling could operate on the pupils of
schools established by the State " (p. 476).
There is no question with McCulloch about the right of the
State to take steps to forward the moral progress, or to prevent
the moral decadence, of the community or any part of the
community under its care ; that is simply its plain and
primary duty, though there may be question with the State,
as with other agencies, whether particular measures proposed
for the purpose are really calculated to effect it.
After this long, and I fear tedious, account of the opinions
of McCulloch, it would be needless to call more witnesses to
refute those who so commonly accuse English economists of
teaching an extreme individualism. For McCulloch may be
said to be their own witness ; they hold him up as the hardest
and narrowest of a hard and narrow school ; one of the ablest
of them, Mr. J. K. Ingram, who writes McCulloclrs memoir
in the Encyclopedia Britannica, going so far as to accuse him
of exhibiting " a habitual deadness in the study of social
372 Contemporary Socialism.
questions to all but material considerations." "We have adduced
enough to disprove that statement. The reader of McCulloch's
writings is constantly struck to observe how habitually his
judgment of a social question is governed by ethical rather
than economic considerations, and how his supreme concern
always seems to be to guard the labouring poor from falling
into any sort of permanent decadence, and to place them
securely on the lines of progressive elevation. But perhaps a
word may be required about the Manchester school. Mr.
Ingram states and again his statement probably agrees with
current prepossessions that McCulloch occupied ' ; substanti-
ally the same theoretic position as was occupied at a somewhat
later period by the Manchester school" (Encyc. Brit., art.
" Political Economy "). We have seen what McCulloch's theo-
retic position really was, and it is certainly not the Manchester
doctrine of popular anathema ; it is not the Manckesterismus of
the German schools. But the Manchester men can scarcely
be said to have properly had anything in the nature of a
general theoretic position. They were not a school of political
philosophy they were a band of practical politicians leagued
to promote particular reforms, especially two reforms in inter-
national policy which involved large curtailments of the role
of Government viz., free trade with other countries, and non-
intervention in their internal affairs ; but they were far from
thinking that, because it would be well for the State to abstain
from certain specific interferences, it would be well for it to
abstain from all ; or that if the State had no civilizing mission
towards the people of other countries, it had therefore no
civilizing mission towards its own. Cobden, for example to
go no farther was a lifelong advocate of a national system
of education ; he was a friend of factory legislation for women
and children, and, with respect to the poor, he taught in one
of his speeches the semi-socialistic doctrine that the poor had
the first right to maintenance from the land that they are,
as it were, the first mortgagees. The Manchester school is
really nothing but a stage convention, a convenient polemical
device for marking off a particular theoretical extreme regard-
ing the task of the State ; but the persons in actual life who
were presumed to compose the school were no more, all of
State Socialism. 373
them, adherents of that theory than Scotchmen, off the stage,
have all short kilts and red hair. And as for that theory itself,
the theory of lai*sez-faire, it has never in England been really
anything more than it is now, the plea of alarmed vested
interests stealing an unwarranted, and I believe an unwel-
come, shelter under the segis of economic science. English
economists, from Smith to McCulloch, from McCulloch to Mr.
Sidgwick, have adhered with a truly remarkable steadiness to
a social doctrine of a precisely contrary character a social
doctrine which, instead of exhibiting any unreasonable aversion
to Government interference, expressly assigns to Government
a just and proper place in promoting the social and industrial
development of the community. In the first place, in the
department of production, they freely allow that just as there
are many industrial enterprises in the conduct of which indi-
vidual initiative must, for want of resources or other reasons,
yield to joint-stock companies, so there are others for which
individuals and companies alike must give place to the State,
because the State is by nature or circumstances better fitted
than either to conduct them satisfactorily ; and in the next
place, in the department of distribution, while rating the
moral or personal independence of the individual as a supreme
blessing and claim, they have no scruple in calling on the
State to interfere with the natural liberty of contract between
man and man, wherever such interference seems requisite to
secure just and equitable dealing, to guard that personal inde-
pendence itself from being sapped, or to establish the people
better in any of the other elementary conditions of all humane
living. We sometimes take pride at the present day in pro-
fessing a distrust for doctrinaire or metaphysical politics, and
we are no doubt right ; but that reproach cannot justly be
levelled against the English economists. They were not Dutch
gardeners trying to dress the world after an artificial scheme ;
that is more distinctive of the social systems they opposed.
Their own system indeed was to study. Nature, to discover the
principles of sound natural social growth, and to follow them ;
but they had no idea on that account of leaving things to
grow merely as they would, or of renouncing the help of good
husbandry. They had, as we have seen, a positive doctrine of
374 Contemporary Socialism.
social politics, which required from the State much more than
the protection of liberty and the repression of crime ; they
asked the State to undertake such industrial work as it was
naturally better fitted to perform than individuals or associa-
tions of individuals, and they asked the State to secure to
the body of the citizens the essential conditions of a normal
and progressive manhood.
Now this doctrine which may be called the English doc-
trine of social politics seems to furnish a basis of considerable
practical value for discriminating between a wholesome and
effective participation by Government in the work of social
reform, on the one hand, and those pernicious and dangerous
forms of intervention on the other, which may be correctly
known by the name of State socialism.
II. The Nature and Principle of State Socialism.
Few words are at present more wantonly abused than the
words socialism and State socialism. They are tossed about
at random, as if their meaning, as was said of the spelling of
former generations, was a mere affair of private judgment.
There is, in truth, a great deal of socialism in the employment
of the word ; little respect is paid to the previous appropriation
of it ; and especially since it has become, as has been said,
hoffahig, men press forward from the most unlikely quarters,
claim kindred with the socialists, and strive for the honour of
being called by their name. Many excellent persons, for ex-
ample, have no better pretext to advance for their claim than
that they also feel a warm sentiment of interest in the cause
of the poor. Churchmen whose duties bring them among the
poor are very naturally touched with a sense of the miseries
they observe, and certain of them, who may perhaps without
offence be said to love the cause well more than wisely, come
to public platforms and declare themselves socialists socialists,
they will sometimes explain, of an older and purer confession
than the Social Democratic Federation, but still good and
genuine socialists merely because the religion they preach is
a gospel of moral equality before God, and of fraternal responsi-
bility among men, whose very test in the end is the test of
State Socialism. 375
human kindness " Inasmuch as ye did it not to one of the
least of these My brethren, ye did it not to Me." But socialism
is not a feeling for the poor, nor yet for the responsibilities of
society in connection with their poverty ; it is neither what
is called humanitarianism, nor what is called altruism ; it is
not an affair of feeling at all, but of organization, and the
feeling it breathes may not be altruistic. The revolutionary
socialists of the Continent, for instance, are animated by as
vigorous a spirit of self-interest and an even more bitter class
antagonism than a trade union or a land league. They fight
for a particular claim of right the utterly unjustifiable claim
to the whole product of labour and they propose to turn the
world upside down by a vast scheme of social reconstruction
in order to get their unjust, delusive, and mischievous idea
realized. The gauge of their socialism, therefore, must, after
all, be looked for in their claim and their remedy, and not in
the vague sympathies of a benevolent spectator who, without
scrutinizing either the one or the other, thinks he will call
himself a socialist because he feels that there is much in the
lot of the poor man that might be mended, and that the rich
might be very properly and reasonably asked to make some
sacrifices for their brethren's sake out of their abundance. The
philanthropic spectator suffers- from no scarcity of words to
express his particular attitude if he desires to do so ; why then
should he not leave socialists the enjoyment of their vocable ?
There is often at the bottom of this sentimental patronage
of socialism the not unchivalrous but mistaken idea that the
ordinary self-interest of the world has been glorified by econo-
mists into a sacred and all-sufficing principle which it would
be interfering with the designs of Providence to restrict, and
that therefore it is only right to side with socialism as a protest
against the position taken by the apologists of the present
system of things, without being understood to commit one's self
thereby to the particular system which socialism may propose
to put in its place. But while the economists think very rightly
that self-interest must always be regarded as the ordinary
guide of life, and that the world cannot be reasonably expected
to become either better, or better off, if everybody were to look
after other people's interests (which he knows nothing about)
376 Contemporary Socialism.
instead of looking after his own (of which he at least knows
something), they are far from showing any indifference to the
danger of self-interest running into selfishness. On the con-
trary, they have constantly insisted as the evidence I have
already produced abundantly proves that where the self-
interest of the strongly placed failed to subject itself spon-
taneously to the restraints of social justice and the responsibilities
of our common humanity, it was for society to step in and
impose the restraints that were just and requisite, and to do
so either by public opinion or by public authority in the way
most likely to be practicable and effectual. Another thing our
sentimental friends forget is that the socialists of the present
day have no thought of substituting any other general economic
motive in the room of self-interest. If they had their schemes
realized to-morrow, men would still be paid according to the
amount of their individual work, and each would work so far
for his own hand. His daily motive would be his individual
interest, though his scope of achievement would be severely
limited by law with the view of securing a better general level
of happiness in the community. The question between econo-
mists and socialists is not whether the claims of social justice
are entitled to be respected, but whether the claims which one
or other of them make really are claims of social justice or no.
Still, so firm is the hold taken by the notion that the socialists
are the special champions of social justice, that one of our most
respected prelates has actually defined socialism in that sense.
The Bishop of Rochester (now of Winchester), in his Pastoral
Letter to his Clergy at the new year of 1888, takes occasion,
while warning the younger brethren against the too headlong
philanthropy which " scouts what is known as the science of
political economy," to describe socialism as " the science of
maintaining the right proportion of equity and kindness while
adjudicating the various claims which individuals and society
mutually make upon each other." In reality, socialism would
be better defined as a system that outsteps the right proportion
of equity and kindness, and sets up for the masses claims that
are devoid of proportion and measure of any kind, and whose
injustice and peril often arise from that very circumstance.
If bishops carry the term off to one quarter, philosophers
State Socialism. 377
carry it to another. Some identify socialism with the associa-
tive principle generally, and see it manifested in the growth
of one form of organization as much as in the growth of an-
other, or at most they may limit it to the intervention of the
associative principle in things industrial, and in that event they
would consider a joint-stock company, or a co-operative store,
or perhaps a building like Queen Anne's Mansions, or the
common-stair system of Scotland, to be as genuine exhibitions
of socialism as the collectivism or anarchism of the Continental
factions or the State monopolies of Prince Bismarck. But a
joint-stock company is no departure from it is rather an exten-
sion of the present regime of private property, free competition,
and self-interest ; and why should it be described by the same
name as a system whose chief pretension is to supersede that
regime by a better? Another very common definition of
socialism perhaps the most common of all, and the last to
which I shall refer here is that socialism is the general prin-
ciple of giving society the greatest possible control over the
life of the individual, in contradistinction to the opposite prin-
ciple of individualism, which is taken to be the principle of
giving the individual the greatest possible immunity from the
control of society. Any extension of the authority of the State,
any fresh regulation of the transactions of individual citizens,
is often pronounced to be socialistic without asking what the
object or nature of the regulations may be. Socialism is iden-
tified with any enlargement, and individualism with any con-
traction, of the functions of government. But the world has
not been made on this socialist principle alone, nor on this
individualist principle alone, and it can neither be explained
nor amended by means of the one without the other. Abstrac-
tions of that order afford us little practical guidance. The
socialists of real life are not men who are bent on increasing
Government control for the mere sake of increasing Govern-
ment control. There are broad tracts of the individual's life
they would leave free from social control ; they would give
him, for example, full property in his house and furniture
during his lifetime, and the right to spend his income, once he
had earned it, in his own way. Their scheme, if carried out,
might be found to compel them to restrict this latter right,
3/8 Contemporary Socialism.
but their own desire and belief undoubtedly is that the indi-
vidual would have more freedom of the kind then than he has
now. They seek to extend Government control only because,
and only so far as, they believe Government control to be
necessary and fitted to realize certain theories of right and
well-being which they think it incumbent on organized society
to realize ; and consequently the thing that properly char-
acterizes their position is not so much the degree of their con-
fidence in the powers of the State as the nature of the theories
of right for which they invoke its intervention. And just as
socialists do not enlarge the bounds of authority from the mere
love of authority, so their opponents do not resist the enlarge-
ment from the mere hatred of authority. They raise no
controversy about the abstract legitimacy of Government
encroachments on the sphere of private capital or of legal
enlargements of the rights or privileges of labour. There is
no socialism in that ; the socialism only comes in when the
encroachments are made on a field where Government adminis-
tration is unlikely to answer, and where the rights conferred
are rights to which labour can present no just and reasonable
claim.
It will be objected that this is to reduce socialism to a mere
matter of more or less. The English economists, it will be
said, practised a little socialism, because they allowed the use
of State means to elevate the condition of the working classes,
or to provide for the wants of the general community ; and the
Continental Social Democrats only practise a little more social-
ism when they cry for a working-class State or for the progres-
sive nationalization of all industries. But in practical life the
measure is everything. So many grains of opium will cure ; so
many more will kill. The important thing for adjusting claims
must always be to get the right measure, and the objection to
socialistic schemes is precisely this, that they take up a theory
of distributive justice which is an absolutely wrong measure,
or else some vague theory of disinheritance which contains no
measure at all. They would nationalize industries without
paying any respect to their suitability for Government man-
agement, simply because they want to see all industries nation-
alized ; and they would grant all manner of compensating
State Socialism. 379
advantages to the working class as instalments of some vague
claim, either of economic right from which they are alleged to
have been ousted by the system of capitalism, or of aboriginal
natural right from which they are said to have been disin-
herited by the general arrangements of society itself. "What
distinguishes their position and makes it socialism is therefore
precisely this absence of measure or of the right measure, and
one great advantage of the English doctrine of social politics
which I have expounded, is that it is able to supply this
indispensable criterion. That doctrine would limit the in-
dustrial undertakings of the State to such as it possessed
natural advantages for conducting successfully, and the State's
part in social reform to securing for the people the essential
conditions of all humane living, of all normal and progressive
manhood. It would interfere, indeed, as little as possible with
liberty of speculation, because it recognises that the best way
of promoting social progress and prosperity is to multiply the
opportunities, and with the opportunities the incentives, of
talent and capital ; but, while giving the strong their head, in
the belief that they will carry on the world so far after them,
it would insist on the public authority taking sharp heed that
no large section of the common people be suffered to fall per-
manently behind in the race, to lose the very conditions of
further progress, and to lapse into ways of living which the
opinion of the time thinks unworthy of our common humanity.
Now State socialism disregards these limits, straying generally
far beyond them, and it may not improperly be denned as the
system which requires the State to do work it is unfit to do in
order to invest the working classes with privileges they have
no right to get.
The term State socialism originated in Germany a few years
ago to express the antithesis not of free, voluntary, or Christian
socialism, as seems frequently to be imagined here, but of
revolutionary socialism, which is always considered to be social-
ism proper, because it is the only form of the system that is of
any serious moment at the present day. State socialism has
the same general aims as socialism proper, only it would carry
out its plans gradually by means of the existing State, instead
of first overturning the existing State by revolution and estab-
380 Contemporary Socialism.
lishing in its place anew political organization for the purpose,
the Social Democratic Republic. There are socialists who
fancy they have but at any moment to choose a government
and issue a decree, as Napoleon once did "Let misery be
abolished this day fortnight" and misery would be abolished
that day fortnight. But the State socialists are unable to
share this simple faith. They are Stats socialists not be-
cause they have more confidence in the State than other
socialists, but because they have less. They consider it utterly
futile to expect a democratic community ever to be able to
create a political executive that should be powerful enough to
carry through the entire socialistic programme. Like the Social
Conservatives of all countries, like our own Young England
parfcy, for example, or the Tory Democrats of the present gene-
ration, they combine a warm zeal for popular amelioration with
a profound distrust of popular government ; but when compared
with other socialists, they take a very sober view of the capacity
of government of any kind ; and although they believe impli-
citly in the " Social Monarchy of the Hohenzollerns," they doubt
whether the strongest monarchy the world has ever seen would
be strong enough to effect a socialistic reconstruction of the
industrial system without retaining the existence for many
centuries to come of the ancient institutions of private pro-
perty and inheritance.
All that is at least very frankly acknowledged by Rodbertus,
the remarkable but overrated thinker whom the State social-
ists of Germany have chosen for their father. Rodbertus was
always regarded as a great oracle by Lassalle, the originator oi
the present socialist agitation, and his authority is constantly
quoted by the most eminent luminary among the State social-
ists of these latter days, Professor Adolph Wagner, who says
it was Rodbertus that first shed on him " the Damascus light
that tore from his eyes the scales of economic individualism."
Rodbertus had lived for a quarter of a century in a political
sulk against the Hohenzollerns. Though he had served as a
Minister of State, he threw up his political career rather than
accept a constitution as a mere royal favour ; he refused to
work under it or recognise it by so much as a vote at the polls.
But when the power of the Hohenzollerns became established
State Socialism. 381
by the victories of Koniggratz and Sedan, and when they
embarked on their new policy of State socialism, Rodbertus
developed into one of their most ardent worshippers. Their
new social policy, it is true, was avowedly adopted as a corrective
of socialism, as a kind of inoculation with a milder type of the
disease in order to procure immunity from a more malignant ;
but Bismarck contended at the same time that it was nothing
but the old traditional policy of the House of Prussia, who had
long before placed the right of existence and the right of labour
in the statute-book of the country, and whose most illustrious
member, Frederick the Great, used to be fond of calling himself
" the beggars' king." Under these circumstances Rodbertus
came to place the whole hope of the future in the " Social Mon-
archy of the Hohenzollerns," and ventured to prophesy that a
socialist emperor would yet be born to that House who would
rule possibly with a rod of iron, but would always rule for the
greatest good of the labouring class. Still, even under a
dynasty of socialist emperors Rodbertus gave five hundred
years for the completion of the economic revolution he contem-
plated, because he acknowledged it would take all that time
for society to acquire the moral principle and habitual firmness
of will which would alone enable it to dispense with the insti-
tutions of private property and inheritance without suffering
serious injury.
In theory Rodbertus was a believer in the modern social
democratic doctrine of the labourer's right to the full product
of his labour the doctrine which gives itself out as " scientific
socialism," because it is got by combining a misunderstanding
of Ricardo's theory of wages with a misunderstanding of the
same economist's theory of value and which would abolish
rent, interest, profit, and all forms of "labourless income,"
and give the entire gross product to the labourer, because by
that union of scientific blunders it is made to appear that the
labourer has produced the whole product himself. Rodbertus,
in fact, claimed to be the author of that doctrine, and fought
for the priority with Marx, though in reality the English
socialists had drawn the same conclusions from the same blun-
ders long before either of them ; but author or no author of it,
his sole reason for touching: the work of social reform at all
382 Contemporary Socialism.
was to get that particular claim of right recognised. Yet for
five hundred years Rodbertus will not wrong the labourers by
granting them their full rights. He admits that without the
assistance of the private capitalist during that interval labour-
ers would not produce so much work, and therefore could not
earn so much wages as they do now ; and consequently, in spite
of his theories, he declines to suppress rent and interest in the
meantime, and practically tells the labourers they must wait
for the full product of labour till the time comes when they
can produce the full product themselves. That is virtually to
confess that while the claim may be just then, it is unjust
now ; and although Eodbertus never makes that acknowledg-
ment, he is content to leave the claim in abeyance and to put
forward in its place, as a provisional ideal of just distribution
more conformable to the present situation of things, the claim
of the labourer to a progressive share, step for step with the
capitalist, in the results of the increasing productivity given
to labour by inventions and machinery. He thought that at
present, so far from getting the whole product of labour, the
labourer was getting a less and less share of its products every
day, and though this can be easily shown to be a delusive fear,
Rodbertus's State socialism w r as devised to counteract it.
For this purpose the first requisite was the systematic man-
agement of all industries by the State. The final goal was to
be State property as well as State management, but for the
greater part of five centuries the system would be private
property and State management. Sir Rowland Hill and the
English railway nationalizes proposed that the State should
own the lines, but that the companies should continue to work
them ; Rodbertus's idea, on the contrary, is that -the State
should work, but not own. But then the State should manage
everything and everywhere. Co-operation and joint-stock
management were as objectionable to him as individual man-
agement. He thought it a mere delusion to suppose, as some
socialists did, that the growth of joint-stock companies and
co-operative societies is a step in historical evolution towards
a socialist regime. It was just the opposite ; it was individual
property in a worse form, and he always told his friend Lassalle
that it was a hopeless dream to expect to bring in the reign
State Socialism. 383
of justice and brotherhood by his plan of founding productive
associations on State credit, because productive societies really
led the other way, and created batches of joint-stock property,
which he said would make itself a thousand times more bit-
terly hated than the individual property of to-day. One
association would compete with another, and the group on a
rich mine would use their advantage over the group on a poor
one as mercilessly as private capitalists do now. Nothing
would answer the end but State property, and nothing would
conduce to State property but State management.
The object of all this intervention, as we have said, is to
realize a certain ideal or standard of fair wages the standard
according to which a fair wage is one that grows step by step
with the productive capacity of the country ; and the plan
Rodbertus proposes to realize it by is practically a scheme of
compulsory profit-sharing. He would convert all land and
capital into an irredeemable national stock, of which the
present owners would be constituted the first or original
holders, which they might sell or transfer at pleasure but not
call up, and on which they should receive, not a fixed rent or
rate of interest, but an annual dividend varying with the pro-
duce or profits of the year. The produce of the year was to be
divided into three parts : one for the landowners, to be shared
according to the amount of stock they respectively held ; a
second for the capitalists, to be shared in the same way ; and
the third for the labourers, to be shared by them according to
the quantity of work they did, measured by the time occupied
and the relative strain of their several trades. This division
was necessarily very arbitrary in its nature ; there was no
principle whatever to decide how much should go to the land-
owners, and how much to capitalists, and how much to
labourers ; and although there was a rule for settling the price
cf labour in one trade as compared with the price of labour in
another, it is a rule that would afford very little practical
guidance if one came to apply it in actual life. At all events,
Rodbertus himself toiled for years at a working plan for his
scheme of wages, but though he always gave out that he had
succeeded in preparing one, he steadily refused to disclose it
even to trusted admirers like LassaUe and Rudolph Meyer, on
3^4 Contemporary Socialism.
the singular pretext tliat the world knew too little political
economy as yet to receive it, and at his death nothing of the
sort seems to have been discovered among his papers. Is it
doing him any injustice to infer that he had never been able
to arrive at a plan that satisfied his own mind as to its being
neither arbitrary nor impracticable ?
Now this is a good specimen of State socialism, because it
is so complete and brings out so decisively the broad char-
acteristics of the system. In the first place, it desires a pro-
gressive and indiscriminate nationalization of all industries,
not because it thinks they will be more efficiently or more
economically managed in consequence of the change, but
merely as a preliminary step towards a particular scheme of
social reform ; in the next place, that scheme of social reform
is an ideal of equitable distribution which is demonstrably
false, and is admittedly incapable of immediate realization ; in
the third place, a provisional policy is adopted in the mean-
while by pitching arbitrarily on a certain measure of privileges
and advantages that are to be guaranteed to the labouring
classes by law as partial instalments of rights deferred or com-
pensations for rights alleged to be taken away.
It may be that not many State socialists are so thorough-
going as Rodbertus. Few of them possibly accept his theory
of the labourer's right which is virtually that the labourer
has a right to everything, all existing wealth being considered
merely an accumulation of unpaid labour and few of them
may throw so heavy a burden on the State as the whole
production and the whole distribution of the country. But
they all start from some theory of right that is just as false,
and they all impose work on the State which the State cannot
creditably perform. They all think of the mass of mankind as
being disinherited in one way or another by the present social
system, perhaps through the permission of private property
at all, perhaps through permission of its inequalities. M. de
Laveleye, indeed, goes a step further back still. In an article
he has contributed on this subject to the Contemporary Review,
he uses as his motto the saying of M. Ren an that Nature is in-
justice itself, and he would have society to correct not merely
the inequalities which society may have itself had a share in
State Socialism. 385
establishing, but also the inequalities of talent or opportunity
which are Nature's own work. Accordingly, M. de Laveleye
describes himself as a State socialist, because he thinks " the
State ought to make use of its legitimate powers for the estab-
lishment of the equality of conditions among men in proportion
to their personal merit." Equality of conditions and personal
merit are inconsistent standards, but if they were harmonious,
it would be beyond the power of the State to realize them for
want of an effective calculus of either.
Few State socialists, however, profess the purpose of correct-
ing the differences of native endowment ; for the most part,
when they found their policy on any theoretic idea at all, they
found it on some idea of historical reparation. In this country,
socialist notions always crop up out of the land. German
socialists direct their attack mainly on capital, but English
socialism fastens very naturally on property in land, which in
England is concentrated into unnaturally few hands : and a
"claim is very commonly advanced for more or less indefinite
compensation to the labouring class on account of their alleged
disinheritance, through the institution of private property, from
their aboriginal or natural rights to the use of the earth, the
common possession of the race. That is the ground, for
example, which Mr. Spencer takes for advocating land nation-
alization, and Mr. Chamberlain for his various claims for
" ransom." The last-comer is held to have as good a right to
the free use of the earth as the first occupant ; and if society
deprives him of that right for purposes of its own, he is main-
tained to be entitled to receive some equivalent, as if society
does not already give the new-comer vastly more than it took
away. His chances of obtaining a decent living in the world,
instead of being reduced, have been immensely multiplied
through the social system that has resulted from the private ap-
propriation of land. The primitive economic rights whose loss
socialists make the subject of so much lamentation are gener-
ally considered to be these four : (1) the right to hunt ; (2) the
right to fish ; (3) the right to gather nuts and berries ; and (4)
the right to feed a cow or sheep on the waste land. Fourier
added a fifth which was certainly a right much utilized in
early times the right of theft from people over the border of
C
386 Contemporary Socialism.
the territory of one's own tribe. Let that right be thrown in
with the rest ; then the claim with which every English child
is alleged to be born, and for which compensation is asked, is
the claim to a thirty-millionth part of the value of these five
aboriginal uses of the soil of England ; and what is that worth?
"Why, if the "prairie value" of the soil is estimated at the high
figure of a shilling the acre per annum, it would only give
every inhabitant something under half a crown, and when
compensation is demanded for the loss of this ridiculous
pittance, one calls to mind what immensely greater compensa-
tions the modern child is born to. Civilization is itself a social
property, a common fund, a people's heritage, accumulating
from one generation to another, and opening to the new-comer
economic' opportunities and careers incomparably better and
more numerous than the ancient liberties of fishing in the
stream or nutting in the forest. The things actually demanded
for the poor in liquidation of this alleged claim may often be
admissible on other grounds altogether, but to ask them in the-
name of compensation for the loss of those primitive economic
rights even though it was done by Spencer or Cobden
is certainly State socialism.
Mr. Chamberlain's famous ." ransom " speeches are an example
of that. There was nothing socialist about the substance of his
proposals. He expressly disclaimed all sympathy with the
idea of equality of conditions ; he hesitated about applying the
graduated taxation* principle to anything but legacies ; he
explicitly said he would do nothing to discourage the cumula-
tive principle in the rich, or the habit of industry in the poor ;
he asked mainly for free schools, free libraries, free parks, and
other things of a like character ; but then he asked for them
as a penalty for wrong-doing, instead of an obligation of
ability as a ransom to be paid by the rich, or by society
generally, for having ousted the poor out of their aboriginal
rights. Mr. Chamberlain merely pled for useful social reforms
in a socialistic spirit.
The favourite theory on which the German State socialists
proceed seems to be that men are entitled to an equalization of
opportunities, to an immunity, as far as human power can
secure it, from the interposition of chance and change. That
State Socialism. 387
at least is the view of Professor Adolph Wagner, whose position
on the subject is of considerable consequence, because he is the
economist-in-ordinary to the German Government, and has
been Prince Bismarck's principal adviser in connection with
all his recent social legislation. Professor Wagner may be
taken as the most eminent and most authoritative exponent
of the theory of State socialism, and he recently developed
his views on the subject afresh in some articles in the Tubin-
gen Zeitschrift fur die Gesammten Staatsicissenschaften for 1887,
on " Finanz-politik und Staatsozialismus." According to
Wagner, the chief aim of the State at present in taxation and
in every other form of its activity ought to be to alter the
national distribution of wealth to the advantage of the working
class. All politics must become social politics ; the State must
turn workman's friend. For we have arrived at a new historical
period ; and just as the feudal period gave way to the absolu-
tist period, and the absolutist period to the constitutional,
so now the constitutional period is merging in what ought
to be called the social period, because social ideas are very
properly coming more and more to influence and control every-
thing, alike in the region of production, in the region of distri-
bution, and in the region of consumption. Now, according
to Wagner, the business of the State socialist is simply to
facilitate the development of this change to work out the
transition from the constitutional to the social epoch in the
best, wisest, and most wholesome way for all parties concerned.
He rejects the so-called "scientific socialism" of Marx and
Rodbertus and Lassalle, and the practical policy of the social
democratic agitation ; and he will not believe either that a
false theory like theirs can obtain a lasting influence, or that a
party that builds itself on such a theory can ever become a
real power. But, at the same time, he cannot set down the
socialistic theory as a mere philosophical speculation, or the
socialistic movement as merely an artificial product of agita-
tion. The evils of both lie in the actual situation of things ;
they are products necessary products, he says of our modern
social development ; and they will never be effectually quieted
till that development is put on more salutary lines. They
have a soul of truth in them, and that soul of truth in the
388 Contemporary Socialism.
doctrines and demands of radical socialism is what State
socialism seeks to disengage, to formulate, to realize. It is
quite true, for example, that the present distribution of wealth,
with its startling inequalities of accumulation and want, is
historically the effect, first, of class legislation and class ad-
ministration of law ; and second, of mere blind chance operat-
ing on a legal regime of private property and industrial
freedom, and a state of the arts which gave the large scale of
production decided technical advantages. In one of his former
writings, Professor Wagner contended that German peasants
lived to this day in mean thatched huts, simply because their
ancestors had been impoverished by feudal exactions and ruined
by wars which they had no voice in declaring ; and he seems
to be now as profoundly impressed with the belief that the
present liberty allowed to unscrupulous speculators to utilize
the chances and opportunities of trade at the cost of others
is producing evils in no way less serious, which ought to be
checked effectively while there is yet time. So long as such
tendencies are left at work, he says it is idle trying to treat
socialism with any cunning admixture of cakes and blows,
or charging State socialists with heating the oven of social
democracy. State socialists, he continues, comprehend the
disease which Radical socialists only feel wildly and call down
fire to cure, and they are as much opposed to the purely work-
ing-class State of the latter, as they are to the purely constitu-
tional State of our modern Liberal ismus vulgaris, as Wagner
calls it.
The true Social State lies, in his opinion, between the two.
WTiat the new social era demands the era which is already,
he thinks, well in course of development, but which it is the
business of State socialism to help Providence to develop
aright is the effective participation of poor and rich alike in
the civilization which the increased productive resources of
society afford the means of enjoying ; and this is to be brought
about in two ways: first, by a systematic education of the
whole people according to a well-planned ideal of culture, and
second, by a better distribution of the income of society among
the masses. Now, to carry out these requirements, the idea
of liberty proper to the constitutional era must naturally be
State Socialism. 389
finally discarded, and a very large hand must be allowed to
the public authority in every department of human activity,
whether relating to the production, distribution, or consump-
tion of wealth. In the first place, in order to destroy the effect
of chance and of the utilization of chances in creating the
present accumulations in private hands, it is necessary to divert
into the public treasury as far as possible the whole of that part
of the national income which goes now, in the form of rent,
interest, or profit, into the pockets of the owners of land and
capital, and the conductors of business enterprises. Wagner
would accordingly nationalize (or municipalize) gradually so
much of the land, capital, and industrial undertakings of the
country as could be efficiently managed as public property or
public enterprises, and that would include all undertakings
which tend to become monopolies even in private hands, or
which, being conducted best on the large scale, are already
managed under a form of organization which, in his opinion,
has most of the faults and most of the merits of State manage-
ment viz., the form of joint-stock companies. He would in
this way throw on the Government all the great means of
communication and transport, railways and canals, telegraphs
and post, and all banking and insurance ; and on the muni-
cipalities all such things as the gas, light, and water supply.
