Contemporary Socialism

ope was then entirely free from the revolutionary alarms which overclouded the first Exhibition in 185

n'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 t

hilanthropy 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

k into oblivion. The communities 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 endeavours is therefore the conquest of the powers of the State. There are some exceptions, but these are very unimportant. The communistic societies of the U

e establishment 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 they 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; where 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

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 contemplate a strongly centralized form of government, and the other preferring to leave the local communes comparatively independent and sovereign, and free, if they choose, to unite themselves in convenient federations. The federal republic has always been the favourite ideal of the Democrats of Spa

should find so much acceptance in Russia; but it is no exclusively Russian product. It was preached 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 everywhere. As institutions and beliefs are seen to lend strength to each other, teeth set on edge against on

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 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

ng-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 question 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

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; bu

for Liberty," p. 4.) Socialists are far from being the only persons whose sense of justice is offended by much in the existing régime, 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 reasonable 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, t

interest, or profit-the right, as they call it, of the labourer to the whole produce of his labour. Now this is a very distinct and definite claim of 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 philanthropic 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

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

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 government 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

ny 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 distribution is really just and equitable, nothing can surely be more pro

tials of all humane living, how can there be any 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 ho

ent, and in some of them with remarkable 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 repose in a democratic

ed 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

ic 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,

s 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 Malthusianism. Did any one say that, without inequalities, progress would cease and arts and civilization decay, Baboeuf was

ds 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, according to his need; they ask the State to give every man according to his work, or, if unfit for work, according to his need, and they hold that this rule would afford every one an honourable sufficiency. But these differences are only refinements on Baboeuf's plan, and its main features remain-equality of conditions, nationalization of pr

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 development 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,

in that country-everything, at least, that electoral power can make them in an elective republic; 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

nt, 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

re, 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

d 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 soc

ng disease. It evinced this tendency very early in the history of the Revolution. As Ledru-Rollin reminded 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 tradit

persion or to a concentration of property. For even in the freest democracy individual property can only be permanently sustained by diffusion, and, if existing conditions have isolated it into the hands of the few, the many will lie under a constant, and, in emergencies, an irresistible temptation 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

n 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 profound 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 freedom. 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 privation 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 democracy 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 disp

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 conditions at present strongly favour concentration or aggregation of capital. The small masters have simply been worsted in 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 circumstance that the power now in

perty, so long as its social system lends exceptional consideration 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, however, 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 holdin

d 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 stability; 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 comfortable holdings, which shall nourish a substantial and independent 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 revol

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; because then, and then only, can the farmer be expected to bestow upon every rood of his ground that generous expenditure of capital, and that sedulous and minute care which are now necessary to make his business profitable. Without entering on the disputed question of the comparative productiveness 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 he must always do-but also with less knowledge of the theory of his art, and wor

countries of Europe and America, and to describe its pre