1 H. M. Hyndman, E. B. Bax, and the Reception of Karl Marx’s Thought in Late-Nineteenth Century Britain, c. 1881-1893 Seamus Flaherty Queen Mary University of London Submitted in partial fulfilment of the requirements of the Degree of Doctor of Philosophy 2 Statement of Originality I, Seamus Flaherty, confirm that the research included within this thesis is my own work or that where it has been carried out in collaboration with, or supported by others, that this is duly acknowledged below and my contribution indicated. Previously published material is also acknowledged below. I attest that I have exercised reasonable care to ensure that the work is original, and does not to the best of my knowledge break any UK law, infringe any third party’s copyright or other Intellectual Property Right, or contain any confidential material. I accept that the College has the right to use plagiarism detection software to check the electronic version of the thesis. I confirm that this thesis has not been previously submitted for the award of a degree by this or any other university. The copyright of this thesis rests with the author and no quotation from it or information derived from it may be published without the prior written consent of the author. Signature: Seamus Flaherty Date: 13. 09. 2017 3 Abstract This thesis examines how the idea of Socialism was remade in Britain during the 1880s. It does so with reference to the two figures most receptive to the work of Karl Marx, H. M. Hyndman and E. B. Bax. It argues that, despite the progress made in others areas of the history of British Socialism, the historiography on Hyndman and Bax is still marred by the influence of Friedrich Engels. It demonstrates that the terms ‘Marxist’ and ‘Marxism’ are anachronisms. It shows that ‘Marxism’ was an invented intellectual tradition. It argues therefore that it is a mistake to take its existence for granted at the outset of the period. It shows instead how Hyndman and Bax interpreted Marx over time, with and without Engels’s mediation. It reveals, firstly, that Hyndman was not the Tory Radical of historical repute, and Bax, secondly, was one of the most serious internal critics of ‘Marxism’ of his generation, who did battle with Engels in print. The chapters on Hyndman reveal a fuller cast of characters than historians have usually been apt to acknowledge. For instance, Giuseppe Mazzini, Henry Fawcett, William Cunningham, John Morley, W. H. Mallock, and Arnold Toynbee all feature prominently. The chapters on Bax also reveal previously unacknowledged affinities: most importantly, perhaps, Herbert Spencer and John Stuart Mill. What also becomes apparent is the substantially different set of sources to those customarily proposed that at once both informed and facilitated the passage of modern British Socialist thought: briefly, the ‘culture of altruism’ that flourished among intellectuals from the 1850s to the 1880s, the rise of historical economics, the discourse of democratic Teutonism and the invention of primitive society, Comtian Positivism, and political economy in its post-Millian form. 4 Table of Contents Acknowledgements 5 Introduction 6 Chapter 1: A Certain Hyndman 29 Chapter 2: Socialism in the Periodical Press 53 Chapter 3: Social Radicalism 77 Chapter 4: A Real Enthusiasm for the New Ideas 101 Chapter 5: A Crowd of Young Bourgeois Intelligentsia 123 Chapter 6: A Spirit of Social Revolution 146 Chapter 7: Unscientific Socialism 172 Chapter 8: From Socialism to Socialism 192 Chapter 9: The Problem of Reality 211 Chapter 10: Liberalism versus Socialism 234 Chapter 11: The Morrow of the Revolution 251 Conclusion 268 Bibliography 276 5 Acknowledgements This research was supported by the Arts and Humanities Research Council. I am grateful for the support received. I would also like to thank Professor Gareth Stedman Jones for supervision. 6 Introduction ‘The truth is this: during the period of England’s industrial monopoly the English working-class have, to a certain extent, shared in the benefits of the monopoly... And that is the reason why, since the dying-out of Owenism, there has been no Socialism in England.’1 This was the view propounded by Friedrich Engels in an article written for Commonweal, the recently established newspaper of the Socialist League, in 1885. In 1892, Engels reproduced the content of that article, in full, in the preface to a new English edition of his youthful account of the consequences of the ‘industrial revolution’, The Condition of the Working Class in England. Overall, Engels believed that the conclusions arrived at in his journalistic assessment of ‘England in 1845 and in 1885’ still held good; he had, he insisted, at that later date, ‘but little to add.’2 Yet, despite Engels’s obvious reticence, among the utterances that he did in fact join to his previous effort, in the final three paragraphs of the preface turned over to that task, he included a qualification of some considerable moment: ‘Needless to say’, he acknowledged, in an almost reluctant tone, ‘that today there is indeed “Socialism again in England”, and plenty of it – Socialism of all shades: Socialism conscious and unconscious, Socialism prosaic and poetic, Socialism of the working-class and of the middle-class, for verily, that abomination of abominations, Socialism, has not only become respectable, but has actually donned evening dress and lounges lazily on drawing-room causeuses.’3 1 Friedrich Engels, The Condition of the Working Class in England (London, Panther, 1969), p. 34. 