CHAPTER XI
THE PURIFIED SOCIALISM
We have, in the preceding chapters, sketched the rise and the principles of the leading schools of historic socialism. The history we have reviewed is a most protean one, and very prolific in theories which are more or less akin.
It is easy to trace certain general features of resemblance in the development of socialism. In the experiments conducted by the followers of Saint-Simon, Fourier, and Owen, we see a desire forthwith to create a ready-made and complete socialism, which almost always ended in failure. Louis Blanc and Lassalle agreed in demanding the organisation of society on democratic principles, and the establishment of productive associations by a State thus constituted. The resemblance in type between the community of Owen, the _phalange_ of Fourier, and the free commune of Bakunin is obvious; and it is not going too far to say that all of them have interesting points of analogy with the village community, which has its survival in the Russian mir.
Throughout the history of socialism we naturally also observe the contrast between the tendency which more or less emphasises State authority and the need of centralisation, and that other tendency which regards the local body as cardinal and decisive. As we have seen, that contrast was perfectly clear in the earliest French socialism, in the schools of Saint-Simon and Fourier. While calling on the State to furnish credit for productive associations, both L. Blanc and Lassalle strongly insisted that these associations should be self-governing and self-developing. The centralising tendency was very marked in Rodbertus. Though it cannot be maintained that the Marx school insist excessively on the claims of authority, yet in the conduct of the International they had a severe struggle with the anarchist following of Bakunin. It is simply the old question of authority and order in relation to individual and local freedom, which always reappears under the newest conditions, and which cannot be solved on absolute principles.
Notwithstanding those general features of resemblance, it would be a serious mistake to identify socialism with any of its forms, past or present. They are only passing phases of a movement which will endure. If socialism has given proof of a persistent vitality, it has also undergone many transformations, and will in all probability undergo many more. Our task now is to inquire into the significance, tendency, and value of the general movement.
The problem before us is one of historical interpretation in the widest sense of the word. It is not an academic question which can be settled by the scholarly comparison of texts and systems.
If the socialistic movement were complete and finished, it would be merely a subject of sympathetic analysis and generalisation by the historian. But the socialistic movement is not complete; it is in process of making—probably only in its early stage. It is a question, therefore, which must be treated not only in the light of history and human nature, but with special reference to the now prevailing forces—industrial, political, social, and ethical. For on these will depend the future course of the movement and its prospects of success. While socialism has a past, it has also a profound significance for the present and the future. The great task for the student is to find out the rational meaning and purport of socialism, its probable significance for the present time and the time coming.
For the rational interpretation of socialism we cannot too often emphasise the fact that it is not an abstract system, but a thing in movement. It is not wedded to any stereotyped set of formulas, whether of Marx or any other, but must be rooted in reality, and, while moulding facts, it must adapt itself to them. Above all, we must ever remember that it claims to represent the aspirations after a better life of the toiling and suffering millions of the human race.
Even a cursory review of the historic socialism is enough to show that, while it has been prolific of new thought in economics, it has been disfigured by every kind of extravagance. In general, it has been far too artificial, arbitrary, and absolute in its treatment of social questions. As we have seen, the early theorists especially were profoundly ignorant of the laws governing the evolution of society. Many later socialists of great influence have laid excessive stress on revolution as the lever of social progress. Few of them have really appreciated the bearings of the population question on the great problems of society. Most of them have been far too absolute in their condemnation of competition. In fact, their general position consists far too much in a sweeping condemnation of the present society, forgetful the while that it is only out of the present that the future, in which they place their hopes, can proceed.
The current socialism, too, has very prematurely shown a tendency to degenerate into a stiff and barren orthodoxy, which seeks to apply narrow and half-digested theories, without adapting or even reasonably understanding them, to circumstances for which they are not suited. This is particularly apparent in the attempts to introduce into England and America formulas and modes of action which have grown up in the very different atmosphere of the European continent. It has not sufficiently recognised the fluent and many-sided variety of modern life, which cannot be embodied in any formula, however comprehensive and elastic.
Finally, socialistic speculation has in many cases tended, not to reform and humanise, but to subvert the family, on the soundness of which social health above all things depends. It has not understood the solidity and value of the hereditary principle in the development of society. Socialists have, in short, been far too ready to attack great institutions, which it must be the aim of all rational progress, not to subvert, but to reform and purify.