Although he recognises the suitability of Government manage-
ment as a consideration to be weighed in nationalizing an
industry, he states explicitly that the reason for the change he
proposes is not in the least the fiscal or economic one that the
industry can be more advantageously conducted by the
Government, but is a theory of social politics which requires
that the whole economic work of the people ought to be more
and more converted from the form of private into the form of
public organization, so that every working man might be a
public servant and enjoy the same assured existence that other
public servants at present possess.
In the next place, since many industries must remain in
private hands, the State is bound to see the existence of the
labourers engaged in private works guaranteed as securely as
those engaged in public works. It must take steps to provide
them with both an absolute and a relative increase of wages
39 Contemporary Socialism.
by instituting a compulsory system of paying wages as a
percentage of the gross produce ; it must guarantee them a
certain continuity of employment ; must limit the hours of
their labour to the length prescribed by the present state of
the arts in the several trades ; and supply a system of public
insurance against accidents, sickness, infirmity, and age,
together with a provision for widows and orphans.
In the third place, all public works are to be managed on
the socialistic principle of supplying manual labourers with
commodities at a cheaper rate than their social superiors.
They are to have advantages in the matters of gas and water
supply, railway fares, school fees, and everything else that is
provided by the public authority.
In the fourth place, taxation is to be employed directly to
mitigate the inequalities of wealth resulting from the present
commercial system, and to save and even increase the labourer's
income at the expense of the income of other classes. This
is to be done by the progressive income-tax, and by the
application of the product of indirect taxation on certain
articles of working-class consumption to special working-class
ends. For example, he thinks Prince Bismarck's proposed
tobacco monopoly might be made "the patrimony of the
disinherited."
In the fifth place, the State ought to take measures to wean
the people not only from noxious forms of expenditure, like the
expenditure on strong drink, but from useless and waste-
ful expenditure, and to guide them into a more economic,
far-going, and beneficial employment of the earnings they
make.
Now for all this work, involving as it does so large an
amount of interference with the natural liberty of things,
"Wagner not unreasonably thinks that a strong Government is
absolutely indispensable a Government that knows its own
mind, and has the power and the will to carry it out ; a
Government whose authority is established on the history and
opinion of the nation, and stands high above all the contending
political factions of the hour. And in Germany, such an
executive can only be found in the present Empire, which is
merely following " Frederician and Josephine traditions " in
State Socialism. 391
coining forward, as it did in the Imperial message of November,
1881, as a genuine " social monarchy."
In this doctrine of Professor Wagner we find the same
general features we have already seen in the doctrine of
Rodbertus. It is true he would not nationalize all industries
whatsoever ; he would only nationalize such industries as the
State is really fit to manage successfully. He admits that
uneconomic management can never contribute to the public
good, and so far he accepts a very sound principle of limitation.
But then he applies the principle with too great laxity. He
has an excessive idea of the State's capacities. He thinks that
every business now conducted by a joint-stock company could
be just as well conducted by the Government, and ought
therefore to be nationalized ; but experience shows railway
experience, for example that joint-stock management, when
it is good, is better than Government management at its best.
Then Professor "Wagner thinks every industry which has a
natural tendency to become in any case a practical monopoly
would be better in the hands of the Government ; but Govern-
ment might interfere enough to restrain the mischiefs of
monopoly as it does in the case of railways in this country,
for example without incurring the liabilities of complete
management. Professor Wagner would in these ways throw a
great deal of work on Government which Government is not
very fit to accomplish successfully, and he would like to throw
everything on it, if he could overcome his scruples about its
capabilities, because he thinks industrial nationalization would
facilitate the realization of his particular views of the equitable
distribution of wealth. It is true, again, that Wagner's theory
of equitable distribution is not the theory of Rodbertus he
rejects the right of labour to the whole product; but his
theory, if less definite, is not less unjustifiable. It is virtually
the theory of equality of conditions which considers all in-
equalities of fortune wrong, because they are held to come
either from chance, or what is worse from an unjust utiliza-
tion of chance, and which, on that account, takes comparative
poverty to constitute of itself a righteous claim for compensa-
tion as against comparative wealth. Now, a state of enforced
equality of conditions would probably be found neither possible
39 2 Contemporary Socialism.
nor desirable, but it is in its very conception unjust. It may
be well, as far as it can be done, to check refined methods of
deceit, or cruel utilizations of an advantageous position, but it
can never be right to deprive energy, talent, and character of
the natural reward and incentive of their exertions. The
world would soon be poor if it discouraged the skill of the
skilful, as it would soon cease to be virtuous if it ostracized
those who were pre-eminently honest or just. The idea of
equality has been a great factor in human progress, but it
requires no such outcome as this. Equality is but the respect
we owe to human dignity, and that very respect for human
dignity demands security for the fruits of industry to the
successful, and security against the loss of the spirit of personal
independence in the mass of the people. But while that is so,
there is one broad requirement of that same fundamental
respect for human dignity which must be admitted to be
wholly just and reasonable the requirement which we have
seen to have been recognised by the English economists that
the citizens be, as far as possible, secured, if necessary by
public compulsion and public money, in the elementary con-
ditions of all humane living. The State might not be right if
it gave the aged a comfortable superannuation allowance, or
the unemployed agreeable work at good wages ; but it is only
doing its duty when, with the English law, it gives them
enough to keep them, without taking away from the one the
motives for making a voluntary provision against age, or from
the other the spur to look out for work for themselves.
It will be said that this is a standard that is subject to a
certain variability ; that a house may be considered unfit for
habitation now that our fathers would have been fain to
occupy ; that shoes seem an indispensable element of humane
living now, though, as Adam Smith informs us, they were still
only an optional decency in some parts of Scotland in his time.
But differences of this nature lead to no practical difficulty,
and the standard is fixity of measure itself when compared
with the indefinite claims that may be made in the name of
historical compensation, or wild theories of distributive justice,
and it makes a wholesome appeal to recognised obligations of
humanity instead of feeding a violent sense of unbounded
State Socialism. 393
hereditary wrong. At all events, it presents the true equality
equality of moral rights over against the false equality of
State socialism equality of material conditions ; and it is able
to present a better face against that system, because it re-
cognises a certain measure of material conditions among the
original moral rights. For this reason the English theory of
social politics is the best practical criterion for discriminating
between socialistic legislation and wholesome social reforms.
The State socialistic position cannot be advantageously attacked
from the ground of Mr. Spencer and the adherents of laissez-
faire, who merely say, Let misfortune and poverty alone ;
whether remediable or irremediable, they are not the State's
aiFairs. The two theories nowhere come within range ; but the
English theory meets State socialism at every point, almost
hand to hand, for it admits the State's competency to deal
with poverty and misfortune, and to alter men's material con-
ditions to the extent needed for the practical realization of
their full moral rights.
III. State Socialism and Social Reform.
On this English theory of social politics, the State, though
not socialist, is very frankly social reformer, and those schools
of opinion, which are usually thought to have been most averse
to Government intervention, have been among the most earnest
in pressing that role upon the State. Cobden, I. presume, may
be taken as a fair representative of the Manchester school, and
Cobden, with all his love of liberty, loved progress more, and
thought the best Government was the Government that did
most for social reform. When he visited Prussia in 1838, he
was struck with admiration at the paternal but improving rule
he found in operation there. " I very much suspect," he said,
" that at present for the great mass of the people Prussia
possesses the best Government in Europe. I would gladly
give up my taste for talking politics, to secure such a state of
things in England. Had our people such a simple and econo-
mical Government, so deeply imbued with justice to all, and
aiming so constantly to elevate mentally and morally its popu-
lation, how much better would it be for the twelve or fifteen
394 Contemporary Socialism.
millions in the British Empire, who, while they possess no
electoral rights, are yet persuaded they are freemen ! " So far
from thinking, as the Manchester man of polemics is always
made to think, that the State goes far enough when it secures
to every man liberty to pursue his own interest his own way,
as long as he does not interfere with the corresponding right
of his neighbours, the Manchester man of reality takes the
State severely to task for neglecting to promote the mental
and moral elevation of the people ; the chief end of Govern-
ment being to establish not liberty alone, but every other
necessary security for rational progress. The theory of laissez-
faire would of course permit measures required for the public
safety, but what Cobden calls for are measures of social ameli-
oration. Provisions for the better protection of person and
property, as they exist, against violence or fraud, make up but
a small part of legitimate State duty, compared wiih provisions
for their better development, for enlarging the powers of the
national manhood, or the product of the national resources.
The institution of property itself is a provision for progress,
and could never have originated under the system of laissez-
faire, which now makes it a main branch of State work to
defend it. In the form of permanent and exclusive possession,
it is undoubtedly a contravention of the equal freedom of all
to the use of their common inheritance, committed for the
purpose of securing their more productive use of it. It inter-
feres with their access to the land, and with the equality of
their opportunities, but then it enhances and concentrates the
energies of the occupants, and it doubles the yield of the soil.
It promotes two objects, which are quite as paramount con-
cerns of the State as liberty itself it improves the industrial
manhood of the nation, and it increases the productivity of the
natural resources ; and institutions that conduce to such results
are not really infractions of liberty, but rather complements
of it, because they give people an ampler use of their own
powers, and create, by means of the increase of production they
work, more and better opportunities than those they take
away.
Now the lines of legitimate intervention prescribed by the
necessities of progress, and already followed in the original
State Socialism. 395
institution of property, will naturally, when extended through
our complicated civilization, include a very considerable and
varied field of social and industrial activity, and this has been
all along recognised by the English economists and statesmen.
While opposed to the State doing anything either moral or
material for individuals, which individuals could do better, or
with better results, for themselves, they agreed in requiring
the State, first, to undertake any industrial work it had superior
natural advantages for conducting successfully ; and second,
to protect the weaker classes effectively in the essentials of all
rational and humane living in what Adam Smith calls " an
undeformed and unmutilated manhood" not only against
the ravages of violence or fear or insecurity, but against those
of ignorance, disease, and want. Smith, we know, would even
save them from cowardice by a system of military training,
and from fanaticism by an established Church, because, he
said, cowardice and fanaticism were as great deformities of
manhood as ignorance or disease, and prevented a man from
having command of himself and his own powers quite as
effectually as violence or oppression. Laws which give every
man better command and use of his own energies are in mani-
fest harmony with liberty, and for the State to do such indus-
trial work as it has special natural advantages for doing is
conformable with the principle of free-trade itself, which has
always prescribed to men and nations as the best rule for their
prosperity, that they should concentrate their strength on the
branches of industry they possess natural advantages for culti-
vating, and give up wasting their labour on less productive
employment. Mr. Chamberlain is certainly wrong in thinking
over-government an extinct danger under democratic institu-
tions, a mere survival from times of oppression which haunts
the people still, though they are their own masters, with foolish
fears of over-governing themselves. In reality, the danger has
much more probably increased, as John Stuart Mill believed,
for if we cannot over-govern ourselves, we can very easily and
cheerfully over-govern one another, and a majority may impose
its brute will with even less scruple than a monarch ; but how-
ever that may be, those who tremble most sincerely for the
ark of liberty cannot see any undue contraction of the field of
396 Contemporary Socialism.
individual action in an extension of authority for either of the
two purposes here specified, for the purpose of undertaking
industrial work which private initiative cannot prosecute so
advantageously, or of making more secure to the weaker
citizens those primary conditions of normal humanity, which
are really their natural right. The first of these purposes is
quite consistent with the principles of men like W. von Hum-
boldt, who contend that the best means of national prosperity
is the cultivation to the utmost of the individual energy of the
people, and who are opposed to Government interference be-
cause it represses or supplants that energy. They welcome
everything that tends to economize and develop energy, to
place things in the hands of those that can do them best, and
generally to increase the productive capacity of the whole
community. They believe that machinery, division of labour,
factory systems, keenest conditions of competition, however
they may at first seem to contract men's opportunities of
employment, always end in multiplying them, and, because
they increase or economize the productive powers of those
actually employed, really expand the field of employment for
all. Now Government management would of course have a
like operation wherever Government management effected a
like economy or increase in the productive powers of society,
and would really expand the field of individual initiative
which it appeared to contract ; and those who believe most in
individual energy and its power of seeking out for itself the
most advantageous new outlets, will find least to complain of
in an intervention of authority which releases men from work
ill-suited to their powers to do, and sends them into work
where their powers can be more fruitfully occupied.
The second purpose of legitimate intervention seems even
less open to objection from that side. The State is asked to
go in social reform only as far as it goes in judicial adminis-
tration it is asked to secure for every man as effectively as it
can those essentials of all rational and humane living which
are really every man's right, because without them he would
be something less than man, his manhood would be wanting,
maimed, mutilated, deformed, incapable of fulfilling the ends
of its being. Those original requirements of humane existence
State Socialism. 397
are dues of the common nature we wear, which we cannot see
extinguished in others without an injury to our own self-
respect, and the State is bound to provide adequate securities
for one of them as much as for another. The same reason
which justified the State at first in protecting person and
property against violence, justified it yesterday in abolishing
slavery, justifies it to-day in abolishing ignorance, and will
justify it to-morrow in abolishing other degrading conditions
of life. The public sense of human dignity may grow from
age to age and be offended to-morrow by what it tolerates
to-day, but the principle of sound intervention is all through
the same that the proposed measure is necessary to enable
men to live the true life of a man and fulfil the proper ends of
rational being. A thoughtful French writer defends State
intervention for the purpose of social amelioration as being a
mere duty of what he calls reparative justice. Popular misery
and decadence, he would say, is always very largely the result
of bad laws and other bad civil conditions, as we see it plainly
to have been in the case of the Irish cottiers, the Scotch crofters,
and the rural labourers of England, and when the community
has really inflicted the injury, the community is bound in the
merest justice to repair it. And the obligation would not be
exhausted with the repeal of bad laws ; it would require the
positive restoration to the declining populations of the condi-
tions of real prosperity from which they fell. But though this
is a specific ground which may occasionally quicken the State's
remedial action with something of the energy of remorse, it is
no extension of its natural and legitimate sphere of interven-
tion, and the State might properly take every measure neces-
sary for the effectual restoration of a declining section of the
population to conditions of real prosperity on the broad and
simple principle already laid down, that the measure is neces-
sary to put those people in a position to fulfil their vocation as
human beings. Hopeless conditions of labour are as contrary
to sound nature, and as fatal to any proper use of man's ener-
gies, as slavery itself, and their mere existence constitutes a
sufficient cause for the State's intervention, apart from any
special responsibility the State may bear for their historical
origin. Even the measure of the required intervention is no
398 Contemporary Socialism.
way less, for if its purpose is to preserve some essential of full
normal manhood, its only limit is that of being effectual to
serve the purpose. The original natural obligation of the State
needs no expansion then from historical responsibilities to cover
any effectual form of remedial action against the social decad-
ence of particular classes of the population, whether it be the
constitution of a new right like the right to a fair rent, the
adoption of administrative measures like the migration of re-
dundant inhabitants, or the provision of wise facilities for the
rest by the loan of public money,
It is plain, therefore, that we have here within the lines of
accepted and even " orthodox " English theory a doctrine of
social politics which gives the Government an ample and per-
fectly adequate place in the promotion of all necessary social
reform ; and if we are all socialists now, as" is so often said, it
is not because we have undergone any change of principles on
social legislation, but only a public awakening to our social
miseries. The Churches, for example, while they left Lord
Shaftesbury to fight his battles for the helpless alone, have now
shared in this social awakening, and show not only a general
ardour to agitate social questions, but even some pains to under-
stand them ; but the Churches did not neglect Lord Shaftesbury
fifty years ago, because they thought his Factory Bills pro-
ceeded from unsound views of the State's functions, but merely
because their interest was not then sufficiently aroused in the
temporal welfare of the poor, and with all their individual
charities they responded little to the grievances of social classes.
We are all socialists now, only in feeling as much interest in
these grievances as the socialists are in the habit of doing, but
we have not departed from our old lines of social policy, and
there is no need we should, for they are broad enough to satisfy
every claim of sound social reform.
It is only when these lines are transgressed that, strictly
speaking, socialism begins; and though it is hopeless to think
of confining the vulgar use of the word to its strict signification,
it is at least essential to do so if we desire any clear or firm
grasp of principle. The socialism of the present time extends
the State's intervention from those industrial undertakings it
is fitted to manage well to all industrial undertakings what-
State Socialism. 399
ever, and from establishing securities for the full use of men's
energies to attempting to equalize in some way the results of
their use of them. It may be shortly described as aiming at
the progressive nationalization of industries with a view to the
progressive equalization of incomes. The common pleas for
this policy are, first, the necessity of introducing a distribution
of wealth more in accordance with personal merit by neutral-
izing the effects of chance, which at present throw some into
opulence without any co-operation from their own labour, and
press thousands into penury in spite of their most honest exer-
tions ; and second, the advantage society would reap from the
mere economy of the resources at present wasted in unnecessary
competition. Both pleas are, however delusive ; it is neither
good nor possible to suppress chance, and if competition in-
volves some loss, it yields a much more abounding gain.
A sense of the blind play of chance in all things human lies
indeed beneath all work of social relief. " Hodie mihi, eras
tibi," wrote the good Regent Murray over his lintel to avert
the grudge of envy, and the same feeling of the uncertainty of
fortune quickens the thought of pity. Men reflect how much
of their own comfort they owe to good circumstances rather
than good deserts, and how much more bad circumstances have
often to do with poverty than bad guiding. To change these
bad conditions so far as to preserve for every man intact the
essentials of common progressive manhood is a proper object
of social work. But while mitigating the operation of chance
to that extent is well, to try and suppress its operation alto-
gether would be injurious, even if it were possible. For there
is no pursuit under the sun in which chance has not its part
as well as skill, and skill itself is often nothing but a quick
grasp of happy chance. To discourage the alert from seizing
good opportunities on the wing, by confiscating the results and
distributing them among the languid and inactive, is the same
thing as to discourage them by like means from exerting all
their industry in any other way. It violates their individual
right with no better effect than to cripple the national pro-
duction. They are entitled to the best conditions for the suc-
cessful use of their individual energies, and the best conditions
for the use of individual energies are the true securities for
400 Contemporary Socialism.
national progress. The sound policy is not the greater equal-
ization of opportunities, but their greater utilization. It may
be right to make ships seaworthy and their masters competent
navigators, but if one of them gets delayed in a calm or dis-
abled by a storm, while another has caught a fair wind and is
carried on to port, it would answer no good purpose to equalize
their gains for the mere correction of the inequality in their
opportunities. It would relax in both masters alike the supreme
essentials of all successful labour activity, vigilance, enter-
prise. State action with respect to the quips and arrows of
fortune ought to go as far but no farther than State action with
respect to the crimes and hostilities of men, or with respect to
evil forces of nature like those of infectious diseases it ought
to content itself with effectually protecting the primary con-
ditions of sound manhood against their outrages. It may do
what it can, not merely to relieve the unfortunate in their
extremity, but to prevent their coming to extremity, to arrest,
if possible, their decline, to check or soften the trade fluctuations
that often swamp them, and to facilitate their self-recovery ;
but, when it goes on to suppress or equalize the operation of
fortune, it destroys the good with the evil, and even if it re-
moved the tares, would find it had only spoiled the harvest of
wheat. The present industrial system has its defects, but it
certainly has one immense advantage which would be forfeited
under socialism it tends to elicit to their utmost the talents
and energies alike of employers and employed. The languor
of the " Government stroke " and the slow mechanism of a
State department are unfavourable to an abundant production.
The general slackening of industry, and the extinction of those
innumerable sources of active initiative which at present are
so busy pushing out new and fruitful developments, are too
great a price to pay for the suppression of the evils of com-
petition. To effect some economies in the use of capital, we
damage or destroy the forces by which capital is produced, and
really lose the pound to save the penny.
Even from the standing-point of a good distribution of
wealth, if by a good distribution we mean, not an equal dis-
tribution of the produce, however small the individual share,
but, what is surely much better, a high general level of com-
State Socialism. 401
fort, though, considerable inequalities may remain, then an
abundant production is still the most indispensable thing, for
it is the most certain of all means to that high general level
of comfort. Even in those agricultural countries where this
result is promoted by a land system favouring peasant pro-
perties, the result is largely due to the fact that occupying
ownership is itself the best condition for high production ; and
if we compare the principal modern industrial nations, we shall
find labour enjoying the best real remuneration in those where
the rate of production is highest, where employers are most
competent, machinery most perfected, and labour itself per-
sonally most efficient. And, on the other hand, while the
general level of comfort rises under a policy that develops pro-
ductivity even at the risk of widening inequality, the general
level of comfort always sinks under the contrary policy which
sacrifices productivity to socialistic ideas and claims.
We have practical experience of the working of socialism in
various forms, and under the most opposite conditions of culture,
and the experience is everywhere the same. Custom in Samoa,
for example, gives a man a pretty strict right to go to his
neighbour and requisition what he wants, or even to quarter
himself in the house without payment, as long as he pleases.
No one dares to refuse, for fear of losing credit and suffering
reproach. Originating as a well-meant refuge for the dis-
tressed, the system has become still more a subterfuge for the
lazy, and Dr. Turner sums up his account of it by saying,
" This communistic system is a sad hindrance to the indus-
trious, and eats like a canker-worm at the roots of individual
and national progress." The disheartening of the industrious
has an even worse effect than the encouragement of the in-
dolent ; the more they make, the more subject they are to the
imposition. The English agricultural labourers belong to a
very different state of society from the savages of Samoa. They
are of an energetic race, which if it does not positively love
work, has probably as little aversion to it as any nation in the
world, and seems often really to delight in the hardest exertion;
but in England the effect of giving the poor a similar socialistic
right was precisely the same as in Samoa. While we are sup-
posed to have been advancing in socialism with our Factory
D D
402 Contemporary Socialism.
Acts, we were really retreating from it in our Poor Law. The
old English laws which for centuries first fixed labourers'
wages, and then made up the deficiencies of the wages, if such
occurred, out of the poor rates, were certainly socialistic, and
the commission that inquired into their working sixty j^ears
ago reported that their worst effect had been to make the
labourers such poor workers that they were hardly worth the
wages they got. The men were by law unable to earn more
if they worked more, or to lose anything if they worked less,
and so their very working powers drooped and withered. As
most modern socialists put their trust entirely in the old motive
of self-interest, and propose to pay every man according to his
work, their only resource against such a result would be a stern
system of poor-law administration, like the English, and that
would of course involve a departure from their favourite ideal
of furnishing the dependent poor with as decent and com-
fortable a living as the independent poor gain for themselves
by their work. The change from Samoa to rural England is
probably not so great as the change from rural England to
Brook Farm and the other experimental communities of the
United States, companies of cultivated and earnest people,
corning from one of the best civilized stocks, and settling under
the favourable material conditions of a new country for the
very purpose of working out a socialist ideal. Yet in these
American communities, socialistic institutions led to precisely
the same results as they did in England and in Samoa, a
slackening of industry, and a deterioration of the general level
of comfort. No doubt, as Horace Greeley said, who knew these
communities well, and lived for a time in more than one of
them, there came to them along with the lofty souls, who are
willing to labour and endure, " scores of whom the world is
quite worthy, the conceited, the crotchety, the selfish, the
headstrong, the pugnacious, the unappreciated, the played-out,
the idle, the good-for-nothing generally, who, finding them-
selves utterly out of place, and at a discount in the world as it
is, rashly conclude that they are exactly fitted for the world as
it ought to be." But the proportion of difficult subjects would
not be larger in Brook Farm or New Harmony than it is in the
ordinary world outside, and in these communities they would
State Socialism. 403
be under the constant influence of leaders of the highest char-
acter and an almost religious enthusiasm. If the new and
better economic motives, which romantic socialists like Mr.
Bellamy always assure us are to carry us to such great things
as soon as the suppression of the present pecuniary motive
allows them to rise into operation if the love of work for its
own sake, the sense of public duty, the desire of public appre-
ciation, could be expected to prevail anywhere to any purpose,
it would be among the gifted and noble spirits who founded
the community of Brook Farm. But the late W. H. Channing,
who was a member of the community and looked back upon
it with the tenderest feelings, explains its failure by saying :
" The great evil, the radical, practical danger, seemed to be a
willingness to do work half thorough, to rest in poor results,
to be content amidst comparatively squalid conditions, and to
form habits of indolence."*
The idleness of the idle was one of the chief standing
troubles in all the socialistic experiments of the United States.
Mr. Noyes gives us an account of forty-seven communistic
experiments which had been made under modern socialist
influences in the United States and had failed, while Mr.
Nordhoff, on the other hand, furnishes a like account of
seventy-two communities, established mainly under religious
influences (fifty-eight of them belonging to the Shakers alone),
which have been not merely social but economic successes,
some of them for more than a hundred years ; and one is
struck with the degree in which the idler difficulty has con-
tributed to the failure of the forty-seven, and in which the
continual and comparatively successful conflict with that diffi-
culty by means of their peculiar system of religious discipline
has aided in the success of the other seventy-two. Mr. Noyes
is himself founder of the Oneida community, and bases his
descriptions of the rest on information supplied by men who
were members of the communities he describes, or on the
materials collected by Mr. Macdonald, a Scotch Owenite, who
visited most of the American communities for the purpose
of describing them. No causes of failure are more often
* Frothingham's " W. H. Channing : a Memoir," p. 18.
404 Contemporary Socialism.
mentioned by him than " too many idlers " and " bad manage-
ment." Not that industry was relaxed all round. On the
contrary, it seems to have been a peculiarity of the Owenite
and Fourierist communities, that the industrious wrought
much harder (and in most of them for much poorer fare) than
labourers of ordinary life. Macdonald was surprised at the
marvellous industry he saw as he watched them, and would
say to himself: " If you fail, I will give it up, for never did I
see men work so well and so brotherly with each other." But
then a little way off he would come on people who " merely
crawled about, probably sick (he charitably suggests), just
looking on like myself at anything which fell in their way."
A very common feeling among members of these communities
seems to have been that they were far more troubled with
idlers than the Test of the world, because their system itself
presented special attractions to that unwelcome class. " Men
came," says one of the Trumbull Phalanx, " with the idea that
they could live in idleness at the expense of the purchasers
of the estate, and their ideas were practically carried out,
while others came with good heart for the work." The same
testimony is given about the Sylvania Association. "Idle and
greedy people," says the writer of this testimony, " find their
way into such attempts, and soon show forth their character
by burdening others with too much labour, and in times of
scarcity supplying themselves with more than their allowance
of various necessaries, instead of taking less." Idle and greedy
people, no doubt, did get into these communities, but these
idle and greedy people constitute, I fear, a very large propor-
tion of mankind, and the point is that socialistic institutions
unfortunately offer them encouragement and opportunity.
The experience of American communism directly contradicts
John Stuart Mill's opinion, that men are not more likely to
evade their fair share of the work under a socialistic system
than they are now. That difficulty in one form or another
was their constant vexation. The members of Owen's com-
munity at Yellow Springs belonged in general to a superior
class ; but one of them, in stating the causes of the failure
of that community, says : " The industrious, the skilful, and
the strong saw the products of their labour enjoyed by the
State Socialism. 405
indolent, and the unskilled, and the improvident, and self-love
rose against benevolence. A band of musicians insisted that
their brassy harmony was as necessary to the common happi-
ness as bread and meat, and declined to enter the harvest field
or the workshop. A lecturer upon Natural Science insisted
upon talking only while others worked. Mechanics whose
day's labour brought two dollars into the common stock
insisted that they should in justice work only half as long as
the agriculturist, whose day's work brought only one." The
same evil, according to R. D. Owen, contributed to the fall
of New Harmony ; " there was not disinterested industry," he
says, " there was not mutual confidence." A lady who was
a member of the Marlboro' Association in Ohio, a socialistic
experiment that lasted four years and then failed, attributes
the failure to " the complicated state of the business concerns,
the amount of debt contracted, and the feeling that each
would work with more energy, for a time at least, if thrown
upon his own resources, with plenty of elbow-room, and
nothing to distract his attention."
The magnitude of this difficulty only appears the greater
when we turn from the forty-seven socialistic experiments
which have failed to the seventy-two which have thriven.
The Shakers and Rappists are undoubtedly very industrious
people, who, by producing a good article, have won and kept
for years a firm hold of the American market, and being, in
consequence of their institution of celibacy, a community of
adult workers exclusively, every man and every woman being
a productive labourer, the wonder is they are not wealthier
and more prosperous even than they are. Their economic
prosperity is based, as economic prosperity always is and
must be, on their general habits of industry, and the natural
tendency of socialistic arrangements to relax these habits is
in their case effectually, though not without difficulty, counter-
acted by their religious discipline. Idleness is a sin ; next to
disobedience to the elders, no other sin is more reprobated
among them, because no other sin is at once so besetting and
so dangerous there, and the conquest and suppression of idle-
ness is a continual object of their vigilance, and of their
ordinary devotional practice. Mr. Nordhoff publishes a few of
406 Contemporary Socialism.
their most popular hymns, and one is struck with the space
the cultivation of personal industry seems to occupy in their
thoughts. " Old Slug," as they delight to nickname the idler,
is the " Old Adam " of the Shakers, and a public sentiment
of hatred and contempt for the indolent man is sedulously
fostered by them. As they not only work, but also live under
one another's constant supervision, and within earshot of one
another's criticism, they more than replace the eye of the
master by the keener and more sleepless eye of moral and
social police. And if all this discipline fails, they have the
last resource of expulsion. They easily make the idler too
uncomfortable to remain. " They have," says Mr. Nordhoff,
" no difficulty in sloughing off persons who come with bad or
low motives." They exercise, in short, the power of dismissal,
the last sanction in ordinary use in the old state of society.
Not that they make any virtue of strenuous labour. They
work moderately, and avoid anything like fatigue or exhaus-
tion. They frankly acknowledged to Mr. Nordhoff, once and
again, that three hired men taken in from the ordinary world
would do as much work as five or six of their members. Their
wants are few and simple, and they are satisfied with the
moderate exertion that suffices to supply them ; but they will
tolerate no shirking of that in any shape or form, and this
alone saves them from disaster. The experiences of these
successful Shaker and Rappist communities serve, therefore,
to show, even better than the experiences of the unsuccessful
Owenite and Fourierist communities, the gravity that the
idleness difficulty would assume in a general socialistic regime,
which possessed nothing in the nature of the power of dis-
missal, and in which we could not calculate either on the
formation of an effective public opinion against idleness, or on
its effective application if it were formed. The men who
founded the unsuccessful communities were far superior to the
Shakers in business ability and education, and they had more
money to begin their experiments with, but where they failed
the Shakers have succeeded through the indirect economic
effects of their rigorous religious discipline. But the evi-
dence is as plain in the one case as in the other as to the
natural, and even powerful, effect of socialistic arrangements
State Socialism. 407
in relaxing the industry of many sorts and conditions of
men.
The same sources of evidence prove with equal clearness
the development under socialistic institutions of two other
concurrent causes of decline. I have already quoted Mr.
Channing's statement that the Brook Farm community showed
a disposition to be content with comparatively squalid condi-
tions of life. Mr. Nordhoff would probably not use the word
squalid of anything he saw in the Shaker and Rappist com-
munities he describes, except perhaps in certain instances of
the state of the public streets ; and in some points, such as the
scrupulous cleanness of the interior of their houses, he would
set them far above their neighbours you could eat your
dinner, he says, off their floors. Still the people he found
everywhere content, if not exactly with squalid, certainly
with poor and dull and rough conditions of life, much poorer,
duller, and rougher than they might easily be. They enjoyed
equality, security from harassing anxiety for the morrow,
abundance even for their limited wants, independence from
subjection to a master, but they were weak in the ordinary
springs of progress. The spirit of material improvement was
not much abroad among them. Give me the stationary state
of society and contentment, you may exclaim ; but then even
this stationary state is only maintained in these sequestered
communities by the constant play of peculiar religious influ-
ences which cannot be counted on everywhere, and it would
soon change into a declining state in the great seething world
outside if it were not effectively counter- worked by the most
powerful incentives to progress. Now the same equalizing
social arrangements which destroy one of the most essential
of these incentives by guaranteeing men the results of industry
without its exertion, enfeeble a second by predisposing them
to rest content with the lower conditions of life to which they
are reduced.
