Contemporary Socialism

e 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 movem

e 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 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 1

n the products 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 expectation. Poverty prevailed everywhere-among labourers and among employers, too-with peoples of the highest industrial development, and with peoples of the lowest-in luxurious cities, and in the huts of villagers-in the rich plains 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 important 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 doctrines 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 influences. 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 my 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 cou

It was to have consisted of three parts; 1st, a historical part, containing an exposition and estimate 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,

ot 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 privilege. Inequality of right was therefore the characteristic of this period; Marlo 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 r

zed the principle of abstract liberty, and it fancied if evil did not disappear, it was always because something still remained that needed emancipation. Communism, 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 different modes of attempting to reduce that principle to practice; and Liberalism happens

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, however, 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

pitalism 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 Marlo, 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 maintenance 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 agains

e 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 personality, 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 adjustment between these two elements. Such an adjustment can only be discovered by

n's activity tends to be carried on; and that in any 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 Marlo, 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 h

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

ited and circumscribed 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. Wh

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 labour changes the situation of things considerably, and must be allowed a leading r?le 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

ibution 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 property 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 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

the natural resources are distributed 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 preliminary con

f 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 maintenance of unnecessary horses, dogs, or other animals that only

roperty 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 comparative economic utility of the two. Without offering any detailed proof of his proposition fr

s his claim on Ricardo's theory of value and Ricardo's law of necessary wages. Marlo builds his on man's