Contemporary Socialism

Contemporary Socialism By John Rae Contemporary Socialism CHAPTER I.INTRODUCTORY. It was a common topic of congratulation at the Exhibition of 1862 that the political atmosphere of Europe was then entirely free from the revolutionary alarms which overclouded the first Exhibition in 1851; but in that very year the old clouds began to gather once more at different quarters of the horizon. It was in 1862 that Lassalle delivered to a club of working men in Berlin his address on "The Present Epoch of the World, and the Idea of the Working Class," which was published shortly afterwards under the title of "The Working Man'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 trade societies which issued eventually in the organization of the International. The double train thus laid has put in motion a propaganda of social revolution more vigorous, widespread, and dangerous than any which has preceded it. But though the reappearance of socialism was not immediately looked for at the time, it could cause no serious surprise to any one who considered how nearly the socialist theory is allied with some of the ruling ideas of modern times, and how many points of attraction it presents at once to the impatient philanthropy 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 interest in the mere fact of its reappearance than in marking the particular form in which, after a prolonged retirement, it has actually returned; for this may perhaps be reasonably taken to be its most vital and enduring type, and consequently that with which we shall mainly have to reckon in the future. Now the present movement is, before all, political and revolutionary. The philanthropic and experimental forms of socialism, which played a conspicuous rôle before 1848, perished then in the wreck of the Revolution, and have never risen to life again. The old schools have dispersed. Their doctrines, their works, their very hopes have gone. The theories of man's entire dependence on circumstances, of the rehabilitation of the flesh, of the passional attraction, once in everybody's mouth, have sunk 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 United States, for instance, are mostly organizations of eccentric religious sects which have no part or influence in the life of the century. The Colinsian Collectivists, followers of the Belgian socialist Colins, are a mere handful; and the Familistère of Guise in France—a remarkable institution, founded since 1848 by an old disciple of Fourier, though not on Fourier's plan—stands quite alone, and has no imitators. Non-political socialism may accordingly be said to have practically disappeared. Not only so, but out of the several sorts and varieties of political socialism, only one has revived in any strength, and that is the extremest and most revolutionary. It is the democratic communism of the Young Hegelians, and it scouts the very suggestion of State-help, and will content itself with nothing short of State-transformation. Schemes such as were popular and noisy thirty years ago—schemes, involving indeed organic changes, but organic changes of only a partial character—have gone to their rest. Louis Blanc, for example, was then a name of some power; but, remarkably enough, though Louis Blanc was but the other year buried with great honour, his Organization of Labour seems to be as completely forgotten as the Circulus of Leroux. M. G. de Molinari writes an interesting account of the debates that took place in the working men's clubs of Paris in the year 1868-9—the first year they were granted liberty of meeting after the 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 who labours without enjoying; where every one who is able to work shall have employment, and every one who has wrought shall retain the whole produce of his labour; and where accordingly, as the indispensable prerequisite of the whole scheme, the land of the country and all other instruments of production shall be made the joint property of the community, and the conduct of all industrial operations be placed under the direct administration of the State. Furthermore, all this is contended for as a matter of simple right and justice to the labouring classes, on the ground that the wealth of the nation belongs to the hands that made it; it is contended for as an obligation of the State, because the State is held to be merely the organized will of the people, and the people is the labouring class; and it is contended for as an object of immediate accomplishment—if possible, by ordinary constitutional means; but, if not, by revolution. This is the form in which socialism has reappeared, and it may be described in three words as Revolutionary Socialist Democracy. The movement is divided into two main branches—socialism proper, or collectivism, as it is sometimes called, and anarchism. There are anarchists who are not socialists, but hold strongly by an individualist constitution of property. They are very few, however, and the great mass of the party known by that name in our day, including the Russian Nihilists, are as ardent believers in the economic socialism of Karl Marx as the Social Democrats of Germany themselves. They diverge from the latter on 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 Spain and of the Communards of Paris, and there is generally a tendency among Federalists, in their impatience of all central authority, to drop the element of federation out of their ideal altogether, and to advocate the form of opinion known as "anarchy"—that is, the abolition of all superior government. It was very natural that this ancient feud among the democrats should appear in the ranks of socialist democracy, and it was equally natural that the Russian Radicals, hating the autocracy of their country and idealizing its rural communes, should become the chief adherents of the federalist and even the anarchic tradition. This is the only point of principle that separates anarchism from socialism. In other respects anarchism may be said to be but an extremer phase of socialism. It indulges in more violent methods, and in a more omnivorous spirit of destruction. Its fury takes a wider sweep; it attacks all current beliefs and all existing institutions; it puts its hopes in universal chaos. I shall endeavour in a future chapter to explain, from peculiarities of the national character and culture, why this gospel of chaos 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 one are easily brought to gnash at all. A sharp check from the public authority generally brings out to the front this extremer element in German socialism. After the repressive legislation of 1878 the German socialists struck the restriction of proceeding "by legal methods" out of their programme, and the wilder spirits among them would be content with nothing short of a policy of general destruction, and, being expelled from the party, started an organization of their own on thoroughly anarchist lines.

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