A third cause of decline to which the American experience
shows socialistic institutions to be incident is a certain weak-
ness in the management, produced sometimes by divided
counsels, sometimes by the delay involved in getting the
sanction of a Board to every little detail of business, and
408 Contemporary Socialism.
sometimes by a difficulty which we find also shattering similar
experiments in France, that men were raised to the Committee
by their gifts of persuasion rather than their gifts of adminis-
tration. Well-meaning persons, with a great itch for managing
things, and a great turn for bungling them, for whom there is,
tinder the present order of society, a considerable safety-valve
in philanthropy, contrive in a socialistic community to get
appointed on the Council of Industry, and play sad havoc
with the common good. While they preached and wasted,
the really practical men who, with better power of talk, might
have confounded them, could only sulk and grumble, and
eventually lost heart in their work, and all interest and con-
fidence in the concern. This had much to do, according to
Mr. Meeker, an old Fourier! st, with the ruin of the North
American Phalanx, one of the most important of the trans-
atlantic experiments, and it was the main cause apparently
of the downfall of the community of Coxsackie " They had
many persons engaged in talking and law-making who did
not work at any useful employment ; the consequences were
that after struggling on for between one and two years the
experiment came to an end." A socialist State would prob-
ably have as many difficulties with this bustling but unsatis-
factory class of persons as a socialist Phalanx, nor would the
evils of divided counsels and departmental delays be a whit
milder ; and the extension of State management to branches
of work for which it had not otherwise some sort of special
natural qualification would have the same kind of ruinous
operation.
In spirit and effect, therefore, as may be palpably seen from
these actual experiments, the equalizing institutions of socialism
stand quite apart from the very restricted use of State manage-
ment and the remedial or invigorating legislation that a sound
social policy prescribes. When England is accused of heading
the nations in the race of State socialism, because England has
nationalized the post and telegraph service, and passed a series
of factory and agrarian Acts for the protection of the weaker
classes of the people, the accusation is made without proper dis-
crimination. It is not the frequency of the intervention, but
its purpose and consequences that make it socialistic. If the
State Socialism. 409
post is better managed by the State than by private initiative,
if the factory and agrarian laws merely reinstate weaker classes
in the conditions essential for a normal human life, and neither
seek nor produce that equalization of the differences of fortune
or skill which is fatal to any high and progressive general level
of comfort, then there is no State socialism in it at all. State
management is not pushed beyond the limit of efficiency, nor
popular rights beyond the positive claims of social justice. Let
us go a little further into detail.
IV. State Socialism and State Management.
What are the conditions of efficient State administration ?
The State possesses several natural characteristics which give
it a decided advantage as an industrial manager, some for one
branch of work, some for another. It has stability, it has per-
manency, and it has what is perhaps its principal industrial
superiority unrivalled power of securing unity of administra-
tion, since it is the only agency that can use force for the pur-
pose. On the other hand, it has one great natural defect, its
want of a personal stake in the produce of the business it con-
ducts, its want of that keen check on waste and that pushing
incentive to exertion which private undertakings enjoy in the
eye and energy of the master. This is the great taproot from
which all the usual faults of Government management spring
its routine, red-tape spirit, its sluggishness in noting changes
in the market, in adapting itself to changes in the public taste,
and in introducing improved methods of production. Govern-
ment servants may very generally be men of a higher stamp
and training than the servants of a private company, but they
are proverbial, on the one hand, for a certain lofty disdain of
the humble but valuable virtue of parsimony, and, on the other,
for an unprogressive, unenterprising, uninventive administra-
tion of business.
Now the branches of industry which the State is fitted to
carry on are of course those in which its great fault happens
to have small scope for play, and in which its great merit
or merits have great scope for play ; those, for example, which
gain largely in efficiency or economy by a centralized ad minis-
4io Contemporary Socialism.
tration, and suffer little harm comparatively from a routine
one. That is the reason Governments always manage the
postal service well. In post-office work the specific industrial
superiority of Government carries its maximum of advantage,
and its specific industrial defect does its minimum of injury.
The carrying and delivery of letters from one part of the
empire to another require, for efficiency, a single co-ordinated
system, and, on the other hand, those operations themselves are
of so unvariable and routine a character that little harm is done
by their being carried on in a routine spirit ; they involve so
little capital expenditure the entire capital of the department
in England is only 80,000 that the opportunity for waste and
corruption is slight ; and being conducted much more largely
under the public eye than the affairs of other departments of
State, they are consequently subject to the constant and inter-
ested criticism of the people whose wants they are meant to
satisfy. The same reason explains why Government dockyards
and arms factories are always managed so unsatisfactorily.
There is, on the one hand, no need in them for any higher unity
of administration than is wanted in any ordinary single busi-
ness establishment ; but, on the other, progressiveness and
adaptability are of the first moment, routine and obstruction
to improvement being indeed among their worst dangers.
Then the risk of prodigality and corruption is high, for their
capital expenditure is greafc, and the check of public criticism
very distant and ineffectual. So exceptional a business is the
post, that the telegraphs, though managed by the same depart-
ment, have never bean, managed with the same success. They
were bought at first at a ransom, they have involved an in-
creasing loss nearly ever since, and the public have to pay
practically as much for their telegrams perhaps more than
the public of the United States pay to their telegraph companies.
Even in the postal department, Government administration
shows the usual official slowness in adopting much-needed and
even lucrative reforms. Of this, a good example occurred only
the other day. It was not until a Boys' Messenger Company
was already in the field and doing the work, that the Post-
master-General was brought to recognise, as he said, " the
desirability of providing a more rapid means of transmitting
State Socialism. 411
single letters for short distances and under special circum-
stances than at present exists."
It ought of course to be acknowledged that State management
in England is tried under the very worst possible conditions,
inasmuch as it is tied to the fortunes and exigencies of political
party. No business could be expected to thrive where the
supreme control is placed in the hands of a good parliamentary
debater, who knows nothing about the special work of the
department he undertakes ; where, even at that, this inexperi-
enced hand is changed for another inexperienced hand every
three or four years ; where policy shifts without continuity, to
dodge the popular breeze of to-day, or to catch the popular
breeze of to-morrow ; and where the actual incumbent of office,
is always able to evade censure by throwing the responsibility
on his predecessors, who are out of office. "Well may a saga-
cious man like Mr. Samuel Laing, with large experience of
administration both in the affairs of State and of private com-
panies, exclaim : " I often think what the result would be if
the railway companies managed their affairs on the same
principles as the nation applies to its naval and military expen-
diture. Suppose the Brighton Board were turned out every
three years, and a new Board came in with new views and a
new policy, and new men at the head of the locomotive, 'traffic.
and other spending departments, how long would it be before
expenses went up and dividends down ? " If State management
is to succeed if it is to have fair play it must be entirely
divorced from party fortunes, while subject, of course, to the
criticism of Parliament, under some system like that adopted
in Victoria for the management of the railways. In such
circumstances the question of the advisability of Government
assuming the management of any industry, is a question of
balancing the probable gains from the greater unity of the
administration against the probable losses from its greater
inertia.
There are some exceptional branches of industry in which
Government does better than private persons, because private
persons have too little interest to do the work well, or even to
do it at all, and there are others in which the State's very want
of personal interest is its advantage instead of its drawback.
412 Contemporary Socialism.
Forestry is the best example of the first sort. One generation
must plant, and another cut down, so that the present owner is
often unwilling to incur the expense of a speculation of which
he is unlikely to live to reap the fruits ; but the natural per-
manence of the State leads it to do more justice to this import-
ant branch of production, and experience everywhere shows
that State forests are more productive than private ones. In
Prussia and Belgium they are nearly twice as productive. The
average annual produce of all forests in Prussia (including
State forests) is 0'36 thaler per Morgen, but the produce of
State forests alone is O66 thaler per Morgen. In Belgium the
produce of all forests is 19*33 francs per hectare, and of State
forests 34 - 42 francs.* The erection of lighthouses is also a
public service, which falls to the State because of individual
inability ; it cannot be undertaken in any way to make it re-
munerative to private adventurers.
The best example of an industrial work for which the State's
want of personal interest is its advantage is the Mint. Nobody
would trust the stamp of a private assayer as he trusts the
stamp of the Government, because the private assayer could
never succeed in placing his personal disinterestedness so abso-
lutely above the suspicion of fraud. The policy of the official
attestation of the quality of commodities is often disputed on
the ground that it discourages improvement above the pass
standard, but it is never doubted that if a brand is wanted, the
brand to command most confidence is the brand of the Crown.
Our own Government, out of the infinity of commodities offered
for sale, attests none but six butter, herrings, plate, gun bar-
rels, chains, and anchors articles in which the dangers of
deterioration probably exceed the chances of improvement, and
in the case of some of these six there is a strong feeling abroad
that the State's intervention is doing more harm than good.
Scotch herrings have suffered lately in the German markets,
because they were worse cured than the Norwegian, and the
herring brand was blamed for the unprogressiveness of the
cure. This class of interventions, therefore, is neither numerous
now, nor likely to become very numerous in the future.
* Reseller's "Finnnz-Wissenschaft," p. 63.
Stale Socialism. 413
A- more important class of undertakings in which the State's
industrial advantage lies in its superiority to the temptations
of self-interest, is that of industries which naturally assume
something of the character of a monopoly, and in which self-
interest lacks both the check on its rapacity, and the spur to
its activity supplied by effective competition. It is true of
more things than railways that when combination is possible,
competition is impossible, and the growth of syndicates, trusts
and pooling arrangements at the present day has led to con-
siderable agitation for State interference, especially in the
case of commodities like salt and coal, which are necessaries of
life. Our experience of these things is as yet limited, but so
far as it has gone it seems to show that the public dangers
dreaded from them are apt to be exaggerated. The combina-
tions fear to raise the price to the public so high as to provoke
competition, and in most cases in America have not raised it at
all, drawing their advantage rather from the reduction in ex-
pense of management, and the saving of capital ; and the
State would not be likely to manage industries producing for
the markets any better than, or even so well as, the more
keenly interested board of private directors. But if the balance
of evidence seems against public management in this class of
monopolies, it stands, I think, decidedly in favour of public
management in another and not unimportant class. The gas
and water supply of towns is a monopoly, and though the
point is not undisputed, it appears to answer better on the
whole in public than in private hands, because the manage-
ment has no interest to serve except the interest of the public.
Experience has not been everywhere the same, but usually it
has been that under municipal control the quality of the gas
has been improved and the price reduced. But this is muni-
cipal management of course, not State management, and the
difference is material, inasmuch as municipal management, in
the case of gas and water supply, is the management of the
production of things of general consumption under the direct
control of the very people who consume them, so that it is con-
stantly exposed to effective public criticism, perhaps as good a
substitute as things admit of for the eye of the master. The
natural defect of public management is so mitigated by this
414 Contemporary Socialism.
circumstance, that probably of all forms of public management,
municipal management is the best, and when applied to
branches of production that tend to become monopolies at any
rate, it answers well. The question is entirely different with
proposals that are sometimes made for converting into muni-
cipal monopolies branches of production such, for example, as
the bread supply of the community which are carried on by
individual management under effective competition. To do
as well as joint-stock management uncontrolled by competition
is one thing ; to do as well as individual management subject
to competition is another ; and so long as public management
replaces nothing but the former class of enterprises, which are
in any case a sort of natural monoplies, it will never contract
the vast field of individual enterprise to any very serious
extent.
"When we pass from municipal monopolies to State monopo-
lies, the problem becomes more grave. The two largest current
proposals of this kind are those of land nationalization and rail-
way nationalization. The former proposal, though much more
noisily advocated than the other, has incomparably the weaker
case. For apart altogether from the mischief of making every
rent settlement a political question, and looking at the matter
merely in its economic aspect, land, of all things, is that which
is least suited for centralized administration, and yields its best
results under the minute concentrated supervision of individual
and occupying ownership. The magic of property is now a
proverbial phrase ; it is truer of land than anything else, and it
merely means that for land interested administration is every-
thing, comprehensive administration nothing, that the zeal of
the resident owner to improve his own land knows no limit,
whereas the obstructive forces of routine and official inertia
have nowhere more power to blight than in land management.
In Adam Smith's time, as he mentions in the " Wealth of
Nations," the Crown lands were everywhere the least produc-
tive lands in their respective countries, and the experience is the
same still. It is so even in Prussia, in spite of its economical
and skilled bureaucracy. Professor Eoscher says it is a com-
mon remark in Germany that Crown lands sell for a greater
number of years' purchase than other lands, because they are
State Socialism. 4 1 5
known to be less improved, and are therefore expected to yield
better results to the energ} T of the purchaser, and he quotes
official figures for 1857, showing that the domain land of Prus-
sia had not risen in value so much as the other land in the
country. Great expectations are often entertained from the
unearned increment, though there is not likely to be much of
that in agricultural land for years to come ; but what is a much
more important consideration for the community is the earned
increment, and under State management the earned increment
would infallibly decline. Of course, this does not exclude the
necessity of strict State control, so far as required by justice,
humanity, and the growth and comfort of the general commu-
nity. Under land nationalization here I have not considered
schemes which do not give the State any real ownership in the
land more than it at present enjoys, or, at any rate, place no
real management of the land in its hands. The rival schemes
of Mr. A. R. Wallace and Mr. Henry George are really only
more or less objectionable methods of increasing the land-tax.
The question of a State railway is not so easily determined.
There are certainly few branches of business where unity of
administration is more advantageous, or where the public would
benefit more from affairs being conducted from the public
point of view of developing the greatest amount of gross traffic,
instead of from the private point of view of making the greatest
amount of net profit. A railway differs from other enterprises,
because it affects all others very seriously for good or ill ; it
may for the sake of more profit give preferences that are hurt-
ful to industrial development, or deny facilities that are essen-
tial to it. A private company may find it more profitable to
carry a less quantity at a high rate than a greater quantity at
a low, and it cannot be expected to run a line that does not pay,
though the general community might benefit greatly more by
the increase of traffic which the line creates than covers the
loss incurred by running it. Now it is impossible to exagger-
ate the importance of having a public work like a railway,
which can help or hinder every trade in the land, conducted
from a public point of view instead of a private, and the pre-
sent discussion in this country on rates and fares points to the
desirability of changes to which private companies are not
4i 6 Contemporary Socialism.
likely to resort of their own accord, nor the railway commis-
sion to be able to compel them. But, on the other hand, it is
equally impossible to exaggerate the risks of the undertaking.
The post office, with its capital of 80,000, is a plaything to the
railways with their capital of 800,000,000, and their revenue
little short of that of the State itself. The operations are of
a most varied nature, and only some of them could be exposed
to effective criticism. The mere transaction of purchase excites
in many minds a not unreasonable fear. If Government made
a bad bargain with the telegraph companies, it would be sure
to make a worse with the railway companies, who are fifty
times more powerful ; and besides, it would very likely have to
borrow its money at a higher figure, for though it could borrow
two millions at 3 per cent., it could not therefore borrow eight
hundred millions, for the simple reason that the number of people
who want 3 per cent, is limited, most holders of stock preferring
investments which, though more risky, offer a prospect of more
gain. If in trying to balance these weighty pros and equally
weighty cons one turns to the experience of State railways, he
will find that as yet it affords few very sure or decisive data,
because it varies in the different countries and times, and has
been very diiferently interpreted.
Of the Continental State railways, those of Belgium and
Germany are usually counted the most favourable examples.
But Mr. Hadley, in his excellent work on Railway Transporta-
tion, shows that the State lines of Belgium were conducted in
an extremely slovenly, perfunctory way until 1853, when pri-
vate lines began to increase and compete with them, and that
though the low rates which this competition was the means
of introducing still remain after the private lines have been
largely bought out, there has been, on the other hand, latterly
a decline in the profits of the State system, an increasing ten-
dency to slackness and inertia in the management, and growing
complaints of creating posts to reward political services, and
manipulating accounts to suit Government exigencies. In
Germany the rates are certainly low and the management
economical, but complaints are made that less is done for the
encouragement of the national resources, and unprofitable
traffic is more severely declined than by the private railways.
State Socialism. 417
On the whole, probably the best State railway system is that
of Victoria ; charging low rates, self-supporting, offering every
encouragement to industrial development ; and the opinion of
England will probably be largely determined by further
observation of that experiment.
The sister colony of New Zealand has made a successful
experiment in another department of industrial enterprise, life
insurance, for which Government management indeed is highly
adapted, because, in the first place, it is a business in which
absolute security is of the last consequence, and there is no
security like Government guarantee ; and in the second, it is a
business in which the calculations of the whole administration
are virtually matters of mechanical routine. The Government
office was only opened in 1871, under the influence of a wide-
spread distrust of private offices, caused by recent bankruptcies,
and it now transacts one-third of the life insurance business of
the colony ; it has probably tended to encourage life insurance,
for while there are only 26 policies per 1000 of population in
the United Kingdom, there are 80 per 1000 in New Zealand,
and its management is much cheaper than that of any other
insurance company in the colony, except the Australian United.
The proportion of expenses to revenue in the Australian
United is 13'66 per cent., in the Government Office 17'23, and
in none of the other companies (whose gross business, however,
is much smaller) is it under 43'02.
Adam Smith thought there were only four branches of
enterprise which were fitted to be profitably conducted by a
joint-stock company. We have seen .in our day almost every
branch of industry conducted by such companies, and an idea
is often expressed that whatever a joint-stock company can do,
Government can do at least quite as well, because the defect
of both is the same. The defect is the same, but Government
has it in larger measure. Joint-stock management is certainly
much less productive in most industries than private manage-
ment. The Report of the Massachusetts Labour Bureau for
1878 contains some curious statistics on the subject. There
were then in the Commonwealth of Massachusetts, 10.395
private manufacturing establishments, employing in all 166,583
persons, and 520 joint-stock manufacturing establishment.
E E
4i 8 Contemporary Socialism.
employing 101,337 persons, and the private establishments,
while they paid a much higher average rate of wages than the
joint-stock, produced at the same time not far from twice as
much for the capital invested. The average wages per head in
the private establishments was 474'37 dollars a year, and in the
joint-stock was 383'47 dollars a year ; while the produce per
dollar of capital was 2'58 dollars' worth in the private, and 1'37
dollars' worth in the joint-stock, and though part of this differ-
ence is attributed to the circumstance that private manufac-
turers sometimes hire their factories and companies do not, the
substance of it is believed to be due to the inferiority of the
joint-stock management. Anyhow, that circumstance could
have no influence in producing the very marked difference in
the wages given by the two classes of enterprise, and the
higher wages would not, and could not, be given unless the pro-
duction was higher. If all the industries of the country, then,
were put under joint-stock management, the result would be (1) a
general reduction in the amount produced, and (2) a consequent
reduction in the general remuneration of the working classes,
and the general level of natural comfort ; and the result would
be still worse under universal Government management. One
of the labourer's greatest interests is efficient management, and
if he suffers from the replacement of individual employers by
joint-stock companies, he would suffer much more by the re-
placement of both by the State, excepting only in those few
departments of business for which the State happens to possess
peculiar advantages and aptitude.
V. State Socialism and Popular Eight.
The limits of the legitimate intervention of the public
authority with respect to the moral development of the com-
munity are prescribed by a different rule from those with
respect to its material development. Efficiency is still, indeed,
a governing consideration, for perhaps more measures for
popular improvement fail from sheer ineffectuality than from
any other reason. The history of social reform is strewn thick
with these dead-letter measures. There is a cry and a lamenta-
tion, and a feeling that something must be done ; and an Acb
State Socialism. 419
of Parliament is passed containing injunctions which no Act
of Parliament can enforce, or which address themselves to mere
accidental circumstances, and leave the real causes of the evil
entirely unaffected. And there would be no impropriety in
describing impracticable or ill-directed legislation of this kind
as being socialistic, for, besides the old association of socialism
with impracticable schemes, impracticable legislation is always
unjust legislation, and unjust legislation for behoof of the
labouring class is essentially socialistic. Every State inter-
ference necessarily involves a certain restriction of the liberty
or other general rights of some class of persons ; and although
this restriction would be perfectly justifiable if it actually
secured the prior or more urgent right of another and perhaps
much more numerous class of persons, it is injustice, and
nothing but injustice, when it merely hurts the former class
without doing any good to the latter. It may hurt both
classes even well-meaning meddling often does ; but what I
desire to bring out here is that labour legislation, which may
have been entirely just and free from socialism in its intention,
may be unjust and full of socialism in its result. We may
therefore, without any fault, include under the head of State
socialism that common sort of proposal which, without urging
any wrong claim, merely asks the State to do the wrong thing
to do either something it cannot do at all, or something that
will not answer the purpose intended. It is socialistic not
because it is impracticable, but because it is unjust.
Since well-meant legislation may thus become urgent, and
therefore socialistic for want of result, it is plain that the
efficiency of the intervention is a very important consideration
in determining the State's duty with respect to popular rights.
But the primary consideration here is the extent of the moral
claim which the individual, by reason of his weakness, has upon
the resources of society, and it is upon that consideration that
the division of conflicting political theories on the subject turns.
All the several theories are agreed that the enlargement of
popular rights, when the enlargement is required by a just
popular claim, is entirely within the proper and natural pro-
vince of the State ; where they differ, and differ seriously, is
partly in their views of the justice of particular elements in
42O Contemporary Socialism.
the popular claim of the time being, but more especially in
their whole conception of the nature and extent of the popular
claim in general. There are still some persons to be found
contending that there are no such things as natural rights, and
there are plenty who cannot hear the words without a sensa-
tion of alarm. But it is now generally admitted, even by those
who adopt the narrowest political theories, that legal rights
are merely the ratification of moral rights already existing, and
that the creation of new legal rights for securing the just
aspirations of ill-protected classes of the people belongs to the
ordinary daily duties of ail civil government. Mr. Spencer
very readily admits that some of the latest constituted rights
in this country the new seamen's right of the Merchant
Shipping Act, and the new women's right of the Married
Women's Property Act are perfectly justifiable for the pre-
vention in the one case of seamen being fraudulently betrayed
into unseaworthy ships, and in the other of women being
robbed of their own personal earnings. But then the new
rights which he would most condemn the right to public
assistance, the right to education, the right to a habitable
dwelling, the right to a fair rent are quite as susceptible of
justification on the ground of natural justice as either the right
to a seaworthy ship or the right to one's own earnings. Mr.
Spencer's theory errs by unduly contracting men's natural
claim. They have a right to more than equal freedom ; they
have a right, to use Smith's phrase, to an undeformed and
unmutilated humanity, to that original basis of human dignity
which it is the business of organized society to defend for its
weaker members against the assaults of fortune as well as the
assaults of men. That is what I have called, for the sake of
distinction, the English theory of social politics. On the other
hand, socialism unduly extends this claim. The right to fair
wages is one thing ; the State could not realize it, but it at
least represents no unjust aspiration ; but the right to an equal
dividend of the national income, claimed by Utopian socialists,
including Mr. Bellamy at the present day, and the right to the
full produce of labour claimed by the revolutionary socialists,
and meaning, as explained by them, the right to the entire
product of labour and capital together, are really rights to
State Socialism. 421
unfair wages, and the whole objection to them is that they are
at variance with social justice. If we keep these distinctions
in view, we shall be able to discriminate between interventions
of authority which are innocent, and interventions which are
tainted with State socialism. Take an illustration or two, 1st,
of interventions for settling the claims of the poor in society in
general, and 2nd, of interventions for adjusting the differences
between one class and another, between employer and labourer,
between landlord and tenant, and the like.
1. Under the first head, the most important question is the
question of public assistance. Prince Bismarck created a con-
siderable European sensation when he first announced his new
social policy in 1884, by declaring in favour of the three claims
of labour, which have been so commonly regarded as the very
alpha and omega of social revolution the right to existence
for the infirm, the right to labour for the able-bodied, and the
right to superannuation for the aged. " Give the labourer,"
he said, " the right to labour when he is able-bodied ; give
him the right to relief when he is sick ; give him the right to
maintenance when he is old ; and if you do so if you do not
shrink from the sacrifice, and do not cry out about State
socialism whenever the State does anything for the labourer
in the way of Christian charity then I believe you will destroy
the charm of the "Wyden (i.e.. Social Democratic) programme."
These three rights are really two, the right of relief when one
is sick and of maintenance when one is old being only different
phases of the right to existence. Now the right to existence
and the right to labour are in themselves both perfectly just
claims, but the construction Prince Bismarck gave them passed
decidedly over into State socialism.
The right to existence is seldom called in question. Malthus,
it is true, said a man had a right to live only as he had a right
to live a hundred years if he could. He might as well have
argued that a man had a right to escape murder only as he
had a right to escape murder for a hundred years if Tie could.
It is really because he cannot that he has the right it is be-
cause he cannot protect himself against violence that he has
a right to protection from the State, and because, and as far as,
he cannot protect himself against starvation that he has a just
422 Contemporary Socialism.
claim upon the State for food. And his claim is obviously
bounded in the one case as in the other by the ability of society.
If society cannot protect him, it is of course absurd to talk of
any right to its protection, but if society can, society ought.
To suffer a fellow-citizen to die of hunger is felt by a civilized
community to be at least as just a disgrace to its government
as it would be to leave him a prey to the knife of the assassin,
or to the incursions of marauders from over the enemy's border.
But as the State furnishes protection against human violence
by its courts of justice, and against disease by its sanitary laws,
so it furnishes protection against famine and indigence by its
legal provision of relief. The claim of the perishing stands on
the same footing as any other claim which is an admitted right
of man to-day ; it is a claim to an essential condition of normal
manhood to existence itself. But then, if the right to exist-
ence must be admitted, it can only be admitted where the
individual is, for whatever reason, unable to make provision
for himself, and it can only be admitted in such measure and
form as will not discourage other individuals from trying to
make independent provision for themselves before their day
of disability comes, because that, in turn, is the way prescribed
by normal manhood and true human dignity.
What State socialists claim, however, is not the right to
existence, but the right to decent and comfortable existence
the right to the style of living which is customary among the
independent poor. The labourer ought, in their eyes, to be
treated as a public servant, and his sick pay and his pension
ought both to be commensurate with the claims and dignity
of honest labour. Now it is of course impossible not to sym-
pathize much with this view, but the difficulty is that if you
make assisted labour as good as independent labour, j-ou shall
soon have more assisted labour than you can manage, you
shall have weakened the push, energy, and forethought of your
labouring class, you shall have really done much to destroy
that very dignity of labour which you desire to establish.
The State may probably, with great advantage, do more for
working-class insurance than it at present does. It could con-
duct the business of the burial benefit and the superannuation
benefit better than any private company or friendly society,
State Socialism. 423
"because it could offer a surer guarantee and the business is
routine ; Mr. Gladstone's excellent annuity scheme has remained
sterile only because it has not been pushed, and the canvasser
and collector are indispensable in working-class 'insurance.
But the socialist proposal is that the State ought to give every
man a pension after a certain age, irrespectively altogether of
his own contributions. Mr. "Webb is one of its most recent
advocates, and, according to the useful figures he has taken
the trouble to obtain, there are in the United Kingdom
1,700,000 persons over sixty-five years of age, of whom
1,300,000 contrive to pension themselves, either by their own
savings or the assistance of their families, while the remaining
400,000 are supported by the rates at an average cost of ten
guineas a year. Mr. Webb's proposal is that in order to save
the feelings of the 400,000 dependants you are to make the
other 1,300,000 persons dependants along with them, and give
ten guineas a year all round. But you cannot make a public
dole a pension by merely calling it a pension. A pension is a
payment made by one's actual employer for work done it is
wages, and the man who has earned his own pension, or has
provided it by his own saving, feels himself and is an inde-
pendent man. It is right to maintain the 400,000 whether
out of national or parochial funds is a detail but sound policy
would rather aim at raising the 400,000 to be as the 1,300,000,
than at lowering the 1,300,000 to the level of the 400,000.
With Mr. Webb it is not a question of giving the 400,000
better allowances than they receive at present which might
be most reasonably entertained but it is a mere question of
not suffering them to be looked down on by the 1,300,000
who have 'fought their own way, and that is not possible,
nor, with all respect for them, is it, from a public point of
view, desirable. It is right to support those who cannot
support themselves, but it is neither right nor wise to remove
all distinctidn between the dependent poor and the inde-
pendent.
But the line between State socialism and sound social politics
in the matter of public assistance may perhaps be better shown
in another branch of Poor Law administration the right to
labour for the able-bodied. The socialist right to labour is the
424 Contemporary Socialism.
right of the unemployed to get labour in their own trades and
at good or current rates of wages. That is the right which
Bismarck substantially admitted in his famous speech. He
said there was a crowd of suitable undertakings which the
State could establish to furnish the unemployed with a fair
day's wage for a fair day's work. It is also practically the
right which prevailed in England between 1782, when Gilbert's
Act abolished the old workhouse test, and 1835, when the new
Poor Law restored it. Gilbert's Act gave the able-bodied poor
the right (1) to obtain from the guardians work near their own
residence and suited to their respective strength and capacity ;
(2) to receive for their labour all the money earned by it ; and
(3) if that sum fell short of their requirements, to have the
difference made up out of the parochial funds. The effect of
that, as we know, was, that public relief became too desirable,
the dependants on it multiplied, the poor rate rose, the wages
of labour fell, the very efficiency of the labourer himself
withered, and the new Poor Law reverted to the workhouse
test, which, harsh though it was considered to be, was in reality
a necessary defence of the character and comfort of the labour-
ing class from further decadence.
To provide the unemployed with work in their own trades
is only to increase the evil you wish to remedy, for the very
existence of the unemployed shows that those particular trades
are slack at the time, that there is no demand for the articles
they produce, and consequently any attempt by the State to
throw fresh supplies of these articles on the already over-
stocked market can have no other effect than to increase the
depression and turn out of employ the men that are still at
work. Paying relief work at the common market rate of
wages is attended with the same objection. The remedy only
aggravates the disease, and what ought to be merely the
labourer's temporary resource against adversity tends to grow
into his regular staff of life. Eelief wages, while sufficient for
the family's support, should remain below the current rates so
as to give the labourer an effective inducement to seek better
employment as soon as better employment can possibly be
obtained. The true and natural defence against misfortune
is the man's own personal exertion and provision, and the pur-
State Socialism. 425
pose of the public intervention is to stimulate and assist, not
to supplant, that vis medicatrix natures.
But under these limitations a right to labour is a just claim
of the unfortunate. It is admitted in the English Poor Law,
and it is admitted in the Scotch parochial practice, which
constructively considers want of employment a form of sickness
or accident, and it requires in both countries to be better real-
ized than it is. 1st : although it is unadvisable to give every
man work at his own trade, and although the choice of trades
for relief purposes is attended with as much difficulty as the
choice of those for prison labour is found to be, yet certainly
the circle of relief trades ought to be extended beyond stone-
breaking and oakum-picking. Socialists themselves are among
the foremost in complaining of the competition of prison labour
with honest labour, although they fail to see that precisely the
same objection attends the competition of relieved labour in
public workshops with unrelieved labour in regular private
employment. The kind of work most free from objection on
this score would probably be the production of articles now
imported from abroad, and there are a great many trades in
which, while we make most of their products at home, we
import particular articles or sorts of articles for one reason or
another. Some of these might be found suitable for the pur-
pose in view. Or the men in the public workshops might be
employed in making a variety of things used in public offices,
imperial or local. 2nd : what is even more important, a dis-
tinction ought to be made between the industrious poor and
that residuum of confirmed failures for whom the stoneyard
test is really intended, and the former ought not to be made to
feel themselves any way degraded in their work, their small
remuneration being trusted to act as a sufficient preventive
against their permanent dependence on the public for employ-
ment. 3rd : then a third and most important requisite is to
supplement the public provision of work with a public pro-
vision of information about the demand for labour over the
country from day to day, so as not merely to support the men
in adversity, but to facilitate their restoration to their normal
condition of prosperity.
For we ought to recognise that though the problem of the
426 Contemporary Socialism.
unemployed is not, as many persons imagine, one of increasing
gravity in our time although, on the contrary, if we go back
thirty years, sixty years, or a hundred years, we always find
worse complaints and more distressing sufferings from that
cause than at present, yet it is certainly a constant problem.