In the socialistic treatment of other questions, such as capital, rent and interest, the same defects of arbitrariness and absoluteness are apparent. But the extravagances of the historic socialism are so obvious that they confute themselves, and we shall not dwell on this aspect of our subject. We must remember that most historic systems have had to run themselves clear of the turbid elements with which they were originally mixed. Socialism, considered both as a movement and as a system of economic thought, is still in process of development. Its theories must undergo the rough-hewing of continual controversy, discussion, and criticism. The whole movement must pass through the test, the tear and wear of experience, under the conditions prescribed by history and the fundamental laws of human nature, before its ideals can hope to be wedded to fact. We might add that it will receive the purification of experience; only, we have to lament that it is the fate of our ideals to submit also to the degradation of experience.
A like charge of abstractness may justly be brought against the two great German economists, Adolf Wagner and Schäffle, whose writings have so largely promoted a better comprehension of socialism. Their economic works are monuments of learning and lucidity, but their exposition and interpretation of the subject are marked by that excessive love of system which is usually characteristic of German specialists. They have brought to the discussion of the historic socialism the same systematising spirit with which German economists have treated Adam Smith. The economists of the Fatherland have reduced the teaching of Adam Smith to a set of abstract propositions, and so have transformed it beyond recognition. In like manner Adolf Wagner laboriously sums up socialism in abstract language, whereas it is above all things a concrete movement, instinct with change and with human passion. In his _Bau und Leben des sozialen Körpers_ Schäffle’s construction of socialism is an elaborate attempt to conceive society as transformed and dominated by a single principle.
Such a point of view can never accord with the actual development of historic forces. In the past the great economic eras have been remarkable for the endless variety of forms which they have assumed. Feudalism was not a stereotyped system, but took a special form in each European country, and in each country it changed from age to age. The competitive system has never entirely and exclusively dominated any society, and has been endlessly modified by custom and the traditions of the past, by national and social interests, and by moral considerations. Adam Smith, the great expounder of natural liberty, did not put it forth as an abstract and exclusive principle, but set it in the light of historic fact, and reserved a large sphere where private enterprise needed to be supplemented by the action of the State. We can only say of the competitive system that it has been normal or prevalent over the most advanced countries of the world for a considerable time. We must conceive socialism in the same way as claiming, when certain historical conditions have been realised, to be the normal or prevalent type of economic and social organisation.
In fact, they have had too exclusively in view the theories of Marx and Rodbertus. In his conception of socialism Wagner has been chiefly influenced by Rodbertus. Schäffle, in his _Quintessenz des Socialismus_, appears as the interpreter of the Marx socialism. Even the less absolute presentation of the socialistic theories by Lassalle should have been sufficient to bring out the contrast between socialism in movement and socialism in the abstract.
This is very nearly equivalent to saying that both economists have been too much influenced by the Prussian type of government and theory of the State. With regard to the two socialists, Rodbertus and Marx, we are not surprised that the former should be Prussian throughout in his way of thinking, but it is a notable instance of the irony of circumstances that Marx should be so largely controlled by habits of speculation which he had learned in Germany in his youth. He was to a great degree Prussian and Hegelian in his political and philosophical habit of mind till the end of his life. It is natural enough that the conception of socialism formed by Wagner and Schäffle should be of a similar character. For them socialism is a system of centralisation, of management from above (_von oben herab_) under a bureaucracy. Such a view may suit people that are used to a centralising autocracy and bureaucracy associated with militarism, but it is entirely opposed to English ideas. An industrial and economic system which would remind us at every step of the Prussian army, the Prussian police and Prussian officialism, is not attractive to those who have breathed a freer air.
Prussia has had a great mission to perform in modern history. From its geographical position and the circumstances attendant on its rise and progress, we can see that it required a powerful army, a strongly centralised government, and an industrial system entirely different from _laissez-faire_. We must respect the great vocations of the different historic peoples, among which Prussia has been one of the first. But that is no reason for expressing socialism in terms suggested by the Prussian form of government, or for supposing that the claim of socialism to control the economic organisation of the future will depend on its conforming to the Prussian type of State. It is to be devoutly hoped that the type of government rendered necessary by the struggle for existence among the nations on the European continent will not become universal.
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But we must now consider a question which is vastly more important than any of the criticisms now offered. What may be regarded as the solid and permanent contribution to human progress made by socialism?
