Contemporary Socialism

h embarrassing misconceptions by adopting too hastily an infelicitous name. It is mo

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 nickname 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 directing 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 comfortable theory of the natural harmony of individual interests, and instead of depl

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 subsequently 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

r 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 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 civilization. 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

hese 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 according 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 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 e

ry 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 politician, 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 newspapers, periodicals, elaborat

be admitted by all. The other is, that every explanation is only provisional, and liable to be superseded in the course of the progress 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 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 scrupulously 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

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 departing 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 everything 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. Roscher 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 themselves, 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 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

lved for the period that raises them. Their very nature alters under other skies and in other ages. They neither appear everywhere 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 p

ience, 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 precisely 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; 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 beginning, and constitutes in fact part of the nature of things from which it is sou

ies 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, responsibilities, 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 unwholesome 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

d 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 distributive 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 consequences 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 industrial 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, nor to self-help alone, that the Socialists of the Chair ask working 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 possibil

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 question 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 necessary. 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 eventually 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 working 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 condit