The unemployed we have always with us, and even their
numbers vary less from time to time than we are apt to sup-
pose. Trades dependent on fine weather are, of course, slack
in winter, but then trades dependent on fashion are slack in
summer, while there are some large trades such as the shoe-
makers that are made brisk by bad weather. Even a general
commercial crisis which throws the workpeople of many trades
idle, makes those of others busy. The building trades are
always busy in bad times, because money and labour are then
cheap, and the opportunity is seized of building or extending
factories, and laying down plant of every description. It was
so to a very remarkable extent during the Lancashire cotton
distress of 1862 ; it was so all over England in the depression
of 1877-78, and the same fact was observed again in Scotland,
and commented upon by the factory inspector in 1886. Other
trades are brisker in a crisis for less happy causes, e.g., the
bakers for the melancholy reason that the working classes are
more generally driven from meat to bread. These natural
corrections or compensations elicited by the depression itself
prevent the numbers of the unemployed from growing so very
much larger in a crisis than in ordinary times that their case
would not be overtaken satisfactorily by the general systematic
provision of relief work, if that were once established. The
excess is met now so effectually by a few special local efforts,
that we have sometimes far fewer able-bodied paupers in bad
years than in good. The number of able-bodied paupers was
very much less in the bad years 1876-1878 than in the good
years immediately after them, or in the still better years im-
mediately before them. The problem being, then, so largely
constant from season to season, and from cycle to cycle, ought
clearly to be solved by a permanent and systematic provision.
The same principle which governs this right to labour
the principle of preventing degradation and facilitating self-
recovery governs other social legislation for the unfortunate
State Socialism. 427
besides the Poor Law. It lies at the bottom of the homestead
exemptions of America, and our own prohibition of arrestment
of tools and wages for debt, and our occasional measures for
cancelling arrears. It is the principle laid down by Pitt when
he said that no temporary occasion should be suffered to force
a British subject to part with his last shilling. He had a right
to his last shilling, because he had a right to an undegraded
humanity. The last shilling stopped his fall, and perhaps
helped him to rise again.
Many persons will admit the right to public assistance,
because it seems limited to saving men from extremities, who
will see nothing but socialism of a perilous sort in other public
provisions, for which popular claims are advanced. Schools,
museums, libraries, parks, open spaces, footpaths, baths, are
certainly means of intellectual and physical life, which keep
the manhood of a community in normal vigour ; but, it will be
asked, if the State once begins to supply such things, where
is it to stop? Is free education to go beyond the primary
branches? What length are you to go? is the question Mr.
Spencer always raises as a bar to your going at all. But the
same question of degree can be raised about everything, about
the duties Mr. Spencer himself imposes upon the State as
really as about those he refuses to sanction. In the matter of
protection, for instance, how many policemen are we required
to detail to a district ? Or how great an army and navy are
we to maintain ? During the excitement about the Jack the
Ripper murders there was much clamour about the police
being too few, and we are subject to periodical panics as to our
imperial defences, in the course of which no two persons agree
in answering the question, what length are we to go? The
question can only be settled of course fay measuring the length
of our necessities with the length of our purse, and the same
class of considerations rules in the other case, the importance
and cost of the given provision to a community of such educa-
tion and culture, together with the impossibility of getting
it adequately supplied without public agency. The opinion
of the time may vary as to what is essential for a whole and
wholesome manhood, and its resources may vary as to what
may be easily borne to supply it ; but the same variation takes
428 Contemporary Socialism.
place with respect to the duties of national defence, or the
administration of justice. The objection is therefore nothing
more or less than the very ancient and famous logical fallacy
with which the Greek sophists used to nonplus their anta-
gonists. As in other affairs, the problem so far will settle itself
practically as it goes along, and the important distinction to
bear in mind is that to give every man the essential conditions
of all humane living is a very different kind of aim from giving
every man the same share in the national production, or a lien
on his neighbour's luck or industry or alertness.
2. From rights realizing general claims of the unfortunate on
society at large, let us now pass to rights realizing special claims
of certain weaker classes of society against certain stronger
classes. The most typical examples of this sort of legislation
are the intervention of the State between buyer and seller,
between landlord and tenant, between employer and labourer,
for the judicial determination of a fair price, a fair rent, or fair
wages, or for the regulation of the conditions of labour, and
tenure of land. Professor Sidgwick declares the Irish and
Scotch Land Acts, which provide for the judicial determination
of a fair rent, to be the most distinctively socialistic measures
the English Legislature has yet passed ; but in reality these
Land Acts are not a bit more socialistic than the laws which
fix a fair price for railway rates and fares, and much less
socialistic than the old usury Acts which sought to determine
fair interest. Such interferences with freedom of contract as
these are, of course, only justifiable when the absence of
effective competition places the real power of settlement of
terms practically in the hands of one side alone, and conduces,
therefore, inevitably to the serious injury and oppression of
the other. Parliament controls railway charges because the
railway companies enjoy a monopoly of most important busi-
ness, and might use their monopoly to wrong the public, and
when Parliament is asked, as it sometimes is, to discourage
corners, rings, syndicates, or pooling combinations, it is on the
ground that these various agencies are attempts, more or less
successful, to exclude competition for the purpose of exacting
from the public more than a fair price. On the other hand,
the reason why we have given up fixing fair interest now is
State Socialism. 429
because we have come to see that competition, being very
effective among money-lenders, fixes it far better for us without
the intervention of the law, and, of course, an unnecessary
interference with freedom of contract is nothing but pernicious.
But, although for ordinary commercial loans the competition
of lenders is a sufficient security for the fair treatment of
borrowers, it affords no protection against extortion to the very
necessitous man, who must accept any terms or starve. His
poverty leaves him no proper freedom to make a contract, and
the law still condemns oppressive rates of usury, to which, as
the Apothecary says in "Romeo and Juliet," the poor man's
poverty, but not his will, consents. In such a case, accordingly,
an authoritative prescription of fair interest is only a necessary
requirement of justice and humanity.
The public determination of fair rent stands on precisely the
same ground. The rent of large farms, like the interest on
ordinary commercial loans, may be safely left to be settled by
commercial competition, because large farms are taken by men
of capital as a business speculation, and landlords cannot exact
more rent than the farms will bear without driving capital out
of agriculture into other branches of production, and so reducing
the demand for that class of farms to an extent that will bring
the rent down to its proper level again. But the rent of small
holdings, like the interest on loans to persons in extremity, is
ruled by other considerations. Cottier tenants, between their
numbers and their necessities, are continually driven into
offering rents the land can never be made to pay, and thereby
incurring for the rest of their days the burden of a lengthening
chain of arrears little better than Oriental debt-slavery. Other
work is hard to find ; the land being limited in supply is a
natural monopoly ; and the State merely steps in to save the
tenantry from the injurious effects of their own over-competi-
tion for an essential instrument of their labour, and, through
their labour, of their very existence. The interference, there-
fore, is perfectly justifiable if the machinery it institutes can
carry out the purpose efficiently, and there is this difference
between a court for fixing rent and a court for fixing the price
of bread, or beer, or labour, that it is only doing work which
in the natural course of things is very usually done by peri-
430 Contemporary Socialism.
odical and independent valuation, instead of by the ordinary
higgling of the market. It has always been the custom on
many large estates to call in a valuator from the outside for
the revision of the rents, and a valuator appointed by the
Crown cannot be expected to do the work any less effectively
than a valuator appointed by the landlord. Moreover, the
tendency of opinion seems to be towards the simplication of
the process by some self-working scheme, a sliding scale for
apportioning an annual rent to the annual production.
State intervention in the determination of the rate of wages
is often proposed either for the purpose of settling trade dis-
putes on the subject, or for the purpose of suppressing what is
called starvation wages and fixing a legal minimum rate. As
for arbitration in trade disputes, the object is, of course, in no
way socialistic, for it is strictly allied with the ordinary judicial
work of the State, and a public and permanent tribunal would
probably answer the purpose much better than a private and
merely occasional one ; for even although it might not be able
to enforce its judgments in all cases by compulsion on the
parties, it would be more likely than the other to command
their confidence and secure by its moral authority their
voluntary submission, and this authority would increase with
the experience of the court.
In certain cases compulsory arbitration seems to be required.
There are trades in which the public interest may require
strikes to be prohibited, in order to prevent a whole com-
munity suffering grave privations, perhaps being starved of its
supply of a necessary of life. The Trades Union Act imposes
express restrictions on combinations among the labourers at gas
and water works, and the recent railway strike in Scotland,
which not only paralyzed trade for a time, but stopped the
supply of coal to whole districts in the middle of the severest
winter of the last part of the century, suggested to many
minds the propriety of similar interference in railway disputes.
But if the State interfered to stop the strike, the State must
needs in equity interfere to decide upon the cause of quarrel.
And happily these are the very cases which are best fitted for
compulsory arbitration, because the trades concerned are not
subject to the market fluctuations to which other trades are
State Socialism. 431
liable, and are therefore better suited for fixed settlements of
definite and considerable duration.
But what socialists claim is a universal determination of
normal wages, so as to give every man the full product of his
labour, as the full product of his labour is understood upon
their theory. For the present, however, they are content to
ask for at least the establishment of a legal minimum rate of
wages ; in fact, an international minimum rate of wages and
an international eight hours working day are the two demands
on which their agitation is in the meantime most strenuously
concentrated. In their recent policy they have reverted to the
kind of remedies they used to speak of with such lofty disdain
as mere palliatives, and have only preserved their separate
identity from other reformers by asking for these palliatives
in their least practicable form. An international compulsory
minimum wage is impossible, for even a national one is so,
and that is the only objection, but a very x sufficient one, to
the proposal. If you could wipe out starvation wages by pass-
ing an Act of Parliament, let the Act be passed to-morrow, for
starvation wages is surely the worst and most exasperating of
all the enemies of humane living. To starve for want of power
to work is bad ; to starve for want of work is worse ; but to
work and yet starve, to work a long, long day without obtain-
ing the bread that should be its natural reward, is a -third and
worst degree of misfortune, for it mocks the fitness and equity
of things, and seizes the mind like a wrong. If it is right to
suppress starvation by law, it would seem more right still to
suppress starvation wages ; and if the socialist contention were
in the least true, that in consequence of the " iron and cruel
law " all wages are starvation wages, and all work sweaters'
work, that work and starve is the inevitable rule under the
present system of things, there would be no good answer to
their demand for the abolition of the present system of things.
But as a matter of fact working and starving is the condition
of only exceptional groups of workpeople, and the right to a
minimum wage, in the sense of a wage above starvation point,
would have no bearing on the great majority of the labouring
classes, inasmuch as they stand already on a considerably
higher level of remuneration.
432 Contemporary Socialism.
Ought the State, however, to fix a legal minimum of wages
for the protection of the exceptional groups of workpeople to
whose situation such a measure might have relation? The
objection to this course comes less from want of justice in the
claim than from want of power in the State to realize it.
The fixing of a legal minimum rate of wages is a task which
it is beyond the State's power to accomplish, except by paying
up the minimum out of its own funds ; for, though the law
fixed a minimum to-morrow, it could not compel employers to
engage workmen at that minimum ; and if employers found it
unprofitable to do so, the only effect of the legislation would
be to throw numbers of men out of work, and make their
maintenance at the legal minimum an obligation of the public
treasury. Of the results of paying wages out of the rates we
have had plenty of experience. To suppress starvation wages
in this way by direct statute is merely impossible, however,
and there would be no taint of socialism in it, if it could be
done. Much less can the like objection be made against any
milder remedies. The only danger is that they would not
prove effectual, and would address themselves to false causes.
Take the sweating system of the East End of London, in
which, bad conditions of labour always going together, we find
starvation wages combined with long hours and unwholesome
work-rooms. Two of the favourite remedies are the abolition
of sub-contracting and the prohibition of pauper Jewish im-
migration ; but neither of these things is the cause of sweating.
The sweating contractor of the East End is not a sub-con-
tractor at all ; he is the only contractor in the business, and
even if he were a sub-contractor, we know that sub-contractors
often pay far better wages than the chief contractor can, be-
cause they know their men better, and get better work out of
them.
A temporary increase in the Jewish immigration may
occasion a temporary aggravation of the difficulty, but the
permanent causes lie elsewhere, and even in the way of
aggravation a matter of a thousand Jews more, or a thousand
Jews less, cannot play an all-important part in a system affect-
ing some hundred thousand workpeople. Sweating is no more
incident to Jewish labour than to English labour. The cheap
State Socialism. 433
clothing trade of Birmingham is certainly in the hands of Jews,
yet sweating is or at least was when the factory inspector
reported in 1879 absolutely unknown. The wages, he said,
were good, the hours were not long, and there were no over-
crowded dens. On the other hand, sweating has not only been
for years endemic in the East End of London, but has even
appeared in a very acute form, apart from any alien influence,
in the tailoring trade in Melbourne, the paradise of working
people, as it is sometimes not unjustly denominated. The
sweating there was conducted largely by ladies who took in
bands of learners, and, according to the evidence before the
Shopkeepers' Commission of 1883, every second house in some
of the suburbs was a shop of that kind. There was an excessive
influx of labour into that trade, because little other work could
be found for women who entertained, as they do generally in
that colony, a prejudice against both factory labour and
domestic service. On the other hand, this overflow was
diverted in Birmingham into other channels by the com-
parative abundance of light employments the district afforded.
But apart from temporary or local circumstances that serve to
aggravate things or alleviate them, the tailor trade is every-
where naturally subject beyond all others to over-competition :
(1) because the work can be done at home ; (2) because it can
be learnt in a few weeks or months well enough to earn starva-
tion wages in a long day at some sorts of work ; (3) because it
needs as little capital for the contractor to start business as it
needs training for the operatives ; and (4) because the operatives
being scattered about in their own homes, or in small work-
shops here and there, have a natural difficulty in coming to
any concerted action that might otherwise mitigate the effects
of the over-competition, and if there is any general remedy for
sweating, it must deal with these causes. To replace home-
work by common work in wholesome workshops, as far as that
can be done, might interfere with what some poor persons
found a convenient resource, but would do no harm to the
working class generally. The work it was less convenient for
some to do would be done by others. The change would
remove at once one of the evils of sweating the unhealthy
work-places and it would contribute to remove the others,
F F
434 Contemporary Socialism.
first by facilitating combination, and second by improving the
personal efficiency of the labourer and the amount of his
production. Dr. Watts, of Manchester, speaking from long
experience, tells us in his " Facts of the Cotton Famine "
(p. 44) that " men often care more about being employed in a
good mill (i.e., a mill with plenty of room, air, and light) than
about the exact price per pound for spinning, or per piece for
weaving, for they know practically what is the effect of these
conditions upon the weekly wages." Various measures have
been suggested which have some such end in view the com-
pulsory registration of the contractor's workrooms and his
outworkers, the requiring him to provide workshops for all his
hands, the joint liability of the clothier with him for the
wholesomeness of the workplaces, the erection of public work-
shops where workpeople may be accommodated for hire ; they
may be open to various objections and there is no space to
indicate or discuss them here but if they are effectual for the
purpose contemplated, that purpose saves them at least from
the reproach of socialism.
The international compulsory eight hours day is attended
with like difficulty. The eight hours day is no necessary plank
of socialism, though socialists have at present united to de-
mand it. Rodbertus, the most learned and scientific of modern
socialists, always contended that the normal working-day ought
not to be of uniform length, but should vary inversely with
the relative strain of the several trades, and Mr. Bellamy,
under his system of absolute equality of income, makes differ-
ences in the hours of labour answer the purpose of regulating
the choice of occupation, and preventing too many persons
running into the easier trades, and too few into the harder.
Nor, indeed, apart from the element of universal compulsion,
has the eight hours day anything of socialism in it at all. In
some trades it is probably a simple necessity for protecting the
workpeople in normal conditions of health ; but above all its
sanitary benefits it would confer upon the workpeople of every
trade alike the much grander blessing of admitting them to a
reasonable share of the intellectual, social, domestic, religious,
and political life of their time. If the State could bestow upon
them this sovereign blessing without forcing them to accept
State Socialism. 435
a reduction of wages, which might deprive them of things even
more essential for their elevation, and which would only breed
among them an intolerable discontent, by all means let the
State declare the glad decree. But experience shows that in
matters of this kind the State and especially the democratic
State is a very limited agent, and cannot successfully enforce
its decrees upon unwilling trades. In certain special cases,
when the short day is demanded for the purpose of averting
admitted dangers to health, as with the miners, or for the
safety of the public, as with the railway service, there is a
recognised stringency of obligation which is exceptional ; but
in the great run of trades the question is virtually one of mere
preference between an hour's leisure and an hour's pay, and
in these circumstances a law has too little moral authority
behind it to be practically enforceable by penalties in the
absence of decided working-class opinion in its favour in the
affected trades. In Victoria more than fifty separate trades
have obtained the eight hours day without any parliamentary
assistance, and almost the only remaining trades which do not
yet enjoy it are the very trades which have been protected by
an eight hours Factory Act since 1874. As soon as the Act
was passed, the operatives, men and women both, petitioned
the Chief Secretary for its suspension, and it has remained in
suspended animation to this day. A democratic government
cannot risk incurring the discontent of a body of the people
merely to prevent them from working an hour more when
they want to earn a little more. California has had an Eight
Hours Act on the statute-book for even a longer period, but it
has remained a mere dead letter, because employers began to
pay wages by the hour or the piece, and the men found they
did not earn so much in the short day as they used to earn in
the long. The same thing has happened in others of the
American States, and the friends of the eight hours movement
in that country are beginning to think that the reason their
long and often hot struggle has hitherto been so fruitless is
because they have been wasting their strength in political
agitation when they ought to have been cultivating and
organizing opinion among the working class themselves trade
by trade. The weakness of statutory eight hours movements
436 Contemporary Socialism.
has generally flowed from two sources. One is that what
their promoters really wanted was not shorter hours, but more
wages. Numbers of them sought only to shorten regular time
in order to lengthen overtime, and numbers more got them-
selves persuaded that a general reduction of hours was the
grand means of effecting a general rise of wages, either by
removing the competition of the unemployed, or in some other
way ; and it has often been only the few always the very elite
of labour who fought for the eight hours day because they
valued the leisure enough to make, if necessary, some little
sacrifice for so noble a boon. When, therefore, wages, instead
of rising, begin to get reduced, general disappointment is in-
evitable, and they get reduced and reduced lower than they
otherwise might be through the second weakness of such
movements, which is simply this, that a trades union which is
not strong enough to get an eight hours day by their own un-
aided efforts, without the assistance of the law, is not strong
enough to prevent their wages from sinking, and in this matter
the law can do nothing to help them. The eight hours day
can only be an abiding possession if it come through the
successive growth of opinion and organization in one trade
after another. The history of the movement in Victoria is the
history of such successive triumphs of opinion and organiza-
tion ; as soon as a trade has come to want the eight hours day
earnestly enough to be willing to sacrifice something for it, the
trade has always got it. In the result they have had to sacri-
fice very little ; scarce one of them suffered a fall of wages by
the change, for the simple reason that there was no serious fall
in their daily production. The difference between the ten
hours day and the eight hours day in Victoria was not two
hours, but only three-quarters of an hour, for at least in the
important trades the old day was ten hours, with an hour
and a quarter off for meals ; and in eight hours with only one
break the men probably did near as much as they did before
in the eight hours and three-quarters with a double break.
Still, most of the trades took twenty or five-and-twenty years
before they ventured to join the movement ; and though no
country in the world is so much under the control of working-
class opinion as Victoria, the proposal of a general legal eight
State Socialism. 437
hours day which has repeatedly come before the Legislature
has never been carried into law.
In one sense the eight hours day is the least socialistic of all
reforms proposed in the interest of the working class, for it is
impossible to make the other classes of society pay for the boon.
It may not, perhaps, be quite certain that there will be any-
thing to pay for it at all, for many people assure us produc-
tion will suffer nothing by the change, and some promise us
it will be even increased. But one thing at least is certain :
if there is anything to pay, it is the working classes themselves
who in the end will and must pay it. The reduction can
make no great difference to employers, except on running con-
tracts, or where for any reason they refuse to keep their plant
in use by an extra shift, for in the matter of wages they will
do under an eight hours system exactly what they do now
pay the men for the amount of work they get out of them and
no more ; and as they thus produce their goods at the old cost,
they can export them at the old price. It need not, therefore,
have any permanent effect worth speaking of on the general
trade of the country. But if the men do less, their wages
will be less too,* and nothing can long keep them what they
were. This wages question is the eight hours question ; and
while it is a question for the men more than for the masters,
it is essential they should keep clear of all misconception in
deciding it.
There is no way of getting ten hours' pay for eight hours'
work except by doing the work of ten hours in the eight. An
Eight Hours Act would give working men no new power to
raise the rate of wages ; and if they cannot by combination
get twelve hours' pay for ten hours' work to-day, they cannot
by combination get ten hours' pay for eight hours' work to-
morrow. It is, indeed, a very current delusion, that a restric-
tion of production must increase wages by necessitating the
employment of the unemployed, whose competition tends at
present to prevent wages from rising. But that effect could
only occur if the same demand for commodities remained, and
* For proof of the position that the rate of wages is determined by the
amount of production, see pp. 307-11.
438 Contemporary Socialism.
although that might be the case if the restriction were confined
to a single branch of industry, while all the rest continued to
produce as much as before, it would not be so if the restriction
were carried out simultaneously all round. The various trades
are one another's customers ; the commodities one supplies con-
stitute the demand for the labour of the others ; and if the supply
is reduced all round, the demand will be reduced all round. To
say there is at any moment a fixed amount of work that has to
be done whatever the produce of the labour, is, as Professor
Marshall very happily observes, to set up a "Work Fund Dogma
exactly analogous to the old "Wages Fund Doctrine of the
schools, and, he might have added, a dogma even more
dangerous to the prosperity of the working-man. Yet the idea
is abroad ; it appears in the trade-union policy of " making
work " that is, making work for to-morrow by not doing it
to-day; it is a kind of mercantilist delusion of the present
century, by which each trade is to cut some advantage for
itself out of the sides of the others until they all come to prac-
tise the trick in turn and fall to mysterious ruin together.
If the eight hours day is to raise wages, it will not be by
limiting production, but by improving it. That the produc-
tivity of labour is capable of improving nay, that it is certain
to improve to such an extent as to earn by-and-by more wages
in an eight hours day than it now does in a ten is scarce
matter of doubt. Apart from the influence of machinery and
invention, there is a great reserve of personal efficiency, espe-
cially in English labour, still capable of development. Mr.
Nasmyth, the inventor of the steam-hammer, said that he
noticed when watching his men at work, that most of them
spent at least two-thirds of their time, not in working, but in
criticising their work with the square and the straight-edge,
which the few dexterous workmen among them almost never
required to use. An increase of dexterity might, therefore,
make up for a reduction of the day in these trades even to four
hours. But the present question is about the probable effect
of the reduction itself upon the efficiency of labour, and ex-
perience certainly does not justify those who declare that it
would increase the daily product. The effect of a reduction
from ten hours or nine to eight is, of course, an entirely different
State Socialism. 439
question from the effect of a reduction from twelve or thirteen
to ten, because the last two hours' labour in a very long and
exhausting day may bear little comparison with the last two
hours of a shorter day ; and of the exact effect of the particular
reduction from ten to eight we possess but scanty evidence,
though much might easily be obtained, one would think, from
establishments that run, as many do, ten hours in summer and
eight hours in winter, or ten hours in busy times and eight
hours in slack. We have some American evidence of this sort,
but it is very contradictory, a few employers saying that quite
as much work was done in the eight hours as in the ten, and
others that as much would have been done had the men made
a better use of their leisure, while several more complained
that the men really did less, and that their energies were posi-
tively slackened under the short hours this also perhaps being
a result of the use they made of their leisure. In Victoria the
production seems to have been reduced a little, but really so
little as to have no very perceptible results, and the leisure is
used so well that the working class have made a distinct rise
in the scale of being, and have developed a remarkable love of
outdoor sports, and spare energy enough to produce some of
the most famous cricketers and scullers in the world. There
are some trades in which it is possible for production to
diminish and yet wages to remain the same, because the
difference can be thrown into the price of the product. These
are trades supplying a commodity in general and necessary
demand of which the consumers will stand a very considerable
rise in the price before they will seriously shorten their pur-
chases. Coal is a good example of such a commodity, and the
miners are therefore very happily situated for the adoption of
an eight hours day. They are more able than most other
trades to prevent such a measure from resulting in any fall of
wages, and consequently a legal enactment on the subject is
less likely with them to create subsequent disappointment, and
remain dead letter. They need State help in the matter less
than most trades, for they are strong and well organized ; but
an Eight Hours Act would be more easily enforced among them.
Very few trades, however, are in this exceptional position. On
the whole, the risk of material loss incurred by the reduction
44O Contemporary Socialism.
is slight compared with, the certainty and greatness of the
moral gain ; the material loss will, in any case, be soon made
up by industrial improvements, if things progress as they are
doing ; and if the reduction is more likely to come through the
union and organization of the trades themselves rather than
by either national or international action, the trades at least
need have no serious fear to make the venture.
The idea of settling questions of this kind by international
action, which was started at first from the side of the employers
as a convenient obstructive, but has since been taken up with
great zeal by the young German Emperor and the socialists, is
obviously delusive. It ignores the possibilities of the case, for
who, in the first place, is to adjust the complicated details of
this international handicap, and rf they were adjusted, who is
to enforce them ? No country is likely to be very strict in en-
forcing those parts of the settlement by which it lost some
point of advantage, and those are the only parts for which
any such settlement was wanted at all. Besides, international
labour treaties are quite unnecessary. Experience all over the
world shows that a short-hour State suffers nothing in the
competition with a long-hour State. "When Massachusetts be-
came a ten-hour State, her manufacturers never found them-
selves at any disadvantage in competing with those of the
neighbouring eleven-hour States of New England, and they
would have still less to fear from rivals who employed, not the
same Anglo-Saxon labour as they did themselves, but the less
efficient labour of Germany or France. The ten-hour day
was its own reward. It improved the efficiency of the work-
people to the degree where, in concert with improvements in
the management, also due to the shortening of the day, the
product of ten hours in Massachusetts was equal to the product
of eleven elsewhere. If the same result were to follow the
adoption of an eight hours day, which, however, has still to be
tested by experiment, there is of course no more reason why
one country should wait for another in adopting the eight
hours day than in adopting the policy of free trade.
CHAPTER XII.
THE AGRAKTAN SOCIALISM OF HENRY GEORGE.
MR. GEORGE sent his " Progress and Poverty " into the world
with the remarkable prediction that it would find not only
readers but apostles. " Whatever be its fate," he says, " it
will be read by some who in their heart of hearts have taken
the cross of a new crusade. . . . The truth I have tried to
make clear will not find easy acceptance. If that could be, it
would have been accepted long ago. If that could be, it would
never have been obscured. But it will find friends those
who will toil for it, suffer for it : if need be, die for it. This is
the power of the truth" (p. 393). Mr. George's prediction is
not more remarkable than its fulfilment. His work has had an
unusually extensive sale ; a hundred editions in America, and
an edition of 60,000 copies in this country are sufficient evi-
dences of that; but the most striking feature in its reception
is precisely that which its author foretold ; it created an army
of apostles, and was enthusiastically circulated, like the testa-
ment of a new dispensation. Societies were formed, journals
were devised to propagate its saving doctrines, and little
companies of the faithful held stated meetings for its reading
and exposition. It was carried as a message of consolation to
the homes of labour. The author was hailed as a new and
better Adam Smith, as at once a reformer of science and a
renovator of society. Smith unfolded " The Nature and Causes
of the "Wealth of Nations," but to Mr. George, we were told,
was reserved the greater part of unravelling " the nature and
causes of the poverty of nations," and if the obsolete science of
wealth had served to make England rich, the young science
of poverty was at length to make her people happy with the
money. Justice and Liberty were to begin their reign, and our
eyes were to see to quote Mr. George's own words " the City
441
442 Contemporary Socialism.
of God on earth, with its walls of jasper arid its gates of pearl "
(p. 392).
The fervour of this first reception may as was perhaps only
natural have suffered some abatement since, but it affords a
striking proof how largely modern society is disquieted by the
results of our vaunted industrial civilization. Even those
amongst us who are most unwilling to disparage the improve-
ment that has really taken place during the last hundred years
in the circumstances of the people, still cannot help feeling
that the improvement has fallen far short of what might have
been reasonably expected from the contemporaneous growth
of resources and productive power. But numbers of people
will not allow that any improvement has occurred at all, and
deliver themselves to an unhappy and unwarranted pessimism
on the whole subject. Because industrial progress has not
extinguished poverty, they conclude that it has not even
lessened it ; that it has no power to lessen it ; nay, that its real
tendency is to aggravate it, that it increases wealth with the
one hand, but increases want with the other, so that civiliza-
tion has developed into a purely upper-class feast, where the
rich are grossly overfilled with good things, and the poor are
sent always emptier and emptier away. Invention, they tell
us, has followed invention ; machinery has multiplied the
labourer's productivity at least tenfold ; new colonies have
been founded, new markets and channels of commerce opened
in every quarter of the globe ; gold-fields have been discovered,
free trade has been introduced, railways and ocean steamers
have shortened time and space themselves in our service.
Each and all of these things have excited hopes of introducing
an era of popular improvement, and each and all of them have
left these hopes unfulfilled. They think, therefore, they now
do well to despair, and they fortify themselves in their gloom
by citing the opinion of Mr. Mill, that " it is questionable
whether all the mechanical inventions yet made have lightened
the day's toil of any human being," without observing that
Mr. Mill immediately follows up that opinion by expressing
the confident assurance that it was " in the nature and the
futurity " of these inventions to effect that improvement.
These gloomy views have in France received the name of
The Agrarian Socialism of Henry George. 443
Sisyphism, because they represent the working class under the
present industrial system as being struck with a curse like that
of Sisyphus, always encouraged by fresh technical advantages
to renewed expectations, and always doomed to see their
expectations perish for ever.
Now, it was upon these despondent and burdened souls that
Mr. George counted so confidently, and, as time has shown,
so correctly, for his apostles and martyrs ; and he counted so
confidently upon them because he had himself borne their
sorrows, and drunk of their despair, and because he now
believed most entirely that his discoveries would bring " in-
expressible cheer " to their minds, as, in the same circum-
stances, they had already brought inexpressible cheer to his
own. " When I first realized," he says, "the squalid misery
of a great city " that is, of the latest and most characteristic
product of industrial development " it appalled and tormented
me, and would not let me rest for thinking of what caused it
and how it could be cured " (p. 395). Poverty seemed to him
to be most abounding and most intense in precisely the most
advanced countries in the world. " Where the conditions to
which material progress everywhere tends are most fully
realized that is to say, where population is densest, wealth
greatest, and the machinery of production and exchange most
highly developed we find the deepest poverty, the sharpest
struggle for existence, and the most enforced idleness " (p. 4).
Nay, poverty, he thought, seemed "to take a darker aspect"
in every community at the very moment when it might be
reasonably expected to brighten at the moment when the
community made a distinct advance in material civilization,
when " closer settlements and a more intimate connection with
the rest of the world and greater utilization of labour-saving
machinery make possible greater economies in production and
exchange, and wealth increases in consequence, not merely in
the aggregate, but in proportion to population " (p. 4). This
process of impoverishment might, he says, escape observation
in an old country, because such a country has generally con-
tained from time immemorial a completely impoverished class,
who could not be further impoverished without going out of
existence altogether, but in a new settlement like California,
444 Contemporary Socialism.
where he resided, poverty might be seen almost in the act of
being produced by progress before one's very eyes. While the
colony had nothing better than log cabins or cloth shanties,
" there was no destitution," though there might be no luxury.
But " the tramp comes with the locomotive, and aim-houses
and prisons are as surely the marks of ' material progress '
as are costly dwellings, rich warehouses, and magnificent
churches " (p. 4). " In the United States it is clear that
squalor and misery, and the vices and crimes that spring from
them everywhere, increase as the village grows to the city, and
the march of development brings the advantages of improved
methods of production and exchange. It is in the older and
richer sections of the Union that pauperism and distress are
becoming most painfully apparent. If there is less deep
poverty in San Francisco than in New York, it is not because
San Francisco is yet behind New York in all that both cities
are striving for? When San Francisco reaches the point
where New York now is, who can doubt that there will also
be ragged and barefooted children in her streets ? " (p. 6). The
prospect alarmed and agitated him profoundly. It deprived
him, as it has deprived so many of the continental socialists, of
all religious belief, for if the real order of things make an ever-
deepening poverty to be the only destiny of the mass of man-
kind, it seemed vain to dream of a controlling Providence or an
immortal life. " It is difficult," says he, " to reconcile the idea
of human immortality with the idea that nature wastes men
by constantly bringing them into being where there is no room
for them. It is impossible to reconcile the idea of an intelligent
and beneficent Creator with the belief that the wretchedness
and degradation, which are the lot of such a large proportion
of human kind, result from His enactments ; while the idea
that man mentally and physically is the result of slow modifi-
cations perpetuated by heredity, irresistibly suggests the idea
that it is the race life, not the individual life, which is the
object of human existence. Thus has vanished with many of
us, and is still vanishing with more of us, that belief which in
the battles and ills of life affords the strongest support and
deepest consolation " (p. 396).