There should be no doubt that socialism has largely contributed to the following results:—
_First_, It has greatly helped to give prevalence to the historical conception of Political Economy. The very conception of socialism has been based on the idea of social-economic change. Their subject has naturally led socialists to study the rise, growth, decline, and fall of economic institutions. And, as we shall see later on, the influence of Hegel and Darwin has taught them to merge the idea of historical economics in the wider and more fundamental conception of evolution. In England socialists are now the chief promoters of the advance in economic study from the ordinary standpoint to the historical, and from the historical to the evolutionary point of view.
_Secondly_, Socialism has greatly deepened and widened the ethical conception of Political Economy. It has, in season and out of season, taught that the entire technical and economic mechanism of society should be made subordinate to human well-being, and that moral principle should be supreme over the whole field of industrial and commercial activity. The charge sometimes brought against socialism, that it appeals only to the lower appetites and instincts of humanity, is most unjust. It would be a more reasonable criticism to say that it inculcates an unselfishness unattainable by any probable development of human nature.
_Thirdly_, Socialism has brought the cause of the poor most powerfully before the civilised world. It is one of the enduring results of socialistic agitation and discussion that the interests of the suffering members of the human race, so long ignored and so fearfully neglected, have become a question of the first magnitude, the foremost question in all progressive countries. It is this question which gives a substantial basis and a real meaning to the great democratic movement, which it would be the gravest of all errors to regard as a merely political struggle. The cause of the poor is likely to be the burning question for generations, lending to political questions their interest, seriousness, and unspeakable importance.
_Fourthly_, Socialism has given us a searching criticism of the existing social-economic system. It may be said to have laid its diagnosing finger on all the sores of society. The only objection that can be rationally taken is that the diagnosis has been an exaggerated one. All fair-minded judges will, however, admit that the socialistic criticism of the existing competitive system is largely, if not substantially, justified on the following points:—
1. The position of the working people, who are the overwhelming majority in every society, is not in harmony with ethical ideas. It has often and largely been a position of degradation, demoralisation, and misery. Normally, it is not consistent with what must be striven after as a desirable condition for the mass of humanity, for it is insecure, dependent and to a large degree servile. The workmen have no reasonable control of their dearest interests; have no guarantee of a settled home, of daily bread, and of provision for old age. It is a delusive freedom that has no solid economic basis.
2. The prevailing competitive system is to a large degree anarchy, and this is not an accident, but a necessity of its nature. This anarchy has two great and baneful modes of expression: strikes, which are a form of industrial war, carrying misery and insecurity over large sections of population, and sometimes menacing the industrial and social life of a whole nation; and the great crises, which at times have even a more disastrous influence, spreading like a storm over the entire civilised world, overthrowing honourable houses of business, and exposing to hopeless ruin and starvation millions of honest people who are in no wise responsible for their fate. And the times of crash are succeeded by protracted periods of stagnation, which for all concerned are scarcely better than the crises which caused it.
3. The phenomena of waste, which are always more or less a feature of the competitive system, are particularly manifest during the great industrial and commercial crises. Not only are the products of industry intended for consumption wasted in vast masses, but the productive forces themselves, such as machinery and shipping, are sacrificed enormously, whilst great numbers of people are idle and starving.
4. The prevailing system also leads to the large development of an idle class of the most motley description. Those conversant with the history of revolutions know how influential an overgrown idle class has often been in forcing them on.
5. The existing competitive system also necessarily leads to a vast amount of inferior, inartistic production in all departments. Cheapness is too conspicuous a feature of every branch of industry.
6. Our moral standards in every department of the national life have been lowered and corrupted by the excessive prevalence of a commercial and mercenary spirit. No rank, profession, or calling has escaped its influence.
7. Thus we are led to the general result, that inequalities of condition, and the too prevalent anarchy and insecurity as well as the unworthy status of the workers under the competitive system, are a permanent source of trouble and even danger to society. The circumstances of the workmen have improved; but it is doubtful whether the improvement has kept pace with their advancing enlightenment and the growing sense of their rights and needs. Here again we must emphasise the fact that the progress of democracy is not merely a political matter. It means still more the continual development of intelligence and of higher and finer needs in the mass of the people, a fuller consciousness of the claims of labour, a greater capacity for organisation, a wider moral and intellectual horizon. In the contrast between their moral and intellectual growth on the one hand, and their insecure and inferior position as precarious wage-labourers on the other, we may at one and the same time discover a great danger to our present social order and a splendid guarantee of further progress. Now, as ever, progress must be, attained through struggle, and perfection through suffering.