2 Ibid, pp. 27, 34. 3 Ibid. 7 Engels’s post-hoc proviso was no overstatement. By 1892, Socialism had indeed re-entered intellectual and political life in Britain in earnest. For example, besides the presence of various groups organised with the explicit aim of realising their respective visions of Socialism – the Fabian Society, the Social Democratic Federation, and the Socialist League – some of the most notable political and literary figures of the period were also busy issuing favourable pronouncements about its positive characteristics, or even adopting, for the first time, the word Socialist as a self-designative term: with uneven degrees of enthusiasm, Joseph Chamberlain, Charles Dilke, and Oscar Wilde all fall under the first head, while Frederic Harrison can be taken as an illustration for the second.4 It is, to be sure, impossible to tell if Engels had him in mind for the part, but if Wilde is the ideal-typical candidate for the role of Socialism clad in evening dress, lounging lazily on drawing-room causeuses, then Sidney Webb and William Morris neatly fulfil the same function for Socialism in its prosaic and poetic shades. In the same manner, if Socialism of the working-class was most clearly represented in Britain by a figure like John Burns or Will Thorne (in Engels’s imagination at least), then the Fabian Society epitomised its middle-class equivalent.5 In a telling comparison, at the same time as Burns and Thorne were assuming important leadership roles in the ‘New Unionism’ at the end of the 1880s, the Fabians were preoccupied instead with the notion of ‘permeating’ the Liberal Party, and maintained a 4 Joseph Chamberlain, ‘Favorable Aspects of State Socialism’, The North American Review, 152 (Jan. 1891), pp. 534-548. Charles Dilke, ‘A Radical Programme. Part I’, The New Review, 3/14 (Jul. 1890), pp. 1-14. Oscar Wilde, ‘The Soul of Man Under Socialism’, Fortnightly Review, 49/340 (Feb. 1891), pp. 292-319. Frederic Harrison, ‘Moral and Religious Socialism’, New Year’s Address at Newton Hall, 1 Jan. 1891, reprinted in National and Social Problems (London, Macmillan & co, 1908), pp. 440-462. 5 Tristram Hunt, The Frock-Coated Communist. The Life and Times of the Original Champagne Socialist (London, Penguin, 2010), p. 334. 8 disdainful pose as to the suitability of the ‘New Unions’ to operate as a vehicle of change.6 By contrast, Engels showed no hesitation in affirming his support for the ‘New Unionism’. Indeed, his recognition of the movement’s significance constituted a second, and final, caveat to the analysis presented in his article of seven years previous. In fact, this second caveat, for Engels, was of far greater importance than the first: for neither the ‘momentary fashion among bourgeois circles of affecting a mild dilution of Socialism’, nor even ‘the actual progress Socialism has made in England generally,’ could match in terms of political magnitude ‘the revival of the East End of London.’7 Needless to say, this was a profoundly partial interpretation. Clearly, when Engels invoked the notion of Socialism unconscious he meant the so-called ‘revival of the East End’. But the idea that unconscious Socialism was operative in Britain already had a substantial and influential alternative history of its own: Henry Fawcett, John Morley, and Herbert Spencer had all argued that Socialism had acquired, unintentionally, an impetus from the State and reform-minded members of the ‘educated classes’; this was also the view of the Fabians. Engels, however, was dismissive of the kind of legislative action that aroused sustained and heated controversy among other British political commentators.8 In general, he was scornful of organised Socialism too. The Fabians incited his disdain owing to their ethos of class-neutrality.9 But the revolutionary 6 See Asa Briggs, ‘Introduction’, in George Bernard Shaw (ed.), Fabian Essays (London, George Allen & Unwin, 1962), p. 25. Sidney Webb, ‘Introduction to the 1920 Reprint’, in Shaw (ed.), Fabian Essays, p. 272. 7 Engels, Condition of the Working Class, p. 34. 8 ‘It is nothing but self-interested misrepresentation… to describe as ‘socialism’ all interference by the state with free competition’, Engels wrote pointedly to Eduard Bernstein in March 1881. Karl Marx and Frederick Engels, Collected Works.