The inquiry Mr. George undertook was consequently one of
The Agrarian Socialism of Henry George. 445
the most vital personal concern to himself, and we are glad to
think that it has been the means of restoring to him the faith
and hope he prizes so much. " Out of this inquny," he tells
us, " has come to me something I did not think to find, and a
faith that was dead revives " (p. 395).
It may be ungracious to disturb a peace won so sorely and
offered so sincerely to others, but the truth is, Mr. George has
simply lost his faith by one illusion and recovered it again by
another. He first tormented his brain with imaginary facts,
and has then restored it with erroneous theories. His argu-
ment is really little better than a prolonged and, we will own,
athletic beating of the air ; but since both the imaginary facts
and the erroneous theories of which it is composed have
obtained considerable vogue, it is well to subject it to a critical
examination. I shall therefore take up successively, first, his
problem ; second, his scientific explanation ; and third, his
practical remedy.
I. Mr. George's Problem.
He states his problem thus : " I propose to seek the law
which associates poverty with progress and increases want with
advancing wealth " (p. 8). The first rule of scientific investi-
gation is to prove one's fact before proceeding to explain it.
" There are more false facts than false theories in the world,"
and a short examination whether a phenomenon actually exists
may often relieve us from a long search after its law. Mr.
George, however, does not observe this rule. He seeks for
the law of a phenomenon without first verifying the pheno-
menon itself nay, apparently without so much as suspecting
that it ought to be verified. He assumes a particular view of
the social situation to be correct, because he assumes it. But
his assumption is a purely subjective and, as will presently be
shown, delusive impression. "We imagine our train to be going
back when a parallel train is going faster forward, and we are
apt to take the general condition of mankind to be retro-
grading when we fix our eyes exclusively on the rapid and
remarkable enrichment of the fortunate few. "What Mr.
George calls "the great enigma of our time" is just the
enigma of the apparently receding train, and he proceeds to
446 Contemporary Socialism.
solve it by coiling himself in a corner and working out an
elaborate explanation from his own inner consciousness " by
the methods of political economy," instead of taking the simple
and obvious precaution of looking oiit of the opposite carriage-
window and testing, by hard facts, whether his impression
was correct. Had he taken this precaution, had he resorted
to an examination of the actual state of the facts, he would
have found good reason to change his impression ; he would
have found that on the whole poverty is not increasing, that
in proportion to population it is considerably less in the more
advanced industrial countries than in the less advanced ones,
and that he had simply mistaken unequal rates of progress
for simultaneous movements of progress and decline. His
impression, it must be admitted, is a prejudice of considerable
currency ; there are many who tell us, as he does, that want
is growing part passu with wealth, and even gaining on it ;
that if the rich are getting richer, the poor are at the same
time getting poorer ; but it is a question of fact, and yet no
one has ever seriously tried to prove the assertion by an
appeal to fact. That Mr. George should have neglected to
submit it to such a test is the more remarkable, because he
was, as he has told us, " tormented " in mind by it, and
because he acknowledges that it is a "paradox" i.e.,
against the reason of the case, and that it is also, to some
extent at least, against appearances. He owns, for example,
that " the average of comfort, leisure, and refinement has been
raised," and that though the lowest class may not share in
these gains, yet even they have in some ways improved. " I
do not mean," he says, " that the condition of the lowest class
has nowhere nor in anything been improved, but that there
is nowhere any improvement which can be credited to in-
creased productive power. I mean that the tendency of what
we call material progress is in no wise to improve the condition
of the lowest class in the essentials of healthy, happy human
life. Nay, more, that it is to still further depress the condition
of the lowest class. The new forces, elevating in their nature
though they be, do not act upon the social fabric from under-
neath, as was for a long time hoped and believed, but strike it
at a point intermediate between top and bottom. It is as
The Agrarian Socialism of Henry George. 447
though an immense wedge were being forced, not underneath
society, but through society. Those who are above the point
of separation are elevated, but those who are below are
crushed down" (p. 5). From this passage it would appear
that, according to Mr. George, the condition of all except the
lowest class has improved in consequence of material progress,
and that the condition of the lowest class has improved in
spite of it. He does not undertake, it seems, to affirm of any
class that it has, as a matter of actual fact, become impover-
ished in the course of social development, but only that there
is a tendency in the increase of productive power in " the
new productive forces " in " material progress " to impover-
ish the lower strata of society. But then he contends that
these forces are practising exactly the same tendency on some
of the highest strata, on classes that we know have been
growing richer and richer every day. For he tells us that
these new forces, entering our social system like a wedge,
depress all who happen to be on the wrong side ; and we shall
presently discover that this unhappy company on the wrong
side of the wedge embraces many groups of persons who will
be excessively astonished to learn that they are there. It
includes, not only the poor labourers who live on wages, but
the great capitalists who live on profits ; the great cotton
spinners, ironmasters, brewers, bankers, contractors ; the very
men, in short, of all the world, whom the new productive
forces have most conspicuously and enormously enriched. I
shall revert to this preposterous conclusion later on, but at
present it is enough to say that a tide, which so many have
swum against and swum to fortune, cannot be very formid-
able, and at all events can furnish no clue whatever to the
possible condition of those who are exposed to it. For that
we have only one resort. It is a plain question of fact is
poverty really increasing ? Are the poor really getting poorer ?
And this can only be competently decided by the ordinary
inductive evidence of facts. The data of this kind which we
possess for settling the question may not be so exact as would
be desirable, but there is no higher tribunal to which we can
appeal. The question must be answered by them, or not
answered at all.
448 Contemporary Socialism.
Now any data we have all conduct to the conclusion that
poverty is not increasing. If poverty were increasing with
the increase of wealth, it would show itself either in an
increase of pauperism, or in a decline in the general standard
of living among the labouring classes, or in a fall in the
average duration of life, and these symptoms would be most
acute in the countries that are most wealthy and progressive.
Now, let us take England as a crucial case of a country in a
very advanced stage of industrial development. Is English
pauperism greater now than it was before the " new produc-
tive forces " ent2red the country ? Is the general standard of
living among the labouring classes lower ? Is the average
duration of life less ? Are poverty and the various symptoms
of poverty more acute in England than in more backward
countries ?
In a foot-note to the passage last quoted from his book, Mr.
George explains that the improvement he recognises in the
lot of the lowest class does not consist in greater ability to
obtain the necessaries of life. Does he mean, because more
things are now reckoned among the necessaries of life? If
so, we fear there is no chance of that difficulty being removed,
nor indeed is there any reason for desiring it to be so. Men's
wants will always increase with their incomes, and the struggle
to make both ends meet may in that case indefinitely continue.
But the fact remains that they have more wants satisfied
than before, that they realize a higher standard of life, and
that is the mark, and indeed the substance, of a more diffused
comfort and civilization. It is true that as the general
standard of living rises, people feel the pinch of poverty at a
higher level than before, and become pauperized for the want
of comforts that are now necessary, but which formerly few
ever dreamt of possessing. To have no shoes is a mark of
extreme indigence to-day ; it was the common lot a century
ago. People may be growing in general comfort, and yet
their ability to obtain necessaries remain stationary, because
their customary circle of necessaries may be always widening.
The real sign of an advancing poverty is when the circle of
recognised necessaries is getting narrow, and yet men have
more difficulty in obtaining them than before ; in other words,
The Agrarian Socialism of Henry George. 449
1st, when the average scale of living falls; and 2nd, when
a larger proportion of the people are unable to obtain it,
reduced though it be. Now, in England, the contrary has
happened ; the general standard of living has risen, and the
proportion of those who are unable to obtain it has declined.
In a preceding chapter I adduced evidence to show how
greatly improved the working-class standard of living now is
from what it was two hundred years ago, in the good old
times socialist writers like to sing of, when men had not yet
sought out many inventions and the world was not oppressed
by the large system of production. But let us tap the line
between then and now at what point we may, and we find
the same result ; the tendency is always to a better style of
living. Mr. Giffen, for example, in his address, as President
of the Statistical Society, on 20th November, 1883, compares
the condition of the working classes to-day with their con-
dition half a century since, and concludes from official returns
that while the sovereign goes as far as it did then in the
purchase of commodities, money wages have increased from
30 to 100 per cent., and, at the same time, the hours of labour
have been reduced some 20 per cent. Except butcher-meat
and house-rent, every other element of the working man's
expenditure is cheaper, and butcher-meat was fifty years ago
hardly an element of his expenditure at all, and the kind of
house he then occupied was much inferior, as a rule, to what
he occupies now, bad as the latter may in many cases be.
But while the general standard of comfort has been rising,
the proportion of the population who are unable to obtain it
has been diminishing. I have already stated that King
estimated the number of persons in receipt of relief in England
and Wales in 1688 at 900,000. Now in 1882 the average
number in receipt of relief at one and the same time was,
according to official returns, 803,719 ; and if we are right in
doubling that figure to find the whole number of paupers
relieved in the course of the year (that being the proportion
borne in Scotland), then we may conclude that there are some
1,600,000 paupers in England and "Wales at the present day.
That is to say, with nearly five times the population, we have
less than twice the pauperism. The result is far from being
Q Q
450 Contemporary Socialism.
entirely gratifying ; a million and a half of paupers (-with more
than half as many again in Ireland and Scotland) constitute a
very grave problem, or rather ganglion of problems ; but the
fact supplies a decisive enough refutation of the pessimist idea
that the actual movement of pauperism has been one of in-
crease instead of one of decrease.
During these two hundred years there is no period in which
wealth and productive power multiplied more rapidly than the
last thirty years, and, therefore, if Mr. George's ideas were
correct, there is no period that should show such a marked
increase of pauperism. What do we find ? We find that
pauperism has steadily declined in England during that period.
The decrease has been gradual and attended with no such
striking interruptions as were frequently exhibited in former
times. But the most remarkable feature about it is that the
number of able-bodied paupers has diminished by nearly a
half; from 201,644 in 1849 to 106,280 in 1882. That is the
very class of paupers whom Mr. George represents it to be the
special effect of increasing productive power to multiply, and
yet, though wealth and productive power have made almost
unexampled progress, and though the population has also
considerably risen in the interval, we have not more than half
as many of this class of paupers now as we had thirty years
ago. No doubt this result is due in part to a better system of
administering relief, just as it is due in part to the growth of
trade unions and friendly societies, to the extension of savings
banks, and to other agencies. But if Mr. George's principle is
true, could such a result have taken place at all ? If " material
progress " has a tendency to multiply " tramps " or able-bodied
paupers, the tendency must be weak, indeed, when a little
judicious management on the part of public bodies, or of work-
ing men themselves, would not only counteract it, but turn
the current so strongly the other way. But the truth is that
the " tramp " has never been so little of a care in this country
as at the present hour, and that it is to material progress we
owe his disappearance. He was a very serious problem to our
ancestors for centuries and centuries. The whole history of
our social legislation is a history of ineffectual attempts to deal
with vagrants and sturdy beggars, and we are less troubled
The Agrarian Socialism of Henry George. 451
with them now mainly because industrial progress has given
them immensely more opportunities of making an honest and
regular living. Industrial progress has all along been creating
work and annihilating tramps, but it has all along been
followed by absurd and perverse complaints like Mr. George's,
that it was only creating tramps and annihilating opportu-
nities of work. Mr. G-eorge says the tramp comes with the
locomotive, but a writer in 1673 (quoted by Sir F. Eden,
" State of the Poor," I., 190) declared that he came with the
stage-coach. He pictures the happy age before stage-coaches,
when (as Mr. George says of California) there might be no
luxury, but there was no destitution, when every man kept
one horse for himself and another for his groom. But with
the introduction of the stage-coach the scene was changed.
People got anywhere for a few shillings, and ceased to keep
horses. They were so much the richer themselves, but their
grooms were ruined and thrown upon the world without horse
or home. Now class privations like these are incidental to
industrial transformations, and in an age of unusual industrial
transitions like ours, they may be expected to be unusually
numerous. But the effect of material progress on the whole is
to prevent such privations rather than cause them. It multi-
plies temporary redundancies of labour, but it multiplies still
more the opportunities for permanently relieving them. Why
are we now free from the old scourges of famine and famine
prices ? Partly because of free trade, but mainly because of
improved communications, because of the steamer and the
locomotive. Even commercial crises are getting less severe in
their effects. The distress among our labouring classes during
the American Civil War was nothing compared with the
suffering under the complete paralysis of industry that followed
the close of the great continental war in 1815. Miss Martineau
tells us of that time : " The poor abandoned their residences,
whole parishes were deserted, and crowds of paupers, in-
creasing in numbers as they went from parish to parish,
spread wider and wider this awful desolation." (History of
England, I. 39.) No such severe redundancy of labour has
taken place since then, and the redundancies that attend
changes of fashion or of mechanical agency, though they un-
45 2 Contemporary Socialism.
doubtedly constitute a serious difficulty, are yet lightened and
not aggravated by the various and complex ramifications of
modern industry. Except a new colony, there is no place
where new-comers are so easily taken on as in a highly
developed industrial country. There are more poor in Norway
than in England, and they are increasing; yet in Norway there
is no rent and no great cities. Mr. George may say, and in
fact he does say, that in old countries the number of paupers is
reduced by simple starvation ; but if that were so, the death-
rate would be increasing. But in England the death-rate is
really diminishing. Let us again quote from Mr. Giffen's
address : " Mr. Humphreys, in his able paper on ' The Recent
Decline in the English Death-Rate,' showed conclusively
that the decline in the death-rate in the last five years, 1876-
80, as compared with the rates on which Dr. Farr's English
Life Table was based rates obtained in the years 1841-45
amounted to from 28 to 32 per cent, in males at each quinquen-
nial of the 20 years, 6-25, and in females at each quinquennial
from 5-25, to between 24 and 35 per cent. ; and that the effect
of this decline in the death-rate was to raise the mean duration
of life among males from 39*9 to 41'9 years, a gain of two years
in the average duration of life. Mr. Humphreys also showed
that by far the larger proportion of the increased duration of
human life in England was lived at useful ages, and not at the
dependent ages of either childhood or old age. No such change
could have taken place without a great increase in the vitality
of the people. Not only had fewer died, but the masses who
had lived must have been healthier and suffered less from
sickness than they did. From the nature of the figures also
the improvement must also have been among the masses, and
not among a select class whose figures threw up the average.
The improvement, too, actually recorded obviously related to a
transition stage. Many of the improvements in the condition
of the working classes had only taken place quite recently.
They had not, therefore, affected all through their existence
any but the youngest lives. When the improvements had
been in existence for a longer period, so that the lives of all
who are living had been affected from birth by the changed
conditions, we might infer that even a greater gain in the
The Agrarian Socialism of Henry George. 453
mean duration of life will be shown. As it was the gain was
enormous. Whether it was due to better and more abundant
food and clothing, to better sanitation, to better knowledge of
medicine, or to these and other causes combined, improvement
had beyond all question occurred." The decline of pauperism
in this country then is not due to any increasing mortality in
the classes from which the majority of the paupers come ; but
it is one among many other proofs that these classes have
profited, like their neighbours, by the course of material pro-
gress. They may not have profited in the same degree as
some others, or in the degree we think desirable and believe to
be yet possible for themselves. But they have profited. The
situation is really, as we have said, one of unequal rates of pro-
gress, and not one of simultaneous progress and decline.
And this Mr. George seems, at a later stage of his argument,
freely to admit. For when he comes to state " the law which
associates poverty with progress and increases want with
advancing wealth," he explains that he does not contend that
poverty is associated with progress at all, but only that a
lessening proportion of the gross produce of society falls to
some classes ; that want may possibly not in the least increase
with advancing wealth ; that all classes may be the wealthier
for the growth of wealth; and practically, that the only
evidence of the poverty of the poor is the greater richness of
the rich. It seems he is not explaining in any wise why the
poor are getting poorer, but only why they are not getting
rich so fast as some of their neighbours. We must quote
chapter and verse for this extraordinary vacillation about the
very problem he wants to solve. " Perhaps," he says, in the
last paragraph of Book III., chapter vi. (p. 154), "it may be
well to remind the reader, before closing this chapter, of what
has been before stated that I am using the word wages, not
in the sense of a quantity, but in the sense of a proportion.
When I say that wages fall as rent rises, I do not mean that
the quantity of wealth obtained by labourers as wages is
necessarily less, but that the proportion which it bears to the
whole produce is necessarily less. The proportion may dimmish
while the quantity remains the same, or even increases. If the
margin of cultivation descends from the productive point, which
454 Contemporary Socialism.
we will call twenty-five, to the productive point we will call
twenty, the rent of all lands that before paid rent will increase
by this difference, and the proportion of the whole produce
which goes to labourers as wages will to the same extent
diminish ; but if in the meantime the advance of the arts or
economies that become possible with greater population have
so increased the productive power of labour that at twenty the
same exertion will produce as much wealth as before at twenty-
five, labourers will get as wages as great a quantity as before,
and the relative fall of wages will not be noticeable in any
diminution of the necessaries or comforts of the labourer, but
only in the increased value of land and the greater comforts
and more lavish expenditure of the rent-receiving class." It
thus turns out that the alleged impoverishment of the
labouring classes through the increasing wealth of society
the sad and desolating spectacle that " tormented " Mr. George
" so that he could not rest " the cruel mystery that robbed
him even of his religious faith, and moved him to write his
powerful but inconclusive book this was no real impoverish-
ment at all, but only an apparent one. It is not so much as
" noticeable " in " any diminution of the necessaries or com-
forts of the labourer " ; it is noticeable only in " the greater
comforts and more lavish expenditure of the rent-receiving
class." The poverty of the labourer consists in the greater
wealth of the landlord. The poor are not poorer ; they only
seem poorer, because certain of the rich have got so much
richer. The problem is thus, on Mr. George's own showing,
just the mock problem of the apparently receding train.
But let us take up this new issue. Mr. George's assertion
now is that wages are a less proportion of the gross produce of
the country than they were, because rent absorbs a corres-
pondingly larger proportion than it did. Is that so? Mr.
George does not think of showing that it is : he assumes it.
without apparently having the smallest pretence of fact for his
assertion. His assumption is entirely wrong. Rent is a much
smaller proportion of the gross produce of the country than it
was, and wages are not only in their aggregate a larger pro-
portion of the aggregate produce of the country, but in their
average a larger proportion of the per capita production.
The Agrarian Socialism of Henry George. 455
There is no need to rest in random assumptions on the matter.
The gross annual produce of the United Kingdom is reckoned at
present at twelve hundred millions sterling, and the rent of the
land at less than seventy millions, or about one seventeenth of
the whole. In the time of King and Davenant, 200 years ago or
so, the annual produce of England and Wales was forty-three
millions, and the rent of land ten millions little less than
one-fourth. (Davenant's "Works, iv., 71.) It is hardly worth
while,- however, making a formal assertion of so self-evident a
proposition as that rent constitutes a much smaller fraction of
the national income now that wealth is invested so vastly in
trade and manufactures, than it did when agriculture was the
one great business of life ; but it is perhaps better worth show-
ing that rent does not absorb a greater proportion even of the
agricultural produce of the country than it used to do. Rent
has risen nearly 200 per cent, in the course of the last hundred
years, but it does not take one whit a larger share of the gross
produce of the land than it took then.
According to the calculations of Davenant and King, the
gross produce of agriculture amounted, at the time of the Re-
volution, to four rents, or, allowing for tithes, to three rents ;
but this was only on the arable. The produce of other land,
natural pasture and forest land and the like, came to less than
two rents ; so that while the rent of arable was not more than
a third of the produce (or, to state it exactly, 27 per cent.), the
rent of land generally was more nearly a half. The figures are
Gross Produce. Kent.
Arable Land 9,079,000 2,480,000
Other Land 12,000,000 7,000,000
Total 21,079,000 9,480,000
(Davenant's Works, iv., 70.) Arthur Young, a century later,
declares that the doctrine of three rents was already exploded,
and that farmers had begun to expend so much on high culti-
vation that they would be very ill content if they produced
no more than three rents. In fact, he declares that even in
former times rent could never have amounted to a third of the
produce, except on lands of the very first quality, and that a
fourth was more probably the average proportion. In his
45 6 Contemporary Socialism.
"Political Arithmetic," published in 1779 (Part II., pp. 27, 31),
he estimated the gross agricultural produce of England
(exclusive of Wales) at 72,826,827, and the gross agricultural
rental at 19,200,000, or 26 per cent., very nearly one-fourth
of the produce. To come down nearer our own time,
M'Culloch estimated the gross agricultural produce of England
and Wales in 1842-3 to have been 141,606,857, and the gross
agricultural rental 37,795,905, or 26 per cent, of the produce.
(" Statistical Account of the British Empire," 3rd Edition, p.
553.) The gross agricultural produce of the United Kingdom
is now 270 millions sterling, and the gross agricultural rental
70 millions. Mr. Mulhall, indeed, estimates it at only 58
millions ; but at 70 millions it would be, as nearly as possible,
26 per cent., curiously enough the same figure exactly as in
1843 and in 1779, and almost the same as in 1689.
So far of rent ; now as to wages. I have already, in a for-
mer chapter (p. 301), produced some evidence to show that the
average labourer's wages bears a higher proportion to the
average income of the country than it did in former times, or,
in other words, that the labourer enjoys a higher per capita
share of the gross annual produce of the country as measured
in money, and I need not repeat that evidence here. Mr. Mul-
hall has made some calculations which confirm the conclusions
there drawn. (" Dictionary of Statistics," p. 246.) He com-
pares the income of the people of the United Kingdom at the
three epochs of 1688, 1800, and 1883. He divides the people into
classes and numbers them by families, stating the total income
of each class and the total number of families among whom it
was divided. I select the two columns containing the results
for the whole population and the results for the working class.
(1) Number of Families :
A.D. 1688. A.D. 1800. A.D. 1883.
Whole Nation . . 1,200,000 1,780,000 6,575,000
Working Class . . 759,000 1,117,000 4,629,000
(2) Earnings:
A.D. 1688. A.D. 1880. A.D. 1883.
Whnlft 1
45,000,000 230,000,000 1,265,000,000
Nation J
j 11,000,000 78,000,000 447,000,000
The Agrarian Socialism of Henry George. 457
A single glance at these tables will show that the aggregate
wages of the country constitutes a slightly better proportion of
its aggregate annual income at present than in 1800, and a
decidedly better proportion than in 1688. But if we look, not
to the aggregate income of the class, but to the average
income of the individual families it contains, the result is
in nowise more favourable to Mr. George's assumption. The
following table will show that :
(3) Average Income of Families :
A.D. 1688. A.D. 1880. A.D. 1883.
"Whole Nation .... 37 129 189
Working Class. ... 14 69 96
The average working-class income was thus 37 per cent, of
the average income of the country in 1688 ; 53 per cent, of
it in 1800; and 51 per cent, of it in 1883. The difference
between the last two epochs is so indecisive that we may
count them practically identical. The real position of affairs
then as to the proportion of wages to national produce is
this, that wages enjoy a considerably larger share of that
produce now than they did at the end of the seventeenth
century, and about the same proportion as they enjoyed at the
end of the eighteenth. If, accordingly, Mr. George resolves to
stick by the point of proportion, he would therefore have no
more solid ground to stand on than on the point of quantity.
Rent, as a proportion of the entire wealth of the country, has
enormously declined, and even as a proportion of agricultural
wealth has not increased. Wages as a proportion have not
declined, but rather risen.
These, among other things, are indications that we have
been concluding too hastily that concentration of wealth is
the characteristic tendency of the time, and ignoring the
existence of many minor and less conspicuous forces which
have been working in the contrary direction. The real
prospect at present is towards diffusion. The enormous
accumulations that have marked the last hundred and fifty
years have owed their existence largely to causes that cannot
be expected to endure ; in the case of land, to vicious laws
directly favouring aggregations ; and in the case of trade, to
458 Contemporary Socialism.
the unparalleled rapidity of tlie transformations and exten-
sions industry has undergone during the period. Great in-
equalities are natural to such a time. Huge fortunes are made
by pioneers, and will not be easily made by their successors.
Railway contracting will never produce again a millionaire like
Mr. Brassey, but it will continue to furnish the means of many
moderate fortunes and competencies. So with every other
new branch of industry, or new field of investment. The
lucky person who is the first to occupy it may rise to great
riches, but his successors will divide the custom, and instead
of one large fortune, there will be a considerable number of
small ones. Mr. George himself admits that the opportunities
of making large fortunes are growing more limited, but oddly
enough he considers the fact to be a signal evidence of " the
march of concentration." In his " Social Problems " (p. 59)
he writes : " An English friend, a wealthy retired Manchester
manufacturer, once told me the story of his life. How he
went to work at eight years of age, helping to make twine,
when twine was made entirely by hand. How, when a young
man, he walked to Manchester, and having got credit for a
bale of flax, made it into twine and sold it. How, building
up a little trade, he got others to work for him. How, when
machinery began to be invented, and steam was introduced,
he took advantage of them, until he had a big factory and
made a fortune, when he withdrew to spend the rest of his
days at ease, leaving his business to his son. ' Supposing you
were a young man now,' said I, ' could you walk into Man-
chester and do that again ? ' ' No,' replied he, ' no one could.
I couldn't with fifty thousand pounds in place of my five
shillings.' " The true moral of this little story is of course
that it is more difficult to amass a huge fortune in that par-
ticular line now than when machinery was young, and that
a man with 50,000 to start with must now content himself
with a much poorer figure than Mr. George's lucky friend
made out of nothing. "Would Mr. George compute what
limit could be set to the sum his friend might have amassed,
had he started in those golden days with 50,000 instead of
five shillings? Even as things stood, his solitary success
did not distribute the wealth of Manchester any the better
The Agrarian Socialism of Henry George. 459
among his fellow-spinners who were not fortunate enough
to get credit for a bale of flax, or pushing enough to ask for it,
and were not in a position to take advantage of the first
introduction of a new power, and rise with it to great wealth.
That the stream of things is now making for more moderate
fortunes, and more of them, is confirmed by the testamentary
statistics of the previous ten years published some time ago by
the Spectator newspaper. These figures show that the number
of fortunes of the first rank left during that period has been
very .much less than it was in the preceding ten years, but
that the number of moderate fortunes has been very much
larger.
What the future may hide in it I shall not venture to divine.
It will no doubt bring upon industry fresh transformations, but
we can hardly expect them to be so numerous or so rapid as
in the brilliant era of industrial progress and colonial develop-
ment we have passed through, and some at least of the changes
that are in store for us point, as I have shown in the introduc-
tory chapter of this book, to a greater diffusion rather than a
greater concentration in the future. Mr. George says : " All
the currents of the time run to concentration. To successfully
resist it we must throttle steam and discharge electricity from
human service " (p. 232). Now steam has undoubtedly been a
great concentrator, but electricity, which is likely to take its
place in the future, will to all appearance be as great a dis-
tributor. Mr. George is equally mistaken regarding the real
effect of the other " currents of the time." " That concentra-
tion is the order of development," says he, " there can be no
mistaking the concentration of people in large cities, the
concentration of handicrafts in large factories, the concentra-
tion of transportation by railroad and steamship lines, and
of agricultural operations in large fields. The most trivial
businesses are being conpentrated in the same way errands
are run and carpet sacks are carried by corporations " (p. 232).
The concentration of people in cities is not the same thing
as the concentration of the wealth of those cities in the
hands of a few individuals. The centralization of labour
in cities has assisted the birth of the trade union and the
co-operative society, which are among the best agencies for
460 Contemporary Socialism.
diffusing wealth ; and the growth of joint-stock companies
is a strange proof of a tendency to greater concentration of
wealth, for the joint-stock company is really an instrument
of the small capital, enabling it by combination to compete
successfully with the larger ; and as to agriculture, the real
tendency, in this country at any rate, seems to be to lesser
holdings. When we complain of the inequalities of our time
and I am far from desiring to underrate their extent or
to palliate their mischievousness we are apt to forget how
largely the real and natural process of evolution is after all
one of distribution, how much the most conspicuous of the
inequalities have been incidental to a transition period, and
due to causes of a temporary nature, and how many indications
we possess that they are not unlikely to be corrected and
moderated in the future course of social development. Some
of the official returns made in connection with the income tax
show that the immense increase of wealth of the last thirty
years has been far from being reaped by any single class, but
has been shared pretty evenly by all the classes included in
those returns. We possess detailed accounts of the number
of persons paying income tax in each grade of income under
Schedule D, from the year 1849, and if we compare the figures
of that year with those of 1879, we shall obtain a fair index
to the movement of distribution during those thirty years.
Schedule D, it is true, includes only incomes derived from
trades and professions, but these incomes may fairly enough
be taken as sufficiently characteristic to afford a trustworthy
indication of the general movement. While population in-
creased in the thirty years by 22 per cent., the number of
incomes liable to income-tax increased by 161 per cent., and
of these, the incomes that have increased in much the largest
proportion are precisely those middling or lower middling
incomes which I have before shown to have unfortunately
declined since 1688. While the number of incomes over
1,000 a year has increased by 165 per cent., the number of
incomes between 150 and 400 a year has increased by
256 per cent. Mr. Goschen, in his inaugural address as Pre-
sident of the Royal Statistical Society in December, 1887, pro-
duced later evidence showing the continuance, and even growth
The Agrarian Socialism of Henry George. 461
of the same tendency. He showed from the Income Tax
Returns that, in spite of the increase of population between
1877 and 1886, the number of incomes over 1,000 a year had
decreased by 2*40 per cent., and the number of incomes be-
tween 500 and 1,000 had remained the same, while the
number of incomes between 150 and 500 had increased 21'4
per cent. He showed from the statistics of certain selected
public companies, that in the ten years from 1876 to 1886 the
number of their shareholders had increased by 72 per cent.,
while the average capital per shareholder had decreased from
443 to 323. He drew similar conclusions from the probate
and inhabited house duty figures, and from several other
sources. (See Journal of Statistical Society, December, 1887.)
These figures prove that the tendency of things, so far as
it concerns the classes above the labourers, is not to further
and exclusive concentration, but rather towards a wider and
beneficial diffusion ; and in regard to the labouring classes, it
is admitted by all even by the extremest social pessimists
that the upper and middle strata of them have participated in
the progress of wealth equally with their neighbours. There
remains only the lowest class of all, and their emancipation is
the serious task of social reform in the immediate future ; but
that class is even now not increasing in the ratio of popula-
tion ; its misery comes from many causes, most of them moral
and physical rather than economic ; and though it presents
difficult and trying problems, there is no reason for renoun-
cing the hope which alone can sustain social reformers to
success.
31. Mr. George's Explanation.
If there is any force in the foregoing observations, it is plain
that there is no such problem as Mr. George has undertaken to
explain, and we are therefore exempted from all necessity of
examining his explanation. But to Mr. George's own mind
his explanation of the appearance that troubled him really con-
stitutes the demonstration of it ; at any rate, he offers no other.
The question of the increase of poverty is of course a question
of fact, that cannot be settled by a, priori deduction alone ; but
Mr. George seems to think otherwise. He is too bent on prov-
462 Contemporary Socialism.
ing it to be necessary to think of asking whether it is actual,
and even a man of science like Mr. A. R. Wallace, while re-
gretting that Mr. George had not chosen to build his proposals
on ground of fact, declares that he adopted an equally legiti-
mate method in deducing his results " from the admitted prin-
ciples and data of political economy." (" Land Nationalization,"
p. 19.) Moreover, most of the social pessimism of the present
time draws its chief support, exactly like Mr. George's, from the
supposed bearing of certain received economic doctrines ; and
our task would therefore be incomplete if we did not follow Mr.
George on this " high priori road " on which he so boldly fares
forth, and performs, as will presently be seen, many a remark-
able feat.