Scarcely any reasonable man therefore will deny that socialism has done excellent service to mankind in so strongly emphasising the necessity for further progress. While it has largely helped to rouse the working classes out of their apathy, it has also done much to dispel the comfortable optimism of those who had succeeded in the competitive struggle for existence.
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This criticism of society is valuable, but its effect is mainly negative. We may go on to claim, however, that socialism, when purified from materialism, from the too revolutionary, absolute, and abstract elements with which it has been associated in history, can render a positive and substantial service to human improvement that would be vastly more valuable than any criticism. It may be maintained that in its main aim and tendency socialism is perfectly sound and right. For amidst much error and exaggeration it has brought out the type of social economic organisation which in the future should and will prevail.
In previous chapters it has been made abundantly clear that the characteristic feature of the present economic order lies in the fact that industry is carried on by private competing capitalists served by wage-labour. According to socialism the industry of the future should be carried on by free associated workers rationally utilising a united capital with a view to an equitable system of distribution. As we have already had occasion to say, no formal statement can rightly give expression to the meaning of a great historical movement. But in such language we believe the contrast between the old order and the new can be most simply and at the same time with due adequacy expressed.
The same type of industrial organisation has been well set forth by J. S. Mill in these words: “The form of association, however, which, if mankind continue to improve, must be expected in the end to predominate, is not that which can exist between a capitalist as chief and workpeople without a voice in the management, but the association of the labourers themselves on terms of equality, collectively owning the capital with which they carry on their operations, and working under managers elected and removable by themselves.”[1] Mill’s view of the subject, it may be remarked in passing, was derived from the study of French and English socialists. His good sense saved him from the utopian extravagance of these writers, and as he had little sympathy with the peculiarly German ways of thought, he shows no tendency to the abstractness of the specialists of the Fatherland. The result is a conception of socialism which is at once intrinsically more reasonable, more adapted to the English mind and to universality, than any other offered by prominent economists. And in this connection we need hardly add that by the English mind we mean the mind of the English-speaking people; also, notwithstanding all that may be said to the contrary, that the English type of society has the best claim to universality, because it has best succeeded in reconciling and realising the fundamental requirements of order and freedom.
The simple expression of the socialistic theory will, no doubt, in the course of propaganda and discussion, long continue to be overlaid and obscured by a mass of detail, sometimes utopian, sometimes all too abstract and systematic. It will be well, therefore, to keep the simplicity of the type in view, but a few explanations may be necessary more fully to elucidate it.
The true meaning of socialism, when rationally understood, is given in the dominating tendencies of social evolution. On the one hand, the effect of the industrial revolution has been to concentrate the means both of production and distribution in immense masses. Capital can now be moved and controlled only on a large scale. The day for the small capital, and the successful control of it by individuals, has passed away. It may continue under exceptional circumstances, but it can no longer expect to be the normal or prevalent form of industry. On the other hand, the body of the people, represented by the modern democracy, can legitimately claim that they shall no longer be excluded from the control of their own economic and social interests. It is a rational and equitable demand that the prevalent divorce of the workers from land and capital should cease. This divorce can be terminated, and the mass of the people can be restored to a participation in the ownership and control of land and capital, only through the principle of association. This is the basis of socialism as given in the normal and dominant forces of the social evolution of our time. As we said in the introduction, socialism is the child of two great revolutions—the industrial revolution, and the vast social and political change embodied in the modern democracy.
Socialism, rationally interpreted, is therefore simply a movement for uniting labour and capital through the principle of association. It seeks to combine labour and capital in the same industrial and social groups. In such a group the present distinction between labourers and capitalists would cease, and the workers become producers, equitably disposing of the entire produce.
Such an industrial association would be self-governing. Socialism is an attempt to establish a free self-governing type of industry, and would therefore seek to realise in the social-economic sphere the principles already recognised in the political. It is a free self-governing form of industry, corresponding in the economic sphere to the democratic system in politics; industry of the people, by the people, for the people. But while a rational socialism seeks to establish industrial freedom, it aims also at promoting and securing industrial peace by terminating the struggle between labour and capital, for, as we have seen, its aim is to unite them in the same group.
Under such a system the workers will have full control of their economic interests. They will have the sobering and steadying discipline of responsibility. They will no doubt make mistakes, as all bodies of men have done since the beginning of the world; but as they will suffer by them, so they will have the power of correcting them. It will be a self-reforming and self-developing system of industry.
And it is hardly necessary to state that these associations will subsist in organic relation to one another. The State is, in idea or principle, such an association on the wide scale, just as the municipality or commune is the local form of association; and their relations to each other may in various degrees and forms represent the principle of federalism or centralisation.