Before beginning his explanation, he throws the problem
itself into what he conceives to be a more suitable scientific
form. " The cause," says he, " which produces poverty in the
midst of advancing wealth is evidently the cause which ex-
hibits itself in the tendency everywhere recognised of wages to
a minimum. Let us therefore put our inquiry into this compact
form : Why, in spite of increase in productive power, do wages
tend to a minimum which will give but a bare living ? " (p. 10).
The problem, as thus restated, is clearly, be it observed, one
of quantity, not of proportion. A bare living is not a relative
share, but a definite amount, of produce. But the tendency in
wages to such a minimum, which he asserts to be everywhere
recognised, is really not recognised at all. In alleging that
it is so, Mr. George evidently alludes to the doctrine of 'wages
taught by E-icardo and his school ; but what they recognised
in wages was a tendency, not to a minimum that would give but
a bare living, but to a minimum that would give a customary
living; in other words, that would sustain the labourers in the
standard of comfort customary among their own class. The
economic minimum is not the absolute minimum of a bare
living ; it is, as Mr. George himself elsewhere puts it, " the
lowest amount on which labourers will consent to live and
reproduce," that is, not the lowest amount on which any
individual labourer will do so, but the lowest amount which
labouring people in general consider it necessary to earn before
they will undertake the responsibility of marriage. If they
The Agrarian Socialism of Henry George. 463
were to get less than this, it was contended, they would refrain
from marrying to an extent that would tell sufficiently on the
supply of labour to force wages up again to their old level.
This level was the minimum to which wages constantly tended,
but then it was always higher than a bare living ; it was deter-
mined by the standard of requirements current among the
labouring class at the time ; and it was recognised to be
capable of rising if that standard rose. True, Bicardo and the
economists of his generation entertained very poor hopes of any
such rise, because the working classes of their time, being with-
out the intelligence, the ideas of comfort, the higher wants
that are powerfully operative among the working classes of
our day, were generally seen to " take out " their better wages
when they chanced to get them in nothing but earlier mar-
riages, which in the end brought their wages down again. We
have happily now to do with a more aspiring and a less uni-
formly composed working class. It is perhaps more aspiring
in some measure because it is less uniformly composed. It
contains many ranks and inequalities and standards of social
refinement and comfort, and the presence of these side by side
develops a more active tendency upward, which, by supplying
a stronger check than before on improvident marriages, will
enable the labourers, class after class of them, to appropriate
securely more and more of the common domain of advancing
civilization. "We have had abundant experience of a rise in
the standard of life, and a rise in the rate of wages, both re-
maining as permanent possessions of sections of the labouring
class. But if Bicardo and his school had less faith than they
reasonably might have had in the possibility of a permanent
upward tendency in wages, they certainly never dreamt of
believing in any permanent downward tendency. According
to their doctrine the rate of wages moved up and down within
certain limits, but always tended to come back to a particular
figure the amount necessary to give the labourer the living
customary among his class. This figure was really no more a
minimum than it was a maximum ; wages were supposed to
fall sometimes below it, as they were supposed to rise some-
times above it ; and to speak of it as a minimum that would
give but a bare living is completely to misrepresent its nature.
464 Contemporary Socialism.
The assumption from which Mr. George starts is thus in no
wise an admitted principle of political economy, and would
therefore not answer the test of legitimacy laid down by Mr.
Wallace. It has no ground outside of Mr. George's own imag-
ination. Economists would solve his problem, " why in spite
of increased productive power wages tend to a minimum that
will give but a bare living ? " by simply denying his fact, and
having done with it. But Mr. George persuades himself that
they would answer it otherwise, and devotes the next section
of his book to an elaborate confutation of the false answers he
supposes they would return to it. They would either explain
it, he thinks, by their theory of the wages fund, or they would
explain it by their theory of population ; and so before con-
fiding to us his own explanation, he considers it necessary to
stop and clear these two venerable theories out of his way. I
am not concerned to defend these theories ; their truth would
not make Mr. George's own view any the falser, nor their
falsehood make it any the truer. One of them indeed was
dead and buried before Mr. George attacked it, though I am
bound to say it would never have fallen before the particular
line of attack he directs against it. The wages fund doctrine,
which played a considerable role both in its original form as
taught by Senior, and in its subsequent form as modified by
M'Culloch, was refuted by Mr. Thornton in 1869, was almost
instantly abandoned by the candid mind of Mr. Mill, and is
now rarely met with as a living economic doctrine. The
wages fund is still regarded of course as having its limit in
capital, and in the conditions which generate capital, but since
these conditions include among other things the number and
efficiency of the labourers, the amount of the wages fund is no
longer represented as at any given moment a fixed and pre-
determined quantity susceptible of no possible alteration to
meet the exigencies of the labour market, and when once this
characteristic was given up, the wages fund doctrine was seen
to have degenerated into little more than a stately truism.
The Malthusian theory of population is not in the same way
discredited, but it likewise is now generally stated with some
reserve. It has become well understood that the earlier econo-
mists assigned it too absolute and universal a validity, and that
The Agrarian Socialism of Henry George. 465
it is not, as they thought, a law for all ages, and especially and
happily not a law for our own. It is true of an era of progres-
sive population and diminishing return from agriculture, but
for our day it has been robbed of its terrors by free trade and
steam navigation, which have connected our markets with
continents of virgin soil, and carried us virtually into an era of
increasing return of indefinite duration. The population ques-
tion was one of serious practical import for our fathers, and as
they saw people marrying and giving in marriage, while every
fresh bushel of food was extracted with increasing difficulty
from an exhaustible soil, they looked with a reasonable dread
to the future, and saw no way of hope except in the practice
of a heroic continence. But we live in another time. "We
find population increasing and yet bread cheapening, simply
because the locomotive which alarmed Mr. George by taking
the tramp to California has brought back plenty to the rest
of the world. It is due to the material progress he preaches
against that we are the first generation who can afford to make
light of the population question, and leave our remote posterity
to deal with the peril when it shall actually arrive.
Mr. George, however, is not content with disputing these
doctrines ; he insists on replacing them with others exactly
opposite to them in purport, and for which he claims a like
universal validity. He propounds a new population theory,
and a new wages fund theory of his own. The more popu-
lation abounds, the more will subsistence superabound, is his
comfortable counter-proposition to Malthusianism. " I assert,"
says he, " that in any given state of civilization a greater
number of people can collectively be better provided for than
a smaller. ... I assert that the new mouths which an
increasing population calls into existence, require no more
food than the old ones, while the hands they bring with them
can in the natural order of things produce more. I assert that,
other things being equal, the greater the population, the
greater the comfort which an equitable distribution of wealth
would give to each individual " (p. 99). In a word, his teach-
ing is that " other things being equal " over-population is a
ridiculous impossibility. What may be all concealed under
the reservation, "other things being equal," he does not en-
H H
466 Contemporary Socialism.
lighten us, but it avowedly contains at least one presupposition
of decisive importance to the question, the presupposition of
the unlimited productiveness of the soil. Mr. George denies
the law of diminishing return. "We shall presently find him,
in his doctrine about rent, basing his whole book on the opera-
tion of this law. But here in his doctrine about population it
suits him to deny it, and he does so on singularly fantastical
grounds (p. 93). He denies it on the ground that " matter is
eternal, and force must for ever continue to act," as if the in-
destructibility of matter was the same thing as its infinite
productiveness. " As the water that we take from the ocean
must again return to the ocean, so the food we take from the
reservoirs of nature is, from the moment we take it, on its way
back to those reservoirs. What we draw from a limited
extent of land may temporarily reduce the productiveness of
that land, because the return may be to other land or may be
divided between that land and other land, or perhaps all land ;
but this possibility lessens with increasing area, and ceases
when the whole globe is considered. That the earth could
maintain a thousand billions of people as easily as a thousand
millions is a necessary deduction from the manifest truths that
at least, as far as our agency is concerned, matter is eternal
and force must for ever continue to act. . . . And from
this it follows that the limit to the population of the globe can
only be the limit of space. Now this limitation of space this
danger that the human race may increase beyond the possi-
bility of finding elbow-room is so far off as to have for us no
more practical interest than the recurrence of the glacial period
or the final extinguishment of the sun " (p. 94-5). If this pas-
sage means anything, it means that the race may go on multi-
plying as long as it finds room to stand on, and that even when
that limit is reached it can only be squeezed to death and not
starved. It can in no case apparently be starved. Subsistence
cannot possibly run short, for the inherent powers of the soil
are not permanently destructible. But he might as well argue
that man must be omnipotent because he is immortal. The
question is not one of the durability of the productive powers
of the earth it is one of their limited or unlimited productive
capacity. Up to a certain point they may yield the same
The Agrarian Socialism of Henry George. 467
return at the same cost year after year in scecula sccculorum,
but will they yield more? Manifestly not. Every bushel
they give after that is got at continuously increasing cost.
Now of course wherever population increases so much, com-
pared with the land at its disposal, that this increasing cost
must be incurred in order to find them food, the epoch of
diminishing return in agriculture has arrived, and the peril of
over-population is already present. Happily, as we have said,
that time is not yet, but it will come long, long before the
human race fails to find elbow-room in this planet.
Mr. George himself admits that in a country of inconsider-
able extent, or in a small island, such as Pitcairn's Island,
over-population is quite possible before elbow-room is near
exhausted (p. 74) and in making the admission he virtually
surrenders his case. He admits in detail what he denies in
gross. For is not the soil of a small island or an inconsiderable
country as eternal as the soil of a continent ? The only dif-
ference is that it is not so extensive, and therefore comes to
the epoch of diminishing return sooner. That is all. The
reason why he makes an exception of such an island is because
its inhabitants " are cut off from communication with the rest
of the world, and consequently from the exchanges which are
necessary to the improved modes of production resorted to
as population becomes dense " (p. 74). But if density of popu-
lation is such a sure improver of production as Mr. G-eorge
represents it to be elsewhere, why should it fail here ? And
if it fail anywhere, how can he argue that it must succeed
everywhere ? Once he admits, as he does in this passage,
that subsistence has a definite limit in the modes of production
that happen to be known in any age and country, and that
population has a definite limit for such age and country in
the amount of subsistence which the known modes of pro-
duction are capable of extracting from the soil, he really
admits all that Malthusians generally contend for, and coming
to curse, he has really blessed them altogether. The limit of
subsistence which he here recognises the limit imposed by
the state of the arts is far within the limit which he has
just been denying, the natural limit to the inherent fertility
of the soil, on which economists base their law of diminishing
468 Contemporary Socialism.
return. The former point is far sooner reached than the
latter. Men will starve because they don't know how to
make the best use of nature long before they will starve be-
cause nature is used up ; and it is exactly that earlier limit
on which Malthusians lay stress.
But except for this inconsistent admission in the case of a
petty isolated island, Mr. George persistently refuses to recog-
nise any kind of limit to subsistence, either in the productive
capacity of the soil or in the state of the arts. He seems to
fancy that land will go on yielding larger and larger harvests
ad infinitum to accommodate an increasing population, and
that even if it failed to do so, new inventions or improved
processes of production would be constantly discovered when
they were needed, and keep the supply of food always equal
to the demand. With these crude assumptions in his head,
he arrives very easily at his own peculiar theory, which is,
that subsistence tends to increase faster than population, be-
cause the growth of population itself affords the means of such
economies and organization of labour as multiply immensely
the productive capacity of each individual labourer. A hundred
labourers, he is fond of arguing, will produce much more than
a hundred times the amount that one will, and it is therefore
clear folly to think of population as capable of encroaching on
subsistence. On the contrary, it seems almost fitter to speak
of it as a means of positively economizing subsistence. Mr.
George's mistake arises from ignoring the fact that subsistence
depends on the productive capacity of land as well as on the
productive capacity of labour, and the productive capacity of
land is not indefinitely progressive.
Mr. George's new wages fund theory is based on a precisely
analogous misconception of the real conditions of the case, and
is just as much in the air as his population theory. " Wages,"
he says, " cannot be diminished by the increase of labourers,
but on the contrary, as the efficiency of labour manifestly
increases with the number of labourers, the more labourers,
other things being equal, the higher wages should be " (p. 62).
Just as he has already argued that food can never run short
before an advancing population, because the new hands can
produce much more than the new mouths can consume, as if
The Agrarian Socialism of Henry George. 469
the hands span it out of their own finger nails ; so he now
argues that wages can never decline for want of capital to
employ labourers, because the capital that employs them is
made by the labourers themselves. They are paid, he declares,
not out of the capital of their employers, but out of the pro-
duct of their own labour. Mr. F. A. Walker, the eminent
American economist, had already taught a similar doctrine,
but with the reservation that while wages were really paid out
of the produce of the labour they remunerated, they were
usually advanced out of the employer's capital. But Mr.
George throws aside this reservation, and declares boldly that
wages are neither paid nor advanced out of capital, and that
if any advance is made in the transaction at all, it is the
labourer who makes it to the employer, not the employer to
the labourer. " In performing his labour, he (the labourer) is
advancing in exchange ; when he gets his wages, the exchange
is completed. During the time he is earning the wages, he
is advancing capital to his employer ; but at no time, unless
wages are paid before work is done, is the employer advancing
capital to him " (p. 49).
In this contention Mr. George relies much on the analogy
of the " self-employing " labour of primitive society. When
men live by gathering eggs, he tells us, the eggs they gather
are their wages. No doubt ; but in our complicated civiliza-
tion we don't live by gathering eggs from day to day, but
by sowing the seed in spring which is to yield us food only
in harvest by preparing work for the market which may
take weeks, months, even years before it is marketable. The
energetic Sir John Sinclair is said to have once danced at a
ball in the evening dressed in a suit the wool of which was
still growing on the sheep's back in the morning ; but rapidity
like that is naturally foreign to ordinary commerce. The
successive operations of clipping, fulling, teasing, spinning,
dying, weaving, cutting, sewing, occupy considerable time.
So with other things. Houses, ships, railways, are not built
in a day, or by a single workman. The product of a single
workman's work for a day at any of these things has no value
apart from the product of the other workmen's work, nor has
the work of them all any value unless the work is, or is to
4/O Contemporary Socialism.
be, completed. The wages paid during the period of con-
struction, therefore, cannot possibly have come out of the work
for which they were paid, but must have been advanced
otherwise. "Who advances them? Clearly not the labourer
himself, for he receives them. And yet that is what Mr.
George unhesitatingly asserts, and his argument is as courage-
ous as it is ingenious. He does not shrink from applying it
to the extremest case you like to suggest the Great Eastern,
the Gothard Tunnel, the Suez Canal ; even in these cases the
labourers, who spent months and years in doing the work,
were paid out of the work itself, out of the Great Eastern,
out of the Gothard Tunnel, out of the Suez Canal. " For,"
says Mr. George, " a work that is incomplete is not valueless,
it is not unexchangeable ; money may be raised on it by
mortgage or otherwise, and as this money is raised on the
product of the labourer's work, the wages it is employed to
pay are really paid out of that product." But this only shifts
the question a little : it does not answer it. "Where does this
lent money come from? Certainly not from the work it is
lent on. Perhaps not, Mr. George will rejoin, again shifting
his ground, but it comes from the product of the contempor-
aneous work of other labourers. " It is not necessary to the
production of things that cannot be used as subsistence or
cannot be immediately utilized that there should have been a
previous production of the wealth required for the main-
tenance of the labourers while the production is going on.
It is only necessary that there should be, somewhere within
the circle of exchange, a contemporaneous production of sub-
sistence for the labourers, and a willingness to exchange this
subsistence for the thing on which the labour is being be-
stowed " (p. 51). But this is only passing round the dilemma.
For this contemporaneous production has itself the same diffi-
culty to face ; it has to sustain its labourers during the time
taken to complete their work; and it can only do so, according
to Mr. George's explanation, by raising the means through a
mortgage on the unfinished work. It borrows to pay its own
wages, but is apparently able to lend to pay other people's.
Mr. George has a happy method of carrying on the affairs of
society by mutual accommodation. Peter is a shoemaker who
I
The Agrarian Socialism of Henry George. 471
wants money to buy leather to make shoes and food to main-
tain him till the shoes are made. Paul is a carpenter who is
in a like case, and wants money to buy food and timber.
Peter borrows the money he needs from Paul on mortgage,
and then Paul in turn borrows what he needs from Peter, on
the same terms. Utopia is a pleasanter world than ours, and
an 10 U probably goes a long way in it ; but here on this hard
earth Peter would certainly make no shoes nor Paul any
chairs, unless he had either himself saved enough to purchase
the materials, or found a neighbour who had done so and was
ready to make him an advance. Except for this neighbour
he could not work at all, and could not therefore " create any
wages," and the amount of work he got and wages he earned
would manifestly depend greatly on the amount of capital
this stranger possessed and was disposed to invest in such an
enterprise.
It is true that the wages of labour will be guided in amount
by the quantity of the product, but they are not on that
account actually paid out of the product. And it is true that
the labourer gives value for his wages certainly he would not
otherwise be employed but that value is not usually market-
able until some time, in many cases years, after the wages
have been enjoyed, and therefore cannot have been the source
whence these wages came. The wages were paid out of the
saved results of previous labour that is, out of capital and Mr.
George has absolutely no conception of the amount of capital
that is necessary to carry on the work of industry. He says
we live from hand to mouth, and so in a sense we do. Our
capital is being constantly consumed and constantly repro-
duced again, and economists are fond of showing, from the
speedy recovery of a civilized state after a devastating war,
how short a time it would really take to replace it entirely.
But until it is replaced every inhabitant undergoes considerable
privations, which simply means that the rate of wages has
fallen for want of it. There are some trades, like the baker's,
where the product is actually sold before the wages are paid ;
and there are many, like the whaler's mentioned by Mr.
George, where the labourers can afford to wait long terms for
part at least of their remuneration (no great sign, by the way,
472 Contemporary Socialism.
of the minimum of a bare living) ; but even in these much
capital must be set aside before a single hand is engaged.
The whalers, for example, must be furnished with a ship to
start with, and be provisioned for the voyage ; and if these
requisites are not forthcoming, they must go without work and
wages altogether, or take work at inferior terms in a market
glutted by their own arrival in it. Mr. George speaks lightly
of the labourers who excavated the Suez Canal advancing
value to the company who employed them, and yet before a
single pick or spade was stuck into the sand of the Isthmus
the company had laid out, in preliminary expenses and
machinery, as much as six millions sterling more than a third
of the whole cost of the Canal. They had then to pay other
five or six millions in wages before the work fetched a single
fee ; and yet Mr. George will have us believe that those five
or six millions actually came out of the profits, merely because
the projectors hoped and believed they might eventually come
out of them. Labourers give an equivalent to the capitalists
for their wages, but their wages are really paid out of the
capital which their employers have saved for the purpose of
purchasing that equivalent. I may have bought a cow in the
hope of recouping myself by selling her milk, but I did not
therefore pay her price out of the milk money for nobody
would have sold her to me if he had to wait for that ; I
bought her out of money I had previously saved, and from
the same source exactly, and no other, do capitalists buy
labour.
But, objects Mr. George, that cannot be ; wages cannot be
paid out of capital, because they are often lowest when, as
shown by the low rate of interest, capital is most abundant.
But Mr. George here confounds existent capital with empk^ed
capital. It is only the capital actually employed that tells on
wages ; the low rate of interest merely shows that there has
been an increase in unemployed capital, and since that is gene-
rally a correlative of a diminution of employed capital, it is
but natural that low interest should be attended by low wages.
Low wages are a consequence of unemployed labour, unem-
ployed labour a consequence of unemployed capital, and un-
employed capital a consequence of unfavourable industrial
The Agrarian Socialism of Henry George. 473
conditions which labour, either with capital or without it,
cannot evade or reverse.
So far then of Mr. George's views on population and the
wages fund, for which much value, as well as originality, has
been claimed. The chapters in which he states them are
certainly among the most impressive and characteristic in his
book. Nowhere else does he display more strikingly his re-
markable acuteness, fertility, and literary power, and nowhere
else are these high qualities employed more fruitlessly from
sheer want of grasp of the elements of the problems he dis-
cusses. These chapters are after all, however, something of a
digression from the main business of the book, and they have
perhaps detained us too long from Mr. George's own explana-
tion of the supposed growth of poverty.
His explanation is this : " The reason why, in spite of the
increase of productive power, wages constantly tend to a mini-
mum which will give but a bare living is that with increase in
productive power, rent tends to even greater increase " (p. 199).
" Rent swallows up the whole gain, and pauperism accompanies
progress " (p. 158). " The magic of property," it seems, has
an unsuspected malignancy ; but, in the present case, its spell
is really exercised only over Mr. George's own vision. For
who, with his eyes open, would believe for a moment what Mr.
George so gravely asserts, that of the whole gain won by our
multiplied productive power, none whatever has gone to the
great bankers, and brewers, and cotton spinners, and iron-
masters, and corn factors, and shipbuilders, and stockbrokers,
and railway contractors ; that our Rothschilds, and Brasseys,
and Barings, and Bairds, the great plutocrats of the time, the
possessors of the largest fortunes in the country, the very men
and classes who have been most conspicuously enriched through
the material progress of the nation, have all the while been
conducting a hard struggle against a fatal tendency in their
incomes to sink to a bare living, and had to feed, exactly like
the manual labourers, from the crumbs that fall from the land-
owners' table. The assertion is too violent and preposterous to
merit serious refutation. Everybody knows that the greatest
part of the wealth of modern society is not concentrated in the
474 Contemporary Socialism.
hands of the landlords at all, that it has not accrued from rent,
and that it would not be a farthing the less though private
property in land were abolished to-morrow.
But violent and preposterous as Mr. George's conclusion is,
it has not been arrived at without the exercise of much per-
verse ingenuity. Having been brought by his examination of
the wages fund and population theories to the conviction that
the key to his riddle was not to be discovered in the condi-
tions that regulated production, he concludes that it must,
therefore, be sought in the conditions that regulate distribution.
His problem is thus one in the distribution of wealth, and it
must be explained, if it is to be explained at all, by the laws
of distribution. To investigate these laws, therefore, becomes
now his object, and the first step he takes is a truly amazing
one. At the very outset he throws the most important class
of participators in the distribution the class that appropriates
the largest share out of court altogether, and he proceeds to
settle the whole question as if they never got a penny, and as if
the entire spoil were divided among their neighbours. People
who live on profits, it seems, have no locus standi in a question
of distribution, and the case must be considered as if the parties
exclusively concerned were the people who live on wages, the
people who live on interest, and the people who live on rent.
" With profits," he says, " this inquiry has manifestly nothing
to do. We want to find what it is that determines the division
of their joint produce between land, labour, and capital, and
profits is not a term that refers exclusively to any one of these
three divisions. Of the three parts into which profits are
divided by political economists, namely compensation for risk,
wages of superintendence, and returns for the use of capital,
the latter falls under the term interest, which includes all the
returns for the use of capital and excludes everything else ;
wages of superintendence falls under the term wages, which
includes all returns for human exertions and excludes every-
thing else ; and compensation for risk has no place whatever,
as risk is eliminated when all the transactions of a community
are taken together" (pp. 113-4).
Now we have to do Here with no mere difference of termin-
ology. Profits may be employers' wages, if you like to call
The Agrarian Socialism of Henry George. 475
them so ; but it is a fatal confusion to suppose that, because
you have called them employers' wages, you are therefore
entitled to treat them as if they were governed by the same
laws and conditions as labourers' wages. The truth is that
they are governed by opposite conditions, and that the pith of
the labour question is just the conflict between these two kinds
of wages for the better share in the distribution. The battle of
labour is not against the employer receiving fair interest on his
capital in proportion to its quantity, but against the amount of
additional profit which the employer claims as wages of super-
intendence, and which he also rates in proportion to capital
invested insread of rating it in proportion to his own trouble or
efficiency. One of the chief hopes of the workman resides in
the possibility of breaking down this erroneous criterion of fair
remuneration for superintendence, and so getting the employers
to content themselves with smaller profits than they have been
in the habit of considering indispensable. Profits and wages
have thus opposite and conflicting interests in the distribution,
but Mr. George, having once disguised the one in the garb of
the other, is imposed on by the disguise himself, and treats
them in his subsequent speculations as if they were the same
thing, or at any rate what in the present connection is equally
pernicious in its effects as if their respective shares in the
distribution were determined by precisely the same conditions.
The result is, as might be expected, a series of singular
contretemps springing from mistaken identity, like those we
are familiar with on the comic stage. The manufacturing
millionaire appears before us as the victim of the same harsh
destiny as the penniless crossing-sweeper, and the banker of
Lombard Sireetis overshadowed by the same blighting poverty
as the lumper of "Wapping. Proudhon, in a powerful passage,
describes pauperism as invading modern society at both ex-
tremes ; it invaded the poor in the positive form of natural
hunger ; it invaded the rich in the unnatural but more devour-
ing form of insatiable voracity. The burden of Mr. George's
prophetic vision contains no such refinements. He sees a huge
wedge driven through the middle of society ; and on the under-
side of that enchanted wedge he sees the merchant princes of
the world eating the bread of poverty with their lowest depend-
476 Contemporary Socialism.
ents. Mr. George's classification of profits under wages there-
fore involves much more than a mere change of nomenclature,
for it has led him to pass off this absurd vision as a literal
description of things as they are. By that classification he
has really put out of his own sight the most important factor
in the settlement of the question he is discussing, and so he
begins playing Hamlet by leaving the part of Hamlet out.
Having simplified matters by throwing profits out of the
cast, Mr. George's next step is to assign the leading role to
rent. In the whole drama of the modern distribution of wealth,
no part is more striking or more often misunderstood than the
part played by rent. Wages never cease to cost much and to
be worth little, but rent seems to have the property of going
on growing while the landlords themselves sleep or play. This
fact has impressed Mr. George so profoundly that, losing sight
of things in their true connection and proportions, he declares
that the growth of rent is the key to the whole situation, and
that neither wages nor any other kind of income, not derived
from land, can ever draw any advantage from the increase of
prosperity, because rent always steps in before them and runs off
with the spoil. He professes to found this conclusion on Bicardo's
theory of rent, which he accepts, not only as being absolutely
true, but as being too self-evident to need discussion. Indeed, he
seems disposed, like some others, to have his fling at Mill for
calling it ihepons asinorum of political economy ; but we shall
presently discover various grounds for suspecting that he has
not crossed the bridge successfully himself, and that here, as
elsewhere, he has been led seriously astray by looking at things
through the mist of doctrines he has only imperfectly mastered.
Anyhow, he offers his theory as a deduction from Ricardo's
law of rent, and this deduction claims particular attention be-
cause it is the corner-stone of his speculations, and constitutes
what he would consider his most original and important con-
tribution to economic science. He says that the law of rent
itself " has ever since the time of Ricardo . . . been clearly
apprehended and fully recognised. But not so its corollaries.
Plain as they are, the accepted doctrine cf wages . . . has
hitherto prevented their recognition. Yet, is it not as plain as
the simplest geometrical demonstrat'on that the corollary of
The Agrarian Socialism of Henry George. 477
the law of rent is the law of wages, when the division of the
produce is simply between rent and wages ; or the law of
wages and interest together, when the division is into rent,
wages, and interest " (p. 120). It is really plainer. It is a
mere truism. In any simple division, if you know how much
one of the factors gets, you know how much is left for the
others, and if you like to dignify your conclusion by the name
of corollary, you are free to do so. But the real point is this,
whether the share obtained by rent is fixed irrespectively of
the share obtained by wages and interest, or whether, on the
contrar}', it does not presuppose the previous determination of
the latter. There is no doubt, at any rate, as to how Ricardo
Mr. George's own authority regarded the matter. Accord-
ing to his celebrated theory, wages and interest are satisfied
first, and then rent is just what is over. Rent is simply surplus
profit. In hiring land, the farmer hires a productive machine,
and under the influence of competition gives, for the use of
that productive machine for a year, the whole amount of
its annual produce which remains as a surplus after paying
the wages of his labourers, and allowing interest on his capital,
and what he considers a fair profit for nis own work of super-
intendence. A certain current rate of wages and a certain
current rate of profit are presupposed, and after these demands
are met, then if the land has yielded anything more, that sur-
plus is what is paid as rent. Ricardo always presumes that
land that cannot produce enough to meet these demands will
not be cultivated at all, and that the poorest land actually
under cultivation is land that meets them and does no more ;
in other words, that leaves nothing over for rent. Let us take
Ricardo's law as it is stated by Mr. George himself (p. 118) :
" The rent of land is determined by the excess of its produce
over that which the same application can secure from the least
productive land in use." The standard by which, according
to this law, the amount of rent is supposed to be determined,
is the produce of the least productive land in use. Now, what
is the least productive land in use ? It is land that produces
just enough to pay the wages the labourers upon it are content
to work for, and the profits the farmer of it is content to farm
for. How that rate of wages and that rate of profits are fixed
478 Contemporary Socialism.
is no matter here ; but one thing is clear and it is enough for
our present purpose that they cannot be determined, as Mr.
George represents them as being, by a law of rent which pre-
sumes and is conditioned by their operation. Ricardo's law
virtually explains rent in terms of wages and profits, and it
would therefore be the height of absurdity to re-explain wages
and profits in terms of rent. And if that is so, the circumstance
which excites Mr. George's surprise, that economists have
always so clearly apprehended the law of rent itself, and yet
failed so completely to recognise the corollaries which he
plumes himself on being the first to deduce from it, admits of
a very simple explanation : the economists understood the law
they expounded, and were better reasoners than to employ it
as a demonstration of its own postulates.
This will become still plainer, if we look more closely at the
fact which has struck Mr. George so much the constant rise
of rent in modern society. He attributes that rise to many
causes ; in fact, there are few things that will not, in his opinion,
raise rent. Progress of population will do so ; but if population
is stationary, it will be done all the same by progress in the
arts ; the spread of education will do it ; retrenchment of public
expenditure will do it; extending the margin of cultivation
will do it ; and so will artificial contraction of that margin by
speculation. In short, he is so haunted by the idea, that he
seems to believe that so long as rent is suffered to survive at
all, whatever we do will only conduce to its increase. Every
step of progress we take extends its evil reign, and if progress
were to reach perfection, rent would drive wages and interest
completely off the field and appropriate " the whole produce "
(p. 179). These fears are not sober, but they could never have
risen had Mr. George first mastered the theory of rent he founds
them on. For rent, being the price paid by producers for the
use of a productive machine, cannot rise unless the price of the
product rises first (or its quantity, if so be that it does not
increase so much as to reduce its price), for unless the price
of agricultural produce rises, the farmer cannot afford to pay
a higher rent for the land than he paid before. No part of
Ricardo's theory is more elementary or more unchallenged than
this, that the rent of land constitutes no part of the price of
The Agrarian Socialism of Henry George. 479
bread, and that high, rent is not the cause of dear bread, but
dear bread the cause of high rent. Rent cannot rise further
or faster than the price of bread (or meat, of course) will allow
it, and the price of bread is beyond the landowner's control.
He cannot raise it. but once it rises, he can easily raise rent in
a corresponding degree. If a rise of rent depends on a rise in
the price of bread, what does a rise in the price of bread depend
on ? On two things which Mr. George ignores or misunder-
stands the progress of population and the diminishing return
in agricultural production. The growth of population increases
the demand for food so much as to raise its price, and renders
it profitable to resort to more difficult soils or more expensive
methods for additional supplies. The price will then remain
at the figure fixed by the cost of the costliest portion that is
brought to market.
Now Mr. George laughs at the idea of increase of population
causing any difficulty about the supply of food population,
which he is never tired of telling us, is the very thing most
wanted to multiply that supply, and possesses a power of
multiplying it in even a progressive ratio to its numbers.
'* The labour of 100 men," he says, " other things being equal,
will produce much more than one hundred times as much as
the labour of one man " (p. 163). And he laughs in the same
way at the idea of a diminishing return in agriculture, as if,
says he, matter were not eternal, and as if an increasing popu-
lation did not of itself increase the productive capacity of the
land through increasing the productive capacity of the labour
upon it. These two misunderstandings lie at the bottom of all
Mr. George's vagaries about rent, and they are perhaps natural
to a speculator, resident in a rich new colony, which, as he
describes it himself, " with greater natural resources than
France, has not yet a million people." No doubt in a country
at that particular stage of its historical development, increase
of population may involve an increase, and even a more than
proportional increase, of food as well as of other commodities ;
but that particular stage is a temporary and fleeting one,
and the world in general is very differently situated from the
State of California thirty years ago. Where there is plenty of
good land, the increase of population occasions no increase in
480 Contemporary Socialism.
the cost of producing food, because there is no need to resort
to poorer land for the purpose ; and while food is got as cheaply
as before, other things are got much more easily and abun-
dantly in consequence of the economies of labour and the many
mutual services which result from the increased numbers of
the community. But that state of matters only continues so
long as there remains no occasion to resort to poorer soils for
the production of food, and that time is long past in most
countries of the world. Mr. George no doubt contends that in
all countries it is just the same as in California, because even
though it may have become more difficult in some places to
produce food, it has become everywhere much easier to produce
other commodities, and (so he argues) the production of any
kind of commodity is practically equivalent to the production
of food, for it can always be exchanged for food. So it can, if
food is there to exchange for it ; but the very question is
whether food is there, or is there in the same relative quantity.
If I say it is more difficult to get food, it is no answer to tell
me that is is much easier to get other things. And because
other things may be multiplied indefinitely at the same cost,
that is no reason for denying that food can only be multiplied
indefinitely at increasing cost. Yet Mr. George reasons as if
it were. This confusion is repeated again and again in the
course of his book, and has evidently had much influence on
his whole speculations. He describes the advantages which
the colonist derives from the arrival of other settlers. " His
land yields no more wheat or potatoes than before, but it does
yield far more of all the necessaries and comforts of life. His
labour upon it will bring no heavier crops, and we will suppose
no more valuable crops, but it will bring far more of all the
other things for which men work " (p. 168). That is true, but
it is not to the purpose. The new settler required a market,
and population brought it ; but although population up to a
certain point is beneficial, you cannot for that reason declare
that beyond that point it cannot possibly become embarrassing ;
for on Mr. George's own hypothesis the ground yields no more
wheat and potatoes than before, and the limit to convenient
population is prescribed by the amount of food the ground
yields, and not by the quantity of other commodities which
The Agrarian Socialism of Henry George. 481
skilled labour can produce. If population were to exceed what
that stock of food would adequately serve, then new-comers
would find little comfort in Mr. George's rhetorical common-
place that they had two hands and only one mouth. His simple
confidence, that they never can be at a less, because they can
get food by exchange as well as by direct production, is a mere
dream, because he forgets that the people they are to exchange
with are in the same case as themselves. They can only give
food in exchange for other things so long as they raise more
food than serves their own numbers, and when their numbers
increase beyond that point, they will have no food to sell. The
limit to subsistence is not the productive capacity of labour,
but the productive capacity of land.
Mr. George's argument rests on another very curious fallacy.
He builds his whole theory of distribution on the fact of the ex-
tension of the margin of cultivation from better to worse soils,
but in the same breath he denies the existence of the very
conditions that alone make that fact possible. Nobody would
resort to worse land unless the better were unable to furnish
indefinite supplies at the old cost, i.e., unless the principle of
diminishing return prevailed in agriculture. Nor would any
one resort to worse land until it paid him to do so, i.e., until
the produce of this worse land became, through a rise in its
price or through improvements in the art of agriculture, equal
in net value to the produce previously yielded by the worst
land then in cultivation. Mr. George denies the principle of
diminishing return. He denies " that the recourse to lower
points of production involves a smaller aggregate of produce
in proportion to the labour expended." He denies this, " even
where there is no advance in the arts and the recourse to lower
points of production is clearly the result of the increased de-
mand of an increased population. For," says he, " increased
population of itself, and without any advance of the arts, im-
plies an increase in the productive power of labour " (p. 163).
But the question is, does it imply any increase in the produc-
tive power of the soil ? Mr. George contends that it does, but
only on the superior soils, not on the inferior. Increasing
population, in his opinion, renders all labour so much more
effective that " the gain in the superior qualities of land will
i i
482 Contemporary Socialism.
more than compensate for the diminished production on the
land last brought in " (p. 165). Now to all this there is one
simple answer: why then resort to inferior soils at all? If
crowding on the superior soils can make those soils indefinitely
productive, why go farther and fare worse ? There can be no
reason for having recourse to worse land, but that the better
has ceased to yield enough at the old cost. Organization and
economy of labour are excellent things, but they cannot press
from the udder more milk than it contains, or rear on the
meadow more sheep than it will carry, or grow on a limited
area available for cultivation more than a definite store of
food.
But while Mr. George denies that there is anything to force
people to poorer soils, he supposes at the same time that they
go freely in order to get a less profit. He holds the amount of
return obtained from cultivating the least productive land
in use to be the lowest rate of return for which anybody will
invest his capital, and therefore to serve in some sense as a
standard rate of remuneration for all applications of capital
and labour. Nobody, he declares, will work for less than he
can make on land that pays no rent. But will any one work
such land for less than he can make in other industries? That
is what Mr. George supposes to be done every day, although
he laughs at the idea of there being any necessity for doing it.
It need not be said that men are not such lunatics. They are
really forced to go to worse soils because the better cannot in-
crease their yield indefinitely at the same cost, and they never
go till they possess a reasonable expectation of making as much
out of the worse land as they did before out of the better.
From all these remarkable misconceptions of the working of
rent, and of the theory of Ricardo on the subject, which he
professes to follow, he draws his first law of distribution, which
is nevertheless, so far as it goes, undoubtedly correct: "Rent
depends on the margin of cultivation, rising as it falls and fall-
ing as it rises " (p. 155).
To find the law of rent, he has told us, is to find at the same
time its correlatives, the laws of wages and interest, and these
laws accordingly he states thus : " Wages depend on the
margin of cultivation, falling as it falls and rising as it rises.
The Agrarian Socialism of Henry George. 483
Interest (its ratio with wages being fixed by the net power of
increase which attaches to capital) depends on the margin
of cultivation, falling as it falls and rising as it rises " (p.
156). He is not content, however, with merely inferring these
two laws as corollaries from the law of rent, but thinks it
necessary to construct for wages and interest a certain inde-
pendent connection with the movement of the margin of culti-
vation. To do so, he first reduces interest, as he had already
reduced profits, to a form of wages ; he then erects all the
different forms of wages (i.e., every form of income except rent)
into a single hierarchical system, in which there are many
different rates of remuneration, occasioned by the necessity of
compensating different risks and exertions, but all moving up
and down concurrently with a certain general rate of wages at
the bottom of the scale ; and he finally connects this general
or standard rate of wages with the margin of cultivation, by
saying that no one would work at anything else for less than
he can make on land open to him free of rent, and that there-
fore the income made by cultivating such land must be the
lowest going.
Mr. George's view of the nature of interest is peculiar. He
considers it to be the natural increase of capital, the fruit of
inherent reproductive powers, like the increase of a calf into
a cow, or of a hen into a hen and chickens ; and because
interest comes in this way freely from nature, he believes the
private appropriation of it to be thoroughly just, although he
presently gives precisely the same reason for declaring rent
to be theft. It is unnecessary to discuss either the truth or
the consistency of this doctrine here, and I refer to it now
merely to explain that although Mr. George thus justifies
interest as being the price of a natural force, he introduces
it into his theory of the origin of poverty, as the price of
human labour. " The primary division of wealth," he says,
" is dual, not tripartite. Capital is but a form of labour, and
its distinction from labour is in reality but a subdivision, just
as the division of labour into skilled and unskilled would be.
In our examination we have reached the same point as would
have been attained had we simply treated capital as a form
of labour, and sought the law which divides the produce
484 Contemporary Socialism.
between rent and wages ; that is to say between the possessors
of the two factors, natural substance and powers and human
exertion which two factors, by their union, produce all
wealth " (p. 144). The difference between interest and wages
is but as the difference between the wages of skilled labour
and the wages of unskilled ; the wages of skilled labour is
only the wages of unskilled, plus some consideration for the
skill, or for the time spent in training, or for drawbacks of
various kinds ; and the wages of unskilled labour is fixed by
the amount that can be made on land that pays no rent.
Profits, salaries, stipends, fees are, in the same way as interest,
declared to be modes of wages. The 50,000 a year of the
merchant prince, it seems, is just the 50 of the day-labourer,
with 49,950 added to compensate him for the additional perils
or drawbacks or discomforts of his life. All incomes, except
the landowner's, row in the same boat, and the day-labourer's
sets the stroke. When the margin of cultivation descends, he
is the first to suffer, and then all the rest suffer with him. If
he loses 10 a year, they successively lose 10 too ; the doctor
or bank-agent will have 490, instead of 500; the railway
chairman, 4,990, instead of 5,000; the merchant prince,
49,990, instead of 50,000; and their loss is the landlord's
gain. Here then we see the whole mystery of iniquity as Mr.
George professes to unravel it. " The wealth produced in
every community is divided into two parts by what may be
termed the rent line, which is fixed by the margin of cultiva-
tion, or the return which labour and capital could obtain from
such natural opportunities as are free to them without payment
of rent. From the part of produce below this line, wages and
interest must be paid. All that is above goes to the owners
of land" (p. 121).
Mr. George here confounds the margin of cultivation with
the margin of appropriation. When economists speak of an
extension of the margin of cultivation, they mean a resort to
less productive land, and that is always accompanied by a rise
of rent; but an extension of the margin of appropriation may
be a resort to more productive land, and jnay occasion a fall
of rent, as has been done in Europe to-day through appro-
priation in America. But what in reality he builds his argu-
The Agrarian Socialism of Henry George. 485
ment on is neither the movement of the margin of cultivation,
nor the movement of the margin of appropriation, but simply
the existence of abundance of unappropriated land. "Wh^re
that exists, rent will, of course, bs low, and wages will be
high, for nobody will give much for land when he can get
plenty for nothing at a little distance off. and nobody will work
at anything else for less than he can make on land that he
may have for nothing. For such land supplies labourers with
an alternative. It is not the best of alternatives, for it needs
capital before one can make use of it, and it takes time before
any return is made from it. A diversity of national industries,
for example, is better, and raises wages more effectively.
Agricultural wages are higher in the manufacturing counties
of England than in the purely agricultural ; and they are
higher in the manufacturing Eastern States of Mr. George's
own country than in the purely agricultural States of the
West, which possess the largest amount of unappropriated
land. The reason of this is twofold : other industries increase
the competition for labour generally, and create, at the same
time, a better market for farm produce. Unoccupied land
would act though less effectually in the same way as an
alternative ; but few countries are fortunate enough to possess
much of it, and as Mr. George does not propose to interfere
with the occupation of land, but only to tax the occupiers, he
has no scheme for showing how countries that have it not are
to get it. It is easy, of course, to call it from the vasty deep.
" Put to any one capable of thought," says Mr. George, " this
question : ' Suppose there should arise from the English Chan-
nel or the German Ocean a Neman's land on which common
labour to an unlimited amount should be able to make ten
shillings a day, and which would remain unappropriated and
of free access like the commons which once comprised so large
a part of English soil. What would be the effect upon wages
in England ? ' He would at once tell 3*011 that common wages
throughout England must soon increase to ten shillings a
day " (p. 207). Perhaps so ; but a little more thought would
teach him that " a Neman's land on which common labour to
an unlimited amount should be able to make ten shillings a
day" must be itself unlimited in extent, and could not be
486 Contemporary Socialism.
accommodated in the English Channel. Apart from preter-
natural conditions, it could not afford remunerative employment
to more than a definite number of occupants and cultivators,
and when it came to be entirely occupied, England would
stand exactly as it does at present. If the millennium of the
working class is to depend on the discovery of a Neman's land
of infinite expansibility, it must be indefinitely postponed.
But supposing such an alternative existed and did influence
the amount employers pay their workmen, how is it to influ-
ence in the same direction the amount they reserve to them-
selves ? It is true, as a matter of fact, that wages and interest
generally rise and fall together, for the simple reason that they
are generally subject to the same influences. When capital is
busily employed, so is necessarily labour, and then both wages
and interest are high ; when capital is largely unemployed, so
is naturally labour also, and then both wages and interest are
low. But an influence like that which is now adduced by Mr.
George does not act on labourer and employer alike. It sup-
plies the labourer with an alternative which strengthens his
hands in his battle for wages with employers. Does it then at
the same time strengthen the employer in his battle with the
labourer? Does it first raise wages at the expense of profits,
and then raise profits at the expense of wages? It clearly
cannot. To argue as if the existence of alternative work
which benefits the labourer, must benefit the employer in the
same degree, and as if the want of it must injure the employer
because it injures the labourer, is simply to misunderstand the
very elements of the case. One might as well argue that
because the heights of Alma were a decided strategical advan-
tage to the Russians, who were posted on them, they were
therefore an equal advantage to the Allies, who had to scale
them.
Laws of distribution, which are founded on a series of such
arbitrary absurdities as those which I have successively ex-
posed, are manifestly incapable of throwing any rational light
on the causes of poverty, or giving any practical guidance to
its amelioration. But, absurd as they may be, they are at
least propounded with considerable parade, and we are there-
fore quite unprepared for the strange turn Mr. George next
The Agrarian Socialism of Henry George. 487
chooses to take. It will be remembered that the only reason
why he undertook to search for these laws at all was, that
by means of them he might explain why wages tended to sink
to a minimum that would give but a bare living; but now
that he has discovered those laws, he declines to apply them
to the solution of this problem. He will not draw the very
conclusion he has laid down all his apparatus to establish. He
will not solve the problem he has promised us to solve; in fact,
he tells us he never meant to solve it; he never thought or
said wages tended to sink to a minimum that would give a
bare living ; he never said they tended to sink at all ; all he
meant to assert was that if they increased, they did not in-
crease so fast as the national wealth generally. He used " the
word wages not in the sense of a quantity, but in the sense of
a proportion" (p. 154). He will not therefore, after all, show
us why the poor are getting poorer ; but he will read for us,
if we like, another riddle, why they are not growing rich so
fast as some of their neighbours. In the name of the patient
reader, I may be permitted to lodge a humble but firm protest
against this eccentric and sudden change of front. Mr. George
ought really to have decided what problem he was to write
about before he began to write at all, and we may therefore
for the present dismiss both his problem and his explanation
till he makes up his mind.
III. Mr. George's Remedy.
After our experience of his problem and his explanation,
we cannot indulge expectations of finding any serious or
genuine worth in the practical remedy Mr. George has to
prescribe ; and we hear, without a thought of incongruity, the
lofty terms in which, like other medicines we know of, it is
advertised to the world by its inventor as a panacea for every
disease society is heir to. ' ; What I propose," he says, " as the
simple yet sovereign remedy which will raise wages, increase
the earnings of capital, extirpate pauperism, abolish poverty,
give remunerative employment to whoever wishes it, afford
free scope to human powers, lessen crimes, elevate morals and
taste and intelligence, purify government, and carry civilization
to yet nobler heights, is to appropriate rent by taxation"
488 Contemporary Socialism.
(p. 288). And the direction for applying the remedy is equally
simple : it is to " abolish all taxation save that upon land
values" (ibid.). This remedy is currently described as the
nationalization of land ; but nationalization of land is a phrase
which stands for several very different and even conflicting
ideas. With the usual fatality of revolutionary parties, the
English land nationalizes are already broken into three sepa-
rate organizations, and represent at least three mutually in-
compatible schemes of opinion. There is first the socialist
idea of abolishing both individual ownership and individual
occupation of land, and cultivating the soil of the country by
means of productive associations or rural communes. Then
there is the exactly opposite principle of Mr. A. R. Wallace
and his friends, who are so much in love with both individual
ownership and individual occupation that their whole aim is
to compel us all by law to become occupying owners of land,
whether we have any mind to be so or no. And, finally, we
have the scheme of Mr. George, which must be carefully dis-
tinguished from the others, because he would destroy individual
ownership but leave individual occupation perfectly intact.
His non-interference with individual occupation is remarkable,
because, as we have seen, he declares the cause of poverty
to be the exclusion of unemployed labour from the opportunity
of cultivating land, and because that exclusion is chiefly due
to the prior occupation of the land by earlier settlers. Mr.
George, however, thinks he can provide a plentiful supply of
unoccupied land, at a nominal price, for an indefinite number
of new-comers without disturbing any prior occupant. He
would do it by merely abolishing the private owner and asking
the occupant to pay his rent to the State instead of to a
landlord, and he explains to us how it is that this simple
expedient is to effect the purpose he desires. " The selling
price of land would fall ; land speculation would receive its
death-blow ; land monopolization would no longer pay. Mil-
lions and millions of acres, from which settlers are now shut
out by high prices, would be abandoned by their present
owners, or sold to settlers upon nominal terms. And this not
merely on the frontiers, but within what are now considered
profitable districts. . , . And even in densely populated
The Agrarian Socialism of Henry George. 489
England would such a policy throw open to cultivation many
hundreds of thousands of acres now held as private parks,
deer preserves, and shooting grounds. For this simple device
of placing all taxes on the value of land would be in effect
putting up the land at auction to whoever would pay the
highest rent to the State. The demand for land fixes its value,
and hence if taxes were placed so as to very nearly consume
that value, the man who wished to hold land without using
it would have to pay very nearly what it would be worth to
any one who wanted to use it " (p. 309).
Putting up land to auction will not secure cheap or nomin-
ally rented farms to an indefinite number of new-comers,
unless there is an indefinite supply of land to divide into farms,
but in the present world that is not so ; and when the existing
stock of agricultural land is exhausted, and every man has his
farm, but there is no more for any new-comer, what is Mr.
George's remedy then ? Abolition of property in land will of
course abolish all trading in such property ; but trading in
landed property does not restrict its occupation. The land
speculator, while he holds the land, of course keeps out another
competitor from the ownership, but he keeps nobody from its
occupation and cultivation. He is surely as ready as anybody
else to make money, if money is to be made, by letting it. even
by putting it up to auction, if Mr. George prefers that mode of
letting. The transfer of the power of letting to the State will
not secure a tenant any faster. And as to the private parks,
deer forests and shootings of England, Mr. George forgets that
they are, most of them, at present rented, and not, as he seems
to fancy, owned by their occupants, and that it would not
make a straw of difference to them whether they paid their
rents to the Crown factor or to the landlord's agent. Since
Mr. George does not prohibit the making of fortunes, he can-
not prevent commercial kings from America or great brewers
from England hiring forests in the Scotch Highlands. And
since, in spite of his celebrated declaration, that "to the landed
estates of the Duke of Westminster the poorest child that is
born in London to-day has as much right as has his eldest son,"
he would still leave the Duke a princely income from the rents
of the buildings upon his estates, and would suffer him to enjoy
490 Contemporary Socialism.
it without paying a single tax or rate on it all (p. 320).
why should the Duke give up his forest in Assynt, merely
because the Crown is to draw the rent instead of the Duke
of Sutherland? Mr. George accordingly proposes a remedy
that would remedy nothing, but leave things just as they
are. Deer forests and the like may not be the best use
of the land, but the particular change Mr. George suggests
would not suppress them or even in the slightest degree
check their spread, and would not throw the ground now occu-
pied by them into the ordinary market for cultivation. And,
besides, even if it did, the land so provided for new-comers
would necessarily soon come to an end, and with it Mr.
George's" simple and sovereign remedy," at least in its specific
operation.
But it is noteworthy that in his lectures in this country
in 1884, Mr. George made little account of the specific opera-
tion of his remedy as a means of furnishing unemployed
labourers with a practicable alternative in agricultural pro-
duction, to which they might continue indefinitely to resort,
and that he preferred for the most part drawing his cure for
poverty from the public revenue which the confiscation of rent
would place at the disposal of the community. Now as to this
aspect of his remedy, it is surely one of the oddest of his
delusions to dream of curing pauperism by multiplying the
recipients of poor relief, and taking away from it, as he claims
credit for doing, through the countenance of numbers, that
reproach which has hitherto been the strongest preventive
against it. Besides, he and his friends greatly exaggerate the
amount of the fund the country would derive from the rent of
its ground. It would really fall far short of paying the whole
of our present taxation, not to speak of leaving anything over
for wild schemes of speculative beneficence. The rural rent
of the country is only seventy millions, and that sum includes
the rent of buildings, which Mr. George does not propose to
touch, and which would probably in the aggregate balance the
ground rent of towns, which he includes in his confiscation
project. Now our local taxation alone conies very near that
figure, and certainly the people generally can scarcely be ex-
pected to rise from a condition of alleged poverty to one of
The Agrarian Socialism of Henry George. 49 1
substantial wealth, or even comfort, through merely having
their local rates paid for them.
The result would therefore be poor, even if no compensation
were to be made to the present receivers of the rent ; but with
the compensation price to pay, it would be really too ridicu-
lously small to throw a whole nation into labour and disorder
for. Much may be done much must be done to make the
land of the country more available and more profitable for the
wants of the body of the people, but not one jot of what is
required would be done by mere nationalization of the owner-
ship, or even done better on such a basis than on that which
exists. The things that are requisite and necessary would
remain still to be done, though land were nationalized to-
morrow, and they can be equally well done without introduc-
ing that cumbrous innovation at all. "With compensation the
scheme is futile ; without it, it is repugnant to a healthy moral
sense. Mr. George indeed regards confiscation as an article of
faith. It is of the essence of the message he keeps on preach-
ing with so much conviction and courage and fervour. Private
property in land, he tells us, is robbery, and rent is theft, and
the reason he offers for these strong assertions is that nothing
can rightly be private property which is not the fruit of human
labour, and that land is not the fruit of human labour, but the
gift of God. As the gift of God, it was, he believes, intended
for all men alike, and therefore its private appropriation seems
to him unjust. Under these circumstances he considers it as
preposterous to compensate landowners for the loss of their
land, as it would be to compensate thieves for the restitution
of their spoil. To confiscate land is only to take one's own,
Mr. George has no difficulty about the sound of the word, nor
is he troubled by any subtleties as to the length it is proper to
go in the work. Mr. Mill, whose writings probably put Mr.
George first 011 this track, proposed to intercept for national
purposes only the future unearned increase of the rent of land,
only that portion of the future increase of rent which should
not be due to the expenditure of labour and capital on the soil.
Mr. George would appropriate the entire rent, the earned in-
crease as well as the unearned, the past as well as the future ;
with this exception, that interest on such improvements as are
49 2 Contemporary Socialism.
the fruit of human exertion, and are clearly distinguishable
from the land itself , would be allowed fora moderate period.
He says in one place, " But it will be said : These are improve-
ments which in time become indistinguishable from the land
itself ! Very well; then the title to the improvements becomes
blended with the title to the land ; the individual right is lost
in the common right. It is the greater that swallows up the
less, not the less that swallows up the greater. Nature does
not proceed from man, but man from nature, and it is into the
bosom of nature that he and all his works must return again "
(p. 242). And in another place, speaking of the separation of
the value of the land from the value of the improvements, he
says : " In the oldest country in the world no difficulty what-
ever can attend the separation, if all that be attempted is to
separate the value of the clearly distinguishable improvements
made within a moderate period, from the value of the land,
should they be destroyed. This manifestly is all that justice
or policy requires. Absolute accuracy is impossible in any
system, and to attempt to separate all the human race has done
from what nature originally provided would be as absurd as
impracticable. A swamp drained, or a hill terraced by the
Romans, constitutes now as much a part of the natural ad-
vantages of the British Isles as though the work had been done
by earthquake or glacier. The fact that after a certain lapse
of time the value of such permanent improvements would be
considered as having lapsed into that of the land, and would be
taxed accordingly, could have no deterrent effect on -such im-
provements, for such works are frequently undertaken upon
leases for years " (p. 302). The sum of this teaching seems to
be that Mr. George would recognise no separate value in any
improvements except buildings, and would be disposed to ap-
propriate even them after such lapse of time as would make it
not absolutely unprofitable to erect them.
What Mr. George fails to perceive is that agricultural land
is in no sense more a gift of God, and in no sense less an
artificial product of human labour, than other commodities
than gold, for example, or cattle, or furniture, in which he
owns private property to be indisputably just. Some of the
richest land in England lies in the fen country, and that land
The Agrarian Socialism of Henry George. 493
is as much the product of engineering skill and prolonged
labour as Portland Harbour or Menai Bridge. Before the days
of Sir Cornelius Vermuyden it was part of the bottom of the
sea. and its inhabitants, as they are described by Camden,
trode about on stilts, and lived by snaring waterfowl. Some
of the best land in Belgium was barren sand-heaps a hundred
years ago, and has been made what it is only by the continuous
and untiring labour of its small proprietors. " God made the
sea, man made the dry land," is a proverb among the Dutch,
who have certainly made their own country as much as Mr.
George has made his book. In these cases the labour and
the results of the labour are obvious, but no cultivated land
exists anywhere that is not the product of much labour
certainly much more labour than Mr. George seems to have
any idea of. In the evidence taken before the recent Crofters'
Commission, Mr. Greig, who conducted the Duke of Suther-
land's improvements in the Strath of Kildonan, stated that
the cost of reclaiming 1,300 acres of land there, and fur-
nishing them with the requisite buildings for nine variously
sized farms, was 46,000. Apart from the buildings, the mere
work of reclamation alone is generally estimated to have cost
20 an acre, and in another part of the same estates an equally
extensive piece of reclamation is said to have cost 30 an acre.
By means of this great expenditure of capital and labour, land
that would hardly fetch a rent of a shilling an acre before was
worth twenty or thirty shillings an acre after. Not the build-
ings only, but the land itself has been made what it is by
labour. It has been adapted to a useful office by human skill
as really as the clay is by the potter, or the timber by the
wright. Deduct from the rent of these reclaimed acres the
value contributed by human labour, and how much would
remain to represent the gift of God ? And would it be greater
or less than would remain after a like process applied, say, to a
sovereign or to a nugget of gold ? Mr. George has no scruple
about the justice of private property and inheritance in the
nugget, and indeed in all kinds of movable wealth. " The
pen with which I am writing," he says, for example, " is justly
mine. No other human being can rightfully lay claim to it,
for in me is the title of the original producers who made it "
494 Contemporary Socialism.
(p. 236). The original producer of the nugget appropriated
what was surely a gift of God as much as the clays or loams
of husbandry ; and if he, as Mr. George admits, has " a clear
and indefeasible title to the exclusive possession and enjoy-
ment " of his nugget, and may transmit that title by bequest
or sale unimpaired for an unrestricted period of time, why is
the original producer of agricultural land to be held up as
more than half a thief, and the present possessor as one
entirely ? And if a proprietor has spent 20,000 in buildings,
and 26,000 in reclamations, in order to convert the surface of
the earth into useful arable soil, why is he to be allowed rent
on the 20,000, and denied it on the 26,000?
So far as the distinction between gifts of nature and pro-
ducts of labour goes, movable wealth and immovable stand
on precisely the same' footing. Both are alike gifts of nature,
and both are alike products of labour. In thinking otherwise
Mr. George is certainly supported by the high authority of
Mr. Mill, who has also failed to recognise how far arable land
was really an artificial product. He says : " The land is not
of man's creation, and for a person to appropriate to himself a
mere gift of nature, not made to him in particular, but which
belonged to all others until he took possession of it, is prlnia
facie an injustice to all the rest " (Dissert, iv., 289). But what
is of man's creation? He finds his materials already created,
and he merely appropriates them, and adapts them to his own
uses by labour, exactly as he does with the soil that in his
hands becomes fruitful fields. Land is as much a creation of
man as anything else is, and everything is as much a gift of
God as land. That distinction is therefore of no possible help
to us. The true ground for observing a difference between the
right of property in land and the right of property in other
things must be sought for elsewhere. It is not because land
is a gift of nature, while other things are products of labour,
but because land is at once limited in quantity, and essential
to the production of the general necessaries of life. These are
the characteristics that make land a unique and exceptional
commodity, and require the right of property in it to be sub-
ject to different conditions from the right of property in other
products of lalbour. The justification of the restriction of that
The Agrarian Socialism of Henry George. 495
right in the case of land accordingly rests neither on theological
dogma nor on metaphysical distinction, but on a plain practical
social necessity. Where land is still abundant, where popu-
lation is yet scanty as compared with the land it occupies,
there is no occasion for interference ; the proprietor might enjoy
as absolute a title as Mr. George claims over his pen, without
any public inconvenience, but, on the contrary, with all the
public benefit that belongs to absolute ownership in other
things. But as soon as population has increased so much as to
compel recourse to inferior soils for its subsistence, it becomes
the duty of society to see that the most productive use possible
is being made of its land, and to introduce such a mode of
tenure as seems most likely effectually to secure that end.
Under these circumstances private property in land requires
an additional justification, besides that which is sufficient for
other things ; it must be conducive to the best use of the land.
Societj" has become obliged to husband its resources ; if it will
do so most efficiently by means of private property, private
property will stand ; if not, then it must fall. Of course land
is not the only kind of property that is subject to this social
claim. All property is so held, but in the case of other things
the claim seldom comes into open view, because it is only on
exceptional occasions that it is necessary to call it into active
operation. Provisions are among the things Mr. George con-
siders not gifts of God but products of labour, but in a siege
private property in provisions would absolutely cease, and the
social right would be all in all. These products of labour would
be nationalized at that time because in the circumstances the
general interests of the community required them to be so, and
the reason why they are not nationalized at other times is at
bottom really this, that the general interest of the community
is better served by leaving them as they are. In some parts
of the world all products of labour actually are nationalized ;
in Samoa, for example, a man who wants anything has a latent
but recognised claim to obtain it from any man who has it ;
but Dr. Turner explains that the result is most pernicious,
because while it has extinguished absolute destitution, it has
lowered the level of prosperity and prevented all progress, no
man caring to labour when he cannot retain the fruits of his
496 Contemporary Socialism.
labour. Civilized communities, however, have always perceived
the immense public advantage of the institution of private
property, and the right to such property, of whatever kind,
really rests in the last analysis on a social justification, and is
held subject to a social claim, if any reason occurred to exert
it. In this respect there is nothing peculiar about land. The
only peculiarity about land is that a necessity exists for the
practical exercise of the claim, because landed property involves
the control of the national food supply, and of other primary
and essential needs of the community. The growth of popu-
lation forces more and more imperatively upon us the necessity
of making the most of our land, and consequently raises the
question how far private property in such a subject is con-
ducive to that end.
Now, in regard to capital invested in trade or manufactures,
it has always been justly considered that the private interest of
its possessor constitutes the best guarantee for its most pro-
ductive use, because the trader or manufacturer is animated
by the purely commercial motive of gaining the greatest pos-
sible increase out of the employment of his capital. But it
must be admitted that the private interest of the landlord does
not supply us with so sure a guarantee. He desires wealth no
doubt as well as the trader, but he is not so purely influenced
by that desire in his use of his property. He is apt to sacrifice
the most productive use of land or, in other words, his purely
pecuniary interest to considerations of ease or pleasure, or
social importance, or political influence. He may consolidate
farms, to the distress of the small tenants and the injury of the
country generally, merely because there is less trouble in
managing a few large farmers than a number of small ; or he
may refuse to give his tenants those conditions of tenure that are
essential to efficient cultivation of the land, merely to keep them
more dependent on himself in political conflicts. Mr. George,
however, has a strong conviction that even the purely pecuniary
interest of the private owner tends to keep land out of cultiva-
tion, but he builds his conclusion on the special experiences
of land speculation rather than on the general facts of land-
.owning. Of course if there were no land-owning, there would
be no land speculation ; but to abolish land-owning merely to
The Agrarian Socialism of Henry George. 497
cure the evils of land speculation is, if I may borrow an illus-
tration of his own. tantamount to burning a house to roast a
joint. Besides, all that is alleged is that speculation keeps a
certain amount of land in America out of the market. In other
countries it suffers from a contrary reproach. The evil of the
bandes noires of France and the Landmetzger of Germany is
their excessive activity in bringing land into the market, by
which they have aggravated the pernicious subdivision of
estates that exist. In America the effect of speculation may
be different, but at any rate keeping land out of the market is
one thing, keeping it out of cultivation is another ; and it is
hard to see how speculation should prevent the extension of
cultivation, because cultivation may be as well undertaken by
tenant as proprietor, and why should a speculator, who buys
land to sell it in a few years at a high profit, object to taking
an annual rent in the interval from an}- one who thought it
would pay him to hire the land ? It would not be fair to con-
demn the landlord for the sins of the land speculator, even if
the latter were all that Mr. George's curious horror of him
represents him to be, and if he exercised any of the irrationally
extravagant effects which Mr. George ascribes to his influence
over the economy of things ; but as a matter of fact a sober
judgment can discover no possible reason why the private
interest of a land speculator as such should stand in the way
of the cultivation of the soil he happens to hold. "What con-
cerns us here, however, is not the private interest of the
speculator, but the private interest of the landlord, whether a
speculative purchaser or not. Now, much land lies waste at
present through the operation of the Game Laws, which estab-
lish an artificial protection of sport as an alternative industry
against agriculture, but then the general institution of private
property in land must not be credited with the specific effects
of the Game Laws, and need not be suppressed in order to get
rid of them. The abolition of these laws would place the culture
of wild animals and the culture of domestic animals on more
equal terms in the commercial competition, and would probably
restore the balance of the landlord's pecuniary advantage in
favour of the latter. Besides, it is not a question of ownership
but of occupation of land that is really involved. If the land
K K
498 Contemporary Socialism.
were nationalized to-morrow, the State would have to decide
whether it would let as much land as had hitherto been let to
sporting tenants ; and of course it can decide that, if it chooses,
now.