In the history and condition of the working people it is a pathetic fact that their sons, who have been gifted with exceptional capacity, generally go over to the richer classes. Their services are thus lost to the class from which they sprang. It must be the aim of the socialist movement also to terminate this incessant divorce between labour and intelligence, by providing within the groups of associated workers due scope for the best talent.
Socialism claims to be the normal and prevalent type of organisation in the future. The methods of production, distribution, and exchange will be under social control. This being so, it may surely be regarded as a special instance of the arbitrariness and absoluteness of the current socialism, when it maintains that all capital must pass out of individual ownership. It may safely be maintained that such a condition of things is not possible, and that, if it were possible, it is entirely undesirable, because most likely to repress individual freedom, and affording indefinite scope for social tyranny. Under any conceivable system of society the free development of man is likely to be promoted by the possession of reasonable private means. The only objection that can be rationally alleged against private property is when it involves injustice to others—a possibility which, under socialism, is amply provided against by the prevalence of social control over economic processes.
The views just stated are not unwarranted by the historic socialism. Amidst much that is most extravagant, Fourier has the merit at least of offering the strongest safeguards for individual and local freedom. Fourier provided that every worker should have the opportunity of gaining and maintaining a capital of his own, but under such social regulation that it would no longer involve wrong to others; and further, he arranged that the owner should have perfect freedom to transfer his services and his capital from one association to another. These are features of Fourier’s system which have been too much neglected by scientific socialists so called; and in these respects he is much less utopian than his critics.
In no question is the arbitrariness of the historic socialism more apparent than in the artificial attempts made to formulate a just method of distribution or remuneration. We have in previous chapters indicated the different methods proposed in the schools of Saint-Simon, Fourier, and Louis Blanc. Nothing has so much tended to give a utopian air to socialistic speculation. Our ideas of justice cannot well be expressed in a single formula, however comprehensive. It has been the endeavour more or less of all moralists and legislators since the origin of human society to elucidate it and reduce it to some kind of reasonable form, but with only very imperfect results; and socialists are not now likely to succeed in a task which is really impracticable. Progress in the realising of justice can be attained only through the collective enlightenment and moral experience of the race; and it will always fall short of our ideals, for our ideals rise as we approximate towards a realisation of them, and so ever leave us behind in the race after perfection.
We need not say, however, that it is an obvious implicate in every equitable theory of distribution that remuneration must generally depend on work or desert. The normal income of the future must be based on service rendered to society by all able members. Regard will be had to the needs of the disabled.
It should be emphasised, moreover, that socialism must assert the supremacy of morality over all the economic processes—production and exchange as well as distribution. Production should be rational and systematic. Above all, distribution should be equitable. In these respects socialism is fundamentally opposed to the one-sided conception of competition which has been so prevalent. It seeks to supersede the existing competitive system of industry by a new order, in which reason and equity shall prevail.
It should also be clear that socialism supplies the much-needed complement and corrective of the principle of natural liberty advocated by Adam Smith. The principle of natural liberty had a great historical value, and when rightly understood must always be regarded as a prime factor in every theory of social progress. But it can be applied only under obvious limits, prescribed by reason and morality. The natural liberty of struggling individuals would, if unchecked, land us in social chaos. The true freedom of human beings is a rational and ethical freedom. Such principles ought to prevail in the commercial relations of nations with each other, as well as in every other department of our industrial and social life.
Socialism, then, simply means that the normal social organisation of the future will and should be an associated or co-operative one. It means that industry should be carried on by free associated workers. The development of socialism will follow the development of the large industry; and it will rationally, scientifically, and systematically use the mechanical appliances evolved during the industrial revolution for the promotion of a higher life among the masses of the people.
It is a new type of industry and economic organisation the practicability of which must be decided by the test of experience. It cannot be introduced mechanically. We cannot force or improvise such a change in the constitution of society. No revolutionary violence can avail to carry through a transformation which runs counter to the fundamental laws of human nature or the great prevailing tendencies of social evolution. This will be especially manifest when we consider that its realisation will above all things depend on the ethical advance of the mass of the people. Character cannot be improved by magic; it can be substantially ameliorated only by an organic change, external circumstances co-operating with an inward moral spirit. The present competitive system must therefore be regarded as holding the field until socialism has given adequate proof of the practicability of the theory which it offers.
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[1] Mill’s _Political Economy_, People’s Edition, p. 465.