So far as I am able to judge, there is only one respect in
which the pecuniary interest of the landlord appears to be
unfavourable to an extension of cultivation. There is probably
a considerable quantity of land that might be cultivated with
advantage to the community generally by labourers who ex-
pected nothing from it but the equivalent of ordinary wages,
and which is at present suffered to lie waste, because its pro-
duce would be insufficient to yield anything more than wages,
and would afford nothing to the capitalist farmer as profit or
to the landlord as rent. How far this operates I have, of course,
no means of knowing ; but here again one may deal with
waste ground if it were judged requisite to do so, without
resorting to any revolutionary schemes of general land
nationalization. Of course much land is kept in an inferior
condition, or perhaps absolutely waste, through want of capital
on the part of its owners, but the same result would happen
under the nationalization plan, through want of capital on the
part of the tenants. Mr. George does not propose to supply
any of the necessary capital out of public funds, but trusts to
the enterprise and ability of the tenants themselves to furnish
it ; so that the occupier would be no better situated under the
State than he would be under an embarrassed landlord, if he
enjoyed compensation for his improvements. In either case
he would improve as far as his own means allowed, and he
would improve no further. But if by nationalization of land
we get rid of the embarrassed landlord, we lose at the same
time the wealthy one, and the tenants of the latter would be
decidedly worse off under the State, which only drew rents,
but laid out no expenses. The community, too, and the general
cultivation of the country would be greatly the losers. Mr.
George has probably little conception of the amount of money
an improving landlord thinks it necessary to invest in main-
taining or increasing the productive capacity of his land. A
convenient illustration of it is furnished by the evidence of Sir
Arnold Kemball, commissioner of the Duke of Sutherland,
The Agrarian Socialism of Henry George. 499
before the recent Crofters' Commission. Sir Arnold gave in
an abstract of the revenue and expenditure on the Sutherland
estates for the thirty years 1853-1882, and it appears that the
total revenue for that period was 1,039,748, and the total
expenditure (exclusive of the expenses of the ducal establish-
ment in Sutherland) was 1,285,122, or a quarter of a million
more than the entire rental. Here, then, is a dilemma for Mr.
George : With equally liberal management of the land on the
part of the State, how is he to endow widows and pay the taxes
of the bourgeoisie out of the rents ? And without such liberal
management how is he to promote the spread of cultivation
better than the present owners ?
The production of food, however, is only one of those uses
of the land in which the public have a necessary and growing
interest. They require sites for houses, for churches, for
means of communication, for a thousand purposes, and the
landlord often refuses to grant such altogether, or charges an
exorbitant price for the privilege. He has refused sites to
churches from sectarian reasons ; for labourers' cottages in
rural districts for fear of increasing the poor-rate; in small
towns with a growing trade from purely sentimental objections
to their growth ; he has refused rights of way to people in
search of pure air, for fear they disturbed his game, and he
has enclosed ancient paths and commons which had been the
enjoyment of all from immemorial time. I do not speak of the
ground rent in large cities where owners are numerous, be-
cause that, though a question of great magnitude, involves
peculiarities that separate it from the allied question of rural
ground-rent, and make it more advantageously treated on its
own basis. But in country districts where owners are few,
and the possession of land therefore confers on one man power
of many sorts over the growth and comfort of a whole com-
munity, that power ought certainly to be closely controlled by
the State. Its tyrannical exercise has probably done more
than anything else to excite popular hostility against land-
lordism, and to lend strength to the present crusade for the
total abolition of private property in land. But here again
the cure is far too drastic for the disease. What is needed is
merely the prevention of abuses in the management of land,
500 Contemporary Socialism.
and that will be accomplished better by regulations in the
interest of the community than by any scheme of complete
nationalization. A sound land reform must in this country
at least set its face in precisely the contrary direction. It
must aim at multiplying, instead of extirpating, the private
owners of land, and at nursing by all wise and legitimate
means the growth of a numerous occupying proprietary. State
ownership by itself is no better guarantee than private owner-
ship by itself for the most productive possible use of the land ;
indeed, if we judge from the experience of countries where it
is practised, it is a much worse one ; but by universal consent
the best and surest of all guarantees for the highest utilization
of the land is private ownership, coupled with occupation by
the owner.
INDEX.
A.
Agriculture, Russian, 291.
Albrecht, the Prophet, 137.
Alexander II., Czar, 264, 205; death,
283.
Alliance, Eepublican Socialist, 47.
Amorphism, 274.
Anabaptist Socialism, 219.
Anarchism, 4 ; in France, 47 ; Aus-
tria, 55 ; Italy, 58 ; Spain, 62 ;
Portugal, 66 ; Belgium, 70 ; Hol-
land, 73; Switzerland, 74; Bos-
ton, 77, 248 ; United States, 80 ;
London, 86 ; Melbourne, 91 ; ul-
tra - socialistic, 249 ; ultra-demo-
cratic, 250; ultra-revolutionary,
255 ; anti-religious, 254 ; War-
saw, 296.
AnarcJiist, The, 86.
Anarchists, Congress at Geneva,
254.
Applegarth, Mr., 320.
Arbitration, Papal, 245 ; courts of,
431.
Arendal Congress, 66.
Ashburnham, Lord, 243.
Austria, Socialism in, 54 ; condition
of people in, 56.
Aveling, Dr. and Mrs., on America,
81 ; on Knights of Labor, 84 ;
on Anarchists, 249.
B.
Babbage, C., 26.
Baboeuf , C. G., 17, 188.
Bakunin, M., in Italy, 57 ; Hegelian,
261 ; with. German Hegelians,
261 ; escape, 273 ; in London, 274 ;
Amorphism, 274; Lyons insur-
rection, 278 ; in Zurich, 278.
Bamberger, M., 203.
501
Barton, Mr., 370.
Bastiat, M., 297.
Bax, Belfort, 84.
Baxter, Dudley, 303.
Beaconsfield, Lord, 210.
Bebel, A., 34 : on armaments, U7 ; 11 ,
125.
Becker, B., 108.
Beesley, Professor, 149.
Beggars in Russia, 286.
Belgium, Socialism, 45, 70 ; forests,
412 ; railways, 416.
Bellamy, E., 79, 403, 434.
Besant, Mrs., 88.
Bismarck, Prince, State Socialism,
12 ; Rodbertus on, 34 ; peasant-
catching, 52 ; right to labour,
421.
Black Division Party, The, 283.
Black Division, The, 292.
Black Hand, The, 62.
Blanc, Louis, 2, 3, 95, 122; theist,
254.
Blanquists, 53.
Boeckh, Professor, 97.
Boehmert, V., 315.
Boerenbond, The, 245.
Bonar, Mr., quoted, 75.
Boston Anarchists, 77.
Boycotting, 42.
Birmingham, 433.
Brassey, Lord, 310, 330.
Brentano, Professor L., on A. Smith,
198 ; on condition of people, 204 ;
working-class claims, 213 ; trade
unions, 216 ; working class insur-
ance, 216.
Brimstone League, 148.
Brissot, M., 16.
Brook Farm, 402.
Brousse, M., 50.
Broussists, 51, 52.
LL
502
Index.
Buchsel, Dr , 239.
Buda Pest Congress, 54.
Burns, John, 85.
Burt, T., M.P., 86.
C.
Cabet, 3.
Cairnes, Professor, on Mill, 5; on
working-class prospects, 297 ; cost
of labour, 310.
California, 435.
Carpenter, E., 89.
Castelar, E., 61.
Catholic Church on employer's re-
sponsibility, 72.
Catholic Socialists, 223.
Catholic Workmen's Clubs, 223,
229 ; in France, 243.
Caudron, Father, 243, 244.
Cavour, Count, 288.
Chamberlain, Rt. Hon. J., M.P.,
ransom, 385, 386; overgovern-
ment, 395.
Channing, W. H., 403.
Chevalier, Michel, 348.
China, Socialist Clubs, 92.
Christian Socialism in England,
87, 220 ; Germany, 223 ; Austria,
242 ; France, 243.
Christian Social Association, 229.
Christian Social Politics, 242.
Church, Primitive Communism of,
237.
Clemenceau, M., 47.
Coaches, Stage, 451.
Cobden, R., 221 ; on Government
intervention, 372; on Prussian
Government, 393.
Colins, M., 2.
Colinsian Socialists, 2, 72.
Colonization, Nihilist, 281.
Companies, Joint Stock, 417.
Communards, 46.
Commune, Paris, 277; Russian,
259, 289.
Communist League, 142, 144.
Conciliation Courts, 35.
Congress at Halle, 33, 37; Gotha,
88 ; Havre, 47, 48 ; Wyden, 44, 126,
421; Zurich, 76; Eisenach, 202;
D'Etienne, 50; Buda Pest, 54;
Lisbon, 66 : Arendal, 86 ; Stock-
holm, 67 ; Copenhagen, 69 ; New-
ark, U.S.A., 80; Leipzig, 103, 179;
Geneva, 150.
Co-operative production, 338, 339.
Copenhagen Congress, 59.
Costa, A., 58.
Councils of Labour, 35.
Crises, Commercial, 323, 451.
D.
Dave, V., 86.
Davenant, Dr., 303, 455.
Davitt, Michael, 90.
Dawes, Mr., quoted, 60.
Day of labour, Normal, 240, 434.
Day of labour, Eight hours, 36,
52 ; Cardinal Manning on, 244 ;
international compulsory, 434 ; in
Victoria, 435 ; California, 435.
Death-rate, 452.
Delitzsch. See Schultze-Delitzsch.
Democracy, relation to socialism,
16, 18; American and Continental,
20.
Denmark, socialism, 67.
Denny, William, 315, 322.
Distribution of incomes, 456.
Dockyards, English, 410.
Dolgourouki, the revolutionist,
274.
Dollinger, Dr. von, 223.
Donnigsen, Helena von, 106.
Dynamite, 256.
E.
Egaiix, Conspiracy of, 17.
Eight Hour Day. See Day of
labour.
Eisenach Congress, 202.
Ely, Professor, 77, 80.
Emancipation of serfs, 270, 284,
286.
Engel, Dr., 31, 203.
Engelhardt, Professor, 293.
Engels, F., 93, 131, 142, 146.
England, Socialism in, 83.
Equality, Love of, 24.
Equality of conditions, 385.
Ethical School of Economics, 209.
Eudes, General, 53.
F.
Fabian Society, 88.
Familistere of Guise, 2.
Farmer, Small, 27, 28, 30.
Federalism of C. Mario, 178.
Ferroti (Schedo), 267.
Ferroul, M., 52.
Feuerbach, Friedrich, 138.
Feuerbach, L., 131, 132.
Index.
503
Fleischmann, M., 42.
Fluctuations, Commercial, 323.
Forbes, Father, 243.
Forestry, 412.
Fourier, 23, 254.
France, Liberty in, 21 ; socialism,
45 ; municipal socialism, 50.
Franklin, B., 13; on high wages, 365.
Fraternity, 269.
Freiligrath, F., 146.
Froebel, F., 130.
Frohme, M., 35.
Fulda Conference, 229.
G.
Gallenga, A., on unemployed in
Italy, 59.
Game Laws, 497.
Geneva Congress, 150.
George, Henr}-, United Labour
Party, 78 ; a semi-socialist, 78 ;
Mayoralty of New York, 79 ; in
Australia, 90 ; " Progress and
Poverty," 440 ; his problem, 445 ;
his explanation, 461 ; theory of
population, 464 ; of wages, 465 ;
profits, 474; rent, 476; his remedy,
486 ; land nationalization, 485.
Germany, Socialism in, 33 ; Crown
lands and industries, 345.
Giffen, R., 449. 452.
Gilbert's Act, 424.
Glennie, J. S., 34.
Gneist, Professor, 203.
Goethe, 127.
Goltz, T. von der, on piecework, 315.
Goschen, Right Hon. G. J., State
intervention, 346 ; rationale of
Factory Acts, 350; distribution
of wealth, 460.
Gotha Congress, 38.
Gotha Programme, 38, 40.
Graham, Mr. Cunninghame, M.P.,
85.
Greig, George, 490.
Greeley, Horace, on socialist com-
munities. 402.
Gronlund, L., 81.
Guesde, J., 48, 50, 73.
Guesdists, 51, 52.
H.
Hadley, Professor, 416.
Hale, "Sir M., 301.
Halle Congress, 33, 37, 41.
Hartmann, E. von, 355.
Hasselmann, 45, 72.
Havre Congress, 47.
Haxthausen, Professor, 259, 262.
Headlam, Rev. S., 84, 88.
Hearn, Professor, 347.
Hegel, 131, 261.
Hegelians, Young, 3, 5, 130, 139.
Heine, H., on Lassalle, 96, 98 ;
on parties, 126.
Held, Professor, 196.
Herder, 127.
Hermann, 309.
Herring brand, 412.
Herzen, Alexander, 261, 262, 264,
265 ; letter renouncing revolu-
tionism, 273, 274.
Herzenism, 266.
Hildebrand, Professor B., 201, 203.
Hill, Sir R., 382.
Hime, Dr., Sheffield, quoted, 341.
Hirsch, Max, 203.
Hoedel, 33.
Holland, Socialism in, 72.
House Communities of Russia,
Dissolution of, 289.
Housing of poor, in Sheffield, 341;
McCulloch's view, 367.
Howell, G., M.P., on piecework,
315.
Hughes, Thomas, 222.
Humboldt, A. von., 98, 102.
Humboldt, W. von., on freedom,
334 ; on marriage, 353 ; on energy,
396.
Humphreys, Mr., 482.
Hyndman, H. M., 84.
Icarians, 2, 77.
" Illegal Men," 257.
Incomes, Distribution of, 486.
Increment, Unearned, 488.
Ingram, Dr. J. K., 371.
Insurance, National, 423; in New
Zealand, 417.
International Working Men's Asso-
ciation in France, 46 ; Italy. 57 ;
Spain, 60, 62 ; Denmark, 68 ; Bel-
gium, 70 ; Holland, 70 ; Jurassian
Federation, 73 ; origin, 147 ; Paris
Commune, 152 ; disruption, 153 ;
in Russia, 276.
International Working People'*
Association, U.S.A., 80.
International ity. 126.
504
Index.
Ireland, Poor Law, 385.
Iri>h labour, 365.
"Iron and Cruel Law," view of
Lassalle. 121 ; of Ketteler, 226 ;
of Todt, 237 ; refuted, 300.
Italy, Socialism in, 57.
J.
Jacobites, 126.
Janson, Professor, pauperism in St.
Petersburg, 284.
Jevons, Professor W. Stanley,
commercial statistics, 327.
Jews become Nihilists. 271, 296.
Jurassian Federation, 73, 250.
Justice, 84.
K.
Karakasoffs attempt, 276.
Kemball, Sir Arnold, 495.
Ketteler, Bishop, 224; iron and
cruel law, 226 ; right of property,
227 ; part of Church in Social
Question, 228.
Kildonan Strath improvements,
490.
King, Gregory, occupiers of land,
29 ; classes of population, 301 ;
distribution of wealth, 303 ; rent
of land, 454.
Kingsley, Charles, 221.
Knies, Professor, 201.
Knights of Labor, 82.
Koegel, Dr., 139.
Kolping, Father, 223.
Koscheleff, 267.
Krapotkin, Prince, 45 ; Lyons an-
archist, 48; English anarchism,
86 ; housing the poor, 250 ; the
Municipal Councils, 252 ; painter,
280.
Labour, Cost of. in different coun-
tries, 310.
Labour Department of State, 35.
Labour Emancipation League of
Russia, 295.
Labouring class prospects, 297, 312.
Labour, Knights of. 82.
Labour Party of Belgium, 71.
Labour Statistical Bureaux, 326.
Laf argue, P., 52.
" Land and Liberty " Society, 283.
Land, diminishing return, 467 ; an
artificial product, 489 ; Mill on,
491 ; speculation in, 493 ; reform,
496.
Landmetzger, 484.
Land Nationalization in Belgium,
72 ; in England. 89.
Land Restoration League, 90.
Laing, Samuel, 411.
Laisant, M., 64.
Laissez-faire, 336, 352; repudiated
by McCulloch, 361 ; never adopted
in England, 373; and property,
394.
Lange, F. A., 216.
Laveleye, E. de, on Italian peasantry,
59; no revolutionary Metropolis
in Italy, 60 ; Spanish socialist
clubs, 61 ; the Portuguese, 65 ; the
Scandinavians, 67; Belgian so-
cialism, 71 ; State Socialism in
England, 346; professes State
Socialism, 384.
Lavergne, M. de, on French and
English rural population, 46.
Lavrists, 280.
Lavroff, P., 278 ; his principles, 279 ;
followers, 295.
Lassalle, F., 92 ; Heine, 96 ; cha-
racter, 96 ; epitaph, 97 ; a revolu-
tion, 97 ; Humboldt, 98 ; Countess
Hatzfeldt's defence, 99; theft
of cassette, 100; conviction for
treason, 101 ; literary work, 102 ;
" Working Men's Programme,"
103; summary of, 109; General
"Working Men's Association, 105;
progress of propaganda, 105;
Helena von Donnigsen, 106 ; death,
108; apotheosis, 108; reply to
Schultze-Delitzsch, 114 ; new so-
cialistic constitution of property,
116; anarchic socialism of exist-
ing regime, 117; Ricardo's doc-
trine of value, 119 ; ' ; iron and
cruel law," 121 ; productive
societies, 122; a national socialist.
124; letter to Feuerbach, 172;
on the modern economists, 201 ;
popularity in Russia. 277 ; on
increase of production, ii:!'i.
Le Basse, Father, 243.
Ledru-Rollin, quoted, 22.
Leipzig Congress, 103, 179.
Leo XIII., 243 ; encyclical, 245.
Le Play, 284.
Leroux, P., 3.
Leroy-Beaulieu, Paul, 219.
Index.
505
Lessing, 127.
Levi, Professor Leone, 304.
Liberalism, Mario on, 185.
Liberty in America, 20 ; in France,
21 ; under democracy, 24.
Lichtenstein, Prince, 243.
Liebknecht, W., 34; on revolution,
42 ; peasant catching, 42 ; religion,
42 ; future socialist State, 43 ;
expulsion from General Working
Men's Association of Germany,
125; foundation of Social Demo-
cratic Labour Party, 125 ; speech
at Leipzig, 249.
Liege, Congress, 243.
Lilyenkrantz, Jacquette, 69.
Limitation of production, 313.
Limousin, M., minimum of social-
ism, 14.
Lisbon Congress, 66.
Locke, John. 353.
London, death-rate, 302.
Ludlow, Edmund, 127.
Ludlow, J. M., 221.
M.
Mably, 161.
Macaulay, Lord, quoted, 214.
Macdonald, Mr., Owenite, 403.
Machiavelli, secret societies, 257.
Malet, Mr., 45.
Malikowsy, 280.
Malthus, T. E., 369, 421.
Malthusianism, 17.
Manchester Party of Germany, 201,
212.
Manchester School, view of Maurice,
221 ; of Kingsley, 221 ; of Todt,
235 ; their real doctrine, 372.
Manning, Cardinal, Liege letter,
244.
Marlboro' Association, 405.
Mario, Carl 178.
Marr, W., 136, 137.
Marshall, Professor A., 437.
Martensen, Bishop, Catholicism and
socialism, 233.
Marx, Karl, historical necessity of
socialism, 23 ; social revolution
impossible without English par-
ticipation, 83 ; despair of English
participation, 84; reception of
Das Kapital, 127 ; life, 129 ; Young
Hegelian, 130 ; early views, 139 ;
Communist League, 142; com-
munist manifesto, 144 ; Inter-
national, 149 ; inaugural address
to, 151 ; summary of Das
Kapital, 156; value, 160; wages,
161 ; normal workday, 161 ;
machinery, 170; piecework, 172;
over-population, 174 ; letter from
Proudhon, 255 ; popularity in
Eussia, 277.
Massachusetts, Joint Stock manage-
ment in, 417.
Maurice, F. D., 11, 221.
McCulloch, J. E., disciple of Eicardo,
360; Wages fund, 360; laissez-
faire, 361 ; State management,
362 ; factory system, 363 ; pauper
labour, 364 ; factory legislation,
366 ; housing the poor, 366 ; poor
law, 368; agricultural produce,
456.
" Medalmen," 294.
Meeker, Mr., Fourierist, 408.
Melbourne anarchists, 91.
Menger, Prof. A., historical neces-
sity of socialism, 23.
Meyer, Eudolph, 242, 383.
Michel, Louise, 48.
Mill, James, 360.
Mill, John Stuart, profession of so-
cialism, 5 ; liberty, 334 ; province
of Government, 353 ; over-govern-
ment in democracy, 395 ; in-
dustrial habits under socialism,
404 ; unearned increment, 488 ;
land, 472.
Ministry of Labour, 35.
Mint, The, 412.
Mir, The, 252, 262.
Molinari, G. de, 3, 45.
Montefiore, L., 97.
Morelly, 16.
Morier, Sir E., 288.
Morris, William, 84, 85.
Most, John, 44, 80, 248.
Moufang, Canon, 230, 231.
Mulhall, M., wages, 308; textile
workers, 323 ; agricultural rent,
456.
Mun, Count A, de, 243.
Municipal management, 413.
Municipal socialism in France, 51.
Mutualists, 3.
N.
Napoleon L, 380.
Nasmyth, James, manual dexterity,
317, 440.
506
Index.
Nasse, Professor E., economic in-
dividualism in England, 346.
Neale, E. Vansittart, 87.
Netchaieff, 276.
Newark Congress, 80.
New Zealand, State insurance, 348.
Nicholas, Czar, 263, 264.
Niewenhuis, D., 72.
Nihilism, Russian, 45, 259 ; name,
266.
Nobiling, 33.
No Man's land, 482.
Nordhoff, Mr., 40:;.
North American Phalanx, 408.
Norway, Socialism in, 66 ; the poor,
452.
Noyes, Mr., 403.
O.
Oldham, co-operative mills, 338.
Old Believers, 292.
Oppenheim, M., 195.
Overtime, 320.
Owen, E. D., 405.
Owen, Eobert, 77, 360.
Owenites, 2, 11, 77, 148 ; in America,
404.
P.
Palm, 67.
Pan-destruction, 274.
Parsons, 249.
Patriotism, disparaged by socialists,
126 ; by great writers, 127.
Paul, St., slave emancipation, 242.
Pauperism, St. Petersburg, 260;
aged, 423; England, 449; able-
bodied, 450 ; Norway, 452.
Peasant proprietary, prospects, 27 ;
in the International, 46.
Peasants' League in Belgium, 245.
Pensions, National, 423.
Perowskaia, Sophia, 280.
Pestel, 264.
Peukert, 55.
Piecework, 314
Pio, 68.
Poles, The, 271.
Poor Law, England, 402; McCul-
loch, 368 ; S. Webb, 423.
Population theory, 464.
Porter, G. E., good wages and
temperance, 318; working class
houses in Sheffield, 341.
Portugal, Socialism in, 65.
Possibilists, 50, 51.
Post-office management, 410.
Potter, George, piecework, 320.
Production, Limitation of, 313.
Productive associations, 79.
Profit-sharing, 339.
Propaganda of Deed, 256.
Property, diffusion, 23 ; advantages
of institution, 333.
Proudhon, anarchy, 250 ; letter to
Marx, 255 ; pauperism, 475.
Prussia, socialism, 31 ; condition of
people, 31 ; occupation of land,
32 ; forests, 42.
R.
Eailways, State, 416.
Eappists, 405.
Eealistic School of Economics, 205.
Eeclus, Elisee, anarchist, 48 ; on
Eussian agriculture, 290.
Eenan, E., 384.
Eent, Fair, 429 ; agricultural, 456 ;
H. George, 476.
Eepublican Socialist Alliance in
France, 54.
Eevolutionist, The complete, 275.
Eeybaud, M., 179.
Eicardo, D.,law of value, 226; "iron
law of wages," 300; real theory
of wages, 306 ; province of Go-
vernment, 359 ; National Bank,
360; working class annuities, 360;
rent, 477.
Eight to existence, 421.
Eight to labour, in Convention of
1793, 22 ; Bismarck on, 421 ; in
English Poor Law, 424.
Eights, Natural, 420; Primitive
economic, 385.
Eodbertus on Bismarck's social
policy, 34 ; differences from Las-
salle, 123 ; social question. 127 ;
relation to socialist movement,
178; converts Wagner, 380; ac-
knowledges Hohenzollerns, 381 ;
views, 381.
Eodriguez de Capada, Professor,
245.
Eogers, Professor Thorold, 350.
Eoscher, Professor W., time as re-
former, 199; historical method,
200,204 ; Eisenach Congress, 203 ;
economic ideal, 205 ; task as eco-
nomist, 207; piecework, 321.
Eousseau, J. J., 16.
Euge, Arnold, 131.
Index.
507
Euskin, John, 88.
Russia, Nihilism in, 259.
Russo- Turkish war, 282.
S.
St. Etienne Congress, 50.
St. Joseph associations, 229.
St. Petersburg pauperism, 260.
St. Simon, 218, 254.
Samoa, Socialist customs in, 401, 492.
Samter, Y., on Mill, 198.
Sassulitch. Vera, 277, 282.
Say, Leon, State Socialism, 345.
Schseffle. Professor, 326.
Scheel, Professor von., social ques-
tion, 215.
Schmoller, Professor, 195 ; on So-
cialists of Chair, 200; Eisenach
Congress, 203; Province of Govern-
ment, 211 ; distributive justice,
213.
Schonberg, Professor, 203, 213.
Schorlemer-Abst, Baron, 229.
Schulte, Professor, 229.
Schultze-Delitzsch, 4 ; co-operative
societies, 103; Lassalle's reply,
114.
Schweitzer, Dr. von, 124.
Self-interest, 375.
Senior, N. W., 464.
Shakers, 405.
Shaw, G., Bernard, 88.
Sheffield, socialists, 89 ; housing of
working-class, 341.
Shuttleworth, Canon, 88.
Sidgwick, Professor, 360, 428.
Sinclair, Sir John, 469.
Sisyphism, 443.
Smith, Adam, as viewed by Social-
ists of the Chair, 198; on Govern-
ment trading, 345; his theory
of social politics, 353; national
education, 354 ; military training,
355 ; English Government man-
agement, 356 ; truck, 357 ; usury.
357 ; corporate management, 417.
Smith, E. Peshine, effect of educa-
tion on wages, 321.
Social Democratic Party in Ger-
many, 33 ; in Eeichstag, 34 ;
France, 48; programme, 49 ; Italy.
58; Spain, 61 ; 'Norway, 66 ; Den-
mark, 69 ; Belgium, 70 ; Holland,
73; Switzerland, 74; U.S.A., 80;
England, 84 ; Scotland, 90 ; Syd-
ney, 91.
Social Monarchical Union, 241.
Social Politics, English theory, 373 :
Christian, 242.
Social Reform, Central Union for,
239.
Socialism, before 1848, 2 ; contem-
porary, 3; labourers' claim of
right, 7 ; variable use of word, 8 ;
inequitableness its ruling cha-
racteristic, 9; old and new, 10;
minimum of. 14 ; relation to de-
mocracy, 15 ; Christian, 224 ;
State, 345 ; meanings of word,374.
Socialist Laws of Germany, 33.
Socialists of the Chair, 195.
Society of Public Utility in Switzer-
land, 76.
Society of Social Peace, 243.
Spain, Socialism in, 60 ; anarchism,
62 ; condition of people, 64.
Spectator, The, testamentary sta-
tistics, 459.
Speculation, 493.
Spencer, Herbert, believes in social-
ist ideal of society, 8 ; the coming
slavery, 346; functions of Govern-
ment, 351, 352 ; land nationali-
zation, 385 ; natural rights, 420.
Stahl, quoted, 16.
State management, 409.
State railways, 415.
State Socialism, 345; in Germany,
379.
State, The, 211.
Statistics, Commercial, 326.
Stein, Professor L. von, 94, 132.
Stephanovitch, 293.
Stepniak, on mir, 252; Paris Com-
mune, 277 ; Russian proletariat,
284 ; Russian peasantry, 285, 286,
288; break-up of the Russian
Commune, 289 ; Russian agri-
culture, 291.
Stocker, Dr., 234, 236, 241, 242.
Stockholm Congress, 67.
Strachey, Mr., 68.
Strikes,"44.
Studnitz, A., 320, 331.
Suez Canal, 348.
Sumner, Archbishop, 370.
Sunday Schools, Nihilist, 269, 272.
Surplus Value, Marx's doctrine, 167.
Sweating System, 432.
Sweden, Socialism in, 66.
Switzerland, Socialism in, 73; So-
ciety of Public Utility, 76 ; secret
societies, 136.
Sylvania Association, 404.
508
Index.
T.
Taylor, Helen, 84.
Tchaikowsky, 280.
Tchernychetfsky, 269, 272.
Telegraphs, State management of,
410.
Thompson, William, anticipation
of Marx's doctrine, 148.
Thornton, W. T., 464.
Thuenen, J. von, natural wages,
121.
Thun, Professor A., 278, 281, 284,
285, 287.
Tocqueville, A. de, socialism and
democracy, 19 ; democratic pas-
sion for equality, 24 ; middle-
class materialization, 24; political
necessity of religion, 25 ; the
plutocracy, 186.
Todt, R., 234.
Trade Unions, 311.
Tramps, 450.
Treitschke, H., 203.
Trepoff, Assassination of General,
OQ9
Trial of the, 193, 280.
Troglodytes, Secret Society, 283.
TrumbuU Phalanx, 404.
Tucker, B. R., 91.
Turgenieff, 266.
Turner, Dr., Samoa, 401, 492.
U.
Unemployed, 424.
Unionism, The New, 85, 86.
United States, Liberty in, 20;
socialism, 77 ; nationalism, 79 ;
anarchism, 80.
V.
Vaillant, M., 53.
Value, Marx's doctrine, 160 ; true
theory, 327.
" Versailles," The, 126.
Victoria, State railways, 411,417;
eight hours day, 436.
Volrnar, Herr von, 35.
Vogt, K., 148.
W.
Wages Fund, 464, 465.
Wages, " iron law," 226, 237, 300 ;
rise since English Revolution,
301; Ricardo's theory, 306; true
theory, 307 ; fair, 430 ; minimum,
431.
Wagner, Professor A., ground-
rents, 199, State and the social
question, 213 : Evangelical Social
Congress, 241 ; converted by Rod-
bertus, 380 ; his State Socialism,
387.
Walker, President F. A., 332, 469.
Wallace, A. R., 89, 485.
Warren, Josiah, 77.
Watts, Dr. J., 434.
Webb, Sidney, 88 ; State pensions
for the aged, 423.
Weitling, W., 80, 137.
Westminster, Duke of, 486.
Wieland, 127.
Will of the People Party, 283, 295.
Winchester, Bishop of, definition
of socialism. 376.
Winkelblech, Professor, 180.
Woeste, M., 244.
Working classes, prospects, 297,
312 ; habits, 318 ; legitimate aspi-
rations, 333.
Workmen's Chambers, 35.
Wyden Congress, 44, 126.
Y.
Yellow Springs, 404.
Young, Arthur, 455.
Young England Party, 380.
Z.
Zurich Congress, 